Categories
general freedom individual achievement responsibility

Freedom’s Friends

Yesterday marked a solemn anniversary. Seventy-​four years ago — on Feb. 22, 1943 — three German students at the University of Munich were tried for treason by the Nazis, convicted and then executed via the guillotine, all in one day.

Days earlier, Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie had been caught distributing a leaflet at the university, which read: “In the name of German youth, we demand restitution by Adolf Hitler’s state of our personal freedom, the most precious treasure we have, out of which he has swindled us in the most miserable way.”

Hans had in his pocket a draft of another leaflet, in Christoph Probst’s handwriting. That seventh leaflet, never distributed, led to Christoph’s arrest and execution, along with Hans and Sophie.

The three were part of a small group of students who wrote and distributed leaflets under the name The White Rose — a symbol of purity standing against the monstrous evil of the Third Reich. The leaflets decried the crimes of National Socialism, including the mass murder of Jews, and urged Germans to rise up.

Three more members were later executed: Willi Graf, Alex Schmorell and Professor Kurt Huber. Another eleven were imprisoned.

Their resistance was ultimately futile, unsuccessful … but not pointless. They would not remain cogs in the killing machine that had taken the most advanced society in the world to the depths of depravity. They took a stand against what George Orwell later characterized as “a boot stamping on a human face, forever.”

Let’s remember, and say, “Never again.” And have the courage to make those words true.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

N.B. For an excellent account of The White Rose, consult the aptly titled A Noble Treason, by Richard Hanser. See also Jacob Hornberger’s The White Rose — A Lesson in Dissent. The Orwell quotation is from the dystopian novel 1984.


Printable PDF

Categories
links

Townhall: Resistance in Munich

The White Rose dissidents have lessons for you and me, even today.

Click on over to Townhall, for Paul’s latest discussion of the White Rose students and their sacrifices. Then come back here to learn more. And get involved in making the world a better, freer place.

Categories
video

Video: The Last Days of the White Rose

If you have been following the “Today in Freedom” and new visual meme features here at Common Sense, you are aware of The White Rose, the group of German dissidents who in 1942 and 1943 produced pamphlets against the Nazi regime.

There have been several good books and movies produced about these young and now long-​gone heroes. One of them is available free on YouTube. It focuses on young Sophie Scholls, and her final days — that is, her and her brother’s direct encounter with the Gestapo and the totalitarian Nazi state. Well worth watching, though prepare yourself — it is not a light, comic romp; anything but:

See the Townhall column of these events, now published on this site.

You owe it to yourself to read the six pamphlets of the White Rose, now available here.

Categories
meme

Read the White Rose Leaflets

“Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be ‘governed’ without opposition by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct.”

Click here to read a complete collection of the White Rose leaflets


White Rose

Click the thumbnail image above to view at full size, and then “right-​click” or “control-​click” to download. And please do feel free to share with your friends!

Categories
meme

Protesting the Nazis in Munich, in 1943

A brother-​and-​sister team of anti-​Nazi activists were arrested on this date in 1943:

To download the full image, click it [above] to view it first in a separate window; download it from there.

Read their pamphlets at our Library on This Is Common Sense.

Categories
Today

Hans and Sophie arrested

On Feb. 18, 1943, Hans and Sophie Scholl, a brother and sister, were arrested at the University of Munich for secretly (or not so secretly) putting out leaflets calling on Germans to revolt against Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. In the previous year Hans had founded a group of students, who called themselves “The White Rose.” The group wrote and distributed six leaflets aimed at educated Germans. The leaflets made their way across Germany and to several other occupied countries. The Allies later dropped them all over the Third Reich.