The Edelweiss Pirates
The Edelweiss Pirates were a group that opposed the Hitler Youth. The Hitler Youth had begun as a sort of club started by Adolf Hitler in 1936 to imbue German youth with the ideas and policies of the Nazi party. The Edelweiss Pirates were more of a group of unconnected youth movements in Western Germany, whose goal was to be the diametrical opposite of the ideas preached by the Hitler Youth. Most Western German cities had a form of the Edelweiss Pirates, though they were not all called that. The group in the city of Cologne, for example, was known as the Navajos. However, there were a few similarities that linked all of the groups together. They were all opposed to the way the Nazis tried to control the lives of youths and most basically were anti-authority and anti-conformist. The Edelweiss Pirates primarily worked by offering a way of life outside of Nazi control, like taking camping trips where they were free to talk about forbidden topics or sing songs forbidden by the Nazis. Most German officers saw these groups as a small scale irritance and punishments were light. However, this would not do for Heinrich Himmler, a famous officer of the Nazi party who directed the killing of over 11 million people. He believed that all Germans must be completely obedient to the Nazi Party and to Hitler. By 1942, Himmler ordered that all Edelweiss Pirates members were to be sent to concentration camps for 2-3 years. And in 1944, 6 youths were hanged. After the Nazis were defeated, the Allied forces occupied Germany and stamped out the remaining Edelweiss Pirates to make a complete break with any remnants of Nazi Germany.
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Jean Jülich (right, with guitar) and his fellow Edelweiss Pirates
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The White Rose
The White Rose memorial at the Ludwig-Maximilian-University in Munich
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The White Rose was an anti-war and anti-Nazi group whose members all attended Munich University and produced anti-war and anti-Nazi leaflets as well as creating anti-Nazi grafitti. Because Germany was a police state and whether it was true or not, people believed that informants were everywhere, so membership of the White Rose was kept very small. The group was active from June 1942 to February 1943, and in that time produced six anti-Nazi leaflets and took part in a grafitti campaign in Europe. It was while they were distributing leaflets that two of the members (Hans and Sophie Scholl) were caught. They were arrested by the Gestapo (Nazi secret police) on February 18, 1943, when they were caught carrying all the evidence needed to arrest them. To protect the other members, the Scholls initially admitted full responsibility, but the Gestapo found it hard to believe that only two people were involved and they eventually gave up the names of the other members. Hans, Sophie, and Christopher Probst were all tried on February 22, 1943, found guilty, sentenced to death by beheading, and executed all in the same day. More trials took place in the following months, where the other members were tried. However, not all of the members were executed and some only sentenced to prison. Before World War II in Europe ended, the final leaflet produced by the White Rose movement was smuggled out of Germany and handed to the advancing Allies. They printed millions of copies of it and dropped them from planes all over the country.
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