The White Rose resistance movement began in Nazi Germany and ended in a shock trial where three of its members were executed. This blog post focuses on Sophie Scholl, one of the members of the movement who was executed by the Nazis in February of 1943. Resistance in Nazi Germany is often focused on the men who rose up and fought, however, resistance by women is much less known about.
The movement started in 1942, and both students and professors of Germanys universities took part. They were a non-violent resistance group and provided an active opposition against the Nazi regime by distributing leaflets and various writings. Their signature style was bold and provocative. One of the first leaflets distributed by the movement stated “If the Germans are so devoid of individuality and have already become such a mindless and cowardly mass, then, yes, they deserve to perish.”[1] They encouraged ordinary Germans to look inwards and ask if it was morally right to follow the Nazi movement. By the fifth leaflet, the group had changed their name to the ‘German Resistance Movement’ to appeal to ordinary Germans.
Sophie Scholl, a member of the resistance movement, was the daughter of Robert Scholl, a politician and vehemently anti-Nazi. While she was originally in the Hitler-Youth, the youth wing of the Nazi party, the arrest of her brother in 1937 for participating in the German Youth movement made Scholl change her opinion of the Nazis. The German youth movement dated back to 1896 and focused on activities outdoors. Though not all in the movement were anti-Nazi, the group was seen by the Nazis as a movement to rival the Hitler Youth and was outlawed. Scholl’s first interaction with the Gestapo came in 1940 when she was arrested, as her brother had been found to be involved with an anti-Hitler-Youth movement. Whilst she was held only for a day, this further contributed to her anti-Nazi beliefs. In May 1942, she began attending the University of Munich where she studied Biology and Philosophy. During this time, her father was imprisoned after he made a critical remark about Adolf Hitler. Scholl’s time at university influenced her to join the White Rose movement.[2]
As a German woman, Scholl was far less likely to be randomly stopped and searched by the SS, which made her an invaluable asset to the White Rose group. Though she only joined the movement in the summer of 1942, Scholl was arrested in February of 1943 after being caught by a janitor of Ludwig Maximilian university distributing leaflets throughout the campus.[3] She was subsequently arrested and admitted to being a member of the group to protect other members. On 22nd February 1943, Sophie, her brother Hans Scholl and another member and friend, Christopher Probst were found guilty of treason and sentenced to death by guillotine.
Sophie Scholl is remembered, above all, as an example of resistance in the face of a regime that seemed immovable and all powerful. However, her role as a woman in the resistance movement resists more than just Nazi Germany and the Third Reich, it resists gender roles that would have prevailed German society and allows women to look back on history and see themselves in resistance. Recently however, her legacy as a resistance activist has been misrepresented by some in the far-right and those who protested Covid-19. They have identified with Scholl as she is seen to be someone who represents German victimhood.[4] This is a drastic misrepresentation of Scholl and the movement for which she stood for and marks a possible dangerous turn into making those who stood for Nazi resistance, a model for an anti-government stance.
Sophie Scholl’s bravery, for not only standing up to the might of the Third Reich, when it meant almost certain death, and as a woman, to break the bounds of what it meant to be a good German, helps those who look back on Nazi Germany, to find concerted resistance fighters within the Third Reich.
Image credit: Sophie Scholl, Wikicommons
Emily Harrington is a recent graduate of History where she focused on Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust. She has a special interest regarding resistance in Nazi Germany and women during the War of Independence in Ireland.
[1] Leaflets of the White Rose (1942), https://www.weisse-rose-stiftung.de/widerstandsgruppe-weisse-rose/flugblaetter/i-flugblatt-der-weissen-rose/ [Accessed 28 April 2024]
[2] Chloe Gruesbeck ‘Sophie Scholl (1921–1943) and the German Student Resistance Group against the Third Reich “The White Rose”’ https://hist259.web.unc.edu/sophiescholl/ [Accessed 01 May 2024]
[3] Pamphlet Distributed by the White Rose Movement, https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/pamphlet-distributed-by-the-white-rose-movement [Accessed 18 May 2024]
[4] Klaus Neumann, ‘I feel like Sophie Scholl’: the (mis)appropriation of icons of anti-Nazi resistance in contemporary Germany’, Patterns of Prejudice, 55.5, pp. 407-435, https://doi.org/10.1080/0031322X.2022.2054620
