German Resistance to Nazism

At the beginning of the unit, I tell the students to go to Wikipedia, find the entry on German Resistance to Nazism, and - alone or in pairs - choose one example (an individual or group of individuals) of Resistance, by Germans, against the Nazi regime. Each team or individual student then gives an ultra-short-presentation, answering Kipling's famous questions that a journalist should ask: "What and Why and When / And How and Where and Who".

We discuss how the various forms of resistant were different and what they had in common, focusing on methods, goals and motivations.

In the next (double) lesson and a half, we watch the movie Sophie Scholl: Die letzten Tage (2005), using the DVD that I have of the movie, with English subtitles.

After watching the movie, I ask the students to tell me at least one thing, anything, that they learnt from the movie and did not know before. Here are some of the responses, which I translated into German (for a presentation that I gave in Germany). Some of the insights of the students (e.g. the first one below) are shocking but very important to hear and talk about.