FEATURE image: Original photograph by Joe Rosenthal, February 23, 1945. Public Domain.
The Battle of Iwo Jima was one of the most costly and consequential American victories of World War II, securing a strategic foothold in the Pacific while producing iconic photographs and film footage that transformed a brutal military campaign into an enduring symbol of sacrifice, heroism, and national resolve.
The battle lasted from February 19 to March 26, 1945, and was among the fiercest engagements of the Pacific War.
The Battle of Iwo Jima was a nearly 40-day battle campaign fought by the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Navy against the Japanese Imperial Army on the island of Iwo Jima in the Pacific. With 110,000 total battle personnel (over 70,000 troops), the American objective of their invasion (called “Operation Detachment”) was to capture the island and its airfields. Iwo Jima was situated between Japan and the American bomber bases in the Mariana Islands. Since summer 1944 unescorted American B-29 bombers were flying nearly 3000 miles roundtrip to bomb Japan and being lost at sea from entrenched Japanese defenses. With Iwo Jima in American hands U.S. fighter planes could escort the long-range bombers as well as have any damaged aircraft find sanctuary on the island. The American victory after a five week campaign resulted in the capture of Iwo Jima with its immediate benefit that, by war’s end, 2,400 B-29s were able to make safe forced landings on the island.
A primary American objective was to capture Iwo Jima’s airfields, allowing fighter escorts for B-29 bombers and emergency landing facilities closer to Japan.
There were 20,000 or so heavily-fortified Japanese defending the island to the death while U.S. Navy and Marine Corps aircrews had complete air superiority. The U.S. Navy provided heavy artillery gunfire support from the sea. The Battle of Iwo Jima, an American victory, took place from February 19 to March 26, 1945, and was one of the fiercest of World War II. That Americans could take the island was not the question. Its exact cost was. The casualty toll was heavy for both sides. The Japanese had 216 taken prisoner and up to 18,375 killed or missing in action. The American combat toll was also staggering: 6,821 killed in action, 19,217 wounded, and 2,648 experiencing battle trauma.
Joe Rosenthal (1911-2006), with his camera hanging at his side, surveys the landing beaches at Iwo Jima on March 7, 1945. Rosenthal was awarded the U.S. Navy Distinguished Public Service Award, as well as the Marine Corps Distinguished Public Service Award by the Marine Corps, for his war photography. Photo by AP/U.S. Marine Corps. Public Domain.
On Friday, February 23, 1945, Rosenthal landed on the island and heard that they were going to raise a flag on the highest point on the island which was the old volcano at the southwest end called Mount Suribachi. Rosenthal carried a Speed Graphic camera that was press standard issue and joined other photographers ready to ascend to the top. Halfway up they met a marine photographer coming down whose camera was obliterated by an enemy grenade explosion. Rosenthal and the others were told that the marines had already raised the flag. But the views were good from the summit anyway and still worth the climb. Once at the top Rosenthal and the rest saw marines who were working to affix a larger flag to a pipe under orders from a captain who wanted to replace it for the earlier smaller flag just raised. When the six marines started to raise that second larger flag on the heavy pole Rosenthal pushed his camera’s shutter. After taking the flag-raising photo, Rosenthal made his way back down Mount Suribachi to the shoreline. There, he took a transport boat out to the command ship, where he wrote captions for his photos and sent them, sight unseen, with the undeveloped film by seaplane to Guam.
“I took the picture. But the Marines took Iwo Jima.”— Joe Rosenthal.
In February 1945 Joe Rosenthal was a 33-year-old American photographer for the AP. Rosenthal’s poor eyesight prevented him from fighting in combat though his task as an embedded photographer placed him in Harm’s Way. Before Iwo Jima, Joe Rosenthal had landed with the marines on Guam and Peleliu. His Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of the flag raising on Iwo Jima became a sign of hope for a war-weary American home front that victory in the Pacific would be theirs. It also became the iconic symbol of everything U.S. Marines. Rosenthal was very proud of his photograph of the six marines and the Marines overall, though modest about any accolades that came his way. Rosenthal put his role in perspective, saying: “I took the picture. But the Marines took Iwo Jima.” Yet it is not to be forgotten that Rosenthal was exposing himself to the same dangers as the six marines that day when he took his iconic photograph for history of the flag raising on Iwo Jima on February 23, 1945.
Photographer Joe Rosenthal’s image of the flag raising atop Mount Suribachi became one of the most recognizable photographs in history and a symbol of American determination.
Original photograph by Joe Rosenthal, February 23, 1945. Public Domain.
Color motion picture footage of the flag raising provided a rare and powerful visual record of the battle.
Iwo Jima Flag Raising 1945 – Rare Color Film by Sgt Genaust [#Upscaled#1080p#60FPS#ww2]. Three feet to Joe Rosenthal’s right, Sgt. Genaust captured the flag-raising from nearly the same angle using color motion picture film.
Unveiled in November 1954, the Marine Corps War Memorial in Washington, D.C. was dedicated to all Marines who have given their lives in the defense of the U.S. since 1775. see – https://www.nps.gov/gwmp/learn/historyculture/usmcwarmemorial.htm – retrieved February 19, 2025. October 2003. Author’s photograph. All Rights Reserved.
The image captured by Rosenthal’s photograph was widely used in war bond drives and helped rally a weary American home front during the final months of the war. The photograph also inspired the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial, ensuring the battle’s place in American memory.
US Marine Corps War Memorial, Washington, D.C. The centerpiece of the memorial is a colossal sculpture group by Felix Weihs de Weldon (1907-2003), then on duty with the U.S. Navy, depicting the six Marines who raised the second larger U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima on February 23, 1945. The memorial was designed by Horace Whittier Peaslee, Jr. (1884-1959) and dedicated in November 1954 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. October 2003. Author’s photograph. All Rights Reserved.
US Marine Corps War Memorial, Washington, D.C., was based on the iconic AP photograph by Joe Rosenthal taken on February 23, 1945 of the raising of the U.S. flag at the top of Mount Suribachi at the start of the Battle of Iwo Jima (February 19- March 26, 1945). Rosenthal’s photograph was flashed around the world for the first time on Sunday, February 25, 1945, and instantly became a symbol of the American war effort in the Pacific Theatre during World War II. The Marine Corps War Memorial Foundation organized the fundraising and creation of the monument. The complete cost of the memorial was $850,000 (about $10 million in 2025). The 32-foot-high bronze figures are erecting a 60-foot flag pole onto Mount Suribachi. Important dates in the history of the Marine Corps are burnished in gold into the Swedish marble base.The six marines who raised the flag on Iwo Jima have all been identified and include a sergeant, 2 corporals, and 3 privates first class. Unveiled in November 1954, the Marine Corps War Memorial was dedicated to all Marines who have given their lives in the defense of the U.S. since 1775. October 2003. Author’s photograph. All Rights Reserved.
