How One Brother and Sister’s “Crazy” Leaflet Drop Exposed 2,000 Nazis in Just 5 Minutes

 

February 22nd, 1943. Stadelheim Prison, Munich. The air in the cell is cold, heavy with the  metallic scent of damp stone and finality. It   clings to the thin wool of her sweater. Outside, a  grey Bavarian winter sky presses down on the city,   but in here, time has compressed into a handful of  minutes.

 Sophia Magdalena Scholl, prisoner number   2-43, sits on the edge of a simple wooden cot. She  is just 21 years old. Her face, which in another   life would be animated with intellectual debate  or laughter, is pale but composed. There are   no tears. Her gaze is fixed on a sliver of light  filtering through the barred window, a light she   knows she will not see set.

 In a few moments, she  will be led down a short corridor to a small, grim   room. In that room waits a Fallbeil—a guillotine.  Her crime was not espionage, nor sabotage with   bombs or bullets. Her weapon was the written  word. Her crime was courage. To understand how   a young student of biology and philosophy came to  be staring death in the face with such unnerving   calm, we must go back, not to the beginning  of the war, but to the beginning of the doubt.

Rewind ten years. The Germany of 1933 is  a nation undergoing a seismic shift. The   air crackles with a frenetic energy, a mix  of desperate hope and orchestrated fury.   For a 12-year-old girl named Sophie  Scholl, living in the city of Ulm,   this new world is intoxicating.

 Like so  many of her generation, she is swept up   in the promise of national rebirth. She sees the  parades, the crisp uniforms, the sea of flags,   and feels a powerful sense of belonging.  She eagerly joins the Bund Deutscher Mädel,   the League of German Girls, the female wing of the  Hitler Youth. Here, she is not just a girl; she   is a vital part of a grand national project. She  excels.

 Her blonde hair and bright, intelligent   eyes make her a poster child for the movement.  She becomes a squad leader, teaching younger   girls the songs of the new Germany, leading  them on hikes through the Swabian countryside,   instilling in them the virtues of discipline,  community, and sacrifice for the Führer. Her home, however, is an island of dissent in a  sea of conformity.

 Her father, Robert Scholl, is   a liberal thinker, a former mayor, and a man who  sees the Nazi regime not as Germany’s salvation,   but as its damnation. He calls Adolf Hitler a  “pied piper,” a seducer of the youth leading   the nation to ruin. The dinner table in the Scholl  household becomes a quiet battleground of ideas.   While Sophie speaks with youthful fervor about  the community and purpose she finds in the BDM,   her father counters with warnings about the loss  of individual freedom, the suppression of thought,   and the dark undercurrent of hatred  he sees growing stronger every day.  

He encourages his children—Inge, Hans, Elisabeth,  Sophie, and Werner—to read forbidden authors,   to listen to unapproved music, to think for  themselves. “What I want for you,” he would   tell them, “is to live in uprightness and freedom  of spirit, no matter how difficult that may be.” For a time, Sophie is able to keep these two  worlds separate.

 The world of state-mandated   conformity and the world of private, intellectual  freedom. But the cracks begin to show. At a BDM   meeting, she wants to sing a beautiful, haunting  Russian folk song she loves, but she is sharply   reprimanded. It is a “subversive” song from  an “inferior” people. She tries to share a   book by the Jewish poet Heinrich Heine with her  group, only to be told his works are now banned,   fit only for burning.

 The vibrant, inclusive  community she thought she had joined begins to   feel rigid, narrow, and suffocating. The emphasis  on the collective, which once felt so empowering,   now seems to demand the erasure of the  individual. She sees the creeping cruelty,   the casual anti-Semitism that is becoming state  policy, and the words of her father begin to echo   not as paternal warnings, but as prophecy.

  The first, most crucial seeds of resistance   were not sown in a conspiratorial meeting, but  here, in the quiet, gnawing disillusionment of a   teenage girl realizing the beautiful promise  she had believed in was a monstrous lie. The spring of 1942 breathes a deceptive life into  Munich. Chestnut trees lining the Ludwigstrasse   burst into bloom, masking the ever-present  tension of a nation three years into a world war.  

