Citation - Documents Released in the Ferguson Case

McCulloch, Robert P. "Documents Released in the Ferguson Case". NY Times, St. Louis Police Force, NY Times Archives, Dec. 15, 2014, Clayton, Mo.

 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/11/25/us/evidence-released-in-michael-brown-case.html

Final Project - Fix a Protest - BLM

My final project will be based on fixing the direction of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. From the way that it looks, the movement has turned from protest to resentment. Many say that the movement has failed, so I would want to go back in time to 2014, and try to fix the direction of the protest. The bills, like the End Racial Profiling Act, which has not been voted on in Congress yet. Those involved in the protest have displayed childish behavior. There has even been counter-intuitive behavior within the BLM protest. I want to set myself back to the inception of the protest, when Michael Brown was shot in 2014, and the protests in Ferguson, Missouri. I want to appeal to the identity of unhappy black people in America, and help steer the movement to a place where it could be taken seriously as a protest.

Widerstand - Final Draft

Julian Aronfeld

Widerstand

            Widerstand (n) – German word meaning “resistance”. But the word has evolved to mean something much more specific, as words often tend to do. The word Widerstand is now associated with Germany’s protest against Nazism during World War II.

Most people understand that not every single German was keen on systematically killing an entire race of people during World War II. Hitler’s Nazi party and Secret Service were the ones accomplishing that. Germans still had their lives to live, and they were affected an entirely different way by Nazis; Nazis set up a social hierarchy. Even those with the power to stop Nazis but chose not to were not under the impression that Jews had somehow become scum. They simply wanted their place in the social ladder, and silently agreeing earned them their place. It was extremely shallow and superficial, but not malicious. This is where protesters came in. Resisters were not worried about earning a place in Hitler’s hegemonic hierarchy, they wanted to make Germany stop doing terrible things.

Hitler’s rise to power came with the National Socialist Party, which practiced Fascism; the number one enemy of Communism. Fascism is authoritarian. It focuses on Nationalist principles, keeping a one-party state, and follows tenants similar to a personality cult. It makes sure dissenting opinion is swiftly silenced and brushed to the side.

Communism was actually similar in practice to Fascism, completely opposite in values. Marxism is the very left-wing government idea that everyone must be paid equally and deserves equal treatment under the eyes of the government, getting rid of the social hierarchy that surrounds money and status. Sounds very good in theory, but Marxism became Communism/Socialism in the Soviet Union. Communism in the Soviet Union during World War II ended up being left-wing Fascism. Josef Stalin used his power over his country to greatly oppress his countrymen, and displayed extreme authoritarian principles to rule his country with an iron fist. That being said, Stalin did not follow Marxist principles of fair and equal treatment. In practice we see that Communism didn’t work, but that didn’t stop many people in the world from being attracted to Marxist values in the 1920s through the 1940s; including Germans. Many Germans were especially attracted to Marxism during their Great Depression, which ruined thousands of German lives (Brysac). It created a shaky and divided political climate in Germany leading up to Hitler’s rise to power.

German resistance to Nazism was a very complicated and ambiguous protest, stemming from different ideologies across a whole spectrum of German people. There were some important groups and leaders in Widerstand who helped shape the protest and expand it among Germans, but there were so many players in this protest it’s impossible to point to one historical perspective. Anarchists, Communists, Jews, those who opposed totalitarianism, all wanted to bring Hitler to an end. Though the goals all aligned, the Widerstand protest in Nazi Germany has a rich historical context with multiple perspective and different methods.

            It is important to understand the context behind what it was that Germans protested in Nazi Germany. This is a more ambiguous task than initially expected, because there were actually two aspects to Nazism that different protesters addressed; the prosecution of Jews, and the use of National Socialism in Germany. After World War I, Germany was left in a depression, even worse than the one faced in America in the 1930s. The Treaty of Versailles had blamed Germany for World War I, forcing it to pay all war reparations. Germans were desperate for help, and along came Adolf Hitler in 1929, promising to make Germany great again. He made promises to destitute Germans, “profiting from these conditions to become a mass party with increasing popular support” (Cox).

Most Germans were desperate enough to agree with Hitler’s ideas initially, but as he rose to power, many saw problems with his vision for a utopia; mainly that it included a racial cleansing and a totalitarian government authority. It was Hitler’s initial rise to power in 1933 that sparked a rebellious attitude within youth groups and Jewish communities (Axelrod). The political climate was rocky, and there were a multitude of solutions for the German plight that were argued for between the population. Some believed Hitler to be a savior for the German people, others saw a monster within him.

It was when Nazism came in full swing that dissenters began to come out of the woodwork to protest. This was the inception of the protest, which for this particular protest, was the most important part. 1933 marked the beginning of the event being protested, when Hitler became the Führer of Germany’s third Reich. It also marked the inception of the real protest, when Hitler no longer represented hope and economic prosperity, but became a manipulative leader, campaigning for systemic genocide. The entire protest was built around the ongoing crisis of the Germans and the Nazi party’s power and wrongdoings.

Hitler’s Fascist principles began to show in the inception of the Nazi Party’s power in the late 1920s, which was welcomed by many destitute Germans, but unwelcome by many others. Actually, the protesters were of a minority, since most Germans did not actively resist Hitler’s dictatorship by 1933, when Hitler became leader (Axelrod). Some Germans thought Fascism was not the right way to achieve their goals; like the Red Orchestra, who “followed Marxist principles of Communism right at the Crux of Soviet influence in Europe” (Cox). The Red Orchestra was led by a group of three of the biggest German Nazi protesters from the times; Harro Schulze-Boysen, and Mildred and Arvid Harnack, who began their protest in early 1937. The Red Orchestra consisted of mostly Communists, and the members were Jews, Catholics, atheists, and Christians. This protest group worked on Nazi intelligence and worked to form large groups of dissenters in order to expand the protest.