Flags of Our Fathers (2006) is Clint Eastwood’s powerful film about the Battle of Iwo Jima (February 19 to March 26, 1945) and the legacy of one of the most iconic images of World War II. Eastwood directed and co-produced the film and also composed its score. It was released alongside its companion film, Letters from Iwo Jima, which recounts the same battle from the Japanese perspective.
Distributed by Paramount Pictures in the United States and Warner Bros. internationally, the two films earned strong critical praise. Together they form one of cinema’s most thoughtful examinations of war, heroism, and historical memory.
The Photograph That Became a Symbol
The film is based on James Bradley and Ron Powers’ bestselling 2000 book, which explored the experiences of Bradley’s father, Navy corpsman John Bradley, and the five U.S. Marines who raised the American flag atop Mount Suribachi on February 23, 1945.
Captured by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, the image quickly became one of the most recognizable photographs in American history. Its depiction of determination and sacrifice came to symbolize the United States’ war effort in the Pacific. Decades later, however, further research led the U.S. Marine Corps to revise the identification of several men originally believed to appear in the photograph.
Beyond the Battlefield
While the film contains intense combat sequences depicting the brutal struggle for Iwo Jima, its deeper focus is the human cost of turning soldiers into national symbols.
Three of the flag raisers were killed in action less than a week after the photograph was taken. The surviving participants were returned to the United States, where they became reluctant celebrities. As the war continued, they were enlisted to help promote a nationwide war bond campaign designed to finance the final push toward victory.
The Burden of Heroism
With the war in Europe nearing its end, the photograph and the men associated with it became powerful symbols of American courage and resolve. Yet Flags of Our Fathers questions the nature of heroism itself. The surviving flag raisers struggled with grief, survivor’s guilt, public expectations, and the uncomfortable reality that their fame was based on a single moment overshadowing the sacrifices of thousands of others.
Eastwood’s film ultimately argues that history often elevates symbols while overlooking the complex individuals behind them.
Legacy
More than a conventional war film, Flags of Our Fathers is an exploration of memory, mythmaking, and sacrifice. By examining both the ferocity of combat and the pressures of the home front, the film reveals how a single photograph came to represent a nation at war while forever changing the lives of the men captured within its frame.
Rosenthal told Collier’s magazine: “The sky was overcast, but just enough sunlight fell from almost directly overhead, because it happened to be about noon, to give the figures a sculptural depth. The 20-foot pipe was heavy, which meant the men had to strain to get it up, imparting that feeling of action. The wind just whipped the flag out over the heads of the group, and at their feet the disrupted terrain and the broken stalks of the shrubbery exemplified the turbulence of war.” Quoted in https://www.usfca.edu/magazine/december-2024/feature/man-behind-the-camera – retrieved Feb. 19, 2025. Wire services flashed Joe Rosenthal’s photograph around the world where it was published on the front pages of more than 200 newspapers on Sunday, February 25, 1945. The photo appeared on magazine covers across the country as well. Following the battle of Iwo Jima, the photo was used for publicity in war bond drives from May 11 to July 4, 1945, which raised an amazing $26.3 billion – by far the biggest haul of any of the seven U.S. war loan drives during World War II.. Rosenthal’s photograph became an enduring icon.
The story of Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl, and the White Rose demonstrates that moral courage can survive even at great cost under a totalitarian regime. In Nazi Germany, a group of university students chose conscience over conformity, using words and ideas rather than weapons to challenge dictatorship, expose injustice, and defend human dignity. Their campaign of non-violent resistance became one of the most enduring symbols of intellectual and spiritual opposition to Hitler’s regime.
Gestapo photos of Hans Scholl and Sophie Scholl taken after their capture on February 18, 1943. The White Rose movement of which the Scholls were members distributed leaflets condemning Nazi tyranny, war crimes, and the suppression of freedom. They drew inspiration from Christian ethics, philosophy, literature, and humanist ideals. Believing individual conscience carried greater authority than obedience to an immoral state. Hans and Sophie Scholl were arrested while distributing leaflets at the University of Munich in February 1943. PHOTOS: Public domain.
By John P. Walsh
On February 18, 1943, following the illegal distribution of anti-Nazi leaflets by the White Rose at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München—the leaflets instructing students and all others to actively resist the 10-year-old Nazi regime—three young German university students were arrested. In the next four days these students will be tried in a Nazi kangaroo court, convicted of treason, and condemned to death. Their crime?—public vocal resistance to the totalitarian state that suppresses freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of conscience in addition to reprehensible war crimes, including the Holocaust, during World War II.
On February 22, 1943, in Stadelheim Prison in Munich, Germany, these three White Rose resisters are the first of their group to die for freedom and whose legacy in the 21st century is to be listed as some of the most important Germans of all time—namely, 21-year-old Sophie Scholl, her brother, 24-year-old Hans Scholl, and 23-year-old Christoph Probst, a married father with three children.
Christoph Probst: It wasn’t in vain.
Sophie Scholl: The sun is still shining.
The execution scene from Marc Rothemund’s 2005 German film, Sophie Scholl – The Final Days (“Sophie Scholl – Die letzten Tage”). On February 22, 1943 the three condemned White Rose students—Sophie Scholl (Julia Jentsch), Christoph Probst (Florian Stetter) and Hans Scholl (Fabian Hinrichs)—are allowed a final moment together before being beheaded in Munich’s Stadelheim Prison.
By the start of 1943, the Nazis were badly losing the Battle of Stalingrad in Russia that had been raging since August 1942. Its outcome was a major turning point in the war. The German armed forces experienced nearly one million casualties in six months. The American, British, and the Russian armed forces were closing in on Hitler’s Third Reich from many sides.
Since June 1942 five anti-Nazi leaflets had been written and distributed in and around the university in Munich. The distribution channels as well as the network of this new clandestine anti-Nazi group—who eventually called themselves the German Resistance Movement, a.k.a. the White Rose—had steadily expanded during the creation of these leaflets.
Conditions were growing tense in Germany. There was a developing global consensus—that included some even in Germany— that Hitler’s war was ultimately unwinnable for the Fascist tyrant. As these totalitarian thugs had lashed out to consolidate power so, as ultimate military victory was slipping away, the regime stooped to any means to crush its internal enemies.
The White Rose defended human dignity by insisting that every person possesses a moral conscience and basic freedoms that no state can legitimately suppress, and by courageously resisting Nazi tyranny, racism, mass murder and unjust war despite the certainty of severe punishment.
Sophie Scholl, May 9, 1921-February 22, 1943.
