July 28, 2010 • 18 mins
During World War II, the Nazi totalitarian party did not tolerate dissent. Despite the risks involved, some Germans did attempt to resist Hitler's government. In this episode, Katie and Sarah explore the story of the White Rose, a secret resistance group.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm their Downy. A few months
ago we talked about Hanna Snish, a Hungarian who opposed
(00:22):
the Nazis by parachuting into Yugoslavia and an attempt to
save fellow Jews. She was arrested, tortured, and executed, and
this heroic story left many of you wanting to hear
more about resistance to the Nazis during World War Two.
These stories are usually tragic, you know, how could they
(00:42):
end well, but they're also pretty inspirational. One of the
most surprising of these heroic stories comes out of Germany,
of all places, where the Gestapo in the SS that
kept such a close eye on the population listening in
to a broadcast of Radio London could be enough to
get you execute it. And it's in Germany, in Munich, actually,
(01:03):
that this group of students decide to protest the atrocities
of their government and stir up their apathetic countrymen at
a great risk to their own lives, and they call
themselves the White Rose. But before we get into the
student movement in Munich. We need to give some background
on what life was like for someone who was trying
(01:24):
to resist the Nazi government, And some sources that Sarah
was reading kept saying that you can't understand unless you've
lived under a totalitarian regime. But we hope this will
help a little bit. So this is what you're up against.
Nazi indoctrinations started in preschool. Children were encouraged to denounce
(01:44):
their parents for making derogatory comments about Hitler or about
the Reich, and at age ten, boys would register to
join the German Young People after being investigated for racial purity.
At thirteen they could join the Hitler Youth and at
eighteen they'd be a member of the Nazi Party. Uh.
It was mandatory to serve either in the armed forces
or in labor details until aged girls did the same thing,
(02:08):
participating in leagues that taught comradeship and motherhood. So that's
what you're up against in terms of this early indoctrination.
But in addition to the Gestapo, every block also has
a spy who would note down conversations going on, keep
track of who was saying what. So maybe you make
a joke to your wife about Hitler and your neighbor
(02:29):
overhears it. Uh next thing you know, you've got police
knocking on your door. So dangerous times. Consequently, it's pretty
difficult for all but the smallest groups to actually protest
the government because organized resistance usually involves a lot of
people socialists, communists, and trade unionists published underground literature. And
(02:50):
even though the Catholic Church is officially silent on what's happening,
some clergymen do work to protect Jews, and the church
denounces quote unquote to euthanasia of the handicapped. We also
have the occasional assassination attempt. After the defeat at Stalingrad,
German officers attempt to blow up Hitler with a bomb.
(03:10):
He was injured and they were immediately executed. But really
the military is about the only group that could be
so bold, because most people who protest against the government
have to do it passively, just small measures of non
compliance with Nazi rules. So it's pretty easy to imagine
that at least a few teenagers were ticked off by
(03:31):
the idea of having to enroll with the Nazi youth
in work to fight against that without getting themselves into
terrible trouble. The student heroes of our story grew up
in the world of the Reich. They were raised in
the thirties, so they're fully indoctrinated. Some were even leaders
of Hitler youth groups. So how did they turn against
(03:52):
the regime and more importantly, why did they decide to
risk their lives to denounce it. Well, a lot of
the eventual members of the White Rose meet in the
winter of nine thirty nine when they're all finishing up
their compulsory two years of army service as part of
this medic program. Basically, if you had intended to go
(04:13):
to medical school eventually, you could finish up your army
service training as a medic to get a little hands
on work before you start your studies. So most of
these kids end up enrolling at the University of Munich
the following spring. And we know that students are the
most protesting group of the population and well, and it's
no different at Munich too. Even though these students really
(04:36):
have to watch their backs, they have a lot more
pressure than most student protesters would have. Still though, when,
for instance, one of their Nazis student leaders tell them
that they'll have to spend their first summer break harvesting
the crops in Bavaria. They are very upset. Stink bombs
go off in the chemistry building, so you can imagine
just these acts of protests, still very dangerous in these times,
(04:58):
but trying to make their opinion. It's heard later in
nineteen thirty nine, when most of the mail Med students
are drafted into the army, they would steal as much
freedom as they could skipping out on roll call or
on drill, according to White Rose survivor George Bittenstein, And
by early nineteen forty two to Med students Alex Schmorell
(05:19):
and Hans Scholl have started writing leaflets, copying them on
a typewriter and distributing them. And Sarah's got the first
line from the first leaflet. 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.
