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During Adolph Hitler’s rule, a group of students at the University of Munich formed White Rose, a resistance movement. When they were younger, a few of the members had been part of the Hitler Youth and the Union of German Girls, groups with the goal of spreading party loyalty and Nazi ideals. Eventually, they became disillusioned with Nazism, and began reading anti-Nazi sermons. They also started to attend classes taught by Kurt Huber, a Philosophy and Musicology professor whose lectures included disguised criticisms of Nazism. As they witnessed the apathy of German citizens to the Nazi crimes and heard of the mass murder of Polish Jews, their disillusionment grew.

Sophie Scholl and other members of the White Rose. Source: (Zinn Education Project/colorized).

Hans Scholl, Alexander Schmorell, Christoph Probst, and Willi Graf were medical students; their studies were interrupted by compulsory military service. In April 1942, Willi Graf met Alexander Schmorell and Hans Scholl before the three of them were sent to the Eastern Front in July. Schmorell, who spoke Russian, could communicate with the Russians to learn more of what was going on. During their service, they also witnessed the abuse of Jewish laborers and heard about the extermination of the Jews and the Poles. This exacerbated their desire to do something.

They Distributed Leaflets To Combat Apathy

Source: (Zinn Education Project).

Between June and July 1942, Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell write the first four leaflets in Shmorell’s parent's house. In the leaflets, they quoted the Bible, Aristotle, Novalis, Goethe, and Schiller. They left the leaflets in telephone books in public phone booths. They also mailed them to professors and students, and they had them taken to other universities for distribution. They had to stop their activities from July 23 until October 30 as they once again went to the Eastern Front. When Sophie Scholl learned of her brother’s activities, she joined the group in Autumn 1942. Willi Graf and Christoph Probst joined, and others, including Huber, quickly followed. The group, which accepted people of all backgrounds with no concern for race, sex, age or religion, also started to experiment with graffiti as another means of disseminating their message.

They produced the fifth leaflet in January 1943, distributing thousands of copies. This fifth leaflet was designed to appeal to the larger German population and was taken to a number of additional cities. At this point, they changed the name of the group to “German Resistance Movement” so that it would be less intellectual. In this leaflet, they called for people to renounce “national socialist subhumanism” and to join in the fight for “freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and protection of the individual citizen from the arbitrary action of criminal dictator-states.”

A Maintenance Man Turned Them In

Mug shots of the Scholl siblings. Source: (Reddit/colorized).

With the leaflets appearing all over Munich, the Gestapo begins a manhunt to find the members, and the University of Munich was placed under greater surveillance; all suspicious activity was to be reported immediately.

After the Battle of Stalingrad, a student riot broke out a Munich University, and the group sent out their sixth and final leaflet. On February 18, 1943, they distributed the leaflets in the empty hallways. They had some leftover, and Sophie dropped them from the top floor into the atrium. The maintenance man, Jakob Schmid, noticed and called the Gestapo. They arrived and arrested Sophie and Hans. Hans had a copy of a draft of the next leaflet written by Probst; Hans tried to tear it apart and swallow it. The Gestapo recovered enough of it to arrest Christoph Probst. Hans confessed, and Sophie assumed all responsibility to protect the other members of the group. When Hans Scholl was interrogated, he said, “I knew what I took upon myself and I was prepared to lose my life by so doing.” Hans Scholl explained the origins of the name of the group while he was being interrogated by the Gestapo. However, he provided several explanations. He claimed that he may have chosen it after reading a poem of the same name by Clemens Brentano, a poem by Jose Marti, or the novel The White Rose by B. Traven. It may also have simply been symbolic, representing purity and innocence in the face of evil. If it had come from Traven’s novel (a book with both Scholl and Schmorell had read), Scholl may have been being intentionally vague since Traven’s book had been banned, and it had been supplied by Josef Söhngen. Söhngen, an anti-Nazi bookseller, had provided them with a place to meet and had hidden their pamphlets for them after they were printed.

They Were Short-lived But Did Make A Difference

A monument to White Rose outside Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Source: (Wikipedia).

The three were executed by guillotine on February 22, 1943. Other members were arrested; some were imprisoned, and others were executed as well, including Huber and Schmorell, who was eventually canonized as a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church. In March 1943, word of the group’s resistance began to spread, and on August 2, 1943, The International Student Assembly hosts a rally to honor them. Speakers included Eleanor Roosevelt.