The 30th of January 1933. Adolf Hitler is appointed chancellor of Germany bringing an
end to German democracy. Guided by racist and authoritarian ideas, the Nazis abolish basic
freedoms and seek to create a community which would unite all social classes and regions of
Germany behind one Führer. The Third Reich quickly becomes a police state, where individuals are
subject to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. The Nazis effectively use propaganda to win the
support of millions of Germans to facilitate persecution, war, and ultimately genocide.
There is, however, some German opposition to the Nazi state but critics of the Nazi regime would
often pay the ultimate price for their defiance of the Fuhrer. One of them is Sophie Scholl.
Sophia Magdalena Scholl was born on the 9th of May 1921 in Forchtenberg, then part of
the Weimar Republic which was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933. Sophie was the fourth
of six children of Robert, the mayor of Sophie’s hometown and Magdalena Scholl. The parents brought
up their children as Lutherans. In 1932 the family moved to Ulm,
where Sophie’s father founded a tax and accounting service company
The stock market crash on the 24th of October 1929, marked the beginning of the
Great Depression in the United States which soon spread across the globe.
The Great Depression also played a role in the emergence of Adolf Hitler, the leader of the
Nazi Party, in Germany. Deteriorating economic conditions in Germany in the 1930s created an
angry, frightened, and financially struggling populace open to more extreme political systems,
including fascism and communism. Hitler’s antisemitic and anticommunist
rhetoric depicted Jews as causing the Depression. While the Great Depression and German economic
conditions were not solely responsible for bringing Hitler to power, they helped
to create an environment in which he gained support and on the 30th of January 1933 Adolf
Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany by the German President Paul von Hindenburg.
However, there were also critics of the Nazi regime and Sophie’s father Robert was one
of them. He was horrified when in 1933 like many other youngsters, his son Hans, joined
the party's Hitler Youth movement and Sophie its sister organization, the League of German Girls.
While in January 1933, the Hitler Youth had approximately 100,000 members, by the end of the
year this figure had increased to over 2 million. Jews were not allowed to join these organizations.
These organizations, led by Baldur von Schirach, were the primary tools that the Nazis used to
indoctrinate young people with Nazi ideology, thus shaping the beliefs, thinking and actions
of the German youth. Boys and girls were taught to be both racially conscious and physically fit in
order to build a new future for Germany and were often present at Nazi Party rallies and marches.
In 1935, Hans Scholl was one of three standard-bearers from
Ulm who took part in the NSDAP's "Reich Party Rally for Freedom" which took part in Nuremberg.
Belonging to the organization was a significant
time commitment which interfered with other priorities, such as church and school.
During these meetings, the members were encouraged to abandon their individuality,
wore the same uniforms, sang the same Nazi songs and participated in similar activities.
This time commitment and regular exposure to the Nazi ideology weakened the influence of parents,
teachers, religious figures, and other voices of authority. In fact,
the Hitler Youth and League of German Girls even encouraged their members to report to
their leaders about what was happening in their schools or churches as well as if their parents or
neighbors were not acting in line with the regime. Schools too played an important role in spreading
Nazi ideas to German youth. From their first days at school, German children were imbued with
the cult of Adolf Hitler and his portrait was a standard fixture in all classrooms. While censors
removed some books from the classroom, German educators introduced new textbooks that taught
students love for Hitler, obedience to state authority, militarism, racism, and antisemitism.
In 1935, at the height of Hitler’s rise, Sophie even became a Squad
Leader of the League of German Girls but soon after she began to question and rebel.
Hans and Sophie quickly saw through the Nazi youth organizations façade
and became disillusioned with the groups when they realized the true
foundations of the Nazi state, guided by racist and authoritarian principles.
In December 1936, a law declared the Hitler Youth to be the only legally permitted youth
organization in Germany and stated that "all of the German youth in the Reich is organized within
the Hitler Youth”. The Nazi Totalitarian Regime wanted to control people completely and bring
all aspects of German life under Nazi control. This was not what Hans and Sophie were taught
by their father who always emphasized two basic values to them: uprightness and freedom of spirit.
In 1937, Sophie’s brother Hans and other friends were arrested for participating in the German
Youth Movement which in contrast to the Hitler Youth organization was very idealistic, romantic,
and moral and its members tended to take greater risks in following and acting upon their beliefs
and persuasions. They disliked the conformity and militarization of Hitler Youth culture.
During the trial, Hans was also charged under “Paragraph 175” which
was the statute of the German criminal code that banned sexual relations between men.
The revised Nazi version of Paragraph 175 read: “A man who commits sexual acts with another man
or allows himself to be misused for sexual acts by a man, will be punished with prison.”
Because Hans made a positive impact on the judge, he dismissed the homosexual
allegations as a “youthful failing” and Hans was allowed to leave the trial with a clean slate.
During the first six years of Hitler’s dictatorship, government at every level—Reich,
state and municipal—adopted hundreds of laws, decrees, directives, guidelines,
and regulations that increasingly restricted the civil and human rights of the Jews in Germany.