It is here, at the prestigious University of  Munich, that 21-year-old Sophie Scholl arrives   to study biology and philosophy. For her, it is  a chance to finally immerse herself in the world   of ideas her father had championed, to escape  the stifling intellectual confines of the BDM,   which she had long since abandoned in her heart.

  But more importantly, Munich is where her older   brother, Hans, is. Hans Scholl, a charismatic  and brilliant medical student, is the sun around   which a small constellation of like-minded friends  orbits. Sophie is quickly drawn into their circle. This is not a group of typical, hardened  revolutionaries. They are poets, artists,   and thinkers.

 There is Alexander Schmorell,  a Russian-born artist and medical student,   whose soul feels more at home in the world of  Tolstoy and Dostoevsky than in the Third Reich.   There is Christoph Probst, a young father  and medical student, deeply philosophical   and grounded in his Catholic faith. And there  is Willi Graf, a quiet, intensely serious medic,   whose early refusal to join the Hitler Youth  had already marked him as an outsider.

 Their   clandestine gatherings are acts of quiet  rebellion. In smoky back rooms and crowded   apartments, they don’t plot assassinations; they  read banned books, recite the poetry of Rilke,   and listen to the forbidden strains of  American jazz. They debate the nature of God,   the meaning of freedom, and the responsibility  of the individual in a totalitarian state.  

They are trying to keep a flame of humanity  and culture alive in a storm of barbarism. For a time, this intellectual resistance  is enough. But in the summer of 1942,   something changes.

Continue below

 

 

 

 

February 22nd, 1943. Stadelheim Prison, Munich. The air in the cell is cold, heavy with the  metallic scent of damp stone and finality. It   clings to the thin wool of her sweater. Outside, a  grey Bavarian winter sky presses down on the city,   but in here, time has compressed into a handful of  minutes.

 Sophia Magdalena Scholl, prisoner number   2-43, sits on the edge of a simple wooden cot. She  is just 21 years old. Her face, which in another   life would be animated with intellectual debate  or laughter, is pale but composed. There are   no tears. Her gaze is fixed on a sliver of light  filtering through the barred window, a light she   knows she will not see set.

 In a few moments, she  will be led down a short corridor to a small, grim   room. In that room waits a Fallbeil—a guillotine.  Her crime was not espionage, nor sabotage with   bombs or bullets. Her weapon was the written  word. Her crime was courage. To understand how   a young student of biology and philosophy came to  be staring death in the face with such unnerving   calm, we must go back, not to the beginning  of the war, but to the beginning of the doubt.

Rewind ten years. The Germany of 1933 is  a nation undergoing a seismic shift. The   air crackles with a frenetic energy, a mix  of desperate hope and orchestrated fury.   For a 12-year-old girl named Sophie  Scholl, living in the city of Ulm,   this new world is intoxicating.

 Like so  many of her generation, she is swept up   in the promise of national rebirth. She sees the  parades, the crisp uniforms, the sea of flags,   and feels a powerful sense of belonging.  She eagerly joins the Bund Deutscher Mädel,   the League of German Girls, the female wing of the  Hitler Youth. Here, she is not just a girl; she   is a vital part of a grand national project. She  excels.

 Her blonde hair and bright, intelligent   eyes make her a poster child for the movement.  She becomes a squad leader, teaching younger   girls the songs of the new Germany, leading  them on hikes through the Swabian countryside,   instilling in them the virtues of discipline,  community, and sacrifice for the Führer. Her home, however, is an island of dissent in a  sea of conformity.

 Her father, Robert Scholl, is   a liberal thinker, a former mayor, and a man who  sees the Nazi regime not as Germany’s salvation,   but as its damnation. He calls Adolf Hitler a  “pied piper,” a seducer of the youth leading   the nation to ruin. The dinner table in the Scholl  household becomes a quiet battleground of ideas.   While Sophie speaks with youthful fervor about  the community and purpose she finds in the BDM,   her father counters with warnings about the loss  of individual freedom, the suppression of thought,   and the dark undercurrent of hatred  he sees growing stronger every day.  

