in 1942, hans, along with his good friend alexander schmorell, started an anti-nazi resistance group. calling themselves the white rose (and later, the resistance movement in germany), the two young men wrote leaflets denouncing the state of nazi germany and calling for passive resistance. they then mailed the leaflets to officials and intellectuals around munich. the first four leaflets were written from june 1942-july 1942. in july 1942, hans and alexander (as well as their good friend willi graf) received notice that they were being deployed to russia for a three month stint as medics. they left munich on july 23, 1942. during there three months there, the young men saw horrifying things, including the warsaw ghetto. what they saw inspired them to step up their leaflet game. when they returned to munich, hans and alexander, as well as willi graf, christoph probst, and sophie scholl, began to step up their efforts. they were soon joined by sophie’s philosophy teacher kurt huber. together, these six individuals made up the core of the white rose resistance. in january 1943, the fifth leaflet was released. while the other pamphlets had only about a hundred distributed, about 10,000 copies were made of the fifth leaflet, which was distributed all around germany by the members, who braved trains swarming with gestapo to post their letters from different places in germany.