the White Rose

[offizier1916]

today 74 years ago, the 18th february 1943, Hans and Sophie Scholl were arrested at the university of munich while distributing the pamphlets.

In remembrance of the white rose!

These men and women had the courage to revolte against this evil dictatorship and terror regime. They couldnt square with their conscience the fact that nazi germany committed crimes everywhere in europe.

Never forget!

[Pete26]

According to one book about the White Rose, Local Nazi authorities supposedly planned to hang the Scholls and Probst in front of the University of Munich as a warning to other students. Death sentence for all was a foregone conclusion days before the trial even started. Munich Gauleiter supposedly ordered a gallows to be built. But higher authorities intervened, as they did not want any martyrs and feared that a public execution like this would have an undesirable effect on student population, as the imprisoned students were fellow Germans. So they decided to get rid of the students quietly and out of sight of the public. They were taken to Stadelheim prison immediately following the death sentence and beheaded there the same day. Sophie was first to go and she was beheaded at exactly 5 PM. Stadelheim hinrichtungsstaette was a one story execution building which housed the guillotine. The guillotine was of Mannhardt type, not a badly restored Vienna Tegel type which they used in the "Die Letzten Tage" movie.

The execution building stood about 40 meters from the cell block where the condemned prisoners were kept. According to the prison chaplain who watched Sophie being led to her death, he could hear a muffled thud through the open window of the cell block where he was standing when the guillotine blade fell.

I often wondered how horrible it had to be to be led inside that execution shed by two guards, being aware that one had only seconds to live after entering that house of death. These executions were carried out swiftly. According to the formal execution protocol it took only 6 seconds to behead Sophie after she was turned over to the executioner, following a short reading by the prosecutor of the death sentence and denial of request for clemency in the anteroom of the execution building. No doubt others were beheaded swiftly as well, as the executioner Johann Reichhart believed in carrying out these executions quickly to keep the agony of the condemned as short as possible.

The Scholl sibling parents were unaware of the execution of their children until the next day. They visited them in prison shortly after they were brought in, but had no idea that the execution would be carried out later that afternoon. Most likely the condemned students were also told of their impending execution only a few hours before it was carried out.

[Pete26]

The guillotine which decapitated the Scholls and Probst on 22 February 1943 was already about 78 years old at that time (it was made around 1865). Now, 74 years later, it is 152 years old, still well preserved, and it still is a formidable killing machine that would most likely function without a glitch with just some minor repairs.

The phrase we commonly use denouncing low quality of many modern day products "they don't build them like they used to" certainly does not apply to this Mannhardt guillotine. But perhaps it is wrong to zero in on the sturdy construction of the machine that decapitated these brave students and others who resisted the Nazis. The machine is now merely an old relic from a dark chapter in German history. Hopefully it will never be used again for its intended purpose.

http://media1.faz.net/ppmedia/video/246 ... -neben.jpg