Unlike the grand canvas of 'Der Untergang', 'Sophie Scholl' is an intimate struggle on an almost miniature scale between the forces of good and evil, freedom and tyranny. Instead of famous names like Hitler, Goebbels, Speer et al., the characters in this story were, at the time, mere nobodies - a boy and girl and a few of their friends (who barely figure in the story) versus the mundane machinery of the local Gestapo. They weren't bomb-planting conspirators, just young people writing pamphlets, and yet this was enough to merit the death penalty. The film does a good job impressing the viewer with how quickly they were grabbed, convicted, and their lives snuffed out - the whole thing was hustled along in about 3 days. The same efficient machinery that murdered millions in concentration camps ground them up like sausages, without a hitch or hesitation.
At the time, their deaths must have seemed like the most futile waste imaginable - the war went on for years more, and it must have seemed, even to those sympathetic, that they had been as thoroughly obliterated as a blade of grass under the treads of a tank. It's never discussed in the film, but as Sophie and her brother were caught and taken away to their doom, I kept remembering the faith with which they embarked on their mission. "The whole university will rise up," said Hans adamantly, certain that once the students read their pamphlet, the lovers of truth and freedom would mobilize and put a stop to Hitler's madness. Yet when they were caught...nothing. The students stood by, cowed and submissive, and there was no uprising. Hans and Sophie must have been bitterly disappointed, but their reproaches were all to the representatives of the Nazi regime that interrogated them, not to the people who did not share their courage and clarity.