He encourages his children—Inge, Hans, Elisabeth,  Sophie, and Werner—to read forbidden authors,   to listen to unapproved music, to think for  themselves. “What I want for you,” he would   tell them, “is to live in uprightness and freedom  of spirit, no matter how difficult that may be.” For a time, Sophie is able to keep these two  worlds separate.

 The world of state-mandated   conformity and the world of private, intellectual  freedom. But the cracks begin to show. At a BDM   meeting, she wants to sing a beautiful, haunting  Russian folk song she loves, but she is sharply   reprimanded. It is a “subversive” song from  an “inferior” people. She tries to share a   book by the Jewish poet Heinrich Heine with her  group, only to be told his works are now banned,   fit only for burning.

 The vibrant, inclusive  community she thought she had joined begins to   feel rigid, narrow, and suffocating. The emphasis  on the collective, which once felt so empowering,   now seems to demand the erasure of the  individual. She sees the creeping cruelty,   the casual anti-Semitism that is becoming state  policy, and the words of her father begin to echo   not as paternal warnings, but as prophecy.

  The first, most crucial seeds of resistance   were not sown in a conspiratorial meeting, but  here, in the quiet, gnawing disillusionment of a   teenage girl realizing the beautiful promise  she had believed in was a monstrous lie. The spring of 1942 breathes a deceptive life into  Munich. Chestnut trees lining the Ludwigstrasse   burst into bloom, masking the ever-present  tension of a nation three years into a world war.  

It is here, at the prestigious University of  Munich, that 21-year-old Sophie Scholl arrives   to study biology and philosophy. For her, it is  a chance to finally immerse herself in the world   of ideas her father had championed, to escape  the stifling intellectual confines of the BDM,   which she had long since abandoned in her heart.

  But more importantly, Munich is where her older   brother, Hans, is. Hans Scholl, a charismatic  and brilliant medical student, is the sun around   which a small constellation of like-minded friends  orbits. Sophie is quickly drawn into their circle. This is not a group of typical, hardened  revolutionaries. They are poets, artists,   and thinkers.

 There is Alexander Schmorell,  a Russian-born artist and medical student,   whose soul feels more at home in the world of  Tolstoy and Dostoevsky than in the Third Reich.   There is Christoph Probst, a young father  and medical student, deeply philosophical   and grounded in his Catholic faith. And there  is Willi Graf, a quiet, intensely serious medic,   whose early refusal to join the Hitler Youth  had already marked him as an outsider.

 Their   clandestine gatherings are acts of quiet  rebellion. In smoky back rooms and crowded   apartments, they don’t plot assassinations; they  read banned books, recite the poetry of Rilke,   and listen to the forbidden strains of  American jazz. They debate the nature of God,   the meaning of freedom, and the responsibility  of the individual in a totalitarian state.  

They are trying to keep a flame of humanity  and culture alive in a storm of barbarism. For a time, this intellectual resistance  is enough. But in the summer of 1942,   something changes. Hans, Alexander, and Willi  are all conscripted as medics and sent for a   three-month tour of duty on the Eastern Front.

 The  letters they send back, and the stories they tell   upon their return, are no longer philosophical.  They are visceral, traumatized, and filled with   a horror that words can barely contain. They  have not been on the front lines of combat,   but behind them, where the true, sickening  nature of the war is laid bare. They have   seen the mass graves.

 They have witnessed the  SS systematically murdering Jewish men, women,   and children in the Polish ghettos. They have seen  the casual, dehumanizing cruelty inflicted upon   the Russian population. The abstract evil they  had discussed in Munich has now become a concrete,   unforgettable image burned into their minds. The  sight of a pit filled with bodies, the sound of   a gunshot ending a life for no reason, the  hollow eyes of starving children—these are   the things that transform their group from  a debating society into a resistance cell.

They return to Munich changed men. The time  for discussion is over. The time for passive   disapproval is over. To know what they know  and to do nothing would make them complicit.   They feel a profound, soul-crushing guilt—the  guilt of the witness. It is Hans and Alexander   who take the first, terrifying step.