Sophie Scholl had almost not graduated from high school in May 1940 because she was sick and tired of the curriculum’s relentless political (Nazi) indoctrination. Scholl was fond of children and took a job teaching kindergarten. But her motivation was not simply that she had found an early vocation but hoped to steer clear of Germany’s six-month National Labor Service (Reichsarbeitsdienst).
The Nazis found her anyway— and Sophie taught at a National Labor Service-approved nursery as part of the war effort. Scholl might not have bothered with the National Labor Service at all except that the Nazis had set it up as a prerequisite for attending university.
In her personal reading Sophie Scholl had already developed an interest in philosophy and theology and wanted to pursue these subjects academically. The Labor Service experience did contribute, however, to Sophie’s outlook—she reacted completely against its militaristic aspects to the point where she started to practice forms of nonviolent resistance.
1940 Letter from Sophie Scholl to a Friend – White Rose Memorial Room – Interior of Main Building of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat – Munich – Germany.
In May 1942, 21-year-old Sophie started at the University in Munich. Her older brother Hans, studying medicine and philosophy at the school, introduced his younger sister to all his friends. Though Hans had evolving and increasingly strong anti-Nazi views, as did his friends, camaraderie revolved around the arts, music, philosophy and theology. The Scholls were also physically active—especially hiking and swimming.
Sophie pursued her intellectual interests at the university making connections with artists, writers, and philosophers. Her father, a hometown mayor, had been put in prison for an indirect critical remark he made about Hitler—and Sophie’s quest to understand how she, as an individual, should act under a dictatorship was intensely personal.
The White Rose formed and began writing and publishing anti-Nazi leaflets in June and July 1942—but Hans Scholl kept his dangerous undertaking secret from Sophie. But, in November 1942, when Sophie learned about the White Rose, she immediately joined.
Hans Scholl (Fabian Hinrichs), left, and Sophie Scholl (Julia Jentsch) in the 2005 German historical film, Sophie Scholl – The Final Days.
On February 18, 1943, in the wake of the battle of Stalingrad, and major Allied victories in Africa which had the Americans and British closing in on Hitler’s Europe, the sixth and final leaflet produced by the White Rose was distributed by Hans and Sophie Scholl and others of the White Rose at Munich University. The leaflet had been written by Kurt Huber, a university faculty and White Rose member, and stated that the “day of reckoning” had finally come for “[Hitler,] the most contemptible tyrant that the German people has ever endured.”
The Atrium, Munich University, where the Scholls dropped the sixth leaflets on February 18, 1943, which led to their arrest by the Gestapo.
Atrium, Munich University.
Bringing the leaflets in suitcases, the Scholls stacked them in corridors of the main building—and the hurried activity, including tossing the last leaflets into the atrium, was noticed by a maintenance man who reported it. Before their arrest by the Gestapo, Sophie had successfully gotten rid of any incriminating evidence. But the Gestapo did find fragments of a seventh leaflet by Christoph Probst on Hans Scholl’s person and, upon searching the Scholls’ apartment, confirmed the White Rose writings. The Gestapo was going to let Sophie free, but when she discovered her older brother had been arrested, she confessed to her full role.
Hans and Sophie Scholl lived in the rear of this apartment building at 13 Franz-Joseph Strasse in Munich from June 1942 until their arrest on February 18, 1943 and execution on February 22, 1943.
The White Rose wrote that Germans should act according to moral truth rather than obey propaganda or fear. Sophie Scholl herself defended her actions during interrogation as flowing from an individual “theology of conscience.”
Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst.
During the interrogation following her arrest, transcripts show that Sophie defended herself mainly by claiming her right to act based on an individual “theology of conscience.”
On February 22, 1943, the Scholls and Christoph Probst were tried in the Volksgerichtshof (The People’s Court) before rabid Nazi judge Roland Freisler. Sophie interrupted the judge several times during his tirades. The court record shows her saying to the judge: “Somebody—after all—had to make a start. What we wrote and said is believed by many others. They just don’t dare to express themselves as we did.” The trio were found guilty of treason and condemned to death. They were guillotined the same day at Munich’s Stadelheim Prison.
They were willing to sacrifice their lives for moral truth and freedom. Sophie Scholl told the Nazi court that someone had to make a start, even if others were afraid to speak. Hans Scholl’s reported final words, “Let Freedom live!” encapsulate the group’s commitment to human liberty and dignity.
Sophie Scholl, Hans Scholl and Christoph Probst, a married father of three children, were tried in the Volksgerichtshof (The People’s Court) before the rabid Nazi judge Roland Freisler.Transcripts show Sophie told the judge, Somebody—after all—had to make a start. What we wrote and said is believed by many others. They just don’t dare to express themselves as we did.
White Rose stamp – Sophie and Hans Scholl.
Hans Scholl was, with Alexander Schmorell (1917-executed by the Nazis in prison, July 13, 1943), a founding member of the White Rose in 1942. After serving as a medic on the Eastern Front in 1939, Hans Scholl became determined to do something to change the German people’s minds about the Nazi regime and its war effort.
By June 1942 the White Rose (Weiße Rose) had been founded on principles of nonviolent intellectual resistance to the Nazis—a highly dangerous proposition in a totalitarian regime.
Rather than violence, they used leaflets, ideas, and public witness to challenge injustice. The post explicitly describes the White Rose as being founded on principles of “nonviolent intellectual resistance.”
Detail of Typewriter Used to Produce White Rose Anti-Nazi Leaflets – White Rose Memorial Room – Interior of Main Building of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat – Munich – Germany.
Between June and mid-July 1942, Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell wrote four leaflets against the Nazis appealing to the truth of the people’s consciences based on facts. “Isn’t it true that every honest German is ashamed of the government these days?’ the writers asked in their first leaflet. “Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of the shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible crimes reach the light of day?”
Alexander Schmorell was, with Hans Scholl, a co-founder of the White Rose. Schmorell co-wrote their leaflets. A Russian-German student at Munich University, Schmorell was sentenced to death at 25 years old on April 19, 1943 at the second trial of the White Rose at the Volksgerichtshof. With Munich University faculty member Kurt Huber, also a White Rose member and leaflet writer, Schmorell was beheaded at Munich’s Stadelheim Prison on July 13, 1943. In 2012, Schmorell was declared a saint and martyr in the Russian Orthodox Church.
“Stay strong. Make no concessions!”
The Scholl siblings included Hans, Sophie, Inge, Elisabeth, and their younger brother Werner, who is depicted alongside Sophie in the photograph. Taken by Hans on February 22, 1941, this specific snapshot captures a moment exactly two years to the day before Hans and Sophie were executed by the Nazi regime for distributing anti-war leaflets at the University of Munich. While Hans and Sophie are immortalized for leading the White Rose resistance movement, Werner also notably defied the regime early on, becoming the first in the family to openly break with the Nazis when he resigned from the Hitler Youth in 1939.