This was the closest that any group got to military resistance that didn’t end in bloodshed for the protesters. Unfortunately, any form of militant protest was impossible, since most “[violent] resisters… were tortured to death after their capture by the SS”, especially in the case of the Warsaw Ghettos (Marrus). The Harnacks, along with Schulze-Boysen, did what they could to help in the resistance. Unfortunately, even this came to an end when Mildred Harnack was “captured and killed by the SS in 1943”. Her reputation was “met with ambiguity and confusion; Mildred was seen as a Soviet Spy in the West and a Marxist saint in the East” (Brysac).

The German resistance movement in World War II was an important facet of the German identity. The movement marked a defiant group of Germans who wanted to bring liberty back to their people, and wanted to stop an evil superpower from taking the world. The identity itself encompasses so many “groups from young to old, from Jewish to Communist”, it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what the full scope of the protest represented and what its goals were (Brothers). It is evident, through analysis of the protest rhetoric and context surrounding the protest’s identity, that the rhetorical goals of Widerstand literature in Nazi Germany included helping prosecuted Germans, shifting public opinion on Nazism and creating an intellectual disarray within Germany regarding Hitler.

            It is important to look at the identities that encompassed the Widerstand movement and how they affected the protest. There were two different groups of people that took the most part in the protest; Communists and Jews. The distinction is not absolute, since many famous protestors such as Herbert Baum had “background in both the Socialist and Jewish youth movements” (Brothers, Weisel). The Baum group, along with the White Rose, were two of the most important groups involved in the anti-Fascist protest, and they both included elements of Jewish identity and Communist identity. The Baum group was a Communist group, led by a Jew. They actually produced a monthly news sheet entitled The Way Out (Der Ausweg)” which was meant to urge German soldiers to fight with them (McDonough).

The Jewish identity was one greatly at risk by the Nazi’s actions, and the protest was fueled by the instinct of self-preservation from German Jews. A people’s identity is important to them, and most will risk their lives in the name of that identity. The Socialist protestors were also important, but they opposed the Nazis for different reasons. They were more interested in fixing the German problem with Marxist ideals than they were interested in helping Jews. That being said, the two groups had goals that aligned very much, namely “striking at their Nazi enemies,” whether that be by intellectual or military means (Cox).

One may argue that these two groups are a part of a larger humanitarian identity, standing up for Jews’ unfair treatment; or that they are the commonly seen political resisters, standing up for their countrymen against an oppressive leadership. These arguments would be incorrect, purely because the two biggest resistance groups, Jews and Communists, did not share an origin of dissent. In short, one can’t bunch the entirety of the resistance identity into one group of humanitarianism or one of political resistance, but rather a splice of each, aligning to share a common goal. It is important to make this distinction, because it would unfair and inaccurate to bunch a group of protesters together that protested for different reasons, even if they shared a common goal.

The rare cases of militant resistance were just the tip of the iceberg for German resistance against Nazis. Perhaps the most important form of protest came from intellectual protest, namely the White Rose society. The White Rose society was comprised of “Jewish youth… previously involved in Socialist movements in Germany post-World War I” (WRS). It is clear that the rhetoric used had to have been inclusive to both identities involved, which meant they had to share a common enemy.

Hans and Sophie Scholl were two University students who created the White Rose Society, which was quite possibly the most impactful and influential intellectual protest to Nazism. The White Rose leaflets produced and distributed by the Scholls were paramount to the resistance. They framed their pamphlet distribution very similarly to The Federalist Papers from colonial America, as underground pamphlets that called to arms or otherwise grabbed the attention of Nazi resisters (Marrus).

White Rose Society really defined intellectual protest of Nazis in their own way. They wrote about a very important aspect of the protest, which was self-preservation of the German people’s identity. Nazism was a stain on the German name, and would bring “shame that will befall [German] children when the veil has fallen from [their] eyes” (WRS #1). This use of pathos was strong, and appealed to Germans who simply followed Hitler because he promised to make the world a better place for their children. The White Rose was great at producing pamphlets with logical and emotional appeal. Their idea of protest was mainly to keep the German identity strong and separated from the Nazis. This goal ended up becoming a common goal among German opposition. Instead of attempting something like destroying a Nazi headquarters, the “White Rose, along with other youth groups that followed, urged people to separate themselves from the Nazi culture, and instead preserve themselves” (McDonough).

The White Rose’s use of emotional appeal was preceded only by logical appeal to the Germans. They attempted to hold a mirror up to Germans and make them see what evils they were letting their country participate in. Those who followed Hitler envisioned a utopia, but as a White Rose pamphlet puts it, “all ideal forms of government are utopias… a state cannot be constructed on a theoretical basis” (WRS #3). A rhetorical slap in the face, it seems, this statement is both logical and critical of German’s docile behavior toward Hitler. This kind of intellectual opposition was important rhetoric, as it set a precedent for making Germans self-critical of their involvement in Nazism rather than outwardly critical toward Hitler. It would later become the “most important way Germans fought the Nazi culture”, as public protest became more and more heavily outlawed (Cox). The White Rose used many forms of rhetoric in their anti-Nazi pamphlets, and set important rhetorical standards for further literary opposition.

Their pamphlets were made to be read by all Germans that they could reach, and even distribution was taken care of. The FAUD[i] was a big group that helped in The White Rose’s goals, when they used their “influence of labor in order to further distribute pamphlets” (FAUD)[ii]. This is a huge indicator of the White Rose’s influence, as their mainly Jewish identity was aided by the FAUD’s Anarchist identity. The fact that other organizations were willing to help is also evident by the White Rose’s pamphlet production, headed by Sophie Scholl along with help from Ludwig Maximillian University’s printing team who had previously worked for the Gestapo (H.E.A.R.T.)[iii]. The printing press team had been Gestapo sympathizers who published propaganda for Hitler, until the prosecution of two of their Jewish members at which point the printing team had shifted opinion to work for the resistance (H.E.A.R.T.).

The White Rose Society was created for the express purpose of “gathering intel… distributing dissent” about Hitler and the Third Reich (Brothers). The society became a huge catalyst for swaying German opinion about Hitler when they began the distribution of flyers in 1940.

