At that point in time, the White Rose group had not yet become a concrete reality, and nobody had a plan to print the leaflets which would constitute a milestone in courageous resistance. Yet already an antipathy toward Hitler and his National Socialist Party was strong in Sophie and in the other future members of the group. Although powerful, this aversion needed to be more precisely articulated. The letters and private diaries of these resistance confederates show how they wrestled with their thoughts in order to arrive at a clear understanding of what they would eventually do, and why.
In addition to the task of clarifying exactly what they would do, and why — any precise concept of organizing a resistance group and distributing leaflets was far in the future and not yet in any of their minds — another need was finding the moral, psychological, and spiritual frame of mind which would allow and empower them to eventually carry out that work. Each of the future members of the White Rose had a strong revulsion at the work of the National Socialist Party, was absolutely clear that it was evil, and knew that any opposition would entail mortal danger.
Sophie Scholl records in her private diary how she’d tried a number of different understandings until she arrived at a final understanding:
Manchmal meine ich, den Weg zu Gott durch meine Sehnsucht allein, durch eine ganze Hingabe meiner Seele in einem Augenblick erzwingen zu können. Wenn ich ihn sehr bitte, wenn ich ihn so über alles liebe, wenn mir das Herz so weh tut, weil ich weg bin von ihm, müßte er mich zu sich nehmen. Aber es gehören viele Schritte, viel allerwinzigste Schritte dazu, und es ist ein sehr langer Weg. Man darf nicht verzagen. Als ich einmal so verzagt war, weil ich immer wieder zurückfiel, da wagte ich es nicht mehr zu beten, ich nahm mir vor, von Gott nichts mehr zu wollen, bis ich wieder eher bestehen konnte vor seinen Augen. O, es war doch im Grunde ein Wollen zu Gott. Ich kann ihn aber immer bitten, das weiß ich jetzt.
Each of these stages represents a naive or undeveloped emotional attempt to will herself into some spiritual state and thereby attain worth. A close reading reveals the following steps:
First, to find one’s way to God by having a powerful yearning or longing; which by itself is presumed to be enough, or manifest enough, to make one worthy to speak with God.
Second, to wring with herculean effort all at once a devotion, dedication, and commitment out of one’s soul; both this step and the first step amount to an act of willing.
Third, to plead and beg; presumably the intensity and sincerity of one’s pleading and begging would make one worthy to be heard by God.
Fourth, to love God above all else; yet here, ‘love’ is still understood in an immature way, as a passion or emotion, which is again measured by its intensity.
Fifth, to experience pain in one’s heart because one is far from God. Perhaps these approaches were influenced by Romanticist poetry; Sophie was well read. The assumption is that God would be moved by her pain and draw her close to Himself.
After each of these five was tried and found wanting, the result is despair, because of the infinite distance between the individual and God, and that many tiny steps had to be taken, each with great care, and each made exactly right: a form of perfectionism, and despair is one of the inevitable results of perfectionism. The despair compounds itself, because it is itself a sin: “one is not allowed to despair.” Falling into this despair, Sophie resolved not to pray and not to want anything from God. She was waiting for the moment at which she could be worthy to stand before God. All of this was done out of her great desire for God.
Although done out of a noble desire, these attempts were also emotionally self-indulgent and juvenile. Sophie realized this quickly, and abandoned each of these approaches.
She rejects the path of emotionalism and abandons a reliance on the strength of her passion, pain, and desire.
She describes all these phases retrospectively; but “now” she has found a peace and solidity in a different view. The jetzt casts aside all the previous approaches as juvenile and misled. She writes of “knowing” instead of the emoting of the previous phases.
Sophie arrives at the unconditional approachability of God: “I can always ask Him.” This view erases the smothering pressure of perfectionism. The immer is unconditional. There are no requirements to fulfill before being heard. God is always eager to welcome communication.
Moving forward from this development, Sophie, and the others who would one day together form the White Rose, could now work out the ‘how’ — which actions they would eventually take, in general and in details — and work out the ‘why’ — a clear articulation of the beliefs and values which motivated their resistance movement.