It is certain that today every honest German is ashamed
(05:41):
of his government. So of the first one hundred of
these flyers that they distribute in mail, thirty five are
returned to the Gestapo. So this means two things. Spies
and people who get this very incriminating flyer in the mail,
get very nervous and send it right back to the Gestapo.
And writing leaflets and copying them might not sound like
(06:04):
a big deal, it is paper is in very short supply,
so buying huge packs of it is very suspicious, and
so is buying lots of postage. And think about how
dangerous it is to carry such a pamphlet around with you,
because if you're stopped and searched, you're done for. But
the students that Munich are amazed to see these pamphlets.
(06:26):
Who's doing this? They're wondering what's going on. The Gestapo
are not pleased, and so the White Rose membership starts
to grow. And it's interesting that the discipline and order
that some of the members might have picked up in
the Hitler youth serves to make them pretty disciplined and
ordered when they're fighting the German government. They would graffiti
(06:47):
the streets of Munich with slogans like down with Hitler,
Hitler the mass murderer, or freedom Freedom, and the initial
Munich group expands to students in Hamburg, Freiburg, Berlin and Vienna.
They would mail each other these mimeographed leaflets and sometimes
They would even carry them on trains, which was a
task usually left up to the girls. They were less
(07:08):
likely to be searched. But they could leave these suitcases
full of these pamphlets in different cars. Well, they'd carry
them in another compartment, because you didn't want to be found.
You wanted to be separate from the suitcase for as
much of the journey as possible. But of course we
also have to talk about what the White Rose movement
was even all about, and was it really true that
(07:30):
Germans didn't know what was going on, what atrocities were
being committed, As you so often here, that's usually the
excuse for such enormous inaction that happened. Well, these kids
know what's going on, and when a lot of the
male population of the White Rose movement goes to serve
on the Eastern Front as medical aids in the summer
of ninety two, they actually see some of the atrocities firsthand.
(07:54):
Hans Shoal sees Jewish labors being beaten, bound for death camps, mistreated,
and he hears about how the polls are being deported
into concentration camps and others like Hans's sister Sophie, here's
about some of the other policies at church in sermons.
So these kids know what's going on. We can assume
that a lot of other people knew. It must have
(08:15):
to exactly. Sophie gets permission to reprint a sermon against
these murders and distributes it to the students. She joins
the White Rose after enrolling at Munich and begging her
brother to let her in. And many of these members
also had Jewish friends who had since been deported. We
have to make it clear they thought that what was
(08:37):
happening was very wrong. This wasn't just a political protest.
This was a very personal thing, definitely. And so by
November nineteen forty two, the students who were on the
Eastern Front serving as medical aids are back, and the
White Rose members are more dedicated than ever to their cause,
and they bring in one of their professors, Kurt Huber,
(09:00):
who helps them edit the drafts, rejecting one is too communists.
I can sort of imagine this mentor relationship between these
students who are probably writing radical things like students do,
and this older fellow sort of toning it down, making
it more powerful, making it a better way to speak
to their audience, and they're not naive enough to think
(09:22):
that their pamphlets will help topple the government, and that's
not what they're trying to do. They understand that it's
only military action that will end the regime. Although they
do specifically distance themselves as independent thinkers fighting for Germany.
They they're very patriotic and they want to make it
clear that they're not puppets under Allied control. But while
(09:42):
they do advocate sabotage of the armaments industry, their goal
is to improve resistance morale and stir these apathetic Germans
into standing up for what is right, letting them know
that there are other people who think that way, yeah,
giving people encouragement, and ultimately they publish six leaflets between
nineteen two and three with that little break while a
(10:04):
lot of the guys are away on the Eastern Front.
