Wilhelm "Willi" Graf (2 January 1918 – 12 October 1943) was a German member of the White Rose resistance group in Nazi Germany.

In 1922, his family moved to Saarbrücken, where his father ran a wine wholesaler and managed the Johannishof, the second largest banquet hall in the city.

It was not long before he joined, at the age of eleven, the Bund Neudeutschland, a Catholic youth movement for young men in schools of higher learning, which was banned after Hitler and the Nazis came to power in 1933.

In 1934, Graf joined the Grauer Orden ("Grey Order"), another Catholic movement which became known for its anti-Nazi rhetoric.

[6] The parade was dominated by swastikas, brown-shirted Hitler Youth troops marching in formation, and "Sieg Heils."

However, Graf and his friends marched under their tattered school flag, making great effort to stand out from their peers.

[8] He conducted an in-depth study of Christian authors in his teenage years, with a special focus on works by Romano Guardini.

Soon after, Graf was transferred to Russia, where he would stay until he was allowed to return to Munich to continue his studies in April 1942.

[1] As he later wrote to a friend while stationed in Russia, "A war has started that I can't compare to anything else, even here in this land that has always been a mystery to us.

"[16] Around this time, Graf began to take part in discussions with Scholl, Schmorell, Probst, and their friends.

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

[17] These leaflets were left in telephone books in public phone booths, mailed to professors and students, and taken by courier to other universities for distribution.

Soon after returning to Munich in November 1942, Graf travelled to Bonn, officially to arrange a fencing tournament, unofficially to ask Marianne Thoeren to marry him.

Graf was a recruiter for the group: from 20 to 24 January 1943, he traveled to Cologne, Bonn, Saarbrücken, Freiburg, and Ulm, armed with copies of the fifth leaflet and a hectograph machine.

With the end goal in mind to recruit some of his Graue Orden friends, he asks forty people to join.

While they agreed with the decision to resist National Socialism, they told Graf that they believed that he and his friends had only a 2% chance of success.

[6] On 15 February 1943, Scholl, Schmorell, and Graf snuck out and graffitied the Feldherrnhalle,[6] then a monument to the Nazis who were killed during the failed Beer Hall Putsch.

[16] On 18 February 1943, Sophie and Hans Scholl went to the Ludwig Maximilian University to leave flyers out for the students to read.

At around midnight on 18 February, Gestapo agents arrested Graf when he returned to his apartment after meeting with his cousins.

At his trial, Graf was sentenced to death at the Volksgerichtshof for high treason, Wehrkraftzersetzung (undermining the troops' spirit), and furthering the enemy's cause.

[23] During this 6-month period the Gestapo used psychological torture to try to extract information from Graf about other White Rose members and other anti-Nazi movements.

[6] Graf never gave up any names, taking on blame for the White Rose activities in order to protect others who had not yet been arrested.

[26][2] In 2017, the Archbishop of Munich and Freising, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, initiated the first step in the process of beatification, a preliminary investigation in which theologians and historians will analyse the life and writings of Graf.

[27][28] In October 2020, the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising made it known that they are in the middle of preparing the process of beatification for Willi Graf.