White Rose
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White Rose

The White Rose (German: Weiße Rose, pronounced [ˈvaɪsə ˈʁoːzə] ) was a non-violent, intellectual resistance group in Nazi Germany which was led by five students and one LMU Munich professor: Willi Graf, Kurt Huber, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, and Hans and Sophie Scholl. The group conducted an anonymous leaflet and graffiti campaign that called for active opposition to the Nazi regime, beginning in Munich on 27 June 1942. Their activities ended with the arrest of the core group by the Gestapo on 18 February 1943.

Graf, Huber, Probst, Schmorell, and the Scholl siblings, alongside other members and supporters of the group who carried on distributing the pamphlets, faced show trials by the Nazi People's Court (Volksgerichtshof); many of them were imprisoned and executed. Hans Scholl and Sophie Scholl, as well as Probst, were executed by guillotine four days after their arrest, on 22 February 1943. During the trial, Sophie interrupted the judge multiple times. No defendants were given any opportunity to speak.

The group wrote, printed, and initially distributed their pamphlets in the greater Munich region. Later on, secret carriers brought copies to other cities, mostly in the southern parts of Germany. In July 1943, Allied planes dropped their sixth and final leaflet over Germany with the headline The Manifesto of the Students of Munich. In total, the White Rose authored six leaflets, which were multiplied and spread, in a total of about 15,000 copies. They denounced the Nazi regime's crimes and oppression, and called for resistance. In their second leaflet, they denounced the persecution and mass murder of the Jews. By the time of their arrest, the members of the White Rose were just about to establish contacts with other German resistance groups like the Kreisau Circle or the Schulze-Boysen/Harnack group of the Red Orchestra. In the 21st century, the White Rose is well known both within Germany and worldwide.

Students from LMU Munich comprised the core of the White Rose: Hans Scholl, Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf, Christoph Probst, and Kurt Huber, a professor of philosophy and musicology. Hans's younger sister, Sophie later came to be a core member of the White Rose. They were supported by other people, mostly in their early twenties, including Otl Aicher, Willi Habermann [de] ("Grogo"), Theodor Haecker, Anneliese Graf, Traute Lafrenz, Katharina Schüddekopf, Lieselotte "Lilo" Ramdohr, Jürgen Wittenstein [de], Falk Harnack, Marie-Luise Jahn, Wilhelm Geyer [de], Manfred Eickemeyer, Josef Söhngen [de], Heinrich Guter [de], Heinrich Bollinger [de], Wilhelm Bollinger [de], Helmut Bauer, Harald Dohrn [de], Hans Conrad Leipelt, Gisela Schertling, Rudi Alt, Michael Brink, Lilo Dreyfeldt, Josef Furtmeier, Günter Ammon, Fred Thieler, and Wolfgang Jaeger.

Wilhelm Geyer taught Alexander Schmorell how to make the tin templates used in the graffiti campaign. Eugen Grimminger of Stuttgart funded their operations. Grimminger was arrested on 2 March 1943, sentenced to ten years in a penal institution for high treason by the "People's Court" on 19 April 1943, and imprisoned in Ludwigsburg penal institution until April 1945. His wife Jenny was murdered in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, presumably on 2 December 1943. Grimminger's secretary Tilly Hahn contributed her own funds to the cause, and acted as go-between for Grimminger and the group in Munich. She frequently carried supplies such as envelopes, paper, and an additional duplicating machine from Stuttgart to Munich. In addition, a group of students in the city of Ulm distributed a number of the group's leaflets and were arrested and tried with the group from Munich. Among this group were Sophie Scholl's childhood friend Susanne Hirzel and her teenage brother Hans Hirzel and Franz Josef Müller.

In Hamburg, a group of students including Reinhold Meyer [de], Albert Suhr [de], Heinz Kucharski [de], Margaretha Rothe [de], Bruno Himpkamp [de], Rudolf Degkwitz (junior) [de], Ursula de Boor [de], Hannelore Willbrandt [de], Karl Ludwig Schneider [de], Ilse Ledien, Eva von Dumreicher, Dorothea Zill, Apelles Sobeczko, and Maria Liepelt [de] formed the White Rose Hamburg resistance group against the National Socialist regime and distributed the group's leaflets.

White Rose survivor Jürgen Wittenstein described what it was like for ordinary Germans to live in Nazi Germany:

The government—or rather, the party—controlled everything: the news media, arms, police, the armed forces, the judiciary system, communications, travel, all levels of education from kindergarten to universities, all cultural and religious institutions. Political indoctrination started at a very early age, and continued by means of the Hitler Youth with the ultimate goal of complete mind control. Children were exhorted in school to denounce even their own parents for derogatory remarks about Hitler or Nazi ideology.

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