The 30th of January 1933. Adolf Hitler is appointed chancellor of Germany bringing an
end to German democracy. Guided by racist and authoritarian ideas, the Nazis abolish basic
freedoms and seek to create a community which would unite all social classes and regions of
Germany behind one Führer. The Third Reich quickly becomes a police state, where individuals are
subject to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. The Nazis effectively use propaganda to win the
support of millions of Germans to facilitate persecution, war, and ultimately genocide.
There is, however, some German opposition to the Nazi state but critics of the Nazi regime would
often pay the ultimate price for their defiance of the Führer. One of them is Alexander Schmorell.
Alexander Schmorell was born on the 16th of September 1917 in Orenburg,
then the Russian Empire. His paternal grandfather was a Prussian trader Karl-August Schmorell who
had lived in the Ural city of Orenburg since 1855. He held positions in the city
administration and owned industrial companies such as breweries and factories for surgical materials.
Alexander’s father Hugo was a physician, and his mother Natalia was a daughter of a Russian
Orthodox priest. She had Alexander baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church but died of typhus during
the Russian Civil War when Alexander was only two years old. In 1920, his widowed father married
Elisabeth Hoffman, a German woman, who, like him, was raised in Russia. In 1921, when Alexander was
4 years old, the family fled from Russia and moved to Munich. The Russian nanny, who moved
to Germany with them, took his late mother's place in Alexander’s upbringing. Since she hardly spoke
German, Alexander Schmorell grew up bilingually speaking both German and Russian natively.
From 1928 to 1937, Schmorell attended Gymnasium in
Munich where he had to repeat his second year because of a deficiency in Latin.
After he finished Gymnasium, Schmorell started with the Reich Labour Service. This organization
helped mitigate the effects of unemployment on the German economy, militarise the workforce
and indoctrinate it with Nazi ideology. It was the official state labour service,
divided into separate sections for men and women. From June 1935 onward, men aged between 18 and
25 may have served six months before their military service.
In November 1937 Alexander Schmorell voluntarily joined the Wehrmacht – the
German armed forces - as a member of the 7th Artillery in Munich. He was trained as
a gunner for one year, and then spent half a year in army medical service training.
After In 1939 Schmorell announced his intentions to become a doctor, he was discharged as a
noncommissioned officer and began studies in medicine in Hamburg. After studying there for 1
semester, he returned to Munich to continue his education at the Ludwig Maximilian University.
The Second World War began on the 1st of September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. The German
invasion of France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands started on the 10th of May 1940
and became known as the Battle of France. These countries, along with France, where
Schmorell served as a medical noncommissioned officer, were conquered within 6 weeks.
In September 1940, Schmorell returned to Munich to continue his studies. There in June 1941 he came
to know Hans Scholl, whom he met through Christoph Probst, his life-long friend. In the summer of the
next year he met Willi Graf, another university student. Together they discussed what Graf had
experienced in Serbia and Poland where he had worked as a medic. In Poland Willi Graf had also
seen the Warsaw Ghetto which was the largest of all Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe during
World War II. An average daily food ration in 1941 for Jews in Warsaw was limited to 184 calories,
compared 2,613 calories for the Germans. An official German order stated that “the basic
provisioning of the Jewish Residential District must be less than the minimum necessary for
preserving life, regardless of the consequences.” The hunger in the ghetto was so great, that
dying people were laying on the streets and small children were seen begging.
Over 80,000 Jews died as a result of the appalling conditions, overcrowding and starvation.
On Sunday, the 22nd of June 1941 started Operation Barbarossa,
the German invasion of the Soviet Union.
The 3,000 personnel of four Einsatzgruppen were sent to the Eastern Front to kill the
Jews and Gypsies, as well as Soviet political commissars. Willi Graf was sent to Russia where
he saw unspeakable atrocities committed by the Nazi Party's own SS forces and the
Wehrmacht. These experiences traumatized him. When Graf was relieved of duty temporarily
and sent back to the University of Munich to continue his studies in April 1942, he shared
these experiences with Alexander Schmorell as well as Hans Scholl and Christoph Probst.