Werner would ultimately meet his own tragic fate on the Eastern Front, disappearing just over a year after his siblings’ deaths. In February 1943, while on temporary military leave in Ulm, he rushed to Munich and managed to slip past guards into the courtroom to witness his siblings’ sham trial. As Hans and Sophie were being led away to the guillotine, Werner managed to reach out and hold their hands one last time. Hans left him with a final, searing command: “Stay strong. Make no concessions!”
In the agonizing hours following their executions, a distraught Werner helped their close friend, Traute Lafrenz, clear out incriminating resistance evidence from his siblings’ rooms just ahead of the Gestapo. Soon after, the Nazi regime arrested the remaining members of the Scholl family under collective punishment laws—but Werner was spared detention only because he had already been ordered back to active duty. In June 1944, during heavy fighting against Soviet forces near Mogilev (in modern-day Belarus), 21-year-old Werner went missing in action. His body was never recovered, and he was officially presumed dead. PHOTO: Public Domain.
In the second leaflet the White Rose spoke of the crimes of the Holocaust: “Since the conquest of Poland, 300,000 Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial way…The German people sleep in a stupid sleep and encourage the Fascist criminals…”
The third leaflet appealed to the German people’s “spirit” to eliminate the Nazi system in their midst.
Their leaflets openly condemned the regime’s mass murder of Jews and called attention to crimes that many Germans preferred not to confront. By doing so, they defended the dignity of those being persecuted and killed.
Leaflets, Memorial to Scholls at Munich University.
For the next four months, until November 1942, Scholl, Schmorell, and other young members of the White Rose were drafted to again serve as medics on the Eastern Front. War’s ongoing horrors that they witnessed only strengthened their resolve to resist.
At their return to Germany in autumn 1942 Sophie Scholl, Hans’ younger sister (born May 9, 1921), learned about the White Rose and Hans’ involvement in it, and eagerly joined the group.
Sophie Scholl bust, Munich University.
With the Battle of Stalingrad raging since August 1942, the White Rose (now called the German Resistance Movement) produced a fifth leaflet in January 1943. It was an appeal addressed to all Germans and the White Rose made almost 10,000 copies to distribute. The leaflet presented a straightforward analysis of the situation so to jog people’s intellect to take moral action. To state, as the leaflet did, that “Hitler cannot win the war; he can only prolong it.” was pure heresy to the all-encompassing propaganda arm of the dictatorship.
In the Battle of Stalingrad which the Nazis lost—it was the major turning point in the war—Hitler made an intense appeal to the German people’s patriotism. By one count, the German armed forces experienced nearly one million casualties in about six months.
The German populace—as well as people around the world– understood that Hitler’s defeat was inevitable. But, unlike the Americans and British who, in November 1942, successfully began and concluded Operation Torch in French Morocco pushing the Germans east and out of North Africa and next out of Southern Europe, few Germans were willing to even yet criticize the Nazi regime let alone take action as did the handful of young students and faculty of the White Rose.
The White Rose defended fundamental human freedoms and opposed a regime that suppressed freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of conscience. Their fifth leaflet called for a future Germany that would protect “freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the individual citizen from the arbitrary action of any dictator states.”
White Rose Leaflets, memorial.
The White Rose’s fifth leaflet called all Germans to “Support the resistance movement!” The leaflet labeled Nazi policies as racist and subhuman, imperialist and militarist—and to be resisted. But further, a future Germany and Europe must, stated the White Rose in this penultimate leaflet, protect “freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the individual citizen from the arbitrary action of any dictator states.”
It was in January 1943 that the White Rose was beginning to expand its operation to make connection with older anti-Nazi groups already formed and operating in Germany, such as the Kreisau Circle led by Helmuth James von Moltke (1907-executed by the Nazis in prison, January 23, 1945).
Helmuth James Graf von Moltke (1907–1945) was one of the leaders of an early diverse group of anti-Nazi intellectuals known as the Kreisau Circle. In prison since January 1944, Von Moltke is photographed at his trial in July 1944. The Nazis executed Moltke in prison in January 1945. By early 1943, members of the mostly student-led White Rose were starting to expand their network of contacts to include other anti-Nazi groups such as the Kriesau Circle.
With the defeat at Stalingrad officially announced by the Nazis in early February 1943, the totalitarian regime blamed the German people. This included pointing a finger at university students as unpatriotic who did not serve in the army. Such slanderous and cowardly accusations from Nazi leaders who pompously impugned German intellectual youth in the wake of a massive Hitler-led military defeat making for one million casualties and devastating the nation’s morale, sparked a riot by students at the university in Munich. A growing chaos under the totalitarian regime had a heartbeat—and as in all totalitarian regimes, scapegoats must be found and made examples of. The leaflets of the White Rose had been disseminating anti-Nazi literature since June 1942. Its perpetrators had yet to be found out—and stood square at the tip of the Fascist dictatorship’s spear.
The White Rose, its members actively looking to capitalize on the energy of the students’ righteous indignation, decided to send out their sixth and last leaflet—which they did on February 18, 1943. The sixth leaflet, written by Munich faculty Kurt Huber (1893-executed by the Nazis in prison, July 13, 1943), and revised by Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell, said that with “the dead of Stalingrad [to] adjure us!,” the “day of reckoning” had finally come for “[Hitler,] the most contemptible tyrant that the German people has ever endured.” The group also stenciled slogans on university walls and buildings throughout Munich, the Nazi Party’s home base, stating “Down with Hitler!” and “Freedom!”
Munich University, Main Corridor.
The distribution of the leaflets packed in suitcases—this time including the public participation of Sophie Scholl—took place on Thursday, February 18, 1943. It is what led to the arrest, trial, conviction, and execution by beheading of Hans and Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst by the Nazis within the span of the next four days.
Sophie Scholl’s last words were: It is such a splendid sunny day, and I have to go. But how many have to die on the battlefield in these days? How many young, promising lives? What does my death matter if by our acts thousands are warned and alerted? Among the student body there will certainly be a revolt!
Hans Scholl’s last words were Es lebe die Freiheit! (Let Freedom live!)
Christoph Probst, Hans and Sophie Scholl graves, Perlach Cemetery in Munich.
Alfred Delp, S.J., stands as one of the most compelling Christian witnesses of the Second World War: a Jesuit priest, intellectual, and Nazi resister whose prison meditations transformed personal suffering, political tyranny, and the certainty of death into enduring reflections on faith, freedom, conscience, and hope.
Alfred Delp, S.J. sailing. Fair use.