 In a  small, hidden studio, they acquire a simple,   hand-cranked mimeograph machine. It’s a clumsy,  messy piece of equipment, staining their hands   with ink and filling the air with a chemical  smell they will forever associate with danger.   They choose a name for their cause: The White  Rose. It is a symbol of purity, of innocence,   and of the spiritual resistance they  hope to awaken in the German people.

In late June 1942, the first leaflet appears.  It is mailed anonymously to academics, doctors,   and writers across Munich. Its tone is not a  call to arms, but a call to conscience. Quoting   Schiller and Goethe, it speaks of the moral and  spiritual degradation of the German nation. “Is   it not true,” one line reads, “that every honest  German is ashamed of his government these days?”   Four such leaflets are written and distributed  between June and July.

 Sophie knows her brother is   involved in something secret, something dangerous.  She senses the new, grim determination in him.   One day, she discovers one of the leaflets.  The writing style, the philosophical quotes,   the passionate moral outrage—it is unmistakably  Hans. She confronts him not with fear,   but with a quiet, unshakeable resolve. She does  not ask him to stop. She insists on joining.

Hans hesitates for only a moment. He sees in  his sister’s eyes not the recklessness of youth,   but the same fire he feels in his own soul—a  moral clarity that makes inaction impossible.   Her inclusion is a risk, but her exclusion  is unthinkable. With Sophie’s arrival,   the clandestine operation takes on a new, more  efficient, and perhaps more dangerous character.  

She is not merely a follower; she is a logistical  and moral powerhouse. While Hans and Alexander   are the impassioned writers, wrestling with  philosophical arguments and fiery rhetoric,   Sophie becomes the quiet, pragmatic heart of  the group. She manages their meager funds,   meticulously accounting for every  pfennig spent on paper and stamps.  

It is Sophie who devises the system of purchasing  stamps and envelopes from dozens of different   post offices, in small, unremarkable  quantities, to avoid arousing suspicion. The work is nerve-wracking and physically  draining. Their headquarters is often   Alexander Schmorell’s studio, a space filled  with the clutter of an artist and the secrets   of a conspiracy.

 The acrid smell of ink and  solvent hangs heavy in the air as they work   late into the night, the rhythmic clank and  whir of the mimeograph machine a constant,   metallic heartbeat of their rebellion. Their hands  are perpetually stained with ink, a visible mark   of their secret war. After the leaflets are  printed, folded, and stuffed into envelopes,   the real danger begins.

 They move through the  blacked-out streets of Munich like ghosts,   dropping the letters into mailboxes, their  ears attuned to every distant footstep, every   cough from a darkened window. The simple act of  mailing a letter becomes an act of high treason. In the autumn of 1942, they are joined by a  new, powerful voice: Professor Kurt Huber,   their philosophy instructor at the university.

  A man of immense intellect and conservative   politics, he is no radical, but he is a staunch  anti-Nazi who sees the regime as an assault   on German culture and morality. He helps them  draft their fifth leaflet, a document that marks   a significant shift in their strategy. The tone  is no longer just for academics; it is a direct,   desperate appeal to the German people.

 It  speaks of the war, of the senseless slaughter,   and for the first time, it proposes a future for  Germany after Hitler, advocating for a federalist   system and European cooperation. They manage  to produce and distribute thousands of copies,   a massive escalation that empties their  coffers and frays their nerves. The constant,   low-level fear of a neighbor’s curiosity, of  a shopkeeper’s question about why they need   so much paper, of the Gestapo’s unmarked  car, becomes their constant companion.

Then, in early February 1943, comes the news  that shatters the myth of German invincibility:   the catastrophic surrender of the German Sixth  Army at Stalingrad. The propaganda machine can   no longer hide the scale of the disaster.  Nearly 100,000 German soldiers are lost.   A wave of shock and grief washes over the  nation, creating the first real crack in   the facade of public confidence.

 For the  White Rose, this is a moment of terrible   opportunity. They believe the German people,  finally confronted with the reality of the war,   might be ready to listen. They have  to act, and they have to act now. Their response is their boldest yet. It’s not  enough to mail leaflets that can be hidden or   thrown away. They need to make a public statement  that cannot be ignored.

