On February 22, 1943 three Munich university students were executed by the Nazis. Their “crime” had been their involvement in a resistance circle known as the “White Rose” (die Weiße Rose), a group that secretly wrote, printed and disseminated anti-Nazi pamphlets, calling on Germans to resist Hitler and bring about an end to World War II. The White Rose circle included a wide network of individuals who helped to spread the pamphlets and support the resistance. At its heart were five students and an academic in Munich: Hans Scholl (1918-1943), Sophie Scholl (1921-1943), Alexander Schmorell (1917-1943), Christoph Probst (1919-1943), Willi Graf (1918-1943) and Prof Kurt Huber (1893-1943).
The group shared several common interests, including a love of literature, art and music, nat-ure, and a deep engagement with religion and philosophy. Their religious backgrounds were more diverse. The Scholls were Lutherans, while Graf and Huber were Catholics (Graf was an enthusiastic altar server with an interest in liturgy and theology). Schmorell was born in Russia to a German father and Russian mother and was raised Russian Orthodox. Probst had been left to choose his own faith. When his children were born, they were baptised by a Catholic priest, and he himself was baptised in prison shortly before his execution.
The first four White Rose pamphlets were written and distributed between June 27 and Ju-ly 12, 1942. Each began with the heading “Pam-phlets of the White Rose” and a number, sug-gesting that from the outset the students intended to produce a series. Each pamphlet ended with instructions to the reader to make and distribute further copies. The pamphlets included quotations, some from totemic German writers such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, and others from Arist-otle, the Book of Ecclesiastes and ancient Chin-ese philosophy. They leveled criticism at those Germans who had allowed Nazism to take hold and asked readers to consider seriously the future that was to come if no one acted. They denounced the persecution of European Jews and the slaughter of Poles in the occupied territories. They advocated sabotage as a way of stalling the war effort. They called Adolf Hitler the anti-Christ and appealed to readers as Christians, demanding they take a stand.
In July 1942, Hans Scholl, Schmorell and Graf left Munich for a three-month tour of duty at the Russian front: they were conscripted medical students who could study during the university term and would then be deployed as medical orderlies during the vacations. When they returned to Munich for the winter semester in November 1942, they resumed their resistance activities with Prof Huber now taking an active role. The fifth pamphlet appeared in January 1943, and the sixth, written by Huber, was produced in February following the German army’s defeat at Stalingrad.
On Thursday February 18, 1943, Hans and Sophie Scholl distributed copies of the pamphlets around the atrium at the entrance of the main university building in Munich. They did so immediately before the end of a lecture, planning to disappear among the groups of students leaving their classrooms. However, they were spotted by the university caretaker who apprehended them, and they were taken to the local Gestapo prison to be interrogated. Four days later, on Monday February 22, they were put on trial alongside Christoph Probst and received the death sentence. Hours after the conclusion of the trial they were informed that their execution was to take place at 5pm that same day.
Hans Scholl and Sophie Scholl were visited by the prison’s Protestant chaplain, the Revd Dr Karl Alt, who gave them Communion and pray-ed with them. Christoph Probst was visited by the Catholic chaplain, Fr Heinrich Sperr, and received the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist. At 5pm the executions were carried out. Probst was 23 and left a wife and three small children. Hans Scholl was 25, and Soph-ie Scholl 21. That evening the chief prosecutor sent a telegram to Berlin to report that the day had proceeded without incident. Alexander Schmorell, Kurt Huber, and Willi Graf were tried in April 1943 along with others involved in the resistance. Schmorell and Huber were executed on July 13 and Graf on October 12.
Eighty years on, there is much still to learn from the members of the White Rose resistance. Reading the group’s published letters and diaries one is struck by how seriously they approached their faith and how at times they struggled with it. These were deeply thoughtful individuals, who, at a time when Nazism was attempting to limit people’s worldview, actively sought like-minded people who, like them, were searching for new worlds through reading, discussion and the exchange of ideas. While Hans and Sophie Scholl’s final letters from prison have not survived, those of the other core members of the group speak powerfully of their resolve and their faith.
In his last letter, dictated to the Catholic prison chaplain, Willi Graf spoke of his deep religious conviction. He reminded his sister of the aria “I know that my Redeemer liveth” from Handel’s Messiah, which they had heard at a concert the previous December: “This faith alone strengthens and sustains me. Do not forget me and pray that God will judge me mercifully.” A cause is now open in the Archdiocese of Munich-Freising for Graf’s beatification. In 2012 Alexander Schmorell was glorified in the Russian Orthodox Church as Alexander of Munich; the official icon shows him in a white robe wearing a white armband with a cross on it, and in his right, he holds a red cross and a white rose.
Standing up to injustice is not easy. If it were, everyone would be doing it. In the same way, we would not know the names of the White Rose members if their message had been a popular one. It wasn’t, and they paid with their lives. They are a timely and hope-filled reminder of the ways in which conscience and moral courage can lead to action that challenges injustice.
Dr Alexandra Lloyd is a Fellow by Special Election of St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and the author of Defying Hitler: The White Rose Pamphlets (Bodleian Library Publishing)
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.