            The leaflets are filled with arguments for the preservation of the German identity, as well as the call to dissent Hitler. The first flyer is a public shaming of Germans, as it refers to the Germans under Hitler as “spineless… shameful… corrupted and spiritually crushed” (WRS #1)[iv]. These words were not just meant to hurt the feelings of the Germans who read it. It is meant to compare the Germans of that generation to those of previous, and shame Germans for being sheep “blindly following their seducers into ruin” (WRS LoR)[v]. Its purpose is to insult the identity of a few Germans in order to preserve the identity of all Germans. White Rose Society argues that Germany had become “a civilized nation allowing itself to be governed without opposition by an irresponsible clique” (WRS #1). The leaflets don’t directly mention a Communist identity, as the German identity is the one targeted in their arguments. This is most likely because it will reach a wider range of people, as well as reflecting the goals of the Society, which is to introduce opposing opinion to Hitler for the sake of the German people. Communism was about as popular of an option as any to destitute Germans, so while it would be possible to target a niche German audience that supports Communism, the goal was quantity.

The White Rose Society leaflets were primarily meant to preserve the German identity and dissent Hitler, but the arguments present in their literature shows a secondary goal; a call to arms. The leaflets distributed by White Rose are artifacts of protest, simply because of this goal. They hoped to bring about change in Germany by calling German people to the resistance. This goal reflects the protest as a whole, and articulated the identity of all Germans who wanted to change Germany. The pamphlets literally “Call to all Germans” in order to bring about the necessary permanent change (WRS LoR).

This change is meant to be permanent, which is evident by the leaflet’s mention of future generations of Germans and their fates. German’s probably didn’t “want [them] and [their] children to suffer the same fate as the Jews”, which is exactly what this leaflet argues would happen if they don’t stand up and make a change (WRS LoR). They make the argument that if Germans don’t listen and let Hitler’s regime go either forgotten, or even worse, accepted, then history is doomed to repeat itself with the German people. This is a very impactful argument, as it highlights the importance of heeding the Society’s warnings, with the consequences befalling not the German people or even the Jews, but their children and all generations to follow.

One of the biggest facets of German resistance was the cultural protest that Widerstand is so famous for. The intent was to cast away the “imperialist ideology” and “centralized hegemony” that the Nazis attempted to place within German culture (WRS #5)[vi]. This kind of goal was not one intended to be carried out with military use, because of the very nature of the goal. The goal of this area of protest was to bring about a full change in Nazi society, which can only be done by means of changing the society’s intellectual stance. It relies more on the people of society than the leaders in this case, which created an interesting dynamic for this protest to fit.

Opposition to Hitler was the act of destroying his dreams of Germany, which included totalitarian authority and a hegemonic structure for him to sit atop, but not necessarily by absolute destruction of the regime. One example of intellectual opposition focused on culture was the famous Swingjugend (Swing Youth) of Germany. Jazz had been a hot button issue in Germany since the Roaring Twenties, and Hitler set out “to eradicate [Jazz] music” (HolocaustMusic). The Swing Youth opposed this cultural restriction and decided to dance to Jazz music anyway, forming secret clubs to play Jazz and swing dance. This is an important example not only because Youth were such a big part of the protest movement, but also because they resisted Hitler without public protest. This kind of inner protest was important, since “public protest had been deemed illegal by Hitler” (McDonough). The only way to really oppose his regime was to was to break his rules and make small dents in his ideology’s control over people. This was accomplished by Swing Youth and serves as a staple cultural protest to government hegemony.

Religious opposition was even used to protest Hitler. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German protestant pastor who knew that the use of religion would be a great rhetorical tool to fight Nazi society, since the very doctrine of religion is meant to take precedence over societal standards. His way of protest was originally “radio broadcast criticizing Hitler,” in 1935 but it was cut off mid-air (BiographyOnline)[vii]. It wouldn’t be until later in 1940 that Bonhoeffer would preach a doctrine of anti-Fascism in a meaningful way. His use of religion was interesting, however, because it meant to bring Hitler down not by means of cultural or even societal resistance, but by means of something that trumps both in the eyes of religious people. God’s word is absolute according to the Bible itself, so if it opposed Nazism, Germans would have to think twice about their support.

Bonhoeffer quoted the cliché Bible versus such as Mark 12:31, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as they love thyself” as a way of protesting Nazi’s unfair treatment of Germans (Bible). This kind of ultimate ethos was exactly what the movement needed to include all three rhetorical means of persuasion; logos, pathos, and ethos. Appealing to God himself became such a threat to Nazis, his “activities lead to his arrest in 1943” (BiographyOnline). His arrest highlighted the importance of his use of religion to attack the Nazi way of life. Nazis knew how dangerous the use of religion could be to end their control on the minds of Germans.

The rhetoric involved in anti-Nazi protest was diverse, and included participation from multiple identities, all for the same cause. Widerstand preserved the German identity from the stain of Nazism both during the war, and following it. Through use of cultural, religious, and intellectual opposition to Hitler and Nazism, Widerstand participants got their names in history as the “most important defense of German identity in history” (Brothers). They managed to disassociate the term Nazis from the term Germans forever.

            The protest that surrounds Widerstand seems like a very important display of German resistance. This becomes even more obvious when one looks at the artifacts of protest from the movement itself, and how those artifacts shaped the protest’s goals and identity. There were multiple origins of resistance because there were multiple identities tied to the protest itself, but the most impactful part of the resistance was literature. Military resistance proved almost useless, since attempts at militant protest toward Nazis was met with swift action by the superpower’s superior military (Brysac). Among the most important literature that surrounded the resistance are the White Rose Society’s pamphlets and the Tarnschriften (hidden message) advertisements pamphlets that were in circulation in Germany. Though they both align with the same goals, their functions and overall purposes proved to be very different.

            Similar to the White Rose Society’s leaflets, yet differing in goals and purpose, were the Tarnschriften[viii]pamphlets that were produced and distributed by the Red Orchestra Communist resistance group. These leaflets were formatted a bit differently the White Rose Society’s, and were arguably more effective. These pamphlets were Nazi intel and resistance jargon disguised as advertisements for products. The advertisements were often circulated in larger, more central cities, where obvious anti-Nazi propaganda would be easily spotted. This needed to be a quick and easy way to distribute dissent; which it was, as the Red Orchestra “cornered the market on…Nazi resistance literature” (Brysac). Most ads began with a general statement about the Nazi’s brutality and evil methods. They would then go on to explain the general statement, and follow it up with some kind of way the people could resist.

