German Resistance - WWII

A dramatization of the final days of Sophie Scholl, one of the most famous members of the German World War II anti-Nazi resistance movement, The White Rose.




"The real damage is done by those millions who want to “survive.” The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes.Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves — or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honor, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe? From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn." —Sophie Scholl

During the Second World War, a small group of students at Munich University begin to question the decisions and sanity of Germany's Nazi government.



"Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be governed without opposition by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct." —The White Rose

In Wittelbacherpalais, Munich's prison and Gestapo center, middle-aged Else Gebel awaits trial for carrying anti-Nazi material. She serves as a clerk in the Gestapo office. On Thursday, 18 February 1943, two youths arrive at the prison, arrested for carrying anti-Reich pamphlets and suspected of dropping leaflets from the university tower and painting anti-Hitler signs along Ludwigstraße: Sophie, 21, and her brother Hans, 24 and back from the Russian front. Sophie is housed with Else, and for five days, as Sophie is interrogated and charges brought, the women form a bond based on simple interactions: poetry, tea, shared clothing, courage, love of freedom, and a promise Else gives Sophie.

"Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don’t dare express themselves as we did."
—Sophie Scholl

Traudl Junge, the final secretary for Adolf Hitler, tells of the Nazi dictator's final days in his Berlin bunker at the end of WWII.



"Of course, the terrible things I heard from the Nuremberg Trials, about the six million Jews and the people from other races who were killed, were facts that shocked me deeply. But I wasn’t able to see the connection with my own past. I was satisfied that I wasn’t personally to blame and that I hadn’t known about those things. I wasn’t aware of the extent. But one day I went past the memorial plaque which had been put up for Sophie Scholl in Franz Josef Strasse, and I saw that she was born the same year as me, and she was executed the same year I started working for Hitler. And at that moment I actually sensed that it was no excuse to be young, and that it would have been possible to find things out."
—Traudl Junge, Hitler’s personal secretary, in Im toten Winkel - Hitlers Sekretärin (2002) [Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary]

Documentary featuring interview footage with Traudl Junge, one of Hitler's personal secretaries during WWII.

Based on actual events, a plot to assassinate Hitler is unfurled during the height of WWII.



"I'm a soldier, I serve my country. But this is not my country. I was lying out there bleeding to death, thinking, if I die now, I leave nothing to my children but shame. I know now there is only one way to serve Germany, and doing so I'll be a traitor - I accept that. Just tell me, can these men see it through?" —Col. Claus von Stauffenberg

The story of Georg Elser, a carpenter who tried to assassinate Hitler in 1939.

From the director of Downfall (2004).

This film also tells the story of the resistance fighter Georg Elser.