- Hans Scholl
Hans Scholl (22 September 1918-22 February 1943) was a member of the White Rose resistance movement in Nazi Germany. Hans was born in Ingersheim, a district of Crailsheim. He, along with his sister, Sophie, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf, and Professor Kurt Huber, wrote and distributed six leaflets denouncing Nazi actions in Europe and calling on the German people to resist what their government was doing.
- Sophie Scholl
Sophia Magdalena Scholl (9 May 1921 - 22 February 1943), along with her brother Hans Scholl, were members of the White Rose non-violent resistance movement in Nazi Germany. They were both convicted of treason and executed by guillotine. Since the 1970s she has been celebrated as one of those Germans who actively opposed the Third Reich during the Second World War.
- Wilhelm Canaris
Wilhelm Franz Canaris (January 1, 1887 - April 9, 1945) was a German admiral and head of the "Abwehr", the German military intelligence service, from 1935 to 1944.
- Hans Oster
Hans Oster was deputy head of the Abwehr, under Wilhelm Canaris, and a dedicated opponent of Adolf Hitler and Nazism. He was a central resistance figure; as early as 1937 he was plotting a coup against Hitler, whereby Count Hans-Jürgen von Blumenthal and other officers would march into the Reich Chancellery and arrest him. The plan was aborted when the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain adopted the policy of appeasement. After the outbreak of the Second World War, …
- Julius Leber
Julius Leber was a German politician and a member of the German Resistance against the Nazi régime Leber was born in Biesheim, Alsace, out of wedlock, to Katharina Schubetzer and later adopted by her Freemason husband Jean Leber. Leber ended his school days in Breisach in 1908 with a "Mittlere Reife" qualification from a vocational high school, having completed training in salesmanship in a wallpaper factory in Breisach.
- Willi Graf
Willi Graf was a member of the White Rose (Weiße Rose) resistance group in Nazi Germany. Willi Graf's family moved to Saarbrücken in 1922, where his father ran a wine wholesaler's. He went to school at the "Ludwigsgymnasium". It was not long before he joined, at the age of eleven, the "Bund Neudeutschland", a Catholic youth movement for young men in schools of higher learning, which was banned after Hitler and the Nazis came to power in 1933.
- Anton Saefkow
Anton Emil Hermann Saefkow was a German Communist and a resistance fighter against the Nazi régime. Anton Saefkow came from a socialist working-class family and in 1920, as a metalworker's apprentice, joined the Communist Youth League to whose Berlin leadership he rose in 1922. In 1927 he became KPD secretary in Berlin, then in Dresden.
- Ernst Niekisch
Ernst Niekisch was a prominent German exponent of National Bolshevism. Born in Trebnitz (Silesia), and brought up in Nördlingen, he became a school teacher by profession. He joined the SPD in 1917 and was instrumental in the setting up of a short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919. He left the SPD soon after and joined the USPD for a time, before returning. During the 1920s he stressed the importance of nationalism and attempted to turn the SPD in that direction.
- Christoph Probst
Christoph Probst was a student of medicine and a member of the White Rose ("Weiße Rose") resistance group.
- Alfred Flatow
Alfred Flatow was a German gymnast. He competed at the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens. Flatow was a successful competitor in 1896. He won the parallel bars, was the runner-up in the horizontal bar, and was a member of the German team that took the gold medals in both the parallel bars and the horizontal bar team events. He also competed in the vault, pommel horse, and rings competitions.
- Artur Nebe
"SS-Gruppenführer" (General) Artur Nebe was Berlin Police Commissioner in the 1920s and an early member of both the "Sturmabteilung" (SA) and the "Schutzstaffel" (SS).
- Alexander Schmorell
Alexander Schmorell and then into the Wehrmacht (German Army during the Nazi era). In 1938, he took part in the annexation of Austria and eventually in the Wehrmacht invasion of Czechoslovakia. After his military service, the artistically gifted Alexander Schmorell began studies in medicine in 1939 in Hamburg. In the autumn of 1940, he went back with his student corps to Munich where he got to know Hans Scholl, and later Willi Graf.
- Theodor Haubach
Theodor Haubach was a German journalist, SPD politician, and resistance fighter against the Nazi régime. Theodor Haubach spent his childhood and youth in Darmstadt. In 1914, right after his "Abitur", he declared himself a war volunteer, was wounded many times while taking part in the First World War until 1918. After the horror of his wartime experiences, he was now ready to be deployed in more peaceful pursuits.
