In 1942 Hans Scholl, his sister Sophie Scholl, Christoph Probst, Willi Graf, and Alexander Schmorell started speaking out against Hitler’s genocidal policies on a university campus in Nazi Germany.
Nazi tyranny and the apathy of German citizens in the face of the regime’s “abominable crimes” outraged idealistic “White Rose” members. Many of them had heard about the mass murder of Polish Jews; as a soldier on the eastern front, Hans Scholl had also seen firsthand the mistreatment of Jewish forced laborers and heard of the deportation of large numbers of Poles to concentration camps.
The group expanded into an organization of students in Hamburg, Freiburg, Berlin, and Vienna. At great risk, “White Rose” members transported and mailed mimeographed leaflets that denounced the regime. In their attempt to stop the war effort, they advocated the sabotage of the armaments industry. “We will not be silent,” they wrote to their fellow students. “We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace!” Because the students were aware that only military force could end Nazi domination, they limited their aims to achieve “a renewal from within of the severely wounded German spirit.”
They distributed pamphlets telling students in Munich to rebel.
Nazis executed Hans and Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst on February 22, 1943. Immediately before Hans was executed, he cried out “Es lebe die Freiheit! – Long live freedom!”, as the blade fell. The Nazi government also eventually arrested and executed philosophy professor Kurt Huber, a peace-guiding figure to the members of the “White Rose”.