 In the dead of night,   on three separate occasions in February,  they take to the streets with buckets of   tar-based paint and brushes. Imagine the  courage it takes. The city is under curfew,   patrolled by the SS. In the freezing dark,  while one stands lookout, heart pounding in   their throat, another quickly and crudely paints  their defiance onto the walls of the city.

 Along   the Ludwigstrasse, near the university itself,  the messages appear for all of Munich to see in   the morning light: Nieder mit Hitler! (Down  with Hitler!) and Freiheit! (Freedom!). This   graffiti campaign is a shocking, public scream of  dissent. And it galvanizes them for their final,   most audacious plan.

 They write a sixth  leaflet, their most impassioned yet,   calling the students to rise up. They print over  two thousand copies. But this time, they will   not just mail them. This time, they will take the  battle directly into the heart of the university. February 18th, 1943. Shortly before 11:00 AM.  The main building of the University of Munich. The air inside the vast, echoing atrium—the  Lichthof—is cool and smells of old paper,   polished marble, and damp wool coats.

 Hans and  Sophie Scholl walk with a purpose that masks the   frantic beating of their hearts. Between them,  they carry a heavy, worn leather suitcase. It’s   not filled with textbooks. It’s filled with  dynamite, but the dynamite is paper. Inside   are more than 1,700 copies of the sixth leaflet,  a payload of truth they are about to detonate in   the heart of the Nazi intellectual establishment.

  Their plan is simple, born of a desperate need for   impact. Lectures are scheduled to end at 11 AM.  They will leave the leaflets in the corridors and   on the staircases, for the thousands of students  to discover as they flood out of the classrooms. They move quickly, separating to cover  more ground. Imagine the tension.   You’re walking through corridors you know  intimately, but today they feel alien,   hostile. Every fellow student who glances your  way seems to be a potential informant.

 Every   professor’s stare feels like an accusation. They  work their way up the grand, sweeping staircases,   their footsteps echoing on the stone. With swift,  practiced movements, they deposit thick stacks of   the white papers on ledges, outside closed lecture  hall doors, and in empty alcoves.

 Their hands are   trembling, but their faces are a mask of calm.  Down below, the atrium is a sea of activity,   students rushing to their classes. The great  clock on the wall ticks towards eleven. Then, a change. The final bell rings for the  start of the lecture period. As if a switch   has been thrown, the noise of the atrium  evaporates.

 Doors close, chatter ceases,   and the vast hall empties with an unnatural  speed. Within a minute, Hans and Sophie are   almost entirely alone, suspended in a sudden,  cavernous silence. They have succeeded. The   leaflets are placed. Now, all they have to  do is walk out, melt back into the city,   and wait for the explosion of discovery.

  They meet at the top of the main staircase,   on the third-floor balustrade overlooking  the now-empty hall below. They turn to leave. But the suitcase is not quite empty. A  few hundred leaflets remain. For Sophie,   the thought of them going to waste is unbearable.  Every single word on those pages was written   in defiance, every sheet of paper purchased  with risk.

 In a moment that is part impulse,   part pure conviction, she stops. She looks  at Hans, a silent, urgent communication   passing between them. He nods. This is it.  This is their statement. Sophie places the   suitcase on the ornate stone balustrade. She  opens the clasps, takes the remaining heavy   stacks of paper, and without a second’s  hesitation, pushes them over the edge.

For a breathtaking moment, there is no sound. Just  a silent, swirling blizzard of white. The leaflets   do not fall; they dance. They twist and flutter in  the air, catching the light from the great glass   ceiling above, a cascade of paper, a snowfall of  truth descending into the heart of the silent,   waiting university. It is a beautiful, triumphant,  and utterly fatal act of defiance.

 Down below,   one man has not gone to class. Jakob Schmid,  the university’s custodian and a zealous Nazi   Party member, sees the strange white storm from  the corner of his eye. He looks up. He sees the   two figures on the top floor—a young man and a  young woman—turning to leave. He sees the empty   suitcase. He understands immediately.

