In 2008, UK Column—which at that time was a print newspaper—published an article entitled The White Rose. We began that article by stating that it had been prompted by a recent conversation with two elderly German ladies who separately, had lived through the rise of the Nazi Party and the horrors of the Second World War in Germany.
Now married and living in England, both the women had contacted UK Column to warn that they believed they were watching the slow, creeping dictatorship that they had first witnessed in Nazi Germany now emerge in Britain. Our discussions with them brought a powerful realisation that they were seeing something that many people in Britain could not: the drip, drip, drip of a political anaesthetic that enforced control over thought, speech and actions.
As we dug deeper into their fears and the reality of Germany in 1943, we came to learn more of the Nazi control mechanism and of those fighting it. The young people who created the White Rose resistance in Germany ultimately paid with their lives, but their actions and bravery were to encourage others in more recent years.
An English lady called Rosie also came to learn of the White Rose and she was motivated to stand up to be counted in The White Rose UK. Brian Gerrish was delighted to interview her, a very gutsy woman.