Teens against the total state: in 1941 Nazi Germany, the brave actions of three teens proved that even Hitler's Third Reich could not deter some youth from discovering and disseminating the truth.

"Peer pressure" has become a psychological buzzword. Especially when applied to teenagers, it suggests that the members of a peer group have neither the independence of thought nor the common sense to oppose the collective mindset of the herd. However, history abounds with inspiring stories of young people who have courageously gone against the tide created not only by their peers but by forces even more threatening.

To appreciate such demonstrable courage, let us take ourselves back to Hamburg, Germany, in 1941. Hamburg was then Germany's most important industrial center and the largest seaport on the European Continent. Like all Germans, the residents of Hamburg were suffering the effects of World War II and, even worse, the loss of most of the freedoms they once enjoyed. Germany had been transformed into an oppressive police state in 1936, when Hitler had signed an order appointing SS Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler as the "Head of German Police in the Reich Home Office." As a result of that order, the SS gained control over all police departments in Germany. Government spies kept a close watch on all citizens.

The Nazis had also passed a law in 1939 making it punishable by death to listen to unauthorized foreign radio broadcasts. To enforce this law, short-wave radios were banned and confiscated, and legal radios were pre-set to receive only the three government-controlled stations. But the National Socialist regime was not content merely to control the content of the media. Its most important target was the minds of German youth. "When an opponent says, 'I will not come over to your side,' I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already,'" Hitler declared in a 1934 speech. "What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community."

Targeting Young People

Even before coming to power in 1933, the Nazis had organized the Hitletjugend (Hitler Youth) as a party auxiliary, in 1932, the last year of the Weimar Republic, the Hitler Youth numbered a mere 107,956; by way of contrast, more than 10 million German youth were active in nonpolitical as sociations, such as the Boy Scouts. As the Nazis consolidated their power, they spared no effort to persuade, beguile--and ultimately, to compel--parents to enroll their children in the party's youth affiliates.

By 1938--five years after the Nazi party's ascent to power--the ranks of the Hitler Youth had swollen to 7,728,259. The following year, Hitler made membership in the organization mandatory by enacting a law conscripting all German youngsters into it.

Once in the hands of Hitler's totalitarian state. German youth were systematically indoctrinated in the regime's anti-God ideology. An anguished letter written on June 19, 1939 by Theophil Wurm, the Lutheran bishop of Wurttemberg, recorded: "In a number of municipalities, standard-bearers of the Hitler Youth ordered their subordinates to see to it that relatives of the Hitler Youth members withdrew from religious instruction classes and applied for ideological instruction within three weeks."

As Dr. Judith Reisman observes, the Hitler Youth program was designed to exterminate the individual conscience--God's law, as written on the human heart--while emancipating base impulses such as hatred and lust, and placing them at the service of the total state. "Nazi youth were taught that brutalizing, even killing, was their right as supermen and that their parents' religious beliefs were irrelevant," notes Dr. Reisman. As Hitler himself summarized his program: "Propaganda must be addressed to the emotions and not to the intelligence, and it must concentrate on a few simple themes ... with lurid photographs of the ... sexual and physical."

It was a seductive proposition for German youth, some of whom had memories of the starvation and chaos that had beset their nation in the aftermath of World War I: By abandoning the values and beliefs they had learned from their parents, and surrendering their will to their "divine" Fuhrer, they would rule the world. If they served the state faithfully, nothing would be denied them.

Yet some German youth were not swayed by the seductive propaganda. Some, defying Hitler's boast of 1934, steadfastly refused to "stand in the new camp" and to "know nothing else but this new community." Some clung to the values taught them by their parents, including an immutable faith in God the State could not diminish or destroy. And some, motivated by their religious faith, did what they could to oppose the Nazi regime, recognizing that they risked losing everything--including even their lives--while standing no chance of overthrowing the Nazis. Yet these young people possessed the strength of character to do what was right because it was right and for no other reason.

Among those German young people who resisted Hitler while living inside the Nazi behemoth were three teenage friends in Hamburg: 16-year-old Helmuth Hubener, 17-year-old Karl-Heinz Schnibbe, and 14-year-old Rudi Wobbe. There were others of course, but the courageous actions of these three friends, in 1941, illustrate the great principle that the State can never beguile an entire generation into denying their God-given instinct to seek out and act upon the truth.