 A guttural  shout tears through the silence: “Stehen bleiben!”   Stop! He sprints across the marble floor, his  hobnailed boots echoing like gunshots. He reaches   the massive front doors of the university and  throws the bolts. The heavy, decisive thump of the   locks sliding into place seals their fate. Sophie  and Hans Scholl are trapped. They hear the shout,   they hear the doors lock. They do not run.

 They  turn, and with a calm that will baffle their   interrogators, they begin to walk down the stairs  to meet the man who has just condemned them. The doors of the Wittelsbacher Palais,  the Gestapo headquarters in Munich,   close behind them. The university’s echoing atrium  is replaced by the sterile, suffocating quiet of a   place built for breaking human spirits. Hans and  Sophie are separated immediately.

 They are now in   the hands of Kriminalobersekretär Robert Mohr, a  seasoned, methodical interrogator. He expects this   to be simple. Two naive, misguided students.  He will apply pressure, exploit their fear,   and they will break, giving up the names of their  entire network. He begins with Sophie. He sees a   young, fragile-looking woman, and he assumes she  will be the weak link. He is profoundly mistaken.

For the first few hours, Sophie puts on a  masterful performance. She is calm, polite,   and astonishingly convincing. She and Hans  were just walking through the university,   she explains. They saw the suitcase lying there.  Out of curiosity, they picked it up, saw what was   inside, and in a moment of panic and foolishness,  decided to get rid of the incriminating material   by throwing it over the railing. She claims it was  a spontaneous, stupid act, an error in judgment.  

Mohr presses her, his questions circling,  probing for inconsistencies. But Sophie’s story   is a fortress. She holds his gaze, her answers  unwavering. She almost convinces him. He is ready   to believe that these two were merely accomplices,  caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. But while Sophie builds her wall of denial, the  Gestapo is tearing down the rest of their world.  

A search of Hans Scholl’s apartment uncovers  damning evidence: a handwritten draft of a   seventh leaflet, penned by Christoph Probst.  It is Christoph’s fatal mistake. The draft   contains his name. The net widens. More damning,  they find receipts for the paper and envelopes,   and a large quantity of unused stamps. The  evidence is overwhelming.

 When Mohr confronts   Hans with this, he knows the game is over. His  primary concern now is not to save himself,   but to save the others. He confesses. He  takes full responsibility for everything,   insisting he acted alone, that his  sister was an unwitting participant. Mohr returns to Sophie’s interrogation  room, a grim satisfaction on his face.  

He lays out the evidence. He tells her that  her brother has confessed. He expects tears,   a collapse, a desperate plea for mercy. He gets  none of it. Sophie’s entire demeanor shifts. The   mask of the naive, frightened girl falls away.  In her place sits a woman of terrifying moral   conviction. Her shoulders straighten. Her voice,  once soft and placating, becomes clear and strong.  

“Yes,” she says, her eyes locking onto his. “I  did this. And I am proud of it.” She then proceeds   to do something that leaves the veteran Gestapo  officer stunned. She turns the interrogation on   its head. She doesn’t beg or bargain. She lectures  him.

 She speaks of freedom, of conscience, of the   duty of every German to resist this criminal  government. “What we wrote and said is also   believed by many others,” she tells him. “They  just don’t dare to express themselves as we did.”   She speaks with such passion and intellectual  force that Mohr, a man whose job is to intimidate,   finds himself on the defensive, forced to justify  the actions of the state he serves.

 For a few   hours, in that small, grey room, a 21-year-old  student puts the entire Nazi regime on trial. The formal trial is a grotesque parody  of justice. On February 22nd, 1943,   just four days after their arrest, Sophie, Hans,  and the now-captured Christoph Probst are brought   before the Volksgerichtshof, the People’s  Court.

 The judge is Roland Freisler, the   infamous “hanging judge,” a fanatical Nazi known  for his screaming, theatrical tirades against   defendants. He is flown in specially from Berlin.  The outcome is predetermined. There is no jury,   no real defense. Freisler shrieks, he insults,  he foams with rage. He calls them traitors, scum,   a disgrace to Germany.

