Opposition from the young The White Rose Group

In 1942, five students and one staff member at Munich University were drawn together by their disgust at the increasing brutality of the Nazi regime in Germany and occupied Europe. The key players were a brother and sister, Hans and Sophie Scholl, who enlisted the help of a professor known to be critical of the Nazi regime. They secretly produced and distributed a set of leaflets, entitled the White Rose, which called attention to the inhuman acts being committed in Germany's name.

They managed to avoid detection for over a year, but they were always at risk. In 1943, two weeks after the German defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad, the White Rose distributed leaflets which bitterly condemned Hitler for 'senselessly and irresponsibly' sending Germany's young men to their death. It proved to be the group's last protest. A university porter exposed them to the authorities. Within five weeks, all six had been arrested, tried and guillotined. The university staff and students joined in praising the porter for his patriotic action.

The fate of the White Rose illustrates the main weakness of all the opposition groups. Short of assassinating the Nazi leaders, which was so desperate a notion that it was usually rejected on practical, if not moral, grounds, there was little that could be done to organize effective opposition.

Edelweiss

One set of German resisters with strong Catholic associations was the group of young people who took the Edelweiss flower as their badge. The flower, which grows in profusion in Bavaria in southern Germany, symbolized the group's wish to promote lasting German values in the face of the amoral doctrines of Nazism. As an organization, Edelweiss spread to many parts of Germany. Reacting against this, the Gestapo, which claimed that some sections of the Hitler Youth (see page 93) had been infiltrated by the movement, was ferocious in hunting down Edelweiss members. In Cologne in 1944, twelve youngsters known to belong to Edelweiss were hanged in public. As with all the resistance movements, Edelweiss is remembered for the heroism of its members rather than for any great influence it had on the German people.