 These pamphlets reflect an identity for the resistance; the identity of the underground resistance, which is distinguishable from the White Rose’s German preservation. By hiding anti-Nazi propaganda within disguised advertisements, the Red Orchestra was doing something more than the White Rose. They were being overtly deceptive. These ads were designed to be distributed right under the Nazi’s noses, rather than in complete secrecy. This deception was an underlying method for these particular pieces of propaganda. It allowed for a much wider range of audience.

The hidden advertisements also had a differing purpose from White Rose. The Tarnschriften was a vessel for intel and Nazi smear campaign. While White Rose pamphlets were persuasive, Tarnschriften was more descriptive, based more on information than argument. Rather than trying to convince Germans to “disassociate [themselves] with Nazis”, the point here was to inform, like when “Hitlerreglerung in den tagen von 27. bis 30. oktober de jahres aber zehntausend juden polnischer staatsangehorigkeit, darunter viele, die selt jahrzehnten in deutschland ansassig warren, verhaftet”[ix] (WRS #2; Tarnschraften)[x]. It was this kind of message that the producers of Tarnshcraften were trying to get to the German people in order to create a crack in the hierarchy. One big part of Hitler’s regime was the totalitarian attitude, where expressed dissent was punishable by death; even influential Germans. With this method of resistance, “even German actors and writers had access” to particular information about the very Nazi regime that was helping them stay famous (Brysac). The more influential the person, the more potential they had for helping turn the public opinion around. It was persuasive by proxy; not persuasive writing in itself, but had the persuasive effect on people.

The Widerstand literature was a strong indicator of the resistance’s goals. They included different types of resistance with differing purposes, all with the express goal of turning the public’s opinions around. They each represent an important identity for protesters from Nazi Germany, whether they sought to protect German identity or introduced a new one into the resistance. Whatever the case is, White Rose and Red Orchestra are staples in German protest literature, because they represent possibly the most important protest Germany has ever had.

It is almost impossible to know the impact of Widerstand on Nazism. Hitler still became the Führer of Germany in 1934, he still killed over 10 million Europeans, and he still lost the second World War to the allies. Did the protesters really do ultimately nothing to help the German people against Nazis? Was it a useless cause? It has already been established that intellectual protest led to the introduction and spread of dissenting opinion in Nazi Germany.

The impact was a crack in the hegemony, which contributed to the attempt to destroy Hitler’s utopia. It was a shift in opinion and thought process, but it didn’t exactly stick a monkey wrench in the ultimate goal of genocide and world domination that the Nazi party had dreamed of. For example, protesters might focus not on an unrealistic expectation of blowing up a Nazi facility, but rather the more evidently realistic goal of attempting to convert the leaders of that facility. That method actually has a chance of failing, even after execution, because a person can change their mind; yet this method was still more realistic than a guaranteed bomb explosion, simply because planting the bomb would be utterly impossible. Intellectual resistance was the preferred method, the impact of which is impossible to determine objectively, but rather must be compared to the few other forms of protest against Nazis. In that sense, it was the most effective simply because it wasn’t immediately silenced like militant protesters.

The real impact is long term. Everybody knows about the Holocaust, but an important distinction has been made for those who understand the German protest; Nazis and Germans are two entirely different identities. It is normally easy to generalize a group based on the wrongdoings of the group’s extremists, as seen with Muslims in America post 9/11. Nazi protest drew a line between Germany and Nazi Germany by reminding people that Nazism was just a system of beliefs and not reflective of the full German population. As a result, the aftermath was an understanding of that distinction, by those not involved. It is evident that other countries intended on punishing Nazis rather than Germany as a whole. After the war, the allies discontinued the Treaty of Versailles to put Germany out of debt, and began the Nuremburg Trials to put former Nazis in jail. There was an immediate understanding of the distinction between the Nazi party’s actions, and the intentions of Germans as a whole, thanks to the protest’s ability to clearly draw that distinction. In that sense, the protest was a success and had a huge impact on Germany post-WWII.

Widerstand was a huge protest that spanned over almost the entirety of World War II. It represented a very infamous event, carried out a well-calculated long-term goal, gives a rare example of the cooperation of several identities in a shared goal, and its impact is arguable at best. What is seen by Widerstand protest is the fact that people can come together for what they believe in even in an oppressive environment; we aren’t all sheep ready to follow the shepherd off a cliff. Many of us are smarter than that, and we fight to keep evil people away from the shepherd’s crook. German protesters from all different walks of life and belief systems knew the implications of Hitler’s regime. They came together in the Red Orchestra and in the White Rose Society, all for the shared purpose of fighting a common enemy. A sense of togetherness tied with a sense of resistance; Widerstand not only accomplished the preservation of German identity, but strengthened it as well.

           

---

[i] FAUD is the Freier Arbeiter Union (Free Worker’s Union). The leaders followed a lot of Communist values and disagreed with Nazi control over workers and business.

[ii] Unknown Author, the FAUD article was a part of an English journal written about anarchy and resistance called En, Organise!

[iii] H.E.A.R.T. published a historical article on the White Rose Society, no expressed author.

[iv] WRS is the White Rose Society, the # indicates which flyer is being referred to.

[v] LoR – Leaflet of Resistance; not numbered but titled.

[vi] WRS – White Rose Society, one of the largest anti-Nazi intellectual movements. The website that features them includes six important pamphlets produced and distributed by the White Rose society.

[vii] BiographyOnline wrote a biography on Dietrich Bonhoeffer and recounted his exploits.

[viii] Tarnschriften – German word, roughly meaning “Hidden Message”

[ix] The pamphlet is in German; a rough translation of this is “Hitler’s regime, on the days between October 27-30, this year (1941), arrested and prosecuted tens of thousands of Jews of Polish nationality”. It mentions elsewhere in the pamphlet that this was right under the public’s nose.