Four published as the White Rose and two are published
under the name Leaflets of the Resistance. And it's that
sixth pamphlet that really destroys some of the major members
of the movement. It's just after the defeat at Stalingrad
when the White Rose publishes its sixth leaflet, and here's
(10:26):
an excerpt, Shaken and broken. Our people. Behold the loss
of the men of Stalingrad. Three hundred and thirty thousand
German men have been senselessly and irresponsibly driven to death
and destruction by the inspired strategy of our World War
one private first class fure we thank you, and another
repeated through the leaflet for us, there is but one slogan,
(10:48):
fight against the party. It says that over and over again,
something to try to get get it stuck in the
reader's head. And the Shoals go to this campus building
at their university and they leave stacks of these leaflets
outside of the doors of the classroom. They're carrying the whole,
the whole shebang in this suitcase. When they realize that
there's still a lot of the leaflets left in their bag,
(11:10):
Sophie takes them up to the third floor and throws
them down a light. Well, so imagine just all these
pamphlets shower showering down. Well, it catches the attention of
a janitor and he turns them into the Gestapo. They're arrested,
and the barely involved Kristoph Propst is actually implicated because
Hans has something mentioning him in his pocket, a draft
(11:33):
for a later pamphlet, so the three of them are
taken into custody. They delivered that last batch of pamphlets
on February eighteenth, ninete and just days later they're put
on trial. The judge is horrified that three nice German
kids could have turned to this, and is especially disgusted
that Hans is a soldier well, and that the state
(11:56):
is paid for his education. It just seems doubly wrong
to this judge. Props has a wife and three babies,
and he claims psychotic depression after the loss at Stalingrad
and because of his wife's difficult child birth. He's trying
to save his life. Sophie explains herself really boldly, though
she says somebody, after all, had to make a start.
(12:16):
What we wrote and said is also believed by many others.
They just don't dare to express themselves as we did.
And later she actually tells the judge, you know the
war is lost, why don't you have the courage to
face it? So she's being incredibly brave and bold in
the face of I mean, she'll definitely be charged by
this judge. There's no other way out. The Shoals parents
(12:40):
tried to burst into the courtroom in the middle of
the trial, and their mother is told she should have
brought them up better. Their father forces his way in
and is forcibly escorted out, and as he's escorted out,
he shouts, one day there will be another kind of justice.
One day they will go down in history. Poor propst family,
on the other him, doesn't even know that he's been arrested.
(13:02):
His wife is still in the hospital from childbirth, and
he's not visited by anyone before his execution. Unsurprisingly, the
judge rules guilty. The court finds quote that the accused have,
in the time of war, by means of leaflets, called
for the sabotage of the war effort in armaments and
for the overthrow of the national socialist way of life
(13:23):
of our people, have propagated defeatist ideas, and have most
vulgarly defamed the fur, thereby giving aid to the enemy
of the Reich and weakening the armed security of the nation.
On this account, there to be punished by death. They're
executed by guillotine almost immediately. The siblings meet with their
parents one last time, and the guards allow the three
(13:45):
to meet one last time. Sophie is killed first, then Propst,
then Hans, who cries out long lived freedom, but it's
not over yet, and the Gestapo arrests three other members
later in the year. Alexander Schmorl is twenty five. We
should I don't think we've mentioned their ages yet. They're
all in their very early twenties. Uh. They also arrest
(14:07):
Willie Graff, who's twenty five, and the professor who is
helping Kurt Hooper, who is forty nine, and some of
them aren't executed until nine, so the second batch of
trials doesn't go as quickly as as the first with
the Shoals and Props does. Today, they're heroes in Germany
for daring to stand up during the country's darkest years.
(14:29):
There's a square at the University of Munich named after
the Shoals, and things all over the city that are
named after other members, and will close with another quote
from their leaflets, quote, we seek the revival of the
deeply wounded German spirit for the sake of future generations.
