22 June 2004

The White Rose

One of today's featured articles at Wikipedia caught my attention. The many stories of embarrassingly passive acquiescence to Hitler is a prejudiced but painful memory to Germans. The White Rose student resistance is an interesting contrast to that.

They rejected the Prussian militarism of Adolf Hitler's Germany and believed in a federated Europe that adhered to Christian principles of tolerance and justice. Quoting extensively from the Bible, Lao Tzu, Aristotle and Novalis, as well as Goethe and Schiller, they appealed to what they considered the German intelligentsia, believing that they would be intrinsically opposed to Nazism.

...

The Scholls and Probst were the first to stand trial, on February 22, 1943. They were found guilty of treason and executed by guillotine that same day. The other key members of the group were also beheaded later that summer. Friends and colleagues of the White Rose, who helped in the preparation and distribution of leaflets and in collecting money for the widow and young children of Probst, were sentenced to prison terms ranging from six months to ten years.

Apparently, there was a movie about them made in 1982.

[ posted by sstrader on 22 June 2004 at 1:28:38 AM in Culture & Society ]