Hans Scholl’s reasons

I am of the opinion that it was not the majority of the German people who failed politically in the time between 1918 – 1933, and above all in 1933. Rather it was that class of people in a nation that should lead a nation politically, [namely] the intelligentsia.

Although a class of educated persons and specialists – in all spheres of intellectual life – was evolving into full bloom, it was precisely these people who were incapable of answering even the simplest political questions. This is the only way to explain that mass movements with their simple slogans were able to out-shout every deeper philosophical undertaking.

I felt that it was high time to seriously point out the national-political duties that this part of middle-class [Germany] was obligated to. Whom If the development of foreign policy had initially taken a more peaceable course, I perhaps would not have been faced with the alternative: Should I commit high treason or not? Rather, I would have attempted to mobilize the positive forces within the this nation in such a manner that they would have outflanked [Note 1] everything negative and led [Note 2] to a national form that would be worth striving for.

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Note 1: Specifically uses the military term.

Note 2: Uses a medical term that can also be translated “transfuse”.

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Source: Hans Scholl’s fourth interrogation, February 20, 1943