An example must be set after the war so that
no one will ever have the slightest desire to try
(14:52):
anything like this ever again. Do not forget the minor
scoundrels of this system note their names so that no
one may escape ape. We shall not be silent. We
are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave
you in peace. It's especially interesting that call to not
forget even the most minor scoundrels, to know their names
(15:13):
so that no one will escape. That's still so pertinent
even today. We have an article on that. It's called
are their Nazi war criminals still at large? And there are,
and people are still actively looking for them and looking
to bring them to justice. People have not forgotten. If
you'd like to look for that article, you can search
on our home page at www dot house stuffworks dot com.
(15:35):
And that brings us to our listener mail for today.
So when we finish our episode on King Ludibig the Second,
we mentioned that he's a very popular figure, or so
we believed in Germany still today. And one of the
things I remember reading about that was that because the
twentieth century history is so violent, people have really embraced
(15:58):
this figure who is a passive This even if he's
crazy and built all these maybe not, maybe not had
imagining friends, maybe maybe not, he's still this very compelling,
peaceful figure and Consequently, a lot of people have gotten
really into him. But we we raised the question is
he really a huge figure in Bavaria And we got
(16:18):
at least one answer from Karen, who studied abroad and
visited his castles. But she also remembers one of her
friends from Bavaria putting out a toast to King Ludwig
in the middle of a bar. All the other American
student kind of didn't know what was going on, but
not yeah exactly. They went along with it to to
(16:39):
look big. The second well, when that happened, a group
of German guys who were also sitting in the bar
started to cheer on King Lidvig as well, and they
started singing the Bavarian regional anthem. Love it. I love
this story of all these college kids, study abroad kids,
German guys singing and toasting kids in load big in
(17:00):
a bar. There are not enough national anthems in bars.
Maybe during the World Cup, but besides that, maybe we
really need to step that up. So thank you Karen
for answering our question, And if you have some really
cool emails to send us, our email address is History
Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com. We would also
like you to make us look good to our boss,
(17:21):
and follow us on Twitter at missed in History and
join our Facebook fan page. You can find out what
we're up to in the various little trivia bits we
find during the week, and remember to check out that
Nazi article by searching on our home page at www
dot how stuff works dot com. For more on this
(17:42):
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works
dot com And be sure to check out the stuff
you missed in History Glass blog on the how stuff
works dot com home page.
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm their Downy. A few months
ago we talked about Hanna Snish, a Hungarian who opposed
(00:22):
the Nazis by parachuting into Yugoslavia and an attempt to
save fellow Jews. She was arrested, tortured, and executed, and
this heroic story left many of you wanting to hear
more about resistance to the Nazis during World War Two.
These stories are usually tragic, you know, how could they
(00:42):
end well, but they're also pretty inspirational. One of the
most surprising of these heroic stories comes out of Germany,
of all places, where the Gestapo in the SS that
kept such a close eye on the population listening in
to a broadcast of Radio London could be enough to
get you execute it. And it's in Germany, in Munich, actually,
(01:03):
that this group of students decide to protest the atrocities
of their government and stir up their apathetic countrymen at
a great risk to their own lives, and they call
themselves the White Rose. But before we get into the
student movement in Munich. We need to give some background
on what life was like for someone who was trying
(01:24):
to resist the Nazi government, And some sources that Sarah
was reading kept saying that you can't understand unless you've
lived under a totalitarian regime. But we hope this will
help a little bit. So this is what you're up against.
Nazi indoctrinations started in preschool. Children were encouraged to denounce
(01:44):
their parents for making derogatory comments about Hitler or about
the Reich, and at age ten, boys would register to
join the German Young People after being investigated for racial purity.
At thirteen they could join the Hitler Youth and at
eighteen they'd be a member of the Nazi Party. Uh.
It was mandatory to serve either in the armed forces
or in labor details until aged girls did the same thing,
(02:08):
participating in leagues that taught comradeship and motherhood. So that's
what you're up against in terms of this early indoctrination.