[x] This example of Tarnschriften was disguised as Excentric Shampoo, and is a perfect example of distributed Nazi intel.

Works Cited

Axelrod, Toby. Hans and Sophie Scholl: German Resisters of the White Rose. New York: Rosen Pub. Group, 2001. Print.

Brothers, Eric, Weisel, Elie. Berlin Ghetto: Herbert Baum and the Anti-Fascist Resistance. Stroud: History, 2012. Print.

Brothers, Eric. "On Teaching the Holocaust and Jewish Resistance." Journal of Jewish Edcation 59.3 (1992): n. pag. Web. 03 Apr. 2016.

Brysac, Shareen Blair. "When the Red Orchestra Fell Silent." The New York Times. The New York Times, 15 Feb. 2013. Web. 02 Apr. 2016.

Brysac, Shareen Blair. Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra. New York: Oxford UP, 2000. Print.

Cox, John M. Circles of Resistance: Jewish, Leftist, and Youth Dissidence in Nazi Germany. New York: Peter Lang, 2009. Print.

Cox, John. "The Herbert Baum Groups." The Human Tradition in Modern Europe: 1750 to the Present. By Cora A. Granata. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008. 139-153. Print.

Fackler, Guido. "Music and the Holocaust." Music and the Holocaust. World ORT, n.d. Web. 02 Apr. 2016.

Hoffmann, Peter, Francis R. Nicosia, and Lawrence D. Stokes. Germans against Nazism: Nonconformity, Opposition and Resistance in the Third Reich: Essays in Honour of Peter Hoffmann. New York: Berghahn, 2015. Print.

Marrus, Michael R. "Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust." Journal of Contemporary History 83rd ser. 30.1 (1995): 83-110. ProQuest. Web. 2 Apr. 2016.

Mark. The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments with the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books: New Revised Standard Version. New York: American Bible Society, 1989. Print.

McDonough, Frank. Opposition and Resistance in Nazi Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. Cambridge University, 2001. Web. 2 Apr. 2016.

 "White Rose Society | The Four Leaflets | HOME." White Rose Society | The Four Leaflets | HOME. White Rose Society, n.d. Web. 02 Apr. 2016.

Unknown author. "A-Infos (en) Britain, Organise! #65 - The FAUD Undergound in the Rhineland Anarchist Resistance to Nazism." A-Infos (en) Britain, Organise! #65 - The FAUD Undergound in the Rhineland Anarchist Resistance to Nazism. Blackened, n.d. Web. 02 Apr. 2016.

Unknown Author. "The White Rose Revolt & Resistance Www.HolocaustResearchProject.org." The White Rose Revolt & Resistance Www.HolocaustResearchProject.org. Carmello Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T., 2007. Web. 02 Apr. 2016.

Unknown author. "Dietrich Bonhoeffer Biography." Biography Online. Biography Online, Sept. 2014. Web. 02 Apr. 2016.

http://www.gat.st/sites/default/files/imagecache/Vollbild/images/emil-gruber_gat_tarnschriften-03.jpg  (Image)

Topic Strings

1. The song itself was written to help those who weren’t there visualize the riots, but that only scratches the surface of the song’s meaning. The listener is supposed to visualize the real tension in the air and the raw emotions felt. Hearing about it is obviously not the same as really being there; strong emotions felt by everyone there were the catalyst for the violence to escalate. It started with some small fights, and became a revolution, as protestors even attempted to tip a bus over. In fact, the song was first played on a one-time only re-opening of the night club, in front of an audience mostly comprised of those who participated in the riots (LA Times). Stills saw the embodiment of hippie counter-culture during the Sunset Strip Riots, the passion and need for change; he attempted to recreate that passion in his song, and show the world what it was really like to be a part of the revolution.

2. The song, The listener, It (the event), It (the event), The song, Stills (writer)

3. This paragraph is less about the characters themselves, and more about how they all come together to clarify the author’s purpose through some historical context. The character is the song, because it is what is affected and influenced by the events mentioned in the paragraph. This paragraph is a mixed topic string, because it focuses on multiple characters, with a centralized emphasis on the main character, the song.

4. The song itself was written to help those who weren’t present visualize the riots, but that only scratches the surface of the song’s meaning. The listener is supposed to visualize the real tension in the air and the raw emotions felt. The event is experienced differently for those who listen to the song than those who were truly present; strong emotions felt by everyone there were the catalyst for the violence to escalate. The protest started with some small fights, but eventually as some protesters tried to even tip a bus over, the event became a revolution. In fact, the song was first played for those who participated in the riots, at a one-time only reopening of the night club. (LA Times). Stills saw the embodiment of hippie counter-culture during the Sunset Strip Riots, the passion and need for change; he attempted to recreate that passion in his song, and show the world what it was really like to be a part of the revolution. *

*Highlighted are the changes made

            5. The topic positions, as previously stated, were anchored to the beginning of the sentences. They weren’t moved at all, as their positions were true to the focus of the sentences. Where I was ambiguous were the stress positions of these sentences. I moved some stress positions to the end to clarify the focus of the characters’ consequences.

            6. The song was experienced differently by people who experienced the event differently. Those who experienced the event differently were aware of the tensions in the 1960s. The tension is what made the protest become a revolution. The revolution was the embodiment of counter-culture. The embodiment of counter-culture was what Stills wrote his song after.

Widerstand - Protest Artifact

Julian Aronfeld

Artifact Analysis

            The protest that surrounds Widerstand seems like a very important and timeless display of German resistance. This becomes even more obvious when one looks at the artifacts of protest from the movement itself, and how those artifacts shaped the protest’s goals and identity. There were multiple origins of resistance because there were multiple identities tied to the protest itself, but the most impactful part of the resistance was literature, since military resistance “proved almost useless” (Brysac). Among the most important literature that surrounded the resistance are the White Rose Society’s pamphlets and the Tarnschriften (hidden message) advertisements pamphlets that were in circulation in Germany. Though they both align with the same goals, their functions and overall purposes proved to be very different.

