When I think about Memorial Day, I think about sacrifice. I (Allison) think about my grandfathers Lewis Buck who served in the US Army in Belgium and Deahl Williams who served in the Air Force in World War 2. I think about Zach’s grandfather Elmer Theiroff who went from farmer to serving the US Army in the Philippines. I think about those who gave their lives for freedom, people who were brave and chose courage over comfort. In America, these are the soldiers we remember, the heroes in uniform.
So it might seem strange to have a blog on Memorial Day about two German teenagers growing up and even participating in Hitler’s regime, some of the darkest hours in human history. They were part of the group that our grandfathers were fighting. Why would we write a blog about them? Weren’t they on the wrong side?
Yes, they started off on the wrong side, but they didn’t end up there. And their faith in Jesus had a lot to do with it. Hans and Sophie Scholl were Lutherans growing up in Nazi Germany. At first glance, they seemed like most college students: idealistic, thoughtful, and excited about their future. But, when faced with evil, they decided to stand up and speak out.
They paid for that courage with their lives.
Like many kids in Germany in the 1930s, Hans and Sophie joined the Hitler Youth as teenagers. This was a group that exploded from 100,000 members in 1932 to 4 million youth in 1935, just three years later. At first, it seemed exciting, like joining the Boy Scouts. Community, purpose, uniforms, torch-lit rallies all felt like a fun movement. But underneath the surface, Hans and Sophie’s father Robert saw what was coming. He warned them about the Nazi ideology: “These are wolves. They are misusing the German people terribly.”
As they grew older, Hans and Sophie began to see it too. They loved reading, thinking, hiking, discussing big ideas. But Nazi Germany didn’t want young people to think for themselves. It wanted control. Uniformity. Obedience. One day Hans was caught reading the books of Stefan Zweig, the great Jewish writer. He loved Stefan Zweig’s short stories. But because Zweig was a Jew, Hans was told all of his writing was trash. That made Hans pause. What does race have to do with good writing and stories? It didn’t make sense to him.
Hans and Sophie were Lutherans, the largest protestant group (60%) in Germany at that time. They were raised reading the Bible, going to church, and believing that all people mattered to God. But they soon realized something terrifying: everything the Nazis stood for was a direct attack on the message of Jesus. Where Hans and Sophie believed the Gospel taught that every human life has dignity, Nazism preached power, race, and superiority. Where Christianity calls us to love our neighbors, the Nazis told people to hate and divide. Nazism reduced humanity to animals, and the Scholl siblings just couldn’t accept it. So they, along with a few fellow students and Christian friends, started a secret group.
They called themselves The White Rose. No one knows for sure where the name came from, but their mission was clear: resist the Nazi regime by telling the truth. The group read many Christian authors including Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine. In the summer of 1942, pooling their money together, they bought a typewriter, a duplicator, stacks of paper and stamps and wrote thousands of anonymous leaflets. Each one boldly called for Germans to reject Hitler’s lies and return to God.
These weren’t angry rants. There was not a single mention of violence. They were carefully written, deeply theological, and passionate. Here is a part of the very first leaflet the published,
Every individual has to consciously accept his responsibility as a member of western and Christian civilization in this last hour to arm himself as best he can to work against the scourge of humanity against fascism and every other form of the absolute state adopt passive resistance wherever you are block the functioning of this atheistic war machine before it is too late before our last city is a heap of rubble like cologne and before the last youth of our nation bleeds to death of the hubris of a subhuman.
Here is another part of the leaflets they produced,
“Every word that comes from Hitler’s mouth is a lie. When he says peace, he means war… When he speaks of God, he really means the power of evil—the fallen angel, Satan.”
They signed them “The White Rose.” And, for months, these leaflets spread quietly across Germany, hand-delivered, mailed, and even smuggled into other cities. Their voices were small, but they were speaking. They would not be silent.
In February 1943, less than one later, Hans and Sophie brought a suitcase full of leaflets to their university in Munich. As students left class, the siblings scattered the papers from a balcony down into the courtyard. The building’s caretaker, a loyal Nazi, saw them and called for their arrest.
Surprisingly, they didn’t run. Were they wanting to be martyrs? Did they know the jig was up? Were they tired of hiding? Who knows. But they were brave despite the worst happening.
At first the Nazi officers didn’t believe they were guilty. The young adults were well-educated, from good families, middle class, even had been part of the Hilter’s Youth group. Surely they weren’t the culprits. When Sophie was interrogated, the officer even gave her a chance to get off Scott-free by blaming her brother. She refused. “You are wrong,” she said. “I would do it all over again.”
Even in jail, Sophie and Hans were brave. Sophie’s cellmate remembers how she would look out through the barred windows at the sunshine and talk to herself out loud saying, “How many are dying? How many young lives full of hope? What difference will my death make if our actions arouse thousands of people?”
A few days later, the siblings were tried, sentenced to death, and executed by guillotine. They were allowed to see their parents one last time. Their mother and father brought them sweets and spoke proudly and lovingly to them. It would be the last time they ever saw each other.
Hans and Sophie were brave to the very end. Sophie was executed first. She left a single word written on a scrap of paper on her bed:
“Freedom.”
Hans’ final words before the guillotine fell echoed his sister’s last message:
“Long live freedom.”
Hans and Sophie Scholl were just 24 and 21 years old. They didn’t have guns. They didn’t lead armies. But they had something stronger: faith, conviction, and courage born from the love of Christ. They believed in a God who had already won the ultimate victory.
This Memorial Day, as we honor those who have laid down their lives for our freedom, let’s also remember that there are many kinds of courage. Hans and Sophie remind us that boldness isn’t always about being loud, it’s about being faithful. Sometimes, loving your neighbor means speaking up.
Sometimes, being a disciple of Jesus means standing apart, even when it costs everything.
We, like them, all started off on the wrong side of the tracks according to Jesus. Our sin separated us from ever having a chance at eternal life. But Jesus came and through His life, death, and resurrection brought us back to His side as His children. The stories we tell and the life we show matters. Their Lutheran roots mattered. What their parents taught them and what they learned in church made all the difference in their short lives. And their legacy is a light that still shines.
In a world that still wrestles with evil, injustice, and lies, we need people who live like Hans and Sophie Scholl. People who carry the truth in love. People who know who they are, who they follow, and what they’re willing to give for others.
That’s what Memorial Day is about, not just honoring the past, but living in such a way that the sacrifice wasn’t in vain.
