Sophie Scholl
February 22, 1943: Sophie Scholl, her brother Hans Scholl, and their friend, Christoph Probst, are executed at Stadelheim Prison in Munich, Germany. This was, effectively, the end of one of the biggest resistance groups within Nazi Germany, Der Weiße Rose -- the White Rose Society.
Sophia Magdalena Scholl was born on May 9, 1921 in Forchtenburg, in Baden-Württemberg, in southwestern Germany. In 1941, Sophie and her brother Hans were among the University of Munich students who founded of Der Weiße Rose, an anti-Nazi resistance group. The group conducted an anonymous leaflet and graffiti campaign that called for active opposition to the Nazi regime.
(As far as I can tell, their choice of a white rose had nothing to do with its use as a symbol by Britain's royal House of York.)
On February 18, 1943, all 6 members were arrested in Munich. Four days later, they were found guilty of treason. The same day, they were executed by guillotine. Her last words were, "It is such a splendid sunny day, and I have to go. But how many have to die on the battlefield in these days, how many young, promising lives. What does my death matter if by our acts thousands are warned and alerted. Among the student body there will certainly be a revolt."
We may never know what the Scholls would have done had they survived the war. If Sophie had lived to see the reunification of Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall and Communist East Germany, she would have been 69 years old.
In 2003, 60 years after her death, Germans were invited by television network ZDF to participate in Unsere Besten (Our Best), a nationwide competition to choose the Top 10 most important Germans of all time. The 1st postwar Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, finished 1st; Martin Luther, founder of the Protestant Reformation, was 2nd; and Karl Marx, the founder of Communism, 3rd.
Voters under the age of 40 helped Scholl and her brother Hans to finish in 4th place, above composers Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven and Johannes Brahms; writers Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller and Friedrich Nietzsche; printing press inventor Johannes Gutenberg; Chancellors Otto von Bismarck and Willy Brandt; and physicist Albert Einstein.
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February 22, 1943 was a Monday. Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And the NHL had no games scheduled. So there were no scores on this historic day.
