What Student Revolutionaries in Nazi Germany Would Think About the Capital Insurrection
Almost 80 years later, the message of The White Rose could not be more relevant
Last month, I was speeding down a hill in Munich on a dilapidated bike when I hit a curb. I flew forward, hit the ground, and skid onto the gravel in front of about twenty Germans. Embarrassed, I hobbled to a bench in front of the University to nurse my wounds.
That’s when I saw it.
Build into the ground was a bronze replica of the leaflets of The White Rose movement. Drafted and distributed by a group of students, the leaflets were a call to action against the Nazis. I knew who the Scholls were, in fact, I’d written a biopic about them two years prior. Fate had shoved me off that bike, to the very spot of their memorial.
As young soldiers sucked into the German war machine, Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell witnessed terrible atrocities on the Russian front, and developed a deepened dislike of the Nazis and the war.
Years later at Munich University, their “radical” thinking was nurtured by…
