Many an American German teacher, whether at the high school or college level, has used as a teaching tool Michael Verhoeven's film Die Weiβe Rose and Inge Scholl's book on her siblings Hans and Sophie, members of the Munich resistance group against Hitler. Ruth Sachs's goal is to debunk the myths and legends that film and book have propagated. Only 10% of the Scholl Archives are open to the public because Inge Aicher-Scholl remained the strict guardian of Hans's and Sophie's diaries and letters until her death in 1998. Manuel Aicher then sold the archives to the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich, with the restriction that he determine what was to be made public and who would be allowed to use the materials. Inge Scholl refused to grant Sachs an interview in 1995, and had Franz Josef Müller, the director of Munich's White Rose Foundation, deny her access to its library and archives.

Sachs's research however did not come to a halt, since she used Gestapo files and other primary source materials from the Bundesarchiv in Berlin. In addition to consulting an impressive number of scholarly works listed in the annotated bibliography, she interviewed many eyewitnesses to
complete the heavily footnoted academic version of the story.

Among them were Traute Lafrenz, Susanne Hirzel (a close friend of Sophie's), Kurt Huber's son Wolfgang, and Erich and Hertha Schmorell. Her efforts are contained in a three-ring binder consisting of 30 chapters, each about 10 pages long. The chapters are divided chronologically in approximately three-month periods, which chronicle the activities of the characters, what their beliefs were at any given time and, most importantly, what happened historically during the period from 1933 to 1942.

Sachs's declared goal for her book, which can also be purchased in a less-heavily-footnoted version for the classroom, is to tell the White Rose story "in historical context, comprehensively, for American youth." Whereas Inge Scholl created the image of the resistance circle centering on the noble warriors Hans and Sophie fighting for a just cause, Sachs confronts us with all the people who impacted the White Rose, numbering around thirty, in all their complexities.

She is a gifted narrator who makes history come alive for students and teachers alike; against an impersonal account, Sachs brings herself into the story with comments, assessments, and some conjectures necessitated by the blocked materials. But she backs up all claims with research and does not shy away from asking hard questions. Sachs noted for example the deafening silence in diaries and letters about the pogrom night in 1938, even though the Scholls lived in a house filled with German Jews. In the spring of 1939 they even moved to an apartment formerly owned by a Jewish family that had had to emigrate. While puzzled by this lack of reaction to such a horrendous event, for her this underscores the hard fact that most Germans moved on with their lives acting as if nothing had happened.

Ruth Sachs's findings are truly groundbreaking, filling in some of the pieces in the previously incomplete puzzle. In the interrogation files for Bündische Trials from 1937-38 it comes out that while in a leadership position in the Hitler Youth, Hans Scholl repeatedly sexually molested a boy under his tutelage. For the history teacher this information is valuable for examining how the Nazis dealt with homosexuality and the bündische youth groups. We also learn that later on Hans - as were many in those times - was likely addicted to a drug known today as crystal speed, which could account for some of the reckless behavior this charismatic, but deeply troubled young man displayed around 1941. We follow Sophie's development from an enthusiastic Jungmädel leader to a critical observer of the political climate, and catch a glimpse into the psyche of very bright, but emotionally disturbed person, who after reading Augustine's Confessions, even contemplated suicide.

In her attempt to add the "missing voices" to the chorus, Ruth Sachs gives vivid accounts of Willi Graf's alienation that he must have felt among his indoctrinated fellow-soldiers at the Eastern front, Otl Aicher's developing conscience, and the willingness to act of the brothers Falk and Arvid Harnack, as well as their influence on Lilo Ramdohr. This volume ends in April 1942, before any of these young people have written and distributed the fliers for which they were to become so famous.

Summing up, it can be safely asserted that the many disconcerting revelations with which the reader of this volume is confronted are well balanced by the realization that authentic, even shocking human frailties could and did co-exist with the genuine heroism of which those dire times were so sorely in need!

Dr. Petra Fiero, Western Washington University. Published in Die Unterrichtspraxis: Teaching German. A Journal of the American Association of Teachers of German. Volume 37, number 2. © 2004.