White Rose

“And what is the German people doing? It sees nothing, hears nothing. Blindly follows its seducers into destruction. Victory at any cost—that's what they’ve written on their flag. I will fight to the end, says Hitler, but the war is already lost… Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, protection of individual citizens against the whims of criminal, violent states—these are the foundations of the new Europe.”

The words above are from one of six leaflets secretly distributed in the early years of World War II by students at the University of Munich, united in the anti-Nazi group known as the White Rose. They scrawled graffiti on the Bavarian government building: “Down with Hitler” and “Hitler – Mass Murderer.”

On February 18, 1943, 21-year-old biology and philosophy student Sophie Scholl, and her 24-year-old brother Hans, a medical student, brought a suitcase full of pamphlets into the university building. Most were left in hallways for students to find after lectures, but Sophie threw the last batch down into the atrium from the top floor. She was seen by the janitor, who reported her to the Gestapo.

All those arrested were brought the next day before the Volksgerichtshof or "People's Court," a Nazi mockery of the rule of law that during the war sent thousands to execution or concentration camps. The trial began just three days after the arrest. Hans attempted to take full responsibility to protect his sister, but Sophie, hoping to shield others in the group, declared that she had brought and scattered the leaflets. During the trial, she repeatedly interrupted judge Roland Freisler, at one point telling him:

“Soon you will be standing where I stand now. Someone had to start. What we wrote and said is what many others think—they just don’t dare to speak it out loud like we did.”

Sophie and Hans Scholl, along with fellow member Christoph Probst, were convicted of treason and sentenced to death. Just hours later, at 5 p.m. on February 22, they were executed by guillotine at Stadelheim Prison in Munich. Sophie was executed first. Hans’s final words were: Long live freedom.”

I didn’t learn about the heroic and tragic story of the White Rose in school. Resistance movements among Germans didn’t fit with the official WWII narrative that prevailed during my education. But my graduating class at the College of Europe in Bruges was named after Sophie and Hans Scholl. The bridge in Strasbourg connecting the Council of Europe to the European Court of Human Rights is named White Rose.

The courage of those Munich students—and other acts of resistance in the Third Reich—doesn’t change the fact that most Germans, out of fear or opportunism, looked away during Nazi crimes, while many actively participated. Yet the White Rose is still an important story, especially for postwar Germany and its efforts to move beyond its dark legacy and reemerge as a democratic, civilized European state—not through silence or revisionism, but through accountability and a clear condemnation of the crimes. In 2013, on the 70th anniversary of the White Rose executions, then-German President Joachim Gauck, a former East German pastor and human rights advocate, said their courage “allowed us to believe that not all Germans of the time were mute and cowardly servants of the regime.” The fourth leaflet the group distributed seventy years earlier ended with the words:

“We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience.”

While resistance to Nazism in the Third Reich never reached the level of organized movements found in other European countries—like Greece, Yugoslavia, Poland, or Norway—it’s estimated that some 77,000 Germans were executed for opposing the regime, not counting tens of thousands more imprisoned in camps, many of whom didn’t survive. Some resistance came from communist groups like Rote Kapelle (Red Orchestra), but the major influence came from segments of the Catholic and Protestant churches, or individuals within them, who had opposed Nazi policies since the 1930s.

That was also true for the White Rose. Though Hans and Sophie Scholl were raised in a liberal family—their parents opposed Nazism from the start—both were involved in Nazi youth organizations in their early years: Hans in the Hitler Youth, Sophie in the League of German Girls. Their views began to change when they learned about atrocities committed against Jews and Soviet POWs, and especially after encountering Catholic and Protestant clergy and theologians.

In their fourth leaflet, they addressed fellow believers directly:

“I ask you, those who claim to be Christians: in this struggle to preserve what is most precious to you, is there hesitation, scheming, delay in the hope that someone else will raise the sword to defend you? Has God not given you the strength and courage to fight against this force? Evil must be attacked where it is strongest—and that is in Hitler’s power.”

Of course, Germany’s situation was very specific. In most other occupied countries, organized resistance came from different social and political groups, though there were also many religious individuals who opposed fascism out of ethical or spiritual conviction. These are the same convictions that some today try to abuse as justification for collaboration.

The story of the White Rose and other anti-fascist resistance fighters across Europe matters because it forms part of the moral foundation of postwar European unification—a project led in large part by Christian Democrats like Konrad Adenauer, Alcide de Gasperi, and Robert Schuman. These leaders did not build their anti-fascism in spite of their Christian beliefs, but precisely because of them. It was on the basis of these principles that they laid the foundation for European integration, grounded in pluralist democracy, the rule of law, and human rights, where citizens can freely and fairly choose their leaders, and where power is constrained by law.

Guided by their Christian values, they advocated for a society that defends human dignity and builds on solidarity—both among individuals and among nations. They fulfilled the White Rose’s vision of a new Europe. The European project stands as the antithesis of the continent’s bloodiest experience and as a bulwark against the return of fascism, resurgent nationalism, and hatred of others. Respect for shared European civilizational values and principles is the test by which the European project—and with it, the security and prosperity of its citizens—will survive or fall.

This does not mean that Christian Democrats were the only ones involved in postwar reconstruction. For example, Belgian leader Paul-Henri Spaak was a socialist. But it is an undeniable fact that anti-fascism is the shared platform on which various democratic political forces—with all the differences of opinion that pluralistic democracy allows and requires—have built the European project over decades.

Today, undermining those democratic European values and belittling anti-fascism in the name of some rebranded Eastern-style conservatism, moral prejudice, or "return" to supposed Christian European roots is a crude insult to those who, in the name of those same Christian values, laid the foundations of postwar Europe—and especially to those who, in the name of those values, sacrificed their lives in resistance to Nazism and fascism.

Long live freedom!