[1] They, as well as other members and supporters of the group who carried on distributing the pamphlets, faced show trials by the Nazi People's Court (Volksgerichtshof); many of them were imprisoned and executed.

Students from the University of Munich comprised the core of the White Rose: Hans Scholl, Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf, Christoph Probst, and Kurt Huber, a professor of philosophy and musicology.

Political indoctrination started at a very early age, and continued by means of the Hitler Youth with the ultimate goal of complete mind control.

Children were exhorted in school to denounce even their own parents for derogatory remarks about Hitler or Nazi ideology.The activities of the White Rose started in the autumn of 1942.

In summer 1942, the German Army was preparing a new military campaign in the southern part of the Eastern front to regain the initiative after their earlier defeat close to Moscow.

When Hans and Sophie Scholl were discovered and arrested whilst distributing leaflets at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich,[1] the regime reacted brutally.

The Scholl siblings, Christoph Probst, Willi Graf and Alexander Schmorell were all raised by independently thinking and wealthy parents.

A common trait of the various organizations was a romantic longing for a pristine state of things, and a return to older cultural traditions, with a strong emphasis on independent, non-conformist thinking.

Kurt Huber was known amongst his students for the political innuendos which he used to include in his university lectures, by which he criticized Nazi ideology by talking about classical philosophers like Leibniz.

He met Hans Scholl for the first time in June 1942, was admitted to the activities of the White Rose on 17 December 1942,[21] and became their mentor and the main author of the sixth pamphlet.

This Russian insight proved invaluable during their time there, and he could convey to his fellow White Rose members what was not understood or even heard by other Germans coming from the Eastern front.

[9] In summer 1942, Hans, Alexander, and Willi had to serve for three months on the Russian front alongside many other male medical students from the University of Munich.

[26] If the White Rose was indeed named after Traven's novel, Hans Scholl's interrogation testimony may have been intentionally vague in order to protect Josef Soehngen, the anti-Nazi bookseller who had supplied this banned book.

Söhngen had provided the White Rose members with a safe meeting place for exchange of information, and receipt of occasional financial contributions.

[13] After their experiences at the Eastern Front, having learned about mass murder in Poland and the Soviet Union, Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell felt compelled to take action.

[29] The students had become convinced during their military service that the war was lost: "Hitler kann den Krieg nicht gewinnen, nur noch verlängern.

"[30] On 3, 8, and 15 February 1943, Alexander Schmorell, Hans Scholl, and Willi Graf used tin stencils to write slogans like "Down with Hitler" and "Freedom" on the walls of the university and other buildings in Munich.

The People's Court first Senate, pursuant to the trial held on 22 February 1943, in which the officers were: President of the People's Court Dr. Freisler, Presiding, Director of the Regional Judiciary Stier, SS Group Leader Breithaupt, SA Group Leader Bunge, State Secretary and SA Group Leader Koglmaier, and representing the Attorney General to the Supreme Court of the Reich, Reich Attorney Weyersberg, [We]find: That the accused have in time of war by means of leaflets called for the sabotage of the war effort and armaments and for the overthrow of the National Socialist way of life of our people, have propagated defeatist ideas, and have most vulgarly defamed the Führer, thereby giving aid to the enemy of the Reich and weakening the armed security of the nation.

Eleven others were sentenced to prison, and Falk Harnack was acquitted of the accusations, which was unexpected, given that his brother and sister had been killed by the Nazis for subversive activities.

Judge Freisler had intended to issue death sentences against Wilhelm Geyer, Harald Dohrn, Josef Söhngen and Manfred Eickemeyer.

[37] The hopes of the White Rose members that the defeat at Stalingrad would incite German opposition against the Nazi regime and the war effort did not come true.

Coincidentally, on 18 February 1943, the same day that saw the arrests of Sophie and Hans Scholl and Willi Graf, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels delivered his Sportpalast speech, and he was enthusiastically applauded by his audience.

Further prosecutions took place until the end of World War II, and German newspapers continued to report, mostly in brief notes, that more people had been arrested and punished.

On 27 June 1943, the German author and Nobel prize winner Thomas Mann, in his monthly anti-Nazi broadcasts by the BBC called "Deutsche Hörer!"

Soviet Army propaganda issued a leaflet, wrongly attributed by later researchers to the National Committee for a Free Germany, in honour of the White Rose's fight for freedom.

[43] The text of the sixth leaflet of the White Rose was smuggled out of Germany through Scandinavia to the United Kingdom by the German lawyer and member of the Kreisau Circle, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke.

[7][49] With the end of communism in the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic in the early 1990s, the Gestapo interrogation protocols and other documents from Nazi authorities became publicly available.

[50] With the fall of Nazi Germany, the White Rose came to represent opposition to tyranny in the German psyche and was lauded for acting without interest in personal power or self-aggrandizement.

Their story became so well known that the composer Carl Orff claimed (falsely by some accounts)[51][52][53] to his Allied interrogators that he was a founding member of the White Rose and was released.

The use of the internet means that the conspiracy theorists can spread their misinformation and gain members across the world unlike the original White Rose who were limited in both regards to Germany.