They felt compelled to take action and began the Nazi Resistance Movement "The White Rose".
From the end of June until mid-July 1942, they wrote the first four leaflets. Each leaflet was
more critical of Hitler and the German people than the last. They encouraged citizens to resist the
Nazi regime, denounce the murder of hundreds of thousands of Poles and demanded an end to the war.
A passage written by Schmorell in the second leaflet, issued in June 1942,
contains the only known public protest by any German resistance group specifically against the
Holocaust. “We wish to cite the fact that, since the conquest of Poland, 300,000 Jews have been
murdered in that country in a bestial manner. Here we see the most terrible crime committed
against the dignity of man, a crime that has no counterpart in human history. No crime of
this dimension has ever been perpetrated against human beings.” The text blames the German people,
in their apathy, for allowing such crimes to be committed by “these criminal fascists.”
They appealed to what they considered the German intelligentsia, believing that these
people would be easily convinced by the same arguments that also motivated them.
These leaflets were left in telephone books in public phone booths,
mailed to professors and students, and taken by courier to other universities for distribution.
In the summer of 1942, male students at the Ludwig Maximilian University
of Munich were required to deploy to the Eastern Front. Among them were Alexander
Schmorell as well as Hans Scholl and Willi Graf. From the 23rd of July 1942, the young men served
as medics in Russia where they saw with their own eyes how German soldiers treated prisoners
and Jews in the occupied territories. They observed the horrors of war and saw
beatings and other mistreatment of Jews by the Germans. In a letter to his sister Anneliese,
Willi Graf wrote: "I wish I had been spared the view of all this which I had to witness.”
Because Alexander Schmorell understood Russian, he could speak to the locals
and translate everything they said to him, to his friends from the White Rose.
During this time, White Rose activities ceased, and were not continued until the
medics came home from the deployment. What the young man had experienced on
the Eastern Front strengthened their determination to fight against Nazism.
Sometimes in the fall 1942, Sophie Scholl, Hans’ sister, learned about her brother's
activities and immediately joined the movement. The last one to join was Kurt Huber, a university
professor at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where the rest of the movement studied.
During his teaching, he was known for teaching classes that did not push Nazi ideology, which
made him a favorite with the University students. Huber joined the movement in December 1942.
In January 1943, the fifth leaflet, "Appeal to all Germans! was produced in 6,000–9,000 copies,
using a hand-operated duplicating machine.
These leaflets, some simply folded, some placed in envelopes, were carried to other German Cities by
the members and supporters of the group and then mailed from there. Copies appeared in many cities
including Hamburg and Berlin. Schmorell himself distributed the leaflet in Austrian cities. He
took the fast train from Munich to Salzburg at the end of January 1943 carrying several hundred
letters. He arrived at the train station, passed through the ticketing area headed for the city and
posted the letters destined for Salzburg in two different mailboxes next to the train station.
The same day, he caught the next train to Linz where he mailed approximately the same number
of leaflets under the same conditions. Still the same day, late in the evening,
Schmorell took a fast train to Vienna, so he could mail the remainder of the leaflets. He
then rented a hotel room and the next day he began mailing their letters in various
mailboxes. This would have been around 100 – 200 letters. In Vienna, he also mailed around 50 to
100 leaflets “Call to All Germans!” in letter format; these were destined for Frankfurt.
This leaflet also mentioned: “ Germans! Do you and your children want to suffer the
same fate that befell the Jews? Are we to be forever a nation which is hated and rejected
by all mankind? No. Dissociate yourselves from National Socialist gangsterism. Hitler
says "I will fight to the last man,". But in the meantime the war has already been lost.
It has become a mathematical certainty that Hitler is leading the German people into the
abyss. Hitler cannot win the war; he can only prolong it. The guilt of Hitler and
his minions goes beyond all measure. Retribution comes closer and closer.”