Arrested by the Gestapo on July 28, 1944—just eight days after the failed July 20 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler—Delp was formally moved to Berlin’s notorious Tegel Prison in August 1944, following initial brutal interrogations and torture at the Gestapo’s Lehrter Straße Cell Prison (known as Moabit). Fr. Delp spent months imprisoned in Tegel, much of the time shackled. During imprisonment he wrote profound Advent and Christmas meditations, which were smuggled out of prison on scraps of paper.
Commentary written and texts compiled by John P. Walsh.
During World War II in Germany, Alfred Delp, S.J. (September 15, 1907 – executed, Berlin, February 2, 1945) was a member of the Kreisauer Kreis (The Kreisau Circle) composed of German men and women from a variety of backgrounds who opposed Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime.
Fr. Delp was arrested by the Nazis in 1944 and, after six months in prison in shackles, the German Catholic priest and Jesuit was sentenced to death for high treason and executed by hanging on Candlemas 1945.
Following the Allied victory in 1945, Fr. Delp’s prison writings were assembled into a posthumous book called Facing Death (German: Im Angesicht des Todes). A highlight of the 37-year-old Delp’s writings are his seasonal sermons and meditations for Advent and Christmas which were written as he languished in a cell “three steps wide” surrounded by Nazi guards.
Fr. Delp’s writings, scrawled on numerous slips of paper and smuggled out before his death, have been compared to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison also written in Tegel prison in Berlin, Germany, during World War II.
Father Delp was developing his thoughts and writing about the annual Advent drama at least as early as 1933 so his prison writings became a concluding chapter of a lasting adult interest as he faced his death.
Jesuit priest Alfred Delp was a member of the German Nazi Resistance and the Kreisau Circle, a group that opposed Hitler’s regime and envisioned a democratic Germany after the fall of the Third Reich.
German-born Alfred Delp S.J. (September 15, 1907 – Berlin, 2 February 1945).
Fr. Delp wrote his meditations and sermons on Advent and Christmas when he was a political prisoner of the Nazis in Germany in World War II.This photo was taken most likely in 1942 or 1943—prior to his arrest by the Gestapo in July 1944. It captures a rare, candid moment of Delp smiling outdoors, wearing his round wire-rimmed glasses and civilian clothing. At the time, Father Delp was a Nazi resister living a dangerous double life. He was serving as a parish priest at St. Georg’s Church in Munich while secretly utilizing a covert underground network to help Jewish refugees escape Nazi persecution into neutral Switzerland. By 1942, he had joined the Kreisau Circle at the invitation of Count Helmuth von Moltke. This clandestine group of Christian intellectuals, theologians, and socialists met secretly to design a humane, democratic, and Christian-principled social order for Germany to rebuild upon after the inevitable downfall of Adolf Hitler’s regime. Though the Kreisau Circle explicitly favored peaceful planning over violence, the Gestapo rounded up its members following the failed July 20, 1944 bomb plot to assassinate Hitler. Delp was arrested on July 28, 1944, severely tortured, subjected to a mock show trial, and ultimately executed by hanging on February 2, 1945. PHOTO: “Alfred Delp Mannheim” by Graf Foto is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
From Alfred Delp, S.J., “Figures of Advent,” Advent of the Heart, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2006 (adapted):
“I see this year’s Advent (December 1944 in Berlin’s Tegel Prison) with an intensity and discomposure like never before….Along with these thoughts comes the memory of an angel that a good person gave me for Advent in 1942. It held a banner: ‘Rejoice, for the Lord is near.’ A war bomb destroyed the angel as well as that good person although I often sense that she continues to do angel-services for me. It is the knowledge of the quiet angels of annunciation, who speak their message of blessing into the distress of our world situation and scatter their blessing’s seeds which begin to grow in the middle of the night which informs and encourages us of the truth of a situation. These angels of Advent are not loud angels of public jubilation and fulfillment but, silent and unnoticed, they come into private and shabby rooms and appear before our hearts as they did long ago. Silently they bring the questions of God and proclaim to us the miracles of God, with whom nothing is impossible. Advent is a time of refuge because it has received a message – and so to believe in God’s auspicious seeds that the angels offer an open heart are the first things we must do with our lives. The next is to go through the days as announcing messengers ourselves. We wait in faith for the abundance of the coming harvest – not because we trust the earth or the stars or our own good sense and courage – but only because we have perceived God’s messages and know about His herald angels – and even have ourselves encountered one.”
SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT.
Standing Nativity Angel holding a lyre. Author’s photograph.
Thomas Merton in his introduction to Alfred Delp’s Prison Writings – a modern compilation of a young German Jesuit’s writings in prison in Berlin before he was executed for high treason as a Nazi resister in World War II – states that Fr. Delp was condemned because he and others “hoped to build a new Germany on Christian principles.” (p. xxv.)
Merton, a mid20th century Trappist monk, priest, and spiritual writer, links Fr. Delp’s political activity in the Kreisau Circle—an underground group of about twenty-five German dissidents of diverse backgrounds opposed to the Nazi regime—to broader Church doctrine and the western tradition of liberalism in evidence since the Ancient Greeks that “always hoped to attain a more equitable world order by peaceful collaboration among nations.” (ibid.)
For Fr. Delp, according to Merton, the stark choice before human beings remained the crucial one of global order or global destruction. Father Delp observed that even religious people in his time had fallen into the militaristic government’s syllogistic trap of “conquest first and a new and better world later.”
Fr. Delp’s concern when making this sort of choice is that “if the person who says it tolerates or helps further conditions which are fatal to mankind…or weakens his or her own spiritual, moral, and religious sense” – then even “the most pious prayer can become a blasphemy.” (ibid.) Fr. Delp proposed that any human indifference to honesty and justice originating in passionate conviction vitiates human nature which is left to then express itself in a vicious circle of fear and arrogance.
From Fr. Delp’s perspective, his active participation in Kreisauer Kreis for which he was executed by the Nazis in February 1945 pointed to the eschatological character of the Advent drama by the young Jesuit priest’s hope in his time for the political and social ruin of Germany which had sunk into bitter darkness and that it would find its way ahead by the light of each person’s burning candle “for honesty and justice.”
Hanging symmetrically from the classical pilasters are lush green pine Advent wreaths accented with vibrant, formal red ribbon bows. Against a peach-toned back wall is a dedicated devotional stand filled with dozens of glowing red glass prayer candles lit by parishioners. Author’s photograph.
Alfred Delp, S.J. Fair use.
From Alfred Delp S.J., Prison Writings, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York, 2004:
“So this Sunday we must again fold our hands and kneel humbly before God in order that his salvation may be active in us and that we may be ready to call upon him and be moved by his presence. The arrogance so typical of modern men and women is deflated here. At the same time, the icy loneliness and helplessness into which we are frozen melts under the divine warmth that fills and blesses us …If we are terrified by a dawning realization of our true condition, that terror is completely calmed by the certain knowledge that God is on the way and actually approaching. Our fate, no matter how much it may be entwined with the inescapable logic of circumstance, is still nothing more than the way to God, the way God has chosen for the ultimate consummation of his purpose, for his permanent ends. Light your candles – such candles as you possess – for they are the appropriate symbol for all that must happen in Advent if we are to live.”
THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT.
Part of a grand nativity scene, a young woman, Martha, dressed in traditional rustic garments, holds a woven basket overflowing with apples and pears, while a garland of red berries drapes down her skirt. Author’s photograph.
On Friday, July 28, 1944, two Gestapo men were waiting outside St. George’s church in Munich, a simple Baroque pile in an almost pastoral setting near the Englischer Garten.
Eight days before there had been an assassination attempt on Hitler’s life which failed. For active German dissidents to the Nazi regime in custody or, for the time being, still walking free, things were going to get worse.
Helmuth James Graf von Moltke (1907 – 1945), one of the leaders of the Kreisau Circle, a type of anti-Nazi salon, had been in prison since January 1944. Now, following the failed bombing at the Wolf’s Lair, Peter Yorck von Wartenburg (1904 –1944) who was the other leader of the Kreisau Circle, was immediately arrested and sent to Berlin where he was tried and executed on August 8, 1944.
St. Michael’s Church (Michaelskirche), Munich. July 1984. Author’s photograph.
Beyond its architectural prominence as the largest Renaissance church north of the Alps, St. Michael’s maintains a deeply profound, historic connection to the German anti-Nazi resistance through Father Alfred Delp, S.J. The young Jesuit priest began his formal priestly ministry within these walls when he was ordained on June 24, 1937, by Munich’s celebrated Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber who delivered his famous anti-Nazi Advent sermons in 1933 which largely defined his ongoing critical tone towards the regime. Father Delp frequently ascended the pulpit of St. Michael’s to deliver powerful sermons that, alongside the courageous ministry of his fellow Jesuit Father Rupert Mayer, openly condemned the total incompatibility of National Socialist ideology with Christian values. This vocal opposition eventually led Delp to join the Kreisau Circle, a clandestine network of dissidents drafting plans for a humanitarian, Christian social order to rebuild Germany following the anticipated collapse of the Third Reich. Implicated in the wider resistance movements, Delp was arrested by the Gestapo in July 1944 and subsequently executed by hanging at Berlin-Plötzensee prison on February 2, 1945. In recognition of his enduring martyrdom, the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising has formally initiated the diocesan phase for Father Delp’s beatification process, ensuring that St. Michael’s continues to honor him as one of its most courageous historic voices.
St. Georg München-Bogenhausen, Munich:
St. Georg München-Bogenhausen. The exterior with its historic cemetery of St. Georg Church in Bogenhausen, Munich. A diocesan parish, a church has existed on this site since the Middle Ages. The current building was reconstructed between 1766 and 1768 and designed by Late Baroque architect Johann Michael Fischer, with interior art created by master sculptors Johann Baptist Straub and Ignaz Günther. As St. Georg was a filial church to the larger Heilig Blut (Holy Blood) parish nearby, Father Delp was the church rector—though to the ordinary churchgoers who attended his anti-Nazi sermons every Sunday, he effectively acted as their pastor.
Jesuit Father Delp’s primary assignment in Munich was serving on the editorial staff of the Jesuit journal Stimmen der Zeit (“Voices of the Times”). When the Nazi Gestapo suppressed and seized the journal’s offices in April 1941, Delp was left without a formal station. The local Archdiocese of Munich stepped in and appointed him as the rector/administrator of this small parish to keep him active. While his regional Jesuit Provincial superior (Augustin Rösch) kept close contact with him and introduced him to the anti-Nazi Kreisau Circle, the day-to-day parish staff at St. Georg was otherwise standard diocesan clergy.
The ornate, highly detailed Late Baroque (Rococo) interior of St. Georg Church in Bogenhausen, Munich, Germany. The architecture and abundant decoration emphasize dramatic composition, theatrical lighting effects, and rich faux-marble finishes characteristic of 18th-century Bavarian church design. PHOTO: “St. Georg München-Bogenhausen, Hochaltar” by Rufus46, used under CC BY-SA 3.0 / Cropped from original.
The danger surrounding Father Delp’s ministry was evident in the constant scrutiny of the Gestapo. Rather than denouncing the Nazi regime through direct political attacks, his sermons systematically dismantled its core ideology. From the pulpit, he rejected the State-as-God concept, affirming instead that only God possessed supreme authority. He also spoke forcefully about the intrinsic dignity, spiritual freedom, and equal worth of every human being, principles that stood in absolute opposition to Nazi racial doctrines and persecution.
The Gestapo fully understood what Delp was doing. Undercover agents and informants regularly filled the pews of St. Georg, reporting his sermons back to the authorities. Delp, in turn, knew they were there and occasionally mocked their presence from the pulpit itself. His dynamic and compelling preaching style drew large crowds, making his influence impossible to ignore. Ultimately, it was this fearless refusal to remain silent that kept him under permanent surveillance and led to his eventual arrest by the Gestapo.Portrait of Father Alfred Delp with glasses smiling [Photograph]. (n.d.). Historical Archives of the German Resistance / Public Domain.
One of the two Gestapo men waiting outside St. George’s to arrest Fr. Alfred Delp, S.J. happened to be an old schoolmate of his.
Like other Catholic bishops and priests who were known de facto dissenters working against the Nazi regime, especially its social and racial ideologies and practices, Fr. Delp had long been under close surveillance by the Gestapo.
As a member of the Kreisau Circle – that group of professionals of diverse religious, social, and political backgrounds with one thing in common (being dyed-in-the-wool anti-Nazis), Fr. Delp was their social scientist with a Ph.D. He illumined their minds to cutting-edge labor issues, including what could be the German worker’s role in a post-war liberated Germany.
Helmuth James Graf von Moltke (March 11, 1907 – January 23, 1945).
Count Moltke had close sympathies with the democratic forces of the day and expressed open criticism as he watched the rise of Hitler. In 1933 he refused to accept Nazi appointments. After the outbreak of World War II, as an expert adviser on international law and the laws of war he served as war administration councilor in the Office for Foreign Affairs/Counterintelligence in the Armed Forces High Command in Berlin. He was particularly active in advocating for humane treatment of prisoners of war and observance of international law. In 1940 Moltke with Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg became the leading figures in a group that emerged as the Kreisau Circle with its discussions held in Berlin and Kreisau. Moltke, formulating memoranda on the establishment of a new political order in Germany, systematically extended his contacts to Protestant and Catholic church leaders and to leaders of the social democratic political opposition. Moltke was arrested on January 19, 1944 after he had warned members of the Solf Circle that they were under Gestapo surveillance. His involvement in the plans for a coup against Hitler was not exposed until after the failure of the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944. Helmuth James Graf von Moltke was sentenced to death by the People’s Court on January 11, 1945 and executed on January 23, 1945 in Berlin-Plötzensee. http://www.gdw-berlin.de/home/ Fair use.
