Hans Scholl

Hans Scholl
German stamp of Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie
Born	Hans Fritz Scholl 22 September 1918 Ingersheim, Germany
Died	22 February 1943(1943-02-22) (aged 24) Munich, Germany
Parent(s)	Robert Scholl Magdalena Müller
Relatives	Inge Scholl (sister) Sophie Scholl (sister)

Hans Fritz Scholl (22 September 1918 – 22 February 1943) was a founding member of the White Rose resistance movement in Nazi Germany. Along with his sister Sophie, he was executed by the Nazis.

Scholl was born in Ingersheim (now a part of Crailsheim, Baden-Württemberg). His father, Robert, later became the mayor of Forchtenberg am Kocher. Hans was the second of six children:

In 1933 he joined the Hitler Youth, but quickly became disillusioned when he realised the true meaning behind the group. He was raised as a Lutheran, although he did at one point consider converting to Catholicism. After this, Hans Scholl studied in the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Medizin (medicine).

In the early summer of 1942, Scholl, his sister Sophie, Willi Graf, Kurt Huber, Christoph Probst, and Alexander Schmorell co-authored six anti-Nazi Third Reich political resistance leaflets. Calling themselves the White Rose, they instructed Germans to practice nonviolent resistance against the Nazis. The group had been horrified by the behavior of some German soldiers on the Eastern Front, where they had witnessed cruelty towards Jews in Poland and Russia.

The leaflets were distributed around the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, where they studied, and the University of Hamburg. They also mailed the leaflets to doctors, scholars, and pub owners throughout Germany.