Small Acts of Resistance

I’ve been thinking a lot about the opportunities everyday people have to resist overwhelming power. Steve Crawshaws’s book, “Small Acts of Resistance: How Courage, Tenacity, and Ingenuity Can Change the World” is filled with stories of people exercising that power.

In 2000, Otpor! placed a barrel on the street with a photo of Slobodan Milošević’s head attached. Beside it was a stick. You could donate one dinar to hit the barrel. Police confiscated the barrel, which allowed the activists to claim the barrel has been arrested, continuing the subversive conversations.

Last year, I was in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, and learned about The Singing Revolution. The Soviets banned national songs in the Baltic states and in the late 80s, people gathered at massive outdoor events, defiantly singing their own cherished songs. On 23 August 1989, approximately two million people (a quarter of the population) joined their hands to form a human chain across all three countries. Independence was gained two years later.

And about ten years ago, I wrote a book to provide exemplar heroes to young people. One of those was the German resistance hero, Sophie Scholl. This amazing artwork from the book is by Matthew Osmon.

Sophie Scholl didn’t start out as a resistance hero. Like many teenagers in Germany at the time, Sophie joined the League of German Girls, the female division of the Hitler Youth. This was against the wishes of her anti-Nazi parents. She loved it. The songs, the uniforms, the sense of belonging—it felt like an adventure.

But as she grew older, something started nagging at her. The more she learned, the more she saw, the more she questioned. Why were books disappearing from libraries? Why were her Jewish friends suddenly treated like they didn’t exist? Why did questioning the government feel dangerous?

Sophie had a choice—keep going with the crowd or start thinking for herself.

She chose to think.

At university in Munich she started meeting with a group of friends, including her brother, Hans. They discussed philosophy, the arts, and current events. One big philosophical question: how should an individual act under a dictatorship? Half way through 1942, many of the friends started The White Rose, a group dedicated to resistance. Their primary tool was to be leaflets. Risking arrest through the acquisition of rationed items like paper, stamps, envelopes, and even a copying machine, the group initially produced four leaflets.

On February 18, 1943, she and Hans were spreading the latest leaflet outside classrooms at Ludwig Maximilian University. A last minute flourish from Sophie, throwing a hundred leaflets down the central atrium, caught the attention of a janitor—an enthusiastic Nazi. He handed them over to the Gestapo. Arrested, interrogated, and put on trial, she never backed down. She looked her judges in the eye and said, “Somebody, after all, had to make a start.”

She was 21 years old when she was executed.

Sophie’s story reminds us that being part of something doesn’t mean you have to stay part of it. She grew up surrounded by Nazi propaganda, but she listened to her conscience instead. Maybe you’ve been part of something that, looking back, didn’t feel right. Maybe you’ve gone along with a group because it was easier than standing alone. That’s normal. What matters is what you do next.

Sophie didn’t just change her mind—she changed her actions. And in doing so, she became a hero.