Why Care About the Rise of Fascism?

Sophie Scholl, member of The White Rose, an anti-Nazi secret cell in Munich 1942

This year an Instagram docudrama has attracted almost 800 thousand followers about a young woman who was born 100 years ago. With a weekly round-up in both German and English it is called Ich Bin Sophie Scholl. I am Sophie Scholl.

Who was Sophie Scholl? Most Germans can tell you, but very few Americans. In 1942 and ’43, in the midst of Germany’s total war and genocide of Jews, Sophie and her brother…