Under arrest, Fr. Delp disappeared into Nazi prisons in Munich and Berlin for almost three weeks. None of his friends could find him.
At Lehrterstrasse, a Gestapo prison in Berlin that specifically dealt with German resisters, the doctor-priest was regularly beaten. Fr. Delp was charged by the National Socialists with a half dozen crimes—being in Kriesau Circle; holding resistance meetings; knowing von Moltke and other anti-Nazis; knowing Claus von Stauffenberg who placed the bomb on July 20, 1944 to assassinate Hitler; knowing in advance of the assassination plot; and, displaying a general attitude of anti-Nazism.
The charge of knowing about the assassination plot before it happened greatly concerned Fr. Delp. He categorically denied it and, consequently worked vigorously through his lawyer to disprove it.
Having moved to Tegel Prison in Berlin on August 8, 1944, Fr. Delp’s whereabouts were finally discovered on August 15, 1944, by Marianne Hapig (1894-1973), a social worker and indefatigable friend to German resistance.
At Tegel, Fr. Delp found another significant friend—Harald Poelchau (1907-1972) the prison’s Lutheran chaplain since 1933. With the agency of chaplain Poelchau, the Catholic priest, Fr. Delp, had wafers and wine to say Mass. Also, messages could be smuggled in and out by way of the laundry.
It was through such a clandestine route that Fr. Delp made his final vows as a Jesuit on December 8, 1944. In front of a visiting witness, Fr. Delp pronounced the vow formula. Afterwards, he apologized for his emotion as he sank into a prison chair and wept.
Marianne Hapig (March 5, 1894 – March 23, 1973).Marianne Hapig discovered Father Delp’s presence at Tegel prison in Berlin after his disappearance following his arrest in Munich three weeks earlier. A career social worker and anti-Nazi Marianne Hapig and her lifelong jurist friend Marianne Pünder managed to smuggle Alfred Delp’s prison writings out of Tegel prison where soon after the war they were published. Fair use.
Dorothee und Harald Poelchau. Dorothee Poelchau (born Dorothee Ziegele; June 6, 1902 – November 4, 1977) was a German librarian and a prominent anti-Nazi resistance fighter who worked alongside her husband, Harald Poelchau. PHOTO: “Dorothee und Harald Poelchau (cropped)” by OTFW, Berlin is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Harald Poelchau (October 5, 1903 – April 29, 1972). Rev. Poelchau gained his doctorate in 1931 under Paul Tillich, the leading representative of Religious Socialism. At the end of 1932, Poelchau applied for a prison chaplain’s post in Berlin and became the first cleric to be employed by the National Socialist regime in a penal institution. As an official in the Justice Department he rapidly became an important source of support for the victims of National Socialist violence, and gave spiritual comfort to hundreds of people sentenced to death as they faced execution. From 1941 onwards he was a member of the circle around Helmuth James Graf von Moltke and attended the first major Kreisau Conference. After the failed coup attempt of July 20, 1944 Poelchau was able to pass on last messages and farewell letters to the relatives of many of those sentenced to death. Harald Poelchau managed to avoid being investigated by the Gestapo and survived the war. Fair use.
Many of Fr. Delp’s Advent writings come during these months in prison. They were smuggled out by Marianne Hapig and, her lifelong friend, Marianne Pünder. For more than a decade, Fr. Delp had written extensively on the Christian season of expectant waiting for the coming of Christmas.
Die gefesselten Hände (English: “Bound Hands”) by Tilman Riemenschneider (c.1460-1531).
During these months in prison, his hands almost always in chains, Fr. Delp had identified with a specific artwork as he wrote his Advent thoughts onto endless slips of paper. It was a sixteenth century German wood sculpture of St. Sebastian known as Die gefesselten Hände (English:“Bound Hands”) by Tilman Riemenschneider (c.1460-1531).
Alfred Delp, S.J. at his trial. Fair use.
In a moving ceremony while in prison and facing possible execution, Father Delp made his final Jesuit vows. Delp refused Nazi offers that could have secured his freedom if he abandoned his Jesuit vocation.
At his two-day trial in January 1945, rabid Nazi judge Roland Freisler was interested in one charge against Delp: the priest’s association with von Moltke. The leader of Kreisauer Kreis would be soon on death row and executed on January 23, 1945. Since 1942, Friesler’s reign of terror already included 5,000 death sentences as president of the People’s Court. It did not help that Fr. Delp was a Catholic priest and Jesuit.
So with Hitler, Friesler was maniacally anticlerical. Although many Nazis grew up as Catholics, in adulthood such notorious men as Hitler, Josef Goebbels, Martin Bormann, Heinrich Himmler, and others, held Christianity in utter and complete contempt. (Ian Kershaw; Hitler: a Biography; pp. 381–82). Once in power, Hitler believed that Christianity signified “the systematic cultivation of the human failure” and that its religious organization and central beliefs had to be marginalized and eventually purged from a heroic German worldview (Alan Bullock; Hitler: a Study in Tyranny; p. 218).
When Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939, the Superior-General of the Jesuits was just then a Pole, Wlodimir Ledóchowski, S.J. (1866 –1942). Ledóchowski who was in charge of neutral Vatican Radio made international broadcasts about Nazi wartime atrocities in many languages.
Wlodimir Ledóchowski, S.J. (1866 –1942). Ledóchowski, S.J. (1866 –1942) had been the Polish Superior-General of the Jesuits since 1915 when Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, setting off World War II. A renowned institutional builder, Ledóchowski established several notable institutes and colleges in Rome. In January 1940, Vatican Radio controlled by the Jesuits and with Pope Pius XII’s authorization broadcast the details of the Polish wartime situation. When the German ambassador protested the German language broadcasts, the Pope honored the request. But Vatican Radio broadcasts in other languages of the Poland situation continued and in even more explicit detail. The British press at the time hailed Vatican Radio as “tortured Poland’s powerful advocate.” see – Peter Hebblethwaite; Paul VI The First Modern Pope, Paulist Press, 1993, p. 140.Portrait of Father Wlodimir Ledóchowski, S.J. [Photograph]. (n.d.). Historical Archives of the Society of Jesus / Public Domain.
That Fr. Delp remained a Jesuit—even after he was offered a plea deal by the Nazis to walk free of all charges if he renounced his religious faith—undoubtedly deserved the death penalty in Freisler’s court.
