The act of passive resistance can be, if properly managed, just about as effective as war in creating change in the world. By acting in a civil manner in a sometimes uncivilized world, it can be argued that the change which takes place is much more profound then that created by war. However, for a passive restive movement to be effective, it takes more then a great leader or cause, it takes a culture that is willing to hear it.
In 1941 Juegen Wittenstein, along with Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl, Inge Scholl, Christoph Probst, Kurt Huber, Alexander Schmorell, and Willi Graf formed the anti-Nazi group White Rose.
In June of 1942, Wittenstein, along with three of his friends, was called up as a medic during Operation Barbarossa. While on duty Wittenstein and his friends witnessed Jews being murdered by the Schutz Staffeinel (SS) in Poland and the Soviet Union.
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When Wittenstein returned to Germany in October of 1942, he and White Rose began publishing leaflets about what he had seen while on duty. The leaflets were at first sent anonymously to people all over Germany. Taking addresses from telephone directories, they tended to concentrate on mailing the leaflets to university lecturers and the owners of bars.
The White Rose group believed that the young people of germany had the potential to overthrow Adolf Hitler and the Nazi government. In one leaflet, Fellow Fighters in the Resistance, they wrote: The name of Germany is dishonored for all time if German youth does not finally rise, take revenge, smash its tormentors. Students! The German people look to us.
The group also began painting anti-Nazi slogans on the sides of houses. This included Down With Hitler, Hitler Mass Murder, and Freedom. They also painted crossed out swastikas.
On February 18,1943, Hans and Sophie Scholl Were caught throwing leaflets from a window. Jakob Schmidt, a member of the Nazi Part saw them and immediately told the Gestapo and they were both arrested. They were searched and the police found a handwritten draft of another leaflet. This they matched to a letter in Scholls house that had been signed by Christoph Probst. The three members appaered before the peoples court and were found guilty of sedition on February 20, 1943 and were executed by guillotine a few hours later. Over the next few weeks the other members were arrested and some were executed. White Rose was over.
This was arguably and effective stand against the Nazi Party, but it lacked a culture that was ready, or able to take a stand against their oppression. However, twenty years later in the United States, another passive resistive movement would get underway. This was led by Martin Luther King Jr.
The name of Martin Luther King, Jr., is associated with the history of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s in the United States. The Montgomery bus boycott, the freedom rides, the Birmingham campaign, the March on Washington, the Selma march, the Chicago campaign, and the Memphis boycott are some of the more noteworthy battlefields where King and his followers fought for the equal rights and equal justice that the United States Constitution ensures for all its citizens.
King, building on the tradition of civil disobedience and passive resistance earlier expressed by Thoreau, Tolstoy, and Gandhi, waged a war of nonviolent direct action against opposing forces of racism and prejudice that were embodied in the persons of local police, mayors, governors, angry citizens, and night riders of the Ku Klux Klan. The great legal milestones achieved by this movement were the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In the later 1960s, the targets of King’s activism were less often the legal and political obstacles to the exercise of civil rights by blacks, and more often the underlying poverty, unemployment, lack of education, and blocked avenues of economic opportunity confronting black Americans. Despite increasing militancy in the movement for black power, King steadfastly adhered to the principles of nonviolence that had been the foundation of his career.
While some may say that the death of Martin Luther King proves that the equality he was searching for does not exist, the fact remains that, as unpleasant as it is to say, that the assassination of King did more for his cause then he could do in life.
The difference between the struggles of King and those of White Rose is the sense of pride which resulted from Kings cause. The Nazi were such an overpowering and dominant force in the lives of Germans that they were not in a position to be inspired. As far as Germans were concerned, the Nazis were in power, period, and to say otherwise would result in death. Thankfully, such a punishment was less likely in the U.S., at least from the government, lets not forgets our friends the KKK. But the point is, King was effective because he was granted the freedom to protest. This was not the case in Germany. So, along with great leaders, and noble cause and determination. It is highly important to have a social structure which will allow the people to hear the message and take a stand.