Soon after on the 2nd of February 1943, after months of fierce fighting and heavy casualties,
the surviving German forces—only about 91,000 soldiers—surrendered Stalingrad on the Volga. The
Battle of Stalingrad ended with the capitulation and near-total loss of the Wehrmacht's Sixth Army.
While Hans Scholl was very depressed about the events in Stalingrad, Alexander Schmorell,
as someone who cared about Russia, was downright happy about the newly
created strategic situation for the Russians.
On the 3rd, 8th, and 15th of February, Alexander Schmorell, Hans Scholl,
and Willi Graf graffitied public buildings with slogans such as "Hitler the Mass murderer!",
"Down with Hitler" and "Freedom" on the walls of the university and other buildings in Munich.
But the hopes of the White Rose members that the defeat at Stalingrad would incite German
opposition against the Nazi regime and the war effort did not come true. On the contrary,
Nazi propaganda used the defeat to call on the German people to embrace "Total War".
The group also produced their sixth pamphlet which was to be their last.
On the 18th of February 1943, while Hans and Sophie were distributing
leaflets at the Ludwig Maximilian University,
Sophie flung the last remaining leaflets from the top floor down into the atrium. However,
she was seen by Jakob Schmid, the university maintenance man and avowed Nazi, who reported
it to the official secret police of Nazi Germany - the Gestapo. Hans and Sophie were arrested.
Christoph Probst was arrested two days after the Scholl siblings when he went to pick up his
paycheck before travelling to see his wife Herta and his newly born daughter, Katja.
Along with Christoph Probst, the two siblings were tried for treason before the Nazi "People's Court"
which was infamous for its unfair political trials. The head judge of the court, Roland
Freisler, was known as the "Hanging judge" as about 90% of his trials ended in death sentences.
Judge Roland Freisler told the court: "The accused have by means of leaflets in a time
of war called for the sabotage of the war effort and armaments and for the
overthrow of the National Socialist way of life of our people, have propagated defeatist ideas,
and have most vulgarly defamed the Führer, thereby giving aid to the enemy of the Reich
and weakening the armed security of the nation. On this account they are to be
punished by death. Their honour and rights as citizens are forfeited for all time."
On the 22nd of February 1943, after a half day trial, they were found guilty of treason
and sentenced to death. Shortly after they were brought to Munich's Stadelheim Prison where they
learned that they would be executed the same day. Even though they were originally scheduled to be
executed by public hanging, there were fears that they would be raised to martyrdom status
if they were publicly killed, so it was decided to kill them by Guillotine in the execution chamber.
While Sophie and Christoph were silent as they died, Hans yelled " long live freedom”.
Unfortunately, they were not the last to die. Although the three took all blame for
the White Rose’s actions, their attempts to save their friends from persecution failed.
After the arrest of Christoph Probst and the Scholl siblings, with the support of
various acquaintances and with a forged passport Schmorell tried to flee to Switzerland. However,
fierce weather forced him back and he returned to Munich on the 24th of February 1943,
the day his executed friends from the White Rose were buried. When at around 10 PM,
the air raid alarm sounded and Schmorell attempted to enter the air raid shelter,
he was recognized, denounced and arrested. He had previously been placed under public manhunt and a
reward of 1,000 Reichsmarks was offered for his capture. Willi Graf had already been arrested on
the 18th of February 1943 and Kurt Huber was taken into custody on the 26th of February.
During the time between his capture and his trial, Schmorell was interrogated multiple
times. He also said: “I cannot identify myself as a National Socialist, because I am more interested
in Russia. I readily acknowledge my love for Russia. In contrast, I reject Bolshevism. My
mother was Russian, I was born there, and I cannot help but care about this country.