Jews felt the effects of more than 400 decrees and regulations that restricted all aspects
of their public and private lives. No corner of Germany was left untouched.
In the meantime, Sophie and her family witnessed the violence and destruction
of the Kristallnacht which occurred on the 9th – 10th of November 1938,
when the Nazi leaders unleashed a series of coordinated violent riots against the Jews
throughout Nazi Germany and recently incorporated territories. The Nazi SA and German civilians not
only ransacked Jewish homes, businesses, synagogues, hospitals, and schools but the
German SS and police sent almost 30,000 Jewish males to concentration camps, primarily Dachau.
Following the Kristallnacht, commonly known as “The Night of Broken Glass”, Nazi legislation
barred Jews from all public schools and universities, as well as from cinemas, theaters,
and sports facilities. In many cities, Jews were forbidden to enter designated “Aryan” zones.
Sophie was horrified by the way in which her Jewish friends and artists were treated,
and political attitude became a criterion in her choice of friends.
Sophie, who had a talent for drawing and painting, was fond of modern art. However, the Nazis deemed
a variety of modern art and artists, with whom Sophie came into contact, to be sick and immoral.
In 1937, the Nazis confiscated thousands of modern artworks from German museums. They displayed many
in the “Degenerate Art” exhibition in Munich which attracted over two million visitors.
Several thousand works of art were confiscated and destroyed and many
of the most valuable works were sold to enrich the regime and prepare for war.
World War 2 started on the 1st of September 1939 when Germany
invaded Poland. Shortly before, Sophie had told her sister Inge:
“I hope there will be war. Hopefully someone will stand up to Hitler.”
In spring 1940, Sophie graduated from secondary school and became a kindergarten teacher.
She hoped that this position would help her to avoid doing the Reich Labour Service which,
from the beginning of the Second World War, was also compulsory for the women and its
objective was to provide support for the Wehrmacht arm forces..
Men and women aged between 18 and 25 had to work up to 76 hours a week.
However, in spring 1941, and regardless of her attempts to avoid it, she was
obliged to work as an auxiliary in a State institute in Blumberg.
In May 1942, Sophie enrolled at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich as a student
of biology and philosophy. Her brother Hans was studying medicine at the same institution.
That same year, Sophie’s father Robert was sentenced to four
months in prison for calling Adolf Hitler the "scourge of God” at his workplace.
Around this time, Hans, Sophie’s brother, met Willi Graf, another university student. Together
with their fellow students Alexander Schmorell and Christoph Probst they discussed what Graf
had experienced in Serbia and Poland where he had worked as a medic . Willi Graf also saw the Warsaw
Ghetto which was the largest of all Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II.
An average daily food ration in 1941 for Jews in Warsaw was limited to 184 calories, compared 2,613
calories for the Germans. An official German order stated that “the basic provisioning of
the Jewish Residential District must be less than the minimum necessary for preserving life,
regardless of the consequences.” The hunger in the ghetto was so great,
that dying people were laying on the streets and small children were seen begging.
Over 80,000 Jews died as a result of the appalling conditions, overcrowding and starvation.
On Sunday, the 22nd of June 1941 started Operation Barbarossa,
the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The 3,000 personnel of four Einsatzgruppen were
sent to the Eastern Front to kill the Jews and Gypsies, as well as Soviet political commissars.
Willi Graf was sent to Russia where he saw unspeakable atrocities committed by the Nazi
Party's own SS forces and the Wehrmacht - German armed forces. These experiences traumatized him.
When Graf was relieved of duty temporarily and
sent to the University of Munich to continue his studies in April 1942,
he shared these experiences with Hans Scholl as well as Alexander Schmorell and Christoph Probst.
They felt compelled to take action and began the Nazi Resistance Movement "The White Rose".
From the end of June until mid-July 1942, they wrote the first four leaflets. Each leaflet was
more critical of Hitler and the German people than the last. They encouraged citizens to resist the
Nazi regime, denounce the murder of hundreds of thousands of Poles and demanded an end to the war.
They appealed to what they considered the German intelligentsia, believing that these
people would be easily convinced by the same arguments that also motivated them.
These leaflets were left in telephone books in public phone booths,
mailed to professors and students, and taken by courier to other universities for distribution.
In the summer of 1942, male students at the Ludwig Maximilian University
of Munich were required to deploy to the Eastern Front. Among them were
Sophie’s brother Hans and his friends Alexander Schmorell and Willi Graf.
From the 23rd of July 1942, the young men served as medics in Russia where they saw
with their own eyes how German soldiers treated prisoners and Jews in the occupied territories.
Because Alexander Schmorell understood Russian, he could speak to the locals and translate everything
they said to him, to his friends from the White Rose. This experience strengthened
their determination to fight against Nazism. During this time, White Rose activities ceased,
and were not continued until the medics came home from the deployment.
Sometimes in the fall 1942, Sophie learned about her brother's
activities and immediately joined the movement. The last one to join was Kurt Huber, a university
professor at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where the rest of the movement studied.