 Hans tries to speak,  to defend their ideals, but he is shouted   down. When Sophie is asked if she has anything to  say, she looks directly at the raging Freisler,   her voice cutting through his hate-filled  courtroom. “Somebody, after all, had to make   a start,” she says calmly. “What we wrote and  said is in the minds of all of you. You just   don’t have the courage to say it aloud.” It is the  final act of defiance. The verdict is read: Death.

February 22nd, 1943. Stadelheim  Prison. Mid-afternoon. The verdict of the People’s Court is not a  surprise, but the speed of its execution is   designed for maximum cruelty. The sentences are  to be carried out that very same day. There will   be no lengthy appeals, no time for goodbyes to  fester into prolonged agony.

 Just the swift,   brutal efficiency of the state. Sophie, Hans, and  Christoph are brought back to Stadelheim Prison,   their final earthly destination. In  an extraordinary act of mercy from   the prison staff, who have been moved  by the dignity of the young defendants,   Sophie’s parents, Robert and Magdalena,  are allowed a brief, final visit.

They are brought into a small visiting room.  Robert Scholl, the man whose lessons on freedom   and conscience had planted the first seeds of  this day, looks at his children. His face is   etched with a grief so profound it seems to have  aged him a decade in a few hours, but his eyes   are filled with an unbearable pride.

 “You will go  down in history,” he tells them, his voice thick   but steady. “There is such a thing as justice.  Gelt, Sophie?” (“Right, Sophie?”). Sophie’s   response is a small, sad smile, a look of  profound love for the father who taught her   to think and a quiet acceptance of the price for  doing so. “Yes, Papa,” she says. “But such a fine,   sunny day, and I have to go.

 But what  does my death matter, if through us,   thousands of people are awakened and stirred to  action?” She then turns to her mother, Magdalena,   whose face is a mask of pure, silent pain.  Sophie’s final words to her are of simple comfort,   the words of a daughter to a mother: “We  will see each other again in eternity.” After her parents leave, she is granted one last  meeting with Hans and Christoph.

 The three of   them, the core of the White Rose, are allowed to  share a final cigarette. There are no hysterics,   no panicked goodbyes. There is a strange, almost  serene sense of peace among them. They have done   what they felt they had to do. They have  not betrayed their ideals or each other.   Christoph Probst, the young father, worries about  his wife and children.

 Hans, ever the protective   older brother, tries to keep their spirits  up. Sophie is the calmest of all. Her faith,   a deep and personal Christianity that  had underpinned her entire worldview,   gives her a strength that seems almost superhuman. At 5:00 PM, the guards come for her. It is time.

  By law, the executions are to be carried out in   the order they were sentenced, and Sophie’s name  was read first. She walks from her cell down the   short corridor towards the execution chamber.  Her steps are firm. The prison chaplain who   walks with her later recounts that she walked  as if going to a celebration. She does not weep.   She does not tremble. She enters the small,  stark room.

 At one end stands the Fallbeil,   the guillotine. Its steel blade, angled and  heavy, gleams dully in the electric light.   Her last recorded words, spoken to the  executioner and the few officials present,   are a final, defiant testament. “How can we expect  righteousness to prevail,” she asks, “when there   is hardly anyone willing to give himself up  individually to a righteous cause?” She turns,   her voice clear and ringing with conviction  for all to hear. “The sun still shines.

” She is positioned on the device.  The executioner, Johann Reichhart,   does his work with swift, practiced precision.  A lever is pulled. The blade falls. It is over   in less than a second. Sophia Magdalena Scholl  is dead. She is 21 years old. Shortly after,   Hans is led into the same room.

 His final  words, shouted just as the blade falls,   are a last cry for the Germany he dreamed of:  “Es lebe die Freiheit!”—”Long live freedom!”   Christoph Probst follows. And then, silence falls  over Stadelheim Prison. The Nazi state believed it   had silenced them. They had chopped down the  roses, but they had misunderstood. The real   power of the White Rose was never in the flowers  themselves, but in the seeds they had scattered.