Youth Disenchanted with Party Line

Helmuth, Karl-Heinz and Rudi were all members of the same branch of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS, or Mormon) in Hamburg. Helmuth had belonged to the Hitler Youth as a boy, but as he matured he began secretly to question the Nazi ideology. The extent of the Nazi evil was not totally apparent to most Germans during the early years of the regime, and many churchgoers, including members of Helmuth's local branch, tried their best to resolve the impossible conflict presented to them. How could they be good German citizens and at the same time defend the God-given rights of the German people against increasingly brutal Nazi oppression? Not everyone approached the conflict in the same way. Many Germans deceived themselves into believing that loyalty to the Nazi State was the same as loyalty to country. Others recognized the Nazis for what they were but deemed it unwise to oppose them openly. They were concerned, for instance, that their opposition could invite brutal retaliation against their entire church community. Still others, like Helmuth and his friends, elected to resist more actively.

Helmuth had received a short-wave radio from his brother, who was in the military and had brought the receiver back from France during a leave. Because he did not get along with his step-father, who was a staunch Nazi supporter, Helmuth had moved into his grandparents' house, where he started listening to BBC news broadcasts from England late at night after his grandparents had gone to bed. Fascinated by the information he was receiving, he invited his friends to share in listening to the broadcasts, a crime under the Reich's 1939 "Decree About Extraordinary Radio Measures." The boys immediately detected a huge contrast between the BBC news reports and those broadcast by the Nazi-approved German stations. The BBC noted war casualties, victories and defeats on both sides, but the German news reports conspicuously ignored the Reich's casualties and setbacks.

But the trio's disenchantment with the Nazi regime went much deeper than its misreporting of war statistics. Years later, Karl-Heinz Schnibbe would recall vividly the November 9, 1938 pogrom called Kristallnacht--"Night of the Broken Glass"--when gangs of Nazis roamed through Jewish neighborhoods breaking windows of Jewish businesses and homes, burning synagogues and looting. In a May 10 interview with THE NEW AMERICAN, Schnibbe recalled: "The hunting of the Jews--that just disturbed me. My mom asked why I was late. I told her what I saw, and I started to cry and ask what is going on. She said, 'You better forget what you saw. This will be our life from now on.' I could not forget it." Witnessing that horrific event had made an indelible impression on him.

Wielding the Weapon of Truth

Helmuth, as secretary to the president of his local LDS branch, was able to take a church typewriter home with him to type up church correspondence, mostly letters of encouragement to men serving in the military. On many occasions late at night, he secretly listened to BBC broadcasts and carefully noted what he had heard. Well-armed with factual information, he then used the typewriter to produce a series of anti-Nazi leaflets, making multiple carbon copies. The teenager had somehow obtained an official rubber stamp used to verify documents as being approved by the Nazi Party, and he affixed the official stamp to each leaflet. The titles for his tracts included: "The Voice of Conscience," "Hitler the Seducer" and "Hitler the Murderer." The provocative nature of these titles guaranteed a harsh reaction. The 1939 Nazi decree had specifically stated: "Whoever willfully distributes the broadcasts of foreign stations which are designed to endanger the strength of resistance of the German people, will, in particularly severe cases, be punished with death."

When Helmuth first proposed his plan to distribute his homemade, anti-Nazi leaflets to his trusted friends, Karl-Heinz was aghast. As Karl-Heinz recalled years later in a narrative published in When Truth Was Treason he asked Helmuth incredulously: "Man, are you nuts? Are you completely off your rocker? What are you thinking of? Surely you don't suppose that we three can overthrow the government?"

Karl-Heinz was somewhat relieved when Helmuth explained that he contemplated nothing so rash. His friend explained his plan: "We can inform people, and can demonstrate that there are groups who are opposed; then many persons can start to talk and say, 'Have you beard about this? That is amazing!'"

Ignoring the danger, Karl-Heinz and Rudi agreed to help Helmuth distribute his papers surreptitiously--pinning them on bulletin boards, inserting them in mail boxes, and slipping them into coat pockets.

Later, in his memoir, published in When Truth Was Treason, Karl-Heinz would recall:

   We never believed that we were in a
   position to overthrow the Nazi
   regime, by no means, but Helmuth always
   said to us: "What we can do is
   to warn the people. We can wake
   them up, we can bring them to the
   point of asking questions and saying:
   'Wait a minute, something is not
   right. I want to hear that myself.' And
   when enough people hear the truth or
   are interested in the truth, then who
   knows?" We wanted to show people
   that it was not a benevolent regime
   with a few problems, but
   that the entire structure
   was thoroughly rotten.