During my service on the Eastern Front in the summer of 1942, I was never put
into a situation where my attitude toward Russia could have possibly been detrimental
to Germany’s interests. If as a soldier I had had to take up arms against the Bolshevists,
before carrying out such an order, I would have had to advise my military C.O. that I could not
do so. In my position as a medical officer, I was spared such an order. When I occasionally heard
this and that through German propaganda about Russian subhumans, I was never convinced by it.”
On the 19th of April 1943, Freisler was flown back again to stand as judge
over the second trial of the White Rose members including Alexander Schmorell.
Freisler yelled at the accused right at the opening saying: “ National Socialism does not
need a criminal code against such "traitors" as you are. I will make this process with you
short”. When an assessor handed him the penal code without a word Freisler immediately threw it in
the direction of the dock, where the accused had to duck to avoid being hit in the head.
Schmorell admitted his anti-Nazi beliefs also in front of Freisler
who histerically screamed at him calling him a ‘traitor’.
Out of the thirteen defendants, one was unexpectedly acquitted, nine were given
prison sentences and three – Schmorell, Graf and Huber - were sentenced to death.
Unlike the first trial, where the death sentences had been carried out on the same day as the
verdict, Alexander's execution was delayed as his family petitioned for clemency. During this time
Alexander Schmorell wrote to his father and stepmother from prison: “ There is one thing,
however, that I want to tell you, so that your pain may be a little bit easier to bear. Should
a pardon be rejected, please believe that 'death' does not mean the end of every life, but in fact,
the opposite - birth, a transition to a new life, one which is wonderful and
will last forever. Death is really nothing terrible. The separation is quite hard. But
it will be less so if you think of it this way, that we won't be separated forever,
but just for a time - like for a trip - in order for us to meet again forever and in all eternity
in a life that is infinitely more beautiful than the present one, and that there will be no end
to us being together. Believe this, and then the burden will undoubtedly become easier for you.’
After about two months of deliberation, a letter came to the prison that said:
“I reject all petitions for mercy.” It was signed by Adolf Hitler.
On the 13th of July 1943, Alexander Schmorell and Kurt Huber were alerted
that their execution would happen later that day.
Schmorell was deeply inspired by his Orthodox Christian faith and was willing to sacrifice
himself as a testimony to his faith in God that had taught him to love beauty and freedom,
both of which the Nazis sought to destroy. After receiving communion from an Orthodox priest,
Schmorell was allowed to write his last letter to his parents in which he wrote:
"I am going with the awareness that I followed my deepest convictions
and the truth. This allows me to meet my hour of death with a conscience at peace.
Think of the millions of young men who have lost their lives out on the field-their
fate is the same as mine. In a few hours I will be in a better life, with my mother,
and I will not forget you. I will ask God to grant you solace and peace. Yours, Shurik.”
The guards came for Alexander a little after 5 pm. He was led out of his cell and into the courtyard,
walking to his death with his head held high, he said to his lawyer,
"I'm convinced that my life has to end now, early as it may seem,
for I have fulfilled my life's mission. I wouldn't know what else I have to do on this earth."
In the execution chamber, the state attorney asked if his name was Alexander Schmorell,
to which he replied, "yes". Then the blade fell and Alexander Schmorell died. He was 25 years old.
After the first White Rose trial, a copy of the sixth leaflet had been smuggled out of
Germany to England. In July 1943, the same month when Alexander Schmorell was executed,
the Royal Air Force dropped millions of propaganda copies over Germany.
This leaflet was retitled “The Manifesto of the Students of Munich”.
Alexander’s bravery is honored in Germany to this day. He and other members of the
White Rose personify the importance of acting according with one’s beliefs even
in the face of the greatest sacrifice of their own lives. Their actions made
them enduring symbols of the struggle for the freedom of the human spirit.
Completing the act of canonization, Schmorell was glorified as a saint and passion bearer by
the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in Munich on the 5th of February 2012.
Today, schools, squares and roads all bear the name of Alexander and other
members of the White Rose movement and it will forever remain a testament to their bravery.
There were many tears shed for Alexander Schmorell.
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