- Werner Seelenbinder
Werner Seelenbinder (born August 2, 1904 in Stettin, Germany, died October 24, 1944) was a German communist and wrestler. Seelenbinder became a wrestler after training as a joiner, and had connections to the young people's workers' movement from an early age. In 1928 and 1929 he won the "Spartakiade" in Moscow; over 200 German sportsmen were banned from the contest, but Seelenbinder, with his interest in Marxism, took part.
- Carl Friedrich Goerdeler
Carl Friedrich Goerdeler (July 31, 1884 - February 2, 1945) was a conservative German politician and opponent of the Nazi regime.
- Robert Stamm
Robert Stamm was a German politician, a Communist (KPD) member of the Reichstag from Bremen, and a victim of the Nazi régime. Already by the age of 14, Robert Stamm had become involved with the Socialist Youth in the Bergisches Land. He became a toolmaker, and in 1917, during his training, he associated himself with the Spartacist League around Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. In 1920 he took part in the struggle against the Kapp Putsch.
- People'S Court
The People's Court (German: "Volksgerichtshof") was a court established by German dictator Adolf Hitler. The "People's Court" was set up outside the operations of the constitutional frame of law. The court had jurisdiction over a rather broad array of "political offenses", which included crimes like black marketeering, work slowdowns, and defeatism.
- Friedrich Fromm
Friedrich Fromm (October 8 1888 - March 12 1945) was a German army officer remembered for his betrayal of conspirators involved in the July 20 Plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Fromm was born in Charlottenburg. He served as a lieutenant during the First World War. In World War II Fromm was Commander in Chief of the Replacement Army (Ersatzheer), in charge of training and personnel replacement for the German Army, a position he occupied for most of the Second World War.
- Karlrobert Kreiten
Karlrobert Kreiten was a German pianist, though holding Dutch citizenship his entire life due to his Dutch father. He was seen by Wilhelm Furtwängler and others as one of the most talented young pianists in Germany. Born in Bonn, his German mother was the classical singer Emmy Kreiten-Barido, nee Liebergesell and his Dutch father Theo Kreiten, a composer, concert pianist, and writer.
- Wilhelm Leuschner
Wilhelm Leuschner was a social-democratic politician who opposed the Third Reich until he was murdered. Wilhelm Leuschner, a stove fitter's son, was born in 1890. His father's name was also Wilhelm Leuschner, and his mother's name was Marie. Leuschner grew up in poverty. In 1903, he began an apprenticeship as a wood sculptor. After finishing this in 1907, he joined the trade union and, on the occasion of the Youth Style Exhibition, he moved to Darmstadt, …
- Adolf Reichwein
Adolf Reichwein was a German educator, economist, and cultural policymaker for the SPD. He was also a resistance fighter in Nazi Germany. After taking part in the First World War, in which he was seriously wounded in the lung, Reichwein studied at the universities in Frankfurt am Main und Marburg, under Hugo Sinzheimer and Franz Oppenheimer, among others. In the 1920s, he was active in education policy and adult education in Berlin and Thuringia.
- Heinrich Graf von Lehndorff-Steinort
Heinrich Ahasverus Graf von Lehndorff-Steinort was a member of the July 20 Plot against Adolf Hitler. "(Graf is a German noble title equal in rank to a Count or a British Earl)." Born in Hanover, Germany, Heinrich studied economics and business administration in Frankfurt am Main, and in 1936, took on the management of the family assets in East Prussia. After the Second World War broke out, he was first deployed in Poland, and later, as a reserve lieutenant, …
- Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim
Albrecht Ritter Mertz von Quirnheim (25 March 1905 - 21 July 1944) was a German officer and a resistance fighter in Nazi Germany involved in the July 20 Plot against Adolf Hitler. Quirnheim was born in Munich, Bavaria, to Hermann Ritter Mertz von Quirnheim, a captain on the Bavarian General Staff. He spent his youth in the Bavarian capital before his father became head of the Imperial Archive (the "Reichsarchiv") and the family moved to Potsdam.
- Kurt Huber
Kurt Huber (October 24, 1893-July 13, 1943) was a member of the White Rose group, which carried out resistance against Nazi Germany. Huber was born in Chur, Switzerland, to German parents. He grew up in Stuttgart and, later (after his father's death), in Munich. He showed an aptitude for such subjects as music, philosophy and psychology, and became a professor in 1920.
- Erwin Planck
Erwin Planck was a German politician, and a resistance fighter in the Third Reich. Born in Berlin, Erwin Planck was the fourth child of theoretical physicist Max Planck and his first wife. After his "Abitur" in 1911, Planck went into the military and pursued a career as an officer. In the First World War, he rather quickly found himself a prisoner of the French in 1914. After he came back to Germany after the war ended, he was active on the General Staff, …
- Johannes Popitz
Johannes Popitz (2 December 1884 - 2 February 1945) was a Prussian finance minister and a member of the German Resistance against Nazi Germany.
