White Rose Youth Opposition

The root and future of your society is the youth. To have them follow you is to have definite power in the future. Hitler seems to have been aware of this when molding his perfect community, therefore he did many things to have his ideology accepted by

In the case of trade unions, they were thought of as opponents to the Nazi regime due to the fact that most were

Although it is easy to say that the younger generations were easily won over closer examination revels that they might not have been so submissive. In 1936 the Hitler youth was made an a government agency which young Aryan German's were expected to join, leading us to believe that there may have been considerable numbers not attending these clubs, whether this is their parents protesting about Hitler's fascist rule or the children's personal choice is difficult to say.

The Nazi Party considered the youth of Germany as an important component for the future. Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nationalist Socialist German Worker’s Party (Nazi Party) wrote in his autobiography Mein Kamp (My Struggle), “whoever has the youth has the future” . Hitler considered the Germany’s youth and the treatment of the youth to be an imperative aspect to guarantee a secure future for Germany and Nazi party and he aimed to create a nation dedicated to the Nationalist Socialist view. In order to achieve this, Hitler exploited the education system and took control of the Youth movement. The Reich Ministry of Education took power of the schooling system permeated it with propaganda to indoctrinate the youth. The majority of the young people in Germany participated in youth groups such as the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls which trained them for military service and motherhood.

Sophie and her brother both start as being fans of Nazism and Hitler’s rein. “Hans was an active Hitler Youth leader- all the children had been members of the movement- the most disturbing aspect of their lives had been the conflicts this had aroused with their fathers” (Dumbach 15). They did this even against their father’s wishes and beliefs. They thought that it was the right thing to do because all of the other children around them were doing this same thing. They saw it as an exciting thing to participate in. They “felt themselves a part in the rebuildings of their deeply divided and demoralized nation”(24). Before Hitler came to power, when they listened to him speak they liked what he had to say about the youth. However they ended up changing these views. “All of the Scholl children had grown disillusioned with National Socialism, and after a few tension-filled years, the family was reconciled” (Dumbach 15). They do this because “their family stood posed against a regime that was making increasing inroads into the peace and autonomy of their lives”(15). Also Hans was appalled by the rules that the Hitler Youth had in place. “[A]n early confrontation that raised within him doubts about the organization to

But two teenage brothers, Kud and Jens Pedersen, wanted to do something about it. So, they came together with their friends and created the RAF Club. This was a resistance club fighting for their rights. The boys cut telephone lines leading right to Nazi headquarters and that was

The lack of resistance and ignorance of the ordinary German population cost many million Jewish lives. The Nazi party’s desire for popularity and support meant that if there was a protest, actions would be taken to keep the public happy, or quiet, with minimal loss of reputation and status. In other words, it meant that the people could win. One successful attempt of protest proved that this theory would have worked. The Rosenstrasse Protest that occurred on the 27th of February 1943 led to the release of several hundred Jewish men from a Gestapo headquarters. This symbolic protest highlighted the fact that if the public were to protest, the execution of Jews could have been slowed or even halted. Despite this, the Rosenstrasse Protest remained the only large protest against the Holocaust throughout its entire duration. This means that the German population continued to ignore and become passive bystanders of the genocide happening around

During the holocaust they urged other students to rebel and protest against the nazi movement. They also made sure the nazis had a hard time and they passed out pamphlets degrading and insulting the nazi group. The organization started a graffiti campaign which called for active opposition against the nazi regime. Their first acts of rebellion started in munich on June 27th, 1942, and ended with the arrest of the main group by the gestapo on February 18th, 1943. Members and supporters of the group who carried on distributing the pamphlets, faced trials by the Nazi people's court, and many were sentenced to death or served in prison.

“The Hitler Youth was founded in 1926” (“The Nazi Party”). As stated by Meinecke, “The Hitler Youth is not a boy scout or a girl guide organization… it is a compulsory Nazi formation which has consciously sought to breed hate, treachery, and cruelty into the minds and souls of every German child. It is in the true sense of the word education for death” (Conley). Hitler “based the Hitler Youth on anti-intellectualism, focusing on military training in preparation for becoming a soldier at 18” ("The Nazi Party”). The Hitler Youth was split up throughout the world, with some of the groups sent as far away as South America. “Baldur von Schirach was appointed the Reich Youth Leader” (“The Nazi Party”). There were age restrictions for the German Youth under Hitler. “German Youth could join the Hitler Youth beginning at the age of 10” (“The Nazi Party”). Hitler thought that the Hitler youth would help the “Third Reich last 1000 years” (Conley). The Hitler Youth played a major part in Hitler’s ultimate plan to eliminate the Jews, the

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his twin sister were born on February 6, 1906. His father was a prominent professor of neurology and psychiatry, his mother was a educated woman who home-schooled Dietrich. Dietrich was the first of the Bonhoeffers to choose to become a theologian. Bonhoeffer received his doctorate from the University of Berlin in 1927. While he did pastor a Lutheran Church for a little

When looking into the history of Germany and determining what led to the startling rise in Nazism in Germany and its detrimental effects on the social outcasts in Europe, it can be easy to deduce that the Nazi regime was one where Hitler walked in with his officials and took office by force. The truth is that, while the Nazi party is responsible for the atrocities that occurred before and during WWII, they would have not gotten far if it hadn’t been for the cooperation of the German people themselves. Life in the Third Reich provides proof through voting, youth programs and village life that the Nazi party rose into power with German support.

“the Hitler Youth was such a group, with its own departments of culture, school, press, propaganda and so on. All this early organization was done because Hitler realized that, if and when he finally managed to over throw the Weimar government, we would need to have something ready to take its place immediately.”

The white rose society were some of the first ones to start this revolt against hitler. Alexander Schmorell and Hans Scholl , both of whom were studying medicine, were the first LMU students to consider mounting an active campaign of resistance against the Nazi regime. Within two weeks, between the 27 June and 12 July 1942, they wrote, printed and distributed the first four “White Rose” protest

After years of mandatory national service, both Hans and Sophie found themselves attending the University of Munich. Because Hans had started going to the school a few years before Sophie joined him, he already had a group of friends that shared the same beliefs as him and his sister, so Sophie easily befriended them as well. Together they discussed the ugliness of war and Hitler’s actions. In time they came to believe that they should do more than just talk about their ideas and actually start acting upon them. The group decided to print and hand out leaflets calling resistance to Hitler, and began calling themselves the White Rose. Some of the members were Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf, and even a philosophy professor at the university named Kurt Huber (“Hans Scholl”).

Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg in 1809. His father Abraham Mendelssohn was a banker, while his mum Lea Mendelssohn was a highly educated artist and musician. Mendelssohn first had his piano lesson from his mum, but soon he was sent to study with the best teachers at that time such as Marie Bigot and Ludwig Burger. He also took composition lessons with Karl