Sophie Scholl
Not everyone in Germany accepted Nazi rule. Sophie Scholl was one of them. Her first inklings about the injustice of the Nazi regime began after she joined the League of German Girls at age 12. Although she enjoyed the games and was quickly promoted to squad leader, Sophie complained about her Jewish friends being barred from the league.
As war broke out, Sophie left secondary school and began auxiliary war work as a nursery teacher. But in 1942, she enrolled at Munich University to study philosophy and biology. It was here her resistance activities took off.
Sophie and her brother Hans were friends with Christoph Probst, the founder of The White Rose movement, an anti-Nazis protest group. Sophie’s boyfriend was posted to the eastern front and she was shocked by his reports of the conditions of the troops as well as the war crimes being committed by the officers. So, surreptitiously she and her friends began to denounce the Nazis.
They began with a leafleting campaign that called upon the German people to rise up: “Nothing is so unworthy of a nation as allowing itself to be governed without opposition by a clique that has yielded to base instinct” read once of the messages “…Western civilization must defend itself against fascism and offer passive resistance, before the nation’s last young man has given his blood on some battlefield.”
The message spread around Germany-the first and the only widespread act of defiance against the Nazis. Sophie, Hans, and Christoph were identified by the Gestapo, tried and executed for treason.
Sophie’s met her death bravely. Her last words were: “How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause. Such a fine, sunny day and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if, through us, thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?”