But in addition to the Gestapo, every block also has
a spy who would note down conversations going on, keep
track of who was saying what. So maybe you make
a joke to your wife about Hitler and your neighbor
(02:29):
overhears it. Uh next thing you know, you've got police
knocking on your door. So dangerous times. Consequently, it's pretty
difficult for all but the smallest groups to actually protest
the government because organized resistance usually involves a lot of
people socialists, communists, and trade unionists published underground literature. And
(02:50):
even though the Catholic Church is officially silent on what's happening,
some clergymen do work to protect Jews, and the church
denounces quote unquote to euthanasia of the handicapped. We also
have the occasional assassination attempt. After the defeat at Stalingrad,
German officers attempt to blow up Hitler with a bomb.
(03:10):
He was injured and they were immediately executed. But really
the military is about the only group that could be
so bold, because most people who protest against the government
have to do it passively, just small measures of non
compliance with Nazi rules. So it's pretty easy to imagine
that at least a few teenagers were ticked off by
(03:31):
the idea of having to enroll with the Nazi youth
in work to fight against that without getting themselves into
terrible trouble. The student heroes of our story grew up
in the world of the Reich. They were raised in
the thirties, so they're fully indoctrinated. Some were even leaders
of Hitler youth groups. So how did they turn against
(03:52):
the regime and more importantly, why did they decide to
risk their lives to denounce it. Well, a lot of
the eventual members of the White Rose meet in the
winter of nine thirty nine when they're all finishing up
their compulsory two years of army service as part of
this medic program. Basically, if you had intended to go
(04:13):
to medical school eventually, you could finish up your army
service training as a medic to get a little hands
on work before you start your studies. So most of
these kids end up enrolling at the University of Munich
the following spring. And we know that students are the
most protesting group of the population and well, and it's
no different at Munich too. Even though these students really
(04:36):
have to watch their backs, they have a lot more
pressure than most student protesters would have. Still though, when,
for instance, one of their Nazis student leaders tell them
that they'll have to spend their first summer break harvesting
the crops in Bavaria. They are very upset. Stink bombs
go off in the chemistry building, so you can imagine
just these acts of protests, still very dangerous in these times,
(04:58):
but trying to make their opinion. It's heard later in
nineteen thirty nine, when most of the mail Med students
are drafted into the army, they would steal as much
freedom as they could skipping out on roll call or
on drill, according to White Rose survivor George Bittenstein, And
by early nineteen forty two to Med students Alex Schmorell
(05:19):
and Hans Scholl have started writing leaflets, copying them on
a typewriter and distributing them. And Sarah's got the first
line from the first leaflet. 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.
It is certain that today every honest German is ashamed
(05:41):
of his government. So of the first one hundred of
these flyers that they distribute in mail, thirty five are
returned to the Gestapo. So this means two things. Spies
and people who get this very incriminating flyer in the mail,
get very nervous and send it right back to the Gestapo.
And writing leaflets and copying them might not sound like
(06:04):
a big deal, it is paper is in very short supply,
so buying huge packs of it is very suspicious, and
so is buying lots of postage. And think about how
dangerous it is to carry such a pamphlet around with you,
because if you're stopped and searched, you're done for. But
the students that Munich are amazed to see these pamphlets.
(06:26):
Who's doing this? They're wondering what's going on. The Gestapo
are not pleased, and so the White Rose membership starts
to grow. And it's interesting that the discipline and order
that some of the members might have picked up in
the Hitler youth serves to make them pretty disciplined and
ordered when they're fighting the German government. They would graffiti
(06:47):
the streets of Munich with slogans like down with Hitler,
Hitler the mass murderer, or freedom Freedom, and the initial
Munich group expands to students in Hamburg, Freiburg, Berlin and Vienna.
They would mail each other these mimeographed leaflets and sometimes
They would even carry them on trains, which was a
task usually left up to the girls. They were less
(07:08):
likely to be searched. But they could leave these suitcases
full of these pamphlets in different cars. Well, they'd carry
them in another compartment, because you didn't want to be found.
You wanted to be separate from the suitcase for as
much of the journey as possible. But of course we
also have to talk about what the White Rose movement
was even all about, and was it really true that
(07:30):
Germans didn't know what was going on, what atrocities were
being committed, As you so often here, that's usually the
excuse for such enormous inaction that happened. Well, these kids
know what's going on, and when a lot of the
male population of the White Rose movement goes to serve
on the Eastern Front as medical aids in the summer
of ninety two, they actually see some of the atrocities firsthand.
