The White Rose: Second Leaflet

The White Rose was a nonviolent, intellectual anti-Nazi resistance group active in Munich, Germany, during the Second World War. The group primarily operated by secretly writing, duplicating, and distributing anonymous leaflets denouncing Adolf Hitler and the atrocities of the Third Reich.

The second leaflet was primarily written in 1942 by core group members Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell. It specifically and directly addressed the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews in occupied Poland, which the authors considered a terrible stain on the German nation.

The White Rose group produced and distributed a total of six leaflets during their resistance campaign. The second leaflet, which detailed the atrocities of the Holocaust, was one of the most direct and dangerous documents the group authored.

Hans Scholl, Alexander Schmorell, and their collaborators secretly printed the leaflets using a duplicating machine hidden in Munich. They distributed them by placing them in public telephone books, sending them anonymously via the mail to academics, and leaving them in university courtyards.