New feature film highlights the heroism of an LDS teen who stood up for truth and against Hitler

The little-known story of Helmuth Hübener was first mentioned in a 1960s novel by German literary giant Günter Grass. It later appeared in a research paper by a Brigham Young University literature professor and was staged as a play at BYU before being featured on the cover of an independent Latter-day Saint magazine, retold in three books and turned into a 93-minute documentary.

There is a street in Hamburg and a school in Berlin named after the Latter-day Saint teen, who printed and secretly distributed anti-Hitler pamphlets en route to becoming the youngest resistance fighter executed by the Nazis.

Now Hübener’s story has been made into a feature film, “Truth & Treason,” which opens this week.

Why has this tiny feat of heroism by a teen and his two friends (Rudi Wobbe and Karl-Heinz Schnibbe) in a teeny congregation of a then-smallish Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints continued to find an audience some 83 years after Hübener met his death?

Maybe because it speaks to the dangers of authoritarianism and misinformation, which have plagued the planet in many eras.

“I encountered Helmuth in Grass’ novel in 1971 and still had the Vietnam War in my mind,” recalls Alan Keele, the emeritus BYU professor who publicized the story. “Now, decades later, there has arisen across the globe an anti-democratic, neo-totalitarian tsunami coming from a veritable ocean of lies, which threatens to overwhelm even the most well-established free societies in the history of the world.”

Hübener learned what was really happening in 1942 by secretly listening to BBC broadcasts. Such truth-telling is desperately needed today, Keele says, “to reverse the tide of authoritarianism.”

When Matt Whitaker made his “Truth & Conviction” documentary in 2002, he recalls saying to himself, “It’s so timely. Boy, this really needs to be made now.”

A quarter century later, he sees its message as even more urgent.

His new movie, “Truth & Treason,” is about some boys standing up to a dictator, he says, “and trying to discern what is the truth when the word truth itself has been hijacked.”

And even though they were Latter-day Saints, he says, and motivated in part by church teachings — captured in the hymn, “Do What Is Right” — it is about standing up for the truth.

Ferdinand McKay, the Scottish actor who played Schnibbe, knew nothing about Mormonism or this morality tale before being cast, but he was moved by it.

It’s like “David versus Goliath, like the underdog versus tyranny,” McKay says in an interview. “It’s transcendental, it’s universal. It mattered then, it matters now, it matters always.”

Facts versus fiction

Whitaker explains the difference between his earlier documentary and his new, mildly fictionalized film.

“The documentary was a photo,” he says, “while the film is a painted portrait.”

The outlines of the real story are simple: In 1941, Hübener found a shortwave radio belonging to his older brother and, in defiance of Nazi law, tuned in to BBC broadcasts, describing what was happening in Germany.

He soon grew convinced of the wrongness of the Nazi program and decided that he must actively oppose it.

Armed with the church’s typewriters and carbon paper to produce anti-Nazi leaflets, Hübener enlisted his two young friends from the congregation to help him distribute them. Over about eight months, he wrote and distributed hundreds of leaflets. By 1942, though, Gestapo agents were onto the scheme and arrested the three teens on various charges, including “conspiracy to commit high treason.”

Hübener, who took responsibility for the plan, was beheaded on Oct. 27, 1942, while Wobbe, Schnibbe were sent to labor camps.

Building on these facts, researchers delved deeper into the times, relationships and context of the story.

They learned from extended family members that 16-year–old Helmuth had a girlfriend. Her character, though mostly invented, was “a great dramatic plus,” says Keele, who consulted on the movie.

“In the interest of dramatization, the filmmakers were not afraid to streamline things or flip them upside down even,” the German studies professor says. “They amped up the tension at the trial by emphasizing that Karl-Heinz [Schnibbe] was now 18 and legally vulnerable to the death penalty. That was very true.”

In reality, Schnibbe got five years in prison, while Rudi [Wobbe] got 10, “so the movie flipped the penalties,” Keele says, “making it appear that Karl was really an important target and Helmuth gave his life for his friend.”

It is probably also true that Helmuth’s “boldness at court,” he says, “was intended to attract attention away from the others.”

One figure who played a pivotal role in the real Hübener drama was his Latter-day Saint branch president, Arthur Zander (played by Daniel Betts). Zander was a member of the Nazi Party, who posted a “No Jews allowed” sign on the church door. The move blocked the participation of Solomon Schwartz, a Jewish convert who later died in a concentration camp. After Hübener’s arrest, Zander wrote “excommunicated” on the young man’s membership record.

After the war, his membership was quickly restored and eight decades later, Hübener’s heroism is heralded by the Utah-based church, which has participated in celebrations of the young Latter-day Saint and relayed his story on its website.

Ironically, all three Latter-day Saint survivors of the episode — Schnibbe, Wobbe and Zander — ended up in Utah.

“In my view, we can and must find a way,” Keele writes in an unpublished essay, “to learn from all of them, from the good, the bad, and the ugly.”

A continuing legacy

As a teenager, Ralf Grünke, a third-generation Latter-day Saint in Germany and a church spokesperson for Central Europe, had a poster of his favorite soccer team and a framed photo of Hübener on his bedroom wall.

Today, he has pictures of his grandson and of Hübener on his desk at the office.

“Helmuth’s example of courage and uprightness guided me through the journey of my formative years and beyond,” Grünke says. “At a time when hatred toward minorities and warmongering became guiding principles of government and society, he held onto the maxim of [the hymn] ‘do what is right; let the consequence follow.’”

Without Hübener’s inspiring story, Grünke says, “I wouldn’t be where and who I am today.”

Ewan Horrocks, the British actor who plays the Latter-day Saint activist in the film, was similarly moved.

“I did do a bit of research into the Hitler Youth, just trying to understand how they thought. Because they were brainwashed, they have no idea that they’ve been indoctrinated with all this stuff,” he says. “At the beginning, the [three] boys were just having fun.”

Then you see the transition from that to Hübener “discovering the truth,” the 23-year-old actor says. “He doesn’t hide away from that as well, which is what makes him who he is and why we’re celebrating this film about his life.”

Hübener “stood up,” Horrocks says. It was “so brave, and it’s so admirable.”

In the film’s final scene with his two buddies, Hübener asks his pals never to forget him.

They clearly didn’t — and neither will millions of others.