Chapter 3 Summary and Analysis

This chapter begins with the Scholl family, elder sister Inge, brother Hans, and fourteen-year-old Sophie Scholl. She had graduated from the Jungmadel to the Bund Deutscher Madel (BDM), the girls' arm of the Hitler Youth. Sophie was a talented artist and sensitive person, and inevitably she began to question the ideas of the Nazis.

Sophie began to refuse to participate in school to provide the usual answers about National Socialism. She was threatened with not graduating, so she hid her feelings and studied enough to gain her high school diploma, as she desperately wanted to join her brother Hans at the University of Munich.

Unsurprisingly, the Nazis soon controlled all aspects of public education; they rewrote textbooks and changed curriculum to reflect the Nazi worldview. Teachers were faced with dismissal unless they toed the Nazi Party line. Jewish teachers were dismissed...