After the death sentence was pronounced on January 11, 1945, the typical procedure of immediate execution was delayed. During this time, the bombing by British and Americans intensified. Fr. Delp desperately hoped that the Allies would arrive in time to set political prisoners, including himself, free. But, finally, on February 2, 1945, at Berlin-Plötzensee Alfred Delp was taken from his holding pen by the Nazi executioner and executed by hanging. The next day, February 3, 1945, Roland Freisler presiding in his People’s Court, was killed by collateral damage in an Allied bombing attack.
Alfred Delp, S.J.
From Alfred Delp, S.J., “Meditation for the Third Sunday of Advent Written in Tegel Prison, Berlin, December 1944” (adapted), Advent of the Heart, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2006:
“Mankind is challenged again to stand and deliver. Only man does not merely exchange one set of chains for another – God’s calls are always creative. They increase the very reality within us that is called upon – precisely because of their realness and authenticity…Freedom is the breath of life. We sit in musty bomb cellars and cramped prisons and groan under the bursting and destructive blows of fate. We should finally stop giving everything a false glamour and unrealistic value and begin to bear it for what it is – unredeemed life. As soon as we do this, the jangling of chains and the trembling of nerves and the faintness of heart transform themselves into a small prayer – “Drop down, dew…” We should much more definitively unite our concrete destiny with those kind of connections and call upon God’s redeeming freedom. Then the narrowness widens, our lungs breathe in fresh air again, and the horizon has promises again. Existence still weeps and mourns, but already a soft, joyous melody of longing and knowledge is ringing through the mourners’ broken voices. With this knowledge and attitude humanity releases itself from the lonely relationship to things and circumstances. A person finds wholesomeness and healing – not the goal-oriented, cool distance of calculation, mechanization, and organization. It is rather that higher level of freedom, the perspective given to someone looking from the heights to what lies below. The voice of such a person is not so quickly silenced!”
“The conditions for true joy have nothing to do with conditions of our exterior life but consist of humanity’s interior frame of mind and competence, which make it possible now and again for the person to sense, even in adverse circumstances, what life is really about…And the first answer is found in the figure of John the Baptist who personifies Advent. Humanity must be brought to an absolute clarity about himself and honestly before himself and others. He must come down from all the pedestals of arrogance onto which he always climbs…From the high-horses of vanity and self-deception that, for a time, let themselves be trotted out so proudly. Those horses though finally throw off their “master” in the wilderness…Two criteria identify whether we are following an authentic impulse or not…Both are found once again in John the Baptist. The first is service – human honesty requires a person to see himself as a servant and perceive his reality as mission and an assignment…The second criterion keeps us on track- annunciation, which calls us to praise of God. An extended personal effort is required to keep giving oneself the impulse to rise above, move away from self. But at the same time this is how a human being attains the necessary openness in which he or she must continue if sincerely wanting to strive toward the great realities God has prepared for him or her.”
FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT.
Advent Nativity awaiting the birth of Jesus. Author’s photograph.
Thomas Merton makes clear about Father Delp that his writings on Advent are usually a simple presentation of the traditional Christian faith with no special originality to his images. (p. xxxv, Prison Writings). It is Fr. Delp’s application of those facts based in his personal experience – as an active dissident and prisoner of a Germany in ruins during World War II – that restores the sometimes hackneyed outcome to Advent to its original hope.
In Fr. Delp’s world, if humanity is fully alert to the desperation and bitterness of the times, Advent’s basic image of God-made-man becomes immensely opportune and favorable for humanity’s future although not holding any foregone conclusions or sudden outcomes.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.” Luke 4:18-19.
Thomas Merton views Father Delp’s Advent meditations in Pauline terms, although Fr. Delp found St. Paul sometimes had a ‘tendency to over-emphasize.’ (p. 55, ibid.). Humanity hopes in God’s close alliance so to win back or have restored a future that is not any longer in ruins and in which humanity and even created life itself is absurdly helpless to fix.
His show trial before the notorious Nazi “People’s Court” took place over two days, spanning January 8–9, 1945. He was officially sentenced to death on January 11, 1945, and subsequently executed on February 2, 1945.
Holy Face painted by Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. National Shrine of St. Thérèse in Darien, Illinois. Author’s photograph.
Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (French, 1873-1897) traced and painted this image of the Holy Face of Jesus and tacked it to wool for hanging as a gift to her sister Céline who was at home at Les Buissonnets taking care of their widower father who was suffering from illness. The National Shrine of St. Thérèse in Darien, Illinois. It may be expected that a similar sort of facial expression was found on Father Delp. On February 2, 1945 Father Delp was imprisoned, tried and executed by the Nazis for “hop[ing] to build a new Germany on Christian principles.”
Alfred Delp S.J. Fair use.
From Alfred Delp S.J., Prison Writings, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York, 2004:
“God in the Christmas encounter is still the challenging God. The greatest misconceptions all center round the typical Christmas picture of God. Humanity becomes so wrapped up in appearance that the breathtaking reality of the birth of God as a human child scarcely enters our mind and the soul doesn’t grasp its significance….Of course the externals, the sweet sentimental pictures, carols, cribs and so on, are a comfort….but there is a great deal more to the nativity than that. The truth of it is too tremendous to be appreciated unless one concentrates on it fully. Since the birth of God, humanity has been confirmed in the hope that when we turn to God’s throne for favor that God is on our side. This does not mean that God has dethroned Himself any more than it means that human life has become a primrose path in the wake of that stupendous event. We need to look critically at the tendency to sentimentalize the divine attributes by personifying them in an innocent child or over-beautifying the adult Jesus. The glamorizing of the nativity story – the making the whole tone of Christ’s life equal to a Baroque sermon full of ominous warnings and grave moralizing – has contributed quite a lot to the West’s being paralyzed in the face of those conditions that hinder us and keep us trapped. God became man but nevertheless is God, master of all creation. Human beings must approach the God-made-man with reverence and adoration – disenthralling themselves in order to find themselves. It is the only way.”
His prison writings remain among the most powerful spiritual documents produced during the Third Reich, uniting Christian faith, human dignity, and resistance to totalitarianism
Alfred Delp, S.J. fair use.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Bullock, Alan, Hitler: a Study in Tyranny, Completely Revised Edition, Harper & Row, New York, 1964.
Delp, S.J., Alfred, Advent of the Heart, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2006.
Delp, S.J., Alfred, Prison Writings, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York, 2004.
Hebblethwaite, Peter, Paul VI The First Modern Pope, Paulist Press, New York, 1993.
Kershaw, Ian, Hitler: a Biography, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 2010.
Kidder, Annemarie S., Ultimate Price Testimonies of Christians who Resisted the Third Reich, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York, 2012.
Royal, Robert, The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century A Comprehensive World History, Crossroad, New York, 2000.
This explanatory article may be periodically updated.
