In Memoriam: Helmuth Hübener

First, he was a Boy Scout; after the Nazis suppressed that organization, Helmuth Hübener was more or less compelled to join Hitler Youth. However, the events of 1938's Kristallnacht soon enough crystallized his opposition to the atrocities of National Socialism; in his mind both anti-Semitism and totalitarianism ran counter to his Mormon beliefs.

Born on this day in 1925, Hübener was the youngest person ever sentenced to die by the Volksgerichtshof when, in October 1942, he was beheaded at Berlin's Plötzensee Prison; he was only 17.

Along with friends Karl-Heinz Schnibbe, Rudolf Wobbe, and later Gerhard Düwer, Hübener aided in the delivery of about 60 different pamphlets throughout the city of Hamburg decrying the futility of Germany's erstwhile attempts to conquer the world. He had also been monitoring broadcasts of the BBC, which was strictly verboten and considered treasonous; much of the content of his inflammatory literature was gleaned from this activity. 'Through their unscrupulous terror tactics against young and old, men and women, they have succeeded in making you spineless puppets to do their bidding,' ran one courageous screed.

Although his friends were merely given long prison sentences for the part they played in undermining the Third Reich, the authorities allowed Hübener's death sentence to stand, on account of his extraordinary level of intelligence, brains being the greatest enemy of Fascism.

Today his name lives on in his hometown, where a youth centre and a pathway between Greifswalder Straße and Kirchenweg in the Hamburg neighbourhood of Sankt Georg - appropriately enough, the patron saint of the Boy Scouts - commemorate one teenager's heroic battle against the forces of evil. A movie tentatively entitled Truth & Treason - which has been in various stages of pre-production since 2008 and now seems set for release in 2011 or 2012 - stars Haley Joel Osment as the boy who stood against Hitler while all around him grown men cringed in silence; the short life of Helmuth Hübener is also the basis of Hübener vs Hitler by Richard Lloyd Dewey, which examines these events through a distinctly Christianist lens.
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Pop History Moment: The Execution of Helmuth Hübener

At 8:13 PM on this day in 1942 Helmuth Hübener - the youngest opponent of the Third Reich to be formally executed* - was beheaded by guillotine at Berlin's Plötzensee Prison following a brief show trial at the Volksgerichtshof on August 11th; he was just 17.

Hübener and his school chums had been involved in the printing of pamphlets - in fact, as many as 60 different titles - which were eloquently critical of Nazi Germany and the atrocities they'd been committing. The intrepid group (including Karl-Heinz Schnibbe, Rudolf Wobbe, and Gerhard Düwer) had also been guilty of monitoring Allied radio broadcasts, which gave an altogether more accurate rendition of the progress of the war in Europe than that being spun by Joseph Goebbels and the Axis propaganda machine.

Hübener's story is not widely known even in Germany - at least not outside his hometown of Hamburg - although it's captivated our imagination here at the Pop Culture Institute something fierce... There's even been talk of his short, courageous life being made into a movie, starring Haley Joel Osment; Hübener's posthumous legacy already includes two books by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, including the 2008 novel The Boy Who Dared and 2005's Newbery Honor book, Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow.

*As opposed to an untold number who were merely herded into gas chambers...
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