(07:54):
Hans Shoal sees Jewish labors being beaten, bound for death camps, mistreated,
and he hears about how the polls are being deported
into concentration camps and others like Hans's sister Sophie, here's
about some of the other policies at church in sermons.
So these kids know what's going on. We can assume
that a lot of other people knew. It must have
(08:15):
to exactly. Sophie gets permission to reprint a sermon against
these murders and distributes it to the students. She joins
the White Rose after enrolling at Munich and begging her
brother to let her in. And many of these members
also had Jewish friends who had since been deported. We
have to make it clear they thought that what was
(08:37):
happening was very wrong. This wasn't just a political protest.
This was a very personal thing, definitely. And so by
November nineteen forty two, the students who were on the
Eastern Front serving as medical aids are back, and the
White Rose members are more dedicated than ever to their cause,
and they bring in one of their professors, Kurt Huber,
(09:00):
who helps them edit the drafts, rejecting one is too communists.
I can sort of imagine this mentor relationship between these
students who are probably writing radical things like students do,
and this older fellow sort of toning it down, making
it more powerful, making it a better way to speak
to their audience, and they're not naive enough to think
(09:22):
that their pamphlets will help topple the government, and that's
not what they're trying to do. They understand that it's
only military action that will end the regime. Although they
do specifically distance themselves as independent thinkers fighting for Germany.
They they're very patriotic and they want to make it
clear that they're not puppets under Allied control. But while
(09:42):
they do advocate sabotage of the armaments industry, their goal
is to improve resistance morale and stir these apathetic Germans
into standing up for what is right, letting them know
that there are other people who think that way, yeah,
giving people encouragement, and ultimately they publish six leaflets between
nineteen two and three with that little break while a
(10:04):
lot of the guys are away on the Eastern Front.
Four published as the White Rose and two are published
under the name Leaflets of the Resistance. And it's that
sixth pamphlet that really destroys some of the major members
of the movement. It's just after the defeat at Stalingrad
when the White Rose publishes its sixth leaflet, and here's
(10:26):
an excerpt, Shaken and broken. Our people. Behold the loss
of the men of Stalingrad. Three hundred and thirty thousand
German men have been senselessly and irresponsibly driven to death
and destruction by the inspired strategy of our World War
one private first class fure we thank you, and another
repeated through the leaflet for us, there is but one slogan,
(10:48):
fight against the party. It says that over and over again,
something to try to get get it stuck in the
reader's head. And the Shoals go to this campus building
at their university and they leave stacks of these leaflets
outside of the doors of the classroom. They're carrying the whole,
the whole shebang in this suitcase. When they realize that
there's still a lot of the leaflets left in their bag,
(11:10):
Sophie takes them up to the third floor and throws
them down a light. Well, so imagine just all these
pamphlets shower showering down. Well, it catches the attention of
a janitor and he turns them into the Gestapo. They're arrested,
and the barely involved Kristoph Propst is actually implicated because
Hans has something mentioning him in his pocket, a draft
(11:33):
for a later pamphlet, so the three of them are
taken into custody. They delivered that last batch of pamphlets
on February eighteenth, ninete and just days later they're put
on trial. The judge is horrified that three nice German
kids could have turned to this, and is especially disgusted
that Hans is a soldier well, and that the state
(11:56):
is paid for his education. It just seems doubly wrong
to this judge. Props has a wife and three babies,
and he claims psychotic depression after the loss at Stalingrad
and because of his wife's difficult child birth. He's trying
to save his life. Sophie explains herself really boldly, though
she says somebody, after all, had to make a start.
(12:16):
What we wrote and said is also believed by many others.
They just don't dare to express themselves as we did.
And later she actually tells the judge, you know the
war is lost, why don't you have the courage to
face it? So she's being incredibly brave and bold in
the face of I mean, she'll definitely be charged by
this judge. There's no other way out. The Shoals parents
(12:40):
tried to burst into the courtroom in the middle of
the trial, and their mother is told she should have
brought them up better. Their father forces his way in
and is forcibly escorted out, and as he's escorted out,
he shouts, one day there will be another kind of justice.