            The White Rose Society was founded by two Communist siblings, Hans and Sophie Scholl, in the Ludwig Maximillian University. Among its ranks were Christians and Jews alike, all Communists who disliked Hitler’s fascist regime and wanted to bring justice to the German people. They began the Society for the express purpose of “gathering intel… distributing dissent” about Hitler and the Third Reich (Brothers). The society became a huge catalyst for swaying German opinion about Hitler when they began the distribution of flyers. The White Rose Flyers were distributed in a way similar to the Federalist Papers of colonial America. They “discreetly handed out flyers, labeled with a White Rose”, each issue containing a new perspective on Hitler’s regime and the German people’s identity (Brysac).

            The leaflets are filled with arguments for the preservation of the German identity, as well as the call to dissent Hitler. The first flyer is a public shaming of Germans, as it refers to the Germans under Hitler as “spineless… shameful… corrupted and spiritually crushed” (WRS #1)[i]. These words were not just meant to hurt the feelings of the Germans who read it for the sake of hurting their feelings. It is meant to compare the Germans of that generation to those of previous, and shame Germans for being sheep “blindly following their seducers into ruin” (WRS LoR)[ii]. Its purpose is to insult the identity of a few Germans in order to preserve the identity of all Germans. White Rose Society argues that Germany has become “a civilized nation allowing itself to be governed without opposition by an irresponsible clique” (WRS #1). The leaflets don’t directly mention or articulate for a Communist identity, as the German identity is the one targeted in their arguments. This is most likely because it will reach a wider range of people, as well as reflecting the goals of the Society, which is to introduce opposing opinion to Hitler for the sake of the German people.

            The White Rose Society leaflets are primarily meant to preserve the German identity and dissent Hitler, but the arguments present in their literature shows a secondary goal; a call to arms. The leaflets distributed by White Rose are artifacts of protest, simply because of this goal. They hope to bring about change in Germany by calling German people to the resistance. This goal reflects the protest as a whole, and articulates the identity of all Germans who want to change Germany, not just the general prideful German identity. The pamphlets literally “Call to all Germans” in order to bring about the necessary permanent change (WRS LoR). This change is meant to be permanent, which is evident by the leaflet’s mention of future generations of Germans and their fates. German’s probably don’t “want [them] and [their] children to suffer the same fate as the Jews”, which is exactly what this leaflet argues will happen if they don’t stand up and make a change (WRS LoR). They make the argument that if Germans don’t listen and let Hitler’s regime go either forgotten, or even worse, accepted, then history is doomed to repeat itself with the German people. This is a very impactful argument, as it highlights the importance of heeding the Society’s warnings, with the consequences befalling not the German people or even the Jews, but their children and all generations to follow.

            Similar to the White Rose Society’s leaflets, yet differing in goals and purpose, were the Tarnschriften[iii]pamphlets that were produced and distributed by the Red Orchestra Communist resistance group. These leaflets were formatted a bit differently the White Rose Society’s, and were arguably more effective. These pamphlets were Nazi intel and resistance jargon disguised as advertisements for products. The advertisements were often circulated in larger, more central cities, where obvious anti-Nazi propaganda would be easily spotted. This needed to be a quick and easy way to distribute dissent; which it was, as the Red Orchestra “cornered the market on…Nazi resistance literature” (Brysac). Most ads began with a general statement about the Nazi’s brutality and evil methods. They would then go on to explain the general statement, and follow it up with some kind of way the people could resist.

These pamphlets reflect an identity for the resistance; the identity of the underground resistance, which is distinguishable from the White Rose’s German preservation. By hiding anti-Nazi propaganda within disguised advertisements, the Red Orchestra was doing something more than the White Rose. They were being overtly deceptive. These ads were designed to be distributed right under the Nazi’s noses, rather than in complete secrecy. This deception was an underlying method for these particular pieces of propaganda. It allowed for a much wider range of audience.

The hidden advertisements also had a differing purpose from White Rose. The Tarnschriften was a vessel for intel and Nazi smear campaign. While White Rose pamphlets were persuasive, Tarnschriften was more descriptive, based more on information than argument. Rather than trying to convince Germans to “disassociate [themselves] with Nazis”, the point here was to inform, like when “Hitlerreglerung in den tagen von 27. bis 30. oktober de jahres aber zehntausend juden polnischer staatsangehorigkeit, darunter viele, die selt jahrzehnten in deutschland ansassig warren, verhaftet”[iv] (WRS #2; Tarnschraften)[v]. It was this kind of message that the producers of Tarnshcraften were trying to get to the German people in order to create a crack in the hierarchy. One big part of Hitler’s regime was the totalitarian attitude, where expressed dissent was punishable by death; even influential Germans. With this method of resistance, “even German actors and writers had access” to particular information about the very Nazi regime that was helping them stay famous (Brysac). The more influential the person, the more potential they had for helping turn the public opinion around. It was persuasive by proxy; not persuasive writing in itself, but had the persuasive effect on people.

The Widerstand literature was a strong indicator of the resistance’s goals. They included different types of resistance with differing purposes, all with the express goal of turning the public’s opinions around. They each represent an important identity for protesters from Nazi Germany, whether they sought to protect German identity or introduced a new one into the resistance. Whatever the case is, White Rose and Red Orchestra are staples in German protest literature, because they represent possibly the most important and memorable protest Germany has ever had.

           

---

[i] WRS is the White Rose Society, the # indicates which flyer is being referred to.

[ii] LoR – Leaflet of Resistance; not numbered but titled.

[iii] Tarnschriften – German word, roughly meaning “Hidden Message”

[iv] The pamphlet is in German; a rough translation of this is “Hitler’s regime, on the days between October 27-30, this year (1941), arrested and prosecuted tens of thousands of Jews of Polish nationality under the public’s nose”

[v] This example of Tarcnschraften was disguised as Excentric Shampoo, and is a perfect example of distributed Nazi intel.

Historical Context

            German resistance to Nazism was a very complicated and ambiguous protest, stemming from different ideologies across a whole spectrum of German people. There were some important groups and leaders in Widerstand who helped shape the protest and expand it among Germans, but there were so many players in this protest it’s impossible to point to one historical perspective. Anarchists, Communists, Jews, those who opposed totalitarianism, all wanted to bring Hitler to an end. Though the goals all aligned, the Widerstand protest in Nazi Germany has a rich historical context with multiple perspective and different methods.

