White Rose Society Warning

The White Rose Society was a group of five students at the University of Munich arrested by the Gestapo and beheaded in 1943 for distributing leaflets alleged to "sabotage the war effort . . .thereby giving aid to the enemy . . .and weakening the armed security of the nation."

The following is from their sixth and first leaflets, pleas for citizen opposition to policies of national aggression and government denial of civil liberties:

“It has become a mathematical certainty that Hitler is leading the German people into the abyss. Hitler cannot win the war; he can only prolong it . . . But what are the German people doing? Blindly they follow their seducers into ruin. Victory at any price! is inscribed on their banner. Are we to be forever a nation (that) is hated and rejected by all mankind? The imperialist ideology of force, from whatever side it comes, must be shattered for all time . . ."

"If . . . people are already so corrupted and spiritually crushed that they do not raise a hand, frivolously trusting in a questionable faith in lawful order of history; if they surrender man’s highest principle, that which raises him above all other God’s creatures, his free will; if they abandon the will to take decisive action and turn the wheel of history and thus subject it to their own rational decision; if they are so devoid of all individuality, have already gone so far along the road toward turning into a spiritless and cowardly mass—then, yes, they deserve their downfall."

"Do not forget that every people deserve the regime it is willing to endure.”