“Your heads will fall as well”

The (perhaps apocryphal) last words of Sophie Scholl (or maybe her brother Hans), on being handed a death sentence by the ‘People’s Tribunal’ of the Nazi state, the Volksgerichtshof.

Sophie Scholl, Hans Scholl and Christoph Probst were all members of the Weiße Rose anti-Nazi resistance movement. They were put on show trial before the quasi-judicial political court for distributing leaflets calling for the fall of the National Socialist regime, and for the end of the war.

Sixty-five years ago, on 22nd February 1943, all three were executed, their heads severed from their bodies by way of guillotine.

Alexander Schmorell and Kurt Huber followed them in July, and Willi Graf in October. Other Weiße Rose comrades were sentenced to long prison terms.