Evolution of Memory: Jürgen Wittenstein. By Denise Elaine Heap.
This traces the evolution of Wittenstein's alleged participation in White Rose resistance from his earliest days of speaking and writing about it in 1947/48, then in the 1980s, to its current state.
The author ably demonstrates how Wittenstein's "memory" has evolved as scholarship has improved. Things he didn't know, or "remembered" incorrectly in the late 80s and early 90s? Suddenly he gets them "right" - after researchers have written about those topics.
Uses actual words, documented for everyone to see and hear. Side by side comparisons make for convincing arguments! It becomes painfully clear that Wittenstein was not a member of the White Rose, and that his many essays and speeches whitewash a questionable past.
This volume contains:
- Ground rules and criteria
- Documents
- Family
- Schooling at Salem
- Hitler's rise to power
- Wittenstein's obsession with Juden Sehen Dich An
- Reich Labor Service and bringing in the harvest (privilege)
- Military service
- Participation in March 1938 Anschluss and October 1938 invasion of Sudetenland
- Kristallnacht
- Foreign policy
- Initial comments about life at university
- Professors: Fritz-Joachim von Rintelen, Kurt Huber, Heinrich Wieland, Oswald Bumke, and Arthur Kutscher
- Josef Söhngen
- Heinrich Ellermann
- June 1940 - his NSDAP membership
- Discussions of friends of the White Rose
- Alleged Gestapo file on Wittenstein
- White Rose name and origins
- Leaflets
- Russia
- "What Wittenstein knew"
- The arrests and trials
- Hans Leipelt and Marie-Luise Jahn
- Military service in Italy
- Freiheitsaktion Bayern and Gerngross
- Life after the war
- OSS/CIC
- Marriage to Elisabeth Hartert
- Move to USA
- Himself, himself, himself - honors, awards, positions
- Why this matters and why his story must be disregarded
ISBN: 978-0-9822984-9-7. Approximately 400 pages. Pre-publication price is $48; after that date, price will increase to $54. Individuals who pre-order will receive paid version of WHY THIS MATTERS newsletter free, until the digital version is complete.
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