There were many women who fought and died as well as any man during the war, but few fought and died the way Sophie Scholl did. While still a teen attending the University of Munich, she began an underground propaganda operation with her brother and a friend called The White Rose. They printed and distributed pamphlets calling Hitler a mass murderer, and saying that he has seduced the German people. After months of frustrated investigation into who was distributing these leaflets, the Gestapo caught a break when the handyman at the University, who was a Nazi party member, saw Sophie and her brother carrying the pamphelets and reported them. These ruthless state police "interrogated" the youths for months before their trial. When Sophie finally appeared in court beside her co-conspirators, she had a broken leg. Nonetheless, she face the sociopathic Nazi judge and called him out in his own courtroom: “You know the war is lost. Why don't you have the
courage to face it?” You can imagine his reaction. He sentenced them to beheading. Fortunately, Sophie is neither demonized for her defiance nor wholly forgotten by her people. In 2005 a film called Sophie Scholl: The Final Days was released in Germany. But she was such an outstanding young lady that I couldn't pass over her story after I read it.
Sophie with her brother, 1942. I hope that's a real flower pinned to her shirt.
Did I mention she had great hair?
