Hans and Sophie Scholl – Talk – English

The beginning

In their youth, Hans and Sophie Scholl were two ardent members of the Hitler Youth. But after a short time, Sophie's opinion changed. She wasn't still able to accept the contents of the Hitler Youth. Especially the antisemitism, she didn't like. Hans was still further a proud member and later he even became the group leader!

After this time, Hans was interested in the Youth organisation "Deutsche Jugendschaft vom 11." But unfortunately (but for sure, it was to be expected), the Nazis were against this kind of organisation and so it wasn't allowed for people to join or found other organisations. That was then the reason why (in autumn 1937), the Nazis made a lot of raids in Germany to avoid the organisations.

Resistance of the Scholls and the "Weißen Rose"

The family Scholl and their friends took part in the passive resistance against the Nazis by (for example) reading books by authors like Thomas Mann, Werner Berggruen or Paul Claudel, which were prohibited to read. Apart from this passive resistance, the members of the "Weißen Rose" fought also with other methods. For example they collected bread for the inmates in the concentration camps and they looked after their relatives. Then, they also refused the donations for NS - organisations.

The foundation members were: Hans Scholl, Willy Graf, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell and later came Sophie Scholl to the group.

Financing and producing of the flyers

The flyers of the "Weißen Rose" were produced in a lot of hidings in Munich. They were written with typewriters. The machines, the paper, the envelopes and the stamps were financed with their own capital and by donations. It wasn't easy for them to avoid a suspicion and so the objects (which they needed for the productions) were bought in many different shops in Germany and even in England, Sweden and in Norway.

The end

In the beginning of 1943, the students painted a lot of sentences on house walls. One of them was like this: "Nieder mit Hitler" or "Es lebe die Freiheit". Many people read it and the population became restless.

On February 18th, 1943, Hans and Sophie Scholl distributed the flyers in a Munich university. But unfortunately, they were watched doing this and so both were executed by the guillotine at Munich-Stadelheim.

The other members of the "Weißen Rose" were killed in the following months, too.

written by niki