White Rose Holy Wars

     Come November, the faithful gather in Provo or Salt Lake City. They have studiously prepared for this moment. Much learning and nightly vigils undergird the assembly. This battle consumes the waking (and often dream-filled) nights of many passionate Latter-Day Saints.
     I am, of course, speaking about the annual BYU-Utes football game, a holy war to end all holy wars.
     Despite its comical nickname, religion hardly plays a role in the festivities. Rather, students paint themselves red or blue, and wrap one another's campuses in graffiti'd taunts. Sure, there's plenty of teasing about who is more Mormon than the other. The coaches and players milk the holy-rolling imagery for all it's worth. And usually the game lives up to its hype, with last-minute finishes and gloating good enough to last a year. A good time is had by all.
     Less funny, with no hint of a good time, are the holy wars that have afflicted White Rose "scholarship" in recent years. What used to be simple and annoying misuse of their story has turned into full-fledged abuse. Previously, we dealt with laymen who distorted the heroism of students and

No Peace on Earth, Much Less Goodwill...

     Coming out of the post office today, I got cut off by a Metro bus. No good reason for his lack of courtesy. Traffic wasn't especially heavy. There was no way he could beat the light one block up the street. Plain, simple rudeness, nothing fancy or especially malicious about it.
     I'm reminded that all too often at this time of year, the qualities we all say we strive for are pushed to the curb. No matter whether we live in Texas or New York, Left Coast or New England, Munich or Tel Aviv, the jolly holiday spirit gets crushed in the rush to have the best tree and most expensive presents, the most extravagant Chanukah. Even Kwanzaa has joined the great tradition of commercialization over meaning.
     And instead of spending time contemplating our common interest in light, our common pursuit of peace, we wind up with the common heartache of heartburn, of distress under stress, of trying to live up to impossible expectations. Often imposed on us by ourselves.
     If you know our family at all, you are aware that Janet committed suicide in mid-December over

A thankful day

     I've posted my "official" Thanksgiving essay (Festival of Plenty) along with companion commentary (Changing, and not so changing, times) on my "other" blog. Please take a moment to read those two, and join me in a happy dance celebrating bubblegum and vanilla ice cream. Among other things!
     I want to add to that a thank you to readers and friends of our work who have given me (and the rest of our family) the energy to keep going. Whether it's Chris Hewitt coming back from a trip to Munich, excited about the places he visited... Or Dr. Armin Mruck, who has long found value in what we do, and often lets us know... Or dear MK, Mr. Munich, who shares all of the passion and some of our pain... Or a new friend, James Richards, who fell into the story and wants to know more... Or Prof. Hammer, who inspires his students at TAMU, who in turn inspire us...
     And so, so many more of you. If I kept going, I would surely miss one or two names, so it's best to stop when I'm missing hundreds. Thank you. Without you, what we do would be meaningless, a worthless void, a clanging cymbal. With you, we're a philharmonic.

Counterfactual history

     For the second time, I'm quoting Jon Meacham here. Funny in some ways, because often my world view diverges comfortably from his. Yet I find his editorials thought-provoking.
     His November 16 column - entitled Rethinking the Lessons of Vietnam - addresses the tendency of historians and journalists alike to repackage history into a form and format that best suits their conclusions.
     In other words, instead of digging for truth, a truth that is objective and as close to stark reality as possible, we who write tend to narrate the historical record subjectively, as seen through our own particular lenses. I know that I do so, although I try to clearly label opinions as such, and subjective discourse similarly as separate from cold, hard facts.
     Meacham's opening quote, attributed to Napoleon, asks, "What is history but a fable agreed-upon?"

The Major

     Yesterday's news about the tragic, horrific shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas must send the same shudders through America's (and the world's) moderate Islamic community ... the same way that Herschel Grynszpan's November 7, 1938 assassination of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath must have sent shudders through the German-Jewish community.
     Far-right-wing, radical groups here in the USA are reacting in much the same way the National Socialist government did seventy-one years ago. Instead of seeing the murders as the work of a isolated gunman, they are now transferring Nidal Malik Hasan's guilt onto an entire religion and ethnic group. Just as Nazis turned the act of a 17-year-old into a crime attributable to a global Jewish conspiracy, so now bloggers see terrorists in every Middle-Eastern face. If that face happens to wear Islamic garb...

Truth Will Tell

     Anyone who has followed our work for more than half a second knows that a major obstacle to truthful telling of White Rose history is, has been, and for the foreseeable future will continue to be Inge Aicher-Scholl and her heirs. In addition to Inge's still-mindboggling refusal to grant me an interview, the overwhelming majority (about 90%) of Scholl Archives are off limits for the next 20 - 25 years.
     Inge and her heirs have controlled the White Rose story almost mercilessly for the past sixty-four years. They've browbeaten anyone who's deviated from her carefully crafted half-truths, including (but not limited to) Christian Petry, Vincent Probst and the Probst family, and even Fritz Hartnagel, Inge's own brother-in-law and Sophie Scholl's sometimes-boyfriend.
     She controlled photographs, Borg*-ing copyrights from dozens of White Rose friends and associates with her "Copyright Geschwister Scholl Archiv" stamp - even when they had not granted her copyright permission. She refused her own family members (specifically, the Hartnagels)

Susanne Zeller-Hirzel, the enigma

     If you've read my White Rose histories, you know how much I enjoyed and appreciated Susanne Hirzel's memoir, Vom Ja Zum Nein [From Yes to No]. She's honest and up front about so many things. Her words ring true, because she only wrote about what she knew. She never insinuated herself into White Rose activities that were beyond the scope of her limited engagement.
     And if you've read the updates to the academic version of those same histories, you know how problematic things became once her brother Hans Hirzel joined the Republikaner party, a far-right-wing, extremist political party in Germany. He eventually un-joined and returned to the CDU, a normal conservative affiliation.