SCHONDORF AM AMMERSEE, Germany — Let’s pick up where we left off last week.

In war, the people almost always lose in one way or another–with some making the ultimate sacrifice–regardless of whether their countries prevail. Ultimate sacrifices leave voids among families and friends that no one can fill. The war that ended in 1945 was no exception.

Along the way are those showing determination, guts, and courage in the face of adversity that those of us who haven’t endured it can’t even begin to imagine.

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Speaking at the 100th anniversary celebration of Landheim Schondorf, a Bavarian boarding school of which her parents, Ernst and Julia Reisinger, were among the founders, Dr. Hedwig Theisen told generations of faculty and alumni in 2005, “Those of you who haven’t lived in a dictatorship can’t imagine what it’s like.”

One alumnus who died during World War II was Christoph Probst. A special plaque at the school honors his memory.

He and other heroes died not from a battle of bullets but from a battle of ideas.

Together, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich students Probst, Willi Graf, Alexander Schmorell, and siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl–all except Sophie Scholl were medical students–and philosophy and music Professor Kurt Huber carried out resistance under the name “die weisse Rose,” meaning “the White Rose.”

Graf, Schmorell, and Hans Scholl were among University of Munich medical students who had served on the Russian front. There they observed horrors of war, this one in particular.

Schmorell and Hans Scholl decided it was time to take action, even though they well understood the grave danger of what they would undertake.

Using a portable typewriter in the early summer of 1942, they wrote four resistance leaflets urging opposition to statism, particularly national socialism. They quoted the Bible, ancient philosophers, and German writers. They left the leaflets in telephone directories in phone booths, mailed them to professors and students, and had them taken to, and distributed at, other universities.

For obvious personal-security reasons, distributors travelling by train stowed leaflet-filled suitcases in compartments other than those where they rode.

The resistance paused from mid-summer to early fall 1942, while Graf, Schmorell, and Hans Scholl were again on the Russian front.

Thereafter, Graf, Sophie Scholl, and Huber joined the group.

In January 1943, thousands of copies of the fifth leaflet were printed. They were distributed throughout Germany and Austria.

That, of course, alarmed–nay, infuriated–the powers that be.

The fateful day was Feb. 18, 1943. Hans and Sophie Scholl took a leaflet-filled suitcase to the University of Munich and distributed stacks of them while classes were in session. As they were leaving, they noticed a few leaflets remained. When Sophie Scholl dropped them from the top of a stairwell atrium, a janitor saw the Scholls and alerted the secret-state police, which in German was called the Geheimstaatspolizei.

The GEheimSTAatsPOlizei was commonly called the Gestapo.

The Gestapo arrested the Scholls.

Sophie Scholl managed to ditch incriminating evidence beforehand. Hans Scholl, however, had a seventh leaflet that Probst had handwritten. Hans Scholl tried to tear it apart and swallow it. But the Gestapo recovered enough to match it to another handwriting sample by Probst in Hans Scholl’s apartment.

The Gestapo arrested Probst on Feb. 20, 1943.

Probst and the Scholls were found guilty during a sham trial before a sham court on Feb. 22, 1943, and executed the same day.

Schmorell and Huber were executed on July 13, 1943, Graf on Oct. 12, 1943.

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Later in 1943, the sixth leaflet came to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Shrewdly understanding the leaflet’s value, Churchill had not thousands but millions of copies printed.

The Royal Air Force dropped them over Germany.

The White Rose heroes’ resistance thereby continued in a way they may not have imagined.

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To their credit, students resisting the forces of socialism in modern-day American colleges and universities also show determination, guts, and courage in the face of adversity that those of us who haven’t endured it can’t even begin to imagine.

As bad as what they must resist can be, it’s little compared to what White Rose heroes resisted in the early 1940s.

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Randy Elf was Duke University’s first guest teacher at Landheim Schondorf, a Bavarian school in Schondorf am Ammersee.

COPYRIGHT © 2025 BY RANDY ELF