They are actually inconspicuous-looking, white, densely printed pieces of paper that young students in Munich are doing something extraordinarily courageous with. They belong to the White Rose, a resistance group in the Third Reich. Their names are Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf and Hans and Sophie Scholl. Professor Karl Huber has also joined them. With leaflets they want to call on the population to resist Hitler.

In the summer of 1942, they anonymously sent the first four issues of their leaflets to intellectuals in Munich. They distributed the fifth leaflet at the end of January 1943, and thousands of copies of it also reached other German cities through comrades-in-arms. On February 18, 1943, Hans and Sophie Scholl let a stack of their sixth flyer fly through the atrium of the university in Munich. It is their undoing - the siblings are betrayed, arrested and later executed.

Access to all STERN PLUS content and articles from the print magazine

ad-free

Already registered?