The Gestapo took what later became known as the Hubener Group seriously enough that they managed to track down the source of the resistance early in the next year, February 1942. Helmuth had decided that it would be advantageous to have his writings translated into French so that they could be read by French prisoners of war, and so he visited a French speaking associate who worked in a government office to solicit his help. However, Helmuth's visit was noticed by a senior official who then dragged the particulars out of the potential translator, forcing him to turn over the documents that Helmuth had given him. From that moment, the fate of the Hubener Group was settled.

Imprisoned in Body, Not in Spirit

The trio were arrested and subjected to brutal interrogation methods at Hamburg's Gestapo headquarters. Because of the sophisticated thinking and manner of expression found in the leaflets, the Gestapo found it impossible to believe that mere teenagers had composed them without adult assistance. The interrogators tortured the boys in a futile attempt to get them to reveal the identity of the adults who were supposedly behind their resistance movement. Eventually, the interrogators were forced to accept that the boys had acted alone.

In a taped interview included in the video-documentary Truth & Conviction: The Helmuth Hubener Story, Karl-Heinz Schnibbe vividly described the two Gestapo agents who came to his workplace to whisk him into a totalitarian nightmare. They were hulking men around six-feet-three or -four inches tall who wore black leather trench coats and had "hands as big as toilet seats." He recalled being forced to wait for his interrogation sessions in a "white room" with glaring walls painted with glossy white enamel illuminated by powerful spotlights that almost blinded him each time he entered.

In August, the boys were transported to Berlin, where they were tried before the highest court in Germany--the so called People's Court, more appropriately known as the "Blood Tribunal." Also tried with them was Gerhard Duwer, a friend of Helmuth who had played a somewhat lesser role in the boys' activities. All were found guilty of high treason and of aiding and abetting the enemy. Gerhard was sentenced to four years at a labor camp, Karl-Heinz was sentenced to five years, Rudi to 10 years, and Hubener, the leader of the group, was sentenced to death.

After they were sentenced, each was asked, in turn, if he had anything to say. All declined except Helmuth, who remained courageous and defiant to the end. He told the judges directly: "Now I must die even though I have committed no crime. So now it's my turn, but your turn will come."

Several appeals were made, including one to the Fuhrer himself, but Helmuth Hubener was executed by guillotine on October 27, 1942. He lost his head, but the Nazis were unable to imprison his soul, which, even during the last moments of his earthly existence, was still dedicated to God and country.

Karl-Heinz, in a moving part of his taped interview, described how he had tearfully said goodbye to his good friend Helmuth with the words: "I hope you leave a better life--and a better Germany."

The end of the war should have ended Karl-Heinz's suffering in the labor camps. Most such prisoners were liberated by the Allies. But an ironic twist of fate prolonged Karl-Heinz's terrible ordeal for several more years.

Several weeks before the end of the war, Karl-Heinz was drafted into the German army. (His friend Rudi was not drafted into the army because be still had more than half of his 10-year sentence left to serve.) Along with other conscripted political prisoners, he was forced to march to the Russian front, where he was captured and held as a prisoner of war for four years by the Soviet army. The totalitarian Soviets were, if anything, even less respectful of human rights than their former allies, the Nazis.

When he was finally released from the Soviet labor camp in 1949, at the age of 24, Karl-Heinz Schnibbe was a walking, six-feet, two-inch skeleton of 98 pounds. He had spent a total of seven years in German and Soviet prisons.

The Hubener Group Legacy

Mr. Schnibbe lives in Salt Lake City with his wife and continues to speak to many audiences about his experiences, including church audiences, youth groups and German schools. Rudi Wobbe lived in Salt Lake until he died of cancer in 1992.

The Nazi regime imprisoned and brutalized the bodies of the young resisters and even ended the earthly life of one. But the regime could not suppress the spirits or touch the souls of these noble young men. Like the pagan Roman imperialists that the Nazis patterned themselves after, the agents of the Third Reich did not seem to fathom that iron bars and chains can neither imprison immortal souls nor dampen the spirits of Christian believers.

The Hubener Group set an example of courage in the face of totalitarian rule that we hope our own youth will not find necessary to emulate. However, their irrepressible spirit should inspire Americans of all ages to be steadfast in preventing tyranny before it becomes firmly entrenched.