Sophie Scholl and the White Rose movement, while less known to Americans, is a powerful example of youthful resistance to the Nazi Regime. Within the United States, Sophie Magdalena Scholl is not the best-known resistance fighter, but her story is a powerful one.
On February 22, , she was beheaded for treason at just 21 years old. Sophie was born in May , the fourth of six children to an upper-middle class family in the south of Germany. When Sophie was 10, the family moved to Ulm, a mid-size southern town dating back to the Middle Ages, where her father worked as state auditor and tax consultant. After the Nazis came to power in January , Sophie, along with most of her siblings, was an excited and happy follower of the National Socialist cult of youth.
The teenager believed in the ideals propagated at the time. Similar to many of their contemporaries, Sophie was particularly intrigued by the focus on nature and communal experiences. Lively discussions were a daily occurrence at the dinner table, teaching the children the value of open and honest conversation—a rarity at the time.
These associations shared and propagated a love for nature, outdoor adventures, as well as the music, art and literature of German Romanticism. Originally seen as compatible with Nazi ideology by many, these alternative groups were slowly dissolved and finally banned by Hans remained active in one such group, however, and was arrested in along with several of the Scholl siblings.
The older Scholl brothers were sent off to fight on the front. She graduated high school in the spring of and started an apprenticeship to become a kindergarten teacher.