            It is important to understand the context behind what it was that Germans protested in Nazi Germany. This is a more ambiguous task than initially expected, because there were actually two aspects to Nazism that different protesters addressed; the prosecution of Jews, and the use of National Fascism in Germany. After World War I, Germany was left in a depression, even worse than the one faced in America in the 1930s. The Treaty of Versailles had blamed Germany for World War I, forcing it to pay all war reparations. Germans were desperate for help, and along came Adolf Hitler, promising to make Germany great again. He made promises to destitute Germans, “profiting from these conditions to become a mass party with increasing popular support” (Cox). Germans were desperate enough to agree with Hitler’s ideas initially, but as he rose to power, many saw problems with his vision for a utopia; mainly that it included a racial cleansing and a totalitarian government authority. It was “Hitler’s initial rise to power in 1933… sparked a rebellious attitude within youth groups and Jewish communities” (Axelrod). It was when Nazism came in full swing that dissenters began to come out of the woodwork to protest. This was the inception of the protest, which for this particular protest, was the most important part. It marked the beginning of the event being protested, in conjunction with the beginning of the protest itself. Furthermore, the inception drew the distinction between Nazis and Germans for the dark events that were to follow. The entire protest was built around the ongoing crisis of the Germans and the Nazi party’s power and wrongdoings.

Hitler’s Fascist principles began to show in the inception of Nazi’s power, which was welcomed by many destitute Germans, but unwelcome by many others. Actually the protesters were of a minority, since “most Germans did actively resist the dictatorship” (Axelrod). Some Germans thought Communism was the right way and not Fascism, like the Red Orchestra, who “followed Marxist principles of Communism right at the Crux of Soviet influence in Europe” (Cox). The Red Orchestra was led by a group of three of the biggest German Nazi protesters from the times; Harro Schulze-Boysen, and Mildred and Arvid Harnack. The Red Orchestra consisted of mostly Communists, and the members were Jews, Catholics, atheists, and Christians. This protest group worked on Nazi intelligence and working to form large groups of dissenters in order to expand the protest. This was the closest that any group got to military resistance that didn’t end in bloodshed for the protesters. Unfortunately, other versions military protest was impossible, since any “[violent] resisters… were tortured to death after their capture by the SS”, especially in the case of the Warsaw Ghettos (Marrus). The Harnacks, along with Harro Schulze-Boysen, were able to do what they could to help in the resistance. Unfortunately, even this came to an end. Mildred Harnack was “captured and killed by the SS in 1943”, and her reputation was “met with ambiguity and confusion; Mildred was seen as a Soviet Spy in the West and a Marxist saint in the East” (Brysac).

Military resistance was just the tip of the iceberg for German resistance against Nazis, because perhaps the most important form of protest came from intellectual protest, namely the White Rose society. Hans and Sophie Scholl were two University students who decided to begin their own form of protest. They created the White Rose Society, which was quite possibly the most impactful and influential intellectual protest to Nazism. The White Rose leaflets produced and distributed by the Scholls were paramount to the idea of resistance. They framed their pamphlet distribution very similar to The Federalist Papers from colonial America, as “underground… pamphlets that called to arms or otherwise grabbed the attention of Nazi resisters” (Marrus). These pamphlets were there to be read by all Germans that they could reach, and even distribution was taken care of. The FAUD[i] was a big group that helped White Rose out, when they used their “influence of labor in order to further distribute pamphlets” (FAUD)[ii]. This is a huge indicator of the White Rose’s influence, as their mainly Jewish identity was aided by the FAUD’s Anarchist identity. The fact that other organizations were willing to help is also evident by the White Rose’s pamphlet production, headed by Sophie Scholl along with help from “Ludwig Maximillian University’s printing team… [who] previously worked for the Gestapo” (H.E.A.R.T.)[iii]. The printing press team had been Gestapo sympathizers who published propaganda for Hitler, until the “prosecution of two of their members, Jews”, at which point the printing team had shifted opinion to work for the resistance (H.E.A.R.T.). The intellectual resistance was important and arguably more impactful for Widerstand than the physical resistance.

Widerstand was a much more involved resistance than most people think. Though the Nazis were part of an evil superpower, the brave resisters in Germany still stood for what they believed in. Most resisters were caught and executed, but that just shows that they succeeded in posing a threat to the third Reich. From Communists to Jews, many different people shared a common enemy in Hitler, and proved to the world that the Germany identity is stronger than any military superpower.

---

[i] FAUD is the Freier Arbeiter Union (Free Worker’s Union). The leaders followed a lot of Communist values and disagreed with Nazi control over workers and business.

[ii] Unknown Author, the FAUD article was a part of an English journal written about anarchy and resistance called En, Organise!

[iii] H.E.A.R.T. published a historical article on the White Rose Society, no expressed author.

Rhetorical Context

         The German resistance movement in Nazi Germany, dubbed Widerstand, is probably the most important facet of Jewish identity from the twentieth century. The movement marked a defiant group of Germans who wanted to bring liberty back to their people, and wanted to stop an evil superpower from taking the world. The identity itself encompasses so many “groups from young to old, from Jewish to Communist”, it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what the full scope of the protest represented and what its goals were (Brothers). It is evident, through analysis of the protest rhetoric and context surrounding the protest’s identity, that the rhetorical goals of Widerstand literature in Nazi Germany included helping, shifting public opinion on Nazism and creating an intellectual disarray within Germany regarding Hitler.

            It is important to look at the identities that encompassed the Widerstand movement and how they affected the protest. There were two different groups of people that took the most part in the protest; Communists and Jews. The distinction is not absolute, since many famous protestors such as Herbert Baum had “background in both the Socialist and Jewish youth movements” (Brothers, Weisel). The Baum group, along with the White Rose, were two of the most important groups involved in the anti-Fascist protest, and they both included elements of Jewish identity and Communist identity. The Baum group was a Communist group, led by a Jew. They actually “produced a monthly news sheet entitled The Way Out (Der Ausweg)” which was meant to “urge German soldiers to fight [with them]” (McDonough). On the other hand, the White Rose society was comprised of “Jewish youth… previously involved in Socialist movements in Germany post-World War I” (WRS). It is clear that the rhetoric used had to have been inclusive to both identities involved, which meant they had to share a common enemy.

