Sophie Scholl

Once Led Girls Into It

Sophie Scholl was born in 1921 and, like her brother Hans, joined the Nazi youth organizations as a teenager with enthusiasm — she led a group of girls in the BDM. What moved her was slow and specific: her father arrested for calling Hitler a scourge, what Hans saw as a medic on the Eastern Front, the books they were not meant to read. From 1942, Hans and fellow students formed a resistance group, the White Rose; when Sophie found out, she joined them, and together they wrote, printed and posted leaflets in Munich calling for passive resistance, running a hand-duplicator at night and mailing copies from different cities so the source could not be traced. There were six leaflets. She was twenty-one.

Arrested, Tried, Executed — Same Week

Arrested on 18 February, tried on 22 February before Roland Freisler in the People's Court — a Nazi political tribunal, not an ordinary court — and executed by guillotine at Stadelheim prison the same day, with her brother Hans and their friend Christoph Probst. Three more members of their group were tried and executed in the months that followed, six in all. Fellow prisoners recalled her last words as being about the weather: such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go.