Seventy years ago today, three German students were executed by
guillotine in Munich’s Stadelheim Prison for their crimes of
high treason against Hitler’s Third Reich. Just four days
earlier, 24-year-old Hans Scholl and his 21-year-old sister
Sophie were arrested after they’d been caught throwing hundreds
of anti-Nazi leaflets from the third floor of the main building
of their Munich University campus. Upon interrogation, the
Gestapo were shocked to discover that these young Germans – the
very essence of the Hitler Youth ideal – were, in fact, the
leaders of the infamous White Rose resistance movement whose
unfathomably bold clandestine actions since the summer of 1942
had caused shockwaves throughout Germany. In the darkest moment
of humanity, here was a beacon of light! Non-violent and rooted
in intellectualism, this impudent movement that had so outraged
and outwitted the Gestapo was no more than a handful of Munich
University students in their early twenties – inspired and aided
by their professor of phil