The White Rose Network: Based on a true story, an unputdownable and utterly heartbreaking World War 2 page-turner by Ellie Midwood

Author:Ellie Midwood [Midwood, Ellie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bookouture
Published: 2022-02-08T16:00:00+00:00

Despite her exhaustion, Sophie couldn’t fall asleep for a long time that night. But when she did, she dreamt of the girl with the yellow star and a golden flower in her hair.

She could only hope the girl would live through this war so that she, Sophie, could ask for her forgiveness too when all this terror was finally over, when people came to their senses at long last and stopped slaughtering each other on blood principle only.

THIRTEEN

GESTAPO JAIL, MUNICH. FEBRUARY 1943

The day seemed to drag its feet like a refugee from a bombed-out city. The analogy felt suitable for Robert Mohr: there were more and more of them now, passing right under the windows of his office, weighed down by the meager possessions they could salvage from the ruins they used to call homes mere days ago. It was one tragic, unending funeral procession, only with baby prams bursting with suitcases and women, black-clad women everywhere, and no men at all, as far as the eye could see. The crumbling empire’s mourners, unpaid and homeless, throwing hateful glances at the swastika flag hanging limply above the Gestapo headquarters’ entrance.

With a snap, Mohr closed the shutters and drew the heavy blackout drapes across the window, blocking the pitiful view. Suddenly, he didn’t want to return to the cellar and face Sophie Scholl and listen to her words—“We are your bad conscience”—and tremble inwardly at the realization that she was already winning, that her generation was winning this war and he, the calcified relic of the Reich’s past, was already fading into nothing, along with the ash that seemed to hang permanently over the city of Munich like a blanket of gray, never-ending snow.

But while the Führer was still in charge and Mohr’s headquarters still had all of their walls about them and he, himself, hadn’t lost his head to one British RAF-supplied bomb or another, he had work to do.

Because someone had to.

Because if it wasn’t him, someone else would take his place.

Because orders were orders and duty called and all that rot—disgusting, generic excuses, most of them used to justify torturing and executing people in the name of the Führer and the Reich.

With the heaviest sigh, Mohr gathered the documents he’d been perusing on his desk and pushed his chair back, rising with a groan more suited to an ancient man on the verge of death. Every step on the way shot a pain through his spine; every exposed bulb along the long corridor made him wince as though it was him who was about to be interrogated, as though he was to defend himself against some terrible crimes; as though it was that tiny slip of a girl with those all-seeing, dark eyes who was the presiding judge and the executor—all in one.

She studied him with unconcealed curiosity while Mohr arranged the files and binders around himself, as if conscious of a change that was churning his very insides under his seemingly unmoved exterior. For some reason, it

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