- Werner von Haeften
Werner Karl von Haeften (9 October 1908 - 20 July 1944) was an Oberleutnant in the Wehrmacht, who took part in the military-based conspiracy against Adolf Hitler known as the July 20 Plot. Haeften and his brother Hans Bernd von Haeften were born in Berlin to Hans von Haeften, an army officer and President of the "Reichsarchiv". He studied law in his hometown and then worked for a bank in Hamburg until the outbreak of World War II, when he joined the German army.
- Karl Sack
Karl Sack (born June 9, 1896 in Bosenheim (now Bad Kreuznach), executed April 9, 1945 in Flossenbürg concentration camp) was a German jurist and member of the resistance movement during World War II. Karl Sack studied law in Heidelberg where he joined a Burschenschaft and after a time in legal practice became a judge in Hesse. He married Wilhelmine Weber and had two sons.
- Erich Fellgiebel
Fritz Erich Fellgiebel was a German officer and resistance fighter in the Third Reich.
- Bruno Tesch
Bruno Guido Camillo Tesch (22 April 1913 in Kiel - 1 August 1933 in Altona, Hamburg) was a German antifascist. In 1933, he was found guilty of murder and put to death in connection with the Altona Blood Sunday ("Altonaer Blutsonntag") incident, an SA march on 17 July 1932 that turned violent and led to 18 people being shot dead. The conviction was overturned in November 1992.
- Hans Conrad Leipelt
Hans Conrad Leipelt was a member of the White Rose ("Weiße Rose") resistance group in Nazi Germany. Leipelt's father was a graduate in civil engineering, and his mother a chemist from a Christian family with Jewish roots. In 1925, the family moved to Hamburg, where Hans did his "Abitur" in 1938, and then reported to the "Reichsarbeitsdienst" and the Wehrmacht.
- Elisabeth von Thadden
Elisabeth Adelheid Hildegard von Thadden (born 29 July 1890 in Mohrungen, East Prussia, now Morąg, Poland; died 9 September 1944 in Berlin, executed) was a German educator who founded a private school that now bears her name, and an outspoken critic of the Nazi régime. She was put to death in the wake of the July 20 Plot, although it appears highly unlikely that she was involved in any plot to overthrow the Nazis.
- Attila Petschauer
Attila Petschauer (December 14, 1904 - January 20, 1943) was a Jewish Hungarian Olympic fencer.
- Hilde Coppi
Hilde Coppi (née Rake, born 30 May 1909 in Berlin, died 5 August 1943 in Berlin-Plötzensee, executed) was a German resistance fighter against the Third Reich. Together with her husband Hans Coppi, she belonged to the Red Orchestra ("Rote Kapelle").
- Mildred Harnack
Mildred Harnack (born Mildred Fish, 16 September 1902 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; died 16 February 1943 in Berlin-Plötzensee) was an American-German literary historian, translator, and resistance fighter in Nazi Germany.
- Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin
Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin was a lawyer, a conservative politician, and the owner of an estate in Pomerania, northeast of Berlin. He was also a resistance fighter in Nazi Germany, a member of the July 20 Plot.
- Maria Restituta
Sister Maria Restituta (born 1 May 1894 in Husovice near Brno, Austria-Hungary (now in the Czech Republic); died 30 March 1943 in Vienna) was a nun and a nurse. Her secular name was Helene Kafka (or Kafková). She was a shoemaker's daughter. When she was two years old, she came with her family to Vienna, then the Austro-Hungarian Empire's capital, and home to a Czech migrant community, among whom she grew up.
- Eugen Bolz
Eugen Anton Bolz was a German politician and a member of the resistance to the Nazi régime.
- Hans Georg Klamroth
Hans Georg Klamroth was, by his knowledge of the plans through distant relatives and his son-in-law Lieutenant-Colonel Bernhard Klamroth, involved in the July 20 Plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. After the bombing at the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia on 20 July 1944 failed to kill Hitler, Klamroth was arrested and, after a show trial at the "Volksgerichtshof" on 15 August, sentenced to death for keeping his knowledge of the plot to himself.
- Johanna Kirchner
Johanna "Hanna" Kirchner. When the Second World War broke out in 1939, she fled to Forbach, Metz (both in Alsace-Lorraine, France), and then finally Paris. Even while abroad, she helped the resistance movement in Germany: she led the Saar Refugees' Committee ("Saarflüchtlingskommitee"), drew up plans and reports for the SPD's executive in exile, and produced and distributed illegal leaflets.