During his teaching, he was known for teaching classes that did not push Nazi ideology, which
made him a favorite with the University students. Huber joined the movement in December 1942.
In January 1943, the fifth leaflet, "Appeal to all Germans! was produced in 6,000–9,000 copies,
using a hand-operated duplicating machine. It was carried to other German Cities by the members
and supporters of the group and then mailed from there. Copies appeared in many cities
including Hamburg, Berlin and even in Vienna. This leaflet also mentioned: “ Germans! Do you and your
children want to suffer the same fate that befell the Jews? Are we to be forever a nation which is
hated and rejected by all mankind? No. Dissociate yourselves from National Socialist gangsterism.
Hitler says "I will fight to the last man,". But in the meantime the war has already been lost.
It has become a mathematical certainty that Hitler is leading the German people into the abyss.
Hitler cannot win the war; he can only prolong it. The guilt of Hitler and
his minions goes beyond all measure. Retribution comes closer and closer”
Soon after on the 2nd of February 1943, after months of fierce fighting and heavy casualties,
the surviving German forces—only about 91,000 soldiers—surrendered Stalingrad on the Volga. The
Battle of Stalingrad ended with the capitulation and near-total loss of the Wehrmacht's Sixth Army.
On the 3rd, 8th, and 15th of February, Alexander Schmorell, Hans Scholl,
and Willi Graf graffitied public buildings with slogans such as "Hitler the Mass murderer!",
"Down with Hitler" and "Freedom" on the walls of the university and other buildings in Munich.
The hopes of the White Rose members that the defeat at Stalingrad would incite German
opposition against the Nazi regime and the war effort did not come true. On the contrary,
Nazi propaganda used the defeat to call on the German people to embrace "Total War".
The group also produced their sixth pamphlet which was to be their last.
On the 18th of February 1943, while Hans and Sophie were distributing leaflets at the Ludwig
Maximilian University, Sophie flung the last remaining leaflets from the top floor down into
the atrium. However, she was seen by Jakob Schmid, the university maintenance man and avowed Nazi,
who reported it to the official secret police of Nazi Germany - the Gestapo.
While Hans and Sophie were arrested, Jakub Schmid received a reward of
3,000 Reichsmarks for denunciation. Under interrogation, Sophie was offered
a reduced sentence if she would admit that her brother had led her astray. But she refused,
saying, “I won’t betray my brother or my principles. I’ll make no bargain with the Nazis.”
Christoph Probst was arrested two days after the Scholl siblings when went he went to pick
up his paycheck before travelling to see his wife Herta and his newly born daughter, Katja.
Along with Christoph Probst, the two siblings were tried for treason before the Nazi "People's Court"
which was infamous for its unfair political trials. The head judge of the court, Roland
Freisler, was known as the "Hanging judge" as about 90% of his trials ended in death sentences.
Appearing in the courtroom Sophie shocked everyone when she remarked
to Freisler “ Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said
is also believed by many others. They just don't dare express themselves as we did”.
On the 22nd of February 1943, after a half day trial, they were found guilty of treason
and sentenced to death. Shortly after they were brought to Munich's Stadelheim Prison where they
learned that they would be executed the same day. Even though they were originally scheduled to be
executed by public hanging, there were fears they would be raised to martyrdom status if
they were publicly killed, so it was decided to kill them by Guillotine in the execution chamber.
For a short time both Sophie and Hans were allowed to meet their parents.
Sophie smiled happily and was pleased to see them. Hans told them that he felt no hatred.
The last words that Sophie said to her cellmate Else Gebel were:
“What does my death matter,
if through us, thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?”
Sophie walked to her death with her head held high.
She was 21 years old when she was guillotined on the 22nd of February 1943 at 5 pm.
Her last words were “The sun still shines”.
Her brother Hans and Christoph Probst were executed by guillotine a few minutes later.
While Sophie and Christoph were silent as they died, Hans yelled " long live freedom”.
Unfortunately, they were not the last to die. Although the three took all blame for
the White Rose’s actions, their attempts to save their friends from persecution failed.
Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf and Kurt Huber were arrested later in February. While Huber
and Schmorell were guillotined in July 1943, Graf was executed the same way in October of that year.
Although Gestapo used psychological torture during the 6-month period to try to extract
information from Graf about other White Rose members and other anti-Nazi movements,
Graf never gave up any names in order to protect others who had not yet been arrested.
After Sophie’s death, a copy of the sixth leaflet was smuggled out of Germany to
England. In July 1943, the Royal Air Force dropped millions of propaganda
copies over Germany, now retitled “The Manifesto of the Students of Munich”.
Sophie’s bravery is honored in Germany to this day. She and other members of the White Rose
personify the importance of acting according with one’s beliefs even in the face of the
greatest sacrifice of their own lives. Their actions made them enduring symbols of the
struggle for the freedom of the human spirit. Today, schools and roads bear Sophie’s name
as well as that of her brother Hans and other members of the White Rose movement and it will
forever remain a testament to their bravery. There were many tears shed for Sophie Scholl.
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