One day they will go down in history. Poor propst family,
on the other him, doesn't even know that he's been arrested.
(13:02):
His wife is still in the hospital from childbirth, and
he's not visited by anyone before his execution. Unsurprisingly, the
judge rules guilty. The court finds quote that the accused have,
in the time of war, by means of leaflets, called
for the sabotage of the war effort in armaments and
for the overthrow of the national socialist way of life
(13:23):
of our people, have propagated defeatist ideas, and have most
vulgarly defamed the fur, thereby giving aid to the enemy
of the Reich and weakening the armed security of the nation.
On this account, there to be punished by death. They're
executed by guillotine almost immediately. The siblings meet with their
parents one last time, and the guards allow the three
(13:45):
to meet one last time. Sophie is killed first, then Propst,
then Hans, who cries out long lived freedom, but it's
not over yet, and the Gestapo arrests three other members
later in the year. Alexander Schmorl is twenty five. We
should I don't think we've mentioned their ages yet. They're
all in their very early twenties. Uh. They also arrest
(14:07):
Willie Graff, who's twenty five, and the professor who is
helping Kurt Hooper, who is forty nine, and some of
them aren't executed until nine, so the second batch of
trials doesn't go as quickly as as the first with
the Shoals and Props does. Today, they're heroes in Germany
for daring to stand up during the country's darkest years.
(14:29):
There's a square at the University of Munich named after
the Shoals, and things all over the city that are
named after other members, and will close with another quote
from their leaflets, quote, we seek the revival of the
deeply wounded German spirit for the sake of future generations.
An example must be set after the war so that
no one will ever have the slightest desire to try
(14:52):
anything like this ever again. Do not forget the minor
scoundrels of this system note their names so that no
one may escape ape. We shall not be silent. We
are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave
you in peace. It's especially interesting that call to not
forget even the most minor scoundrels, to know their names
(15:13):
so that no one will escape. That's still so pertinent
even today. We have an article on that. It's called
are their Nazi war criminals still at large? And there are,
and people are still actively looking for them and looking
to bring them to justice. People have not forgotten. If
you'd like to look for that article, you can search
on our home page at www dot house stuffworks dot com.
(15:35):
And that brings us to our listener mail for today.
So when we finish our episode on King Ludibig the Second,
we mentioned that he's a very popular figure, or so
we believed in Germany still today. And one of the
things I remember reading about that was that because the
twentieth century history is so violent, people have really embraced
(15:58):
this figure who is a passive This even if he's
crazy and built all these maybe not, maybe not had
imagining friends, maybe maybe not, he's still this very compelling,
peaceful figure and Consequently, a lot of people have gotten
really into him. But we we raised the question is
he really a huge figure in Bavaria And we got
(16:18):
at least one answer from Karen, who studied abroad and
visited his castles. But she also remembers one of her
friends from Bavaria putting out a toast to King Ludwig
in the middle of a bar. All the other American
student kind of didn't know what was going on, but
not yeah exactly. They went along with it to to
(16:39):
look big. The second well, when that happened, a group
of German guys who were also sitting in the bar
started to cheer on King Lidvig as well, and they
started singing the Bavarian regional anthem. Love it. I love
this story of all these college kids, study abroad kids,
German guys singing and toasting kids in load big in
(17:00):
a bar. There are not enough national anthems in bars.
Maybe during the World Cup, but besides that, maybe we
really need to step that up. So thank you Karen
for answering our question, And if you have some really
cool emails to send us, our email address is History
Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com. We would also
like you to make us look good to our boss,
(17:21):
and follow us on Twitter at missed in History and
join our Facebook fan page. You can find out what
we're up to in the various little trivia bits we
find during the week, and remember to check out that
Nazi article by searching on our home page at www
dot how stuff works dot com. For more on this
(17:42):
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works
dot com And be sure to check out the stuff
you missed in History Glass blog on the how stuff
works dot com home page.
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