74 years ago almost to the day, on February 22nd, 1943, 21-year old Sophie Scholl and several other young students were guillotined by the Gestapo. The reason: they had been charged with treason after distributing several thousand anti-war pamphlets. They were only a small part of the “White Rose”, a non-violent resistance group that slowly emerged in Munich and which only informed the people about the actual atrocities done during WWII in the name of Germany.

Sophie Scholl was born in 1921 in a pacifist and intellectual family. She joined the BDM (the female branch of the Hitler Youth) as most girls did but despised its propaganda and indoctrination which opposed her values and principles. Wishing to pursue studies at Munich University, she was forced instead to engage in forced labour due to the ongoing war. Aware of the fact that she was contributing indirectly to the ongoing barbarities, she soon joined the non-violent resistance group that formed at the Munich University and died fighting an unjust state. Her last words before being executed were:

How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause? Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us, thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?

2. Mugshot of Sophie Scholl taken by the Gestapo (Germany, 1943)

Around the same time, 22-year old Traudl Junge (née Humps) had just been hired at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. She was born in 1920 and joined the BDM at a young age, where the indoctrination had no effect since she wasn’t interested in politics. Her plan was to become a dancer but the ongoing war made her search for other temporary careers. Almost by chance, she was transferred to the Fuhrer’s headquarters and offered the position of secretary to Adolf Hitler. Junge will become his his last secretary and, because she is not aware of the extent of things happening in Germany at that time, will remain loyal to Hitler until his suicide in May 1945. Later she would explain that she was young and didn’t know better, that she saw Hitler as a “very paternal” boss and was guilty only of going along with what society demanded.

3. Colorized photo of Gertrude “Traudl” Junge (Germany, c. 1943)

For years, though shocked by the things heard at the Nuremberg trials, Traudl would remain “satisfied that [she] wasn’t personally to blame and that [she] hadn’t known about those things.” But one day, after noticing a monument dedicated to Sophie Scholl, Junge was shocked to see the similarities between herself and the resistance fighter and the fact that Sophie died while opposing the things she never knew about at the time. Suddenly, she had no excuse left. The rationalizations vanished. In 2002 she died after several decades marked by painful depression and guilt. She summarized her life shortly before her death:

Today I mourn for two things: for the fate of those millions of people who were murdered by the National Socialists. And for the girl Traudl Humps who lacked the self-confidence and good sense to speak out against them at the right moment.

4. World-wide battle deaths per 100,000 people (WSJ)

Nowadays, of course, the stakes are much lower. Sure, there is a distant war in the Middle East, some trouble in Central Africa and South America, tension in the South China Sea and political squabbles in Europe, but by and large “we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species’ existence”, as Harvard professor Steven Pinker pointed out. There’s no World War, our problems are less violent and more nuanced, and stories like Scholl’s or Junge’s are just memories of a violent era that ended two generations ago.

And yet at the same time, in Europe and North America at least, there is a sense of impending doom caused mostly by economic inequality and ineffective politics. It’s different, it’s something more palpable than distant conflicts or famines because it’s bred in our own backyard.

Indeed, it looks like Brexit is getting a green light despite the disastrous economic forecasts, a Brexit that has been decided by only 52% of the UK. Futhermore, in the USA, after a surprising win of the electoral college by Donald Trump (with a major loss of the popular vote), and after a controversial first month in office, two thirds of Americans are now worried about the future of U.S. politics while his approval rating is declining day by day. Around Europe, economic worries and fear-based political narratives have lead to a resurgence of isolationism and of the far-right. Climate change is affecting the world more and more and yet the reactions are slow or, in the case of the US, regressive. More importantly, across the western hemisphere, social inequality is rising and economic forecasts are gloom.