The Jewish identity was one greatly at risk by the Nazi’s actions, and the protest was fueled by the instinct of self-preservation from German Jews. A people’s identity is important to them, and most will risk their lives in the name of that identity. The Socialist protestors were also important, as they opposed the Nazis for different reasons, yet had goals that aligned very much with that of the Jews, mainly “striking at their Nazi enemies” whether that be by intellectual or military means (Cox). The identity couldn’t be considered a small part of the full identity of protestors who have stood up to their government for what they believe in, or be a facet of humanitarianism, even though they wanted to help Jews escape the clutched of the Nazi regime. This is because of the split in origin of the protestors, which meant that the entirety of the protest couldn’t be bunched in to either humanitarians or government resistors, but instead had a splicing of both for the same cause. In any case, it is evident that the identity of Nazi resistors in Germany, though partially split on ideology and origin, shared goals of ending the third Reich.

Intellectual resistance came in many forms, such as religious opposition, resistance pamphlets, and cultural protest. The most influential opposition was the White Rose Society in Germany, which released anti-Nazi leaflets. This group really defined intellectual protest of Nazis in their own way. They wrote about a very important aspect of the protest, which was self-preservation of the German people’s identity. Nazism was a stain on the German name, and would bring “shame that will befall [German] children when the veil has fallen from [their] eyes” (WRS #1). This use of pathos was strong, and appealed to Germans who simply followed Hitler because he promised to make the world a better place for their children. The White Rose was great at producing pamphlets with logical and emotional appeal. Their idea of protest was mainly to keep the German identity strong and separate from the Nazis. This goal ended up becoming a common goal among German opposition. Instead of attempting something like destroying a Nazi headquarters, the “White Rose, along with other youth groups that followed, urged people to separate themselves from the Nazi culture, and instead preserve themselves” (McDonough). The White Rose’s use of emotional appeal was preceded only by logical appeal to the Germans. They attempted to hold a mirror up to Germans and make them see what evils they were letting their country participate in. Those who followed Hitler envisioned a utopia, but as a White Rose pamphlet puts it, “all ideal forms of government are utopias… a state cannot be constructed on a theoretical basis” (WRS #3). A rhetorical slap in the face, it seems, this statement is both logical and critical of German’s docile behavior toward Hitler. This kind of intellectual opposition was important rhetoric, as it set a precedent for making Germans self-critical of their involvement in Nazism rather than outwardly critical toward Hitler. It would later become the “most important way Germans fought the Nazi culture”, as public protest became more and more heavily outlawed (Cox). The White Rose used many forms of rhetoric in their anti-Nazi pamphlets, and set important rhetorical standards for further literary opposition.

One of the biggest facets of German resistance was the cultural protest that Widerstand is so famous for. The intent was to cast away the “imperialist ideology” and “centralized hegemony” that the Nazis attempted to place within German culture (WRS #5)[i]. This kind of goal is not one intended to be done with military use, because of the very nature of the goal. The goal of this area of protest was to bring about a full change in Nazi society, which can only be done by means of changing the society’s intellectual stance. It relies more on the people of society than the leaders in this case, which created an interesting dynamic for this protest to fit. Opposition to Hitler was the act of destroying his dreams of Germany, which included totalitarian authority and a hegemonic structure for him to sit atop, but not necessarily by absolute destruction of the regime. One example of intellectual opposition focused on culture was the famous Swingjugend (Swing Youth) of Germany. Jazz had been a hot button issue in Germany since the Roaring Twenties, and Hitler set out “to eradicate [Jazz] music” (HolocaustMusic). The Swing Youth opposed this cultural restriction and decided to dance to Jazz music anyway, forming secret clubs to play Jazz and swing dance. This is an important example not only because Youth were such a big part of the protest movement, but also because they resisted Hitler without public protest. The kind of inner protest was important, since “public protest had been deemed illegal by Hitler” (McDonough). The only way to really oppose his regime was to was to break his rules and make small dents in his ideology’s control over people. This was accomplished by Swing Youth and serves as a staple cultural protest to government hegemony.

Religious opposition was even used to protest Hitler. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German protestant pastor who knew that the use of religion would be a great rhetorical tool to fight Nazi society, since the very doctrine of religion is meant to take precedence over societal standards. His way of protest was originally “radio broadcast criticizing Hitler,” but it was cut off mid-air (BiographyOnline)[ii]. It wouldn’t be until later that Bonhoeffer would preach a doctrine of anti-Fascism in a meaningful way. His use of religion was interesting, however, because it meant to bring Hitler down not by means of cultural or even societal resistance, but by means of something that trumps both in the eyes of religious people. God’s word is absolute according to the Bible itself, so if it opposed Nazism, Germans would have to think twice about their support. This kind of ultimate ethos was exactly what the movement needed to include all three rhetorical means of persuasion; logos, pathos, and ethos. Appealing to God himself became such a threat to Nazis, his “activities lead to his arrest in 1943” (BiographyOnline). His arrest highlighted the importance of his use of religion to attack the Nazi way of life. Nazis knew how dangerous the use of religion could be to end their control on the minds of Germans.

The rhetoric involved in anti-Nazi protest was diverse, and included participation from multiple identities, all for the same cause. Widerstand preserved the German identity from the stain of Nazism both during the war, and following it. Through use of cultural, religious, and intellectual opposition to Hitler and Nazism, Widerstand participants got their names in history as the “most important defense of German identity in history” (Brothers). They managed to disassociate the term Nazis from the term Germans forever.

---

[i] WRS – White Rose Society, one of the largest anti-Nazi intellectual movements. The website that features them includes six important pamphlets produced and distributed by the White Rose society.

[ii] BiographyOnline wrote a biography on Dietrich Bonhoeffer and recounted his exploits.