ABSTRACT
One night in February 1943, three students of the University of Munich painted the slogans “Freedom!” and “Down with Hitler!” on the walls of the city’s most sacred Nazi shrine, the Feldherrnhalle, scene of Hitler’s failed putsch of 1923. Guarded day and night by an SS honour guard, the building incorporated a memorial plaque to the fallen Storm Troopers, which citizens were not allowed to pass without raising their arms in the Führer salute. To desecrate this hallowed site under the very noses of the SS was plainly an act calling for the most exceptional bravery. For this and other acts of protest against the Hitler regime, including the printing and distribution of thousands of anti-Nazi leaflets, Hans Scholl, Alex Schmorell and Willi Graf, together with other members of the “White Rose” opposition group, were to pay with their lives before the year was out, many of them dying on the guillotine (Dumbach and Newborn 2006: 140).
