We Will Not Be Silent: The White Rose Student Resistance Movement That Defied Adolf Hitler

Between June 1942 and February 1943, a student movement calling itself the White Rose wrote and clandestinely distributed six leaflets urging the German people to resist the tyranny of the Nazi regime. "Offer resistance -- resistance -- wherever you may be ... before it’s too late," said the first White Rose leaflet. Always traveling alone, brother and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl and a small group of friends carried leaflets in backpacks and suitcases, distributing them to groups in other cities or leaving them in telephone booths, on car windshields, or in apartment house lobbies. One of the few civilian resistance groups, the White Rose was the subject of a desperate manhunt by the Gestapo. Sophie and Hans were ultimately arrested at their university and quickly condemned to death. The arrest and execution of many other members of the White Rose followed. But copies of the leaflets found their way to London, and at the end of 1943, British warplanes dropped tens of thousands of White Rose leaflets over German towns.