Story 1 - Helmuth Hubener Updated 4/1/2010
“German boys! Do you know the country without freedom, the country of terror and tyranny? Yes, you know it well, but are afraid to talk about it. They have intimidated you to such an extent that you don’t dare talk for fear of reprisals. Yes, you are right; it is Germany – Hitler Germany! Through their unscrupulous terror tactics against young and old, men and women, they have succeeded in making you spineless puppets to do their bidding.” Helmuth Hubener
Blair R. Holmes and Alan F. Keele make the point in their book When Truth Was Treason that there are several kinds of courage. They note the courage of the everyday soldier. Many Germans who provided military service to their country displayed this most popular and recognized form of courage. Brave soldiers who serve a defeated cause may receive less of the public adulation than brave soldiers who serve a winning side, but the struggle’s outcome may only determine fame and infamy. It may have little to do with courage itself. I suspect the monumental, existential courage of the battlefield springs to life of its own accord and serves its own purposes. That is the nature of this kind of courage.
Holmes and Keele also identify lesser known forms of courage like the "courage of routine;" the steady, grinding experience of functioning day after day in absolutely horrendous conditions. The British residents who experienced the London Blitz that started in September 1940 and continued until May 1941 displayed the courage of routine. The other type of courage Holmes and Keele identify is the "courage of resistance." This is the courage of conscious angels. It is the "courage to follow one's conscience in isolation, even in the face of death, while at the same time maintaining a sense of relationship between ends and means.” Helmuth Hubener possessed the courage of resistance at the age of 15 or 16.
On October 27, 1942 Helmuth Hubener was led from his cell around 8:00 p.m. at Plotzenzee Prison and was handed over to Herr Rottger, the executioner at Plotenzee. Rottger and his assistants placed Hubener on the guillotine and he was decapitated. Bodies of prisoners executed at Plotenzee were commonly given to the University of Berlin Anatomical Institute for study. Hubener’s body is believed to have gone to the University of Berlin. Helmuth was 17 years of age. He is believed to be the youngest prisoner executed by the Third Reich. Helmuth’s crime was treason. More specifically, his crime was listening to BBC radio broadcasts from the home of his grandparents in Hamburg, Germany, writing flyers describing his impression of the actual state of Germany’s army based on comparisons of the German press reports and the BBC radio broadcasts., and distributing flyers denouncing the Third Reich in the Hamburg area. Helmuth also engaged several other young people to listen to the forbidden BBC radio broadcasts and to distribute the flyers throughout the Hamburg area.
Helmuth’s story is known primarily from the accounts of the three youths who assisted him with his treasonous acts. These three were imprisoned for their actions, served their prison terms, and survived World War II. One of the three, Karl-Heinz Schnibbe, provided his memories of the “Hubener Group” for the book When Truth was Treason. Another of the Hubener Group, Rudi Wobbe has also published an account of the actions and motivations of the young people who made up the group.
Helmuth, Karl-Heinz, and Rudi were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Members of minority faith communities had good reason to feel threatened by the politics and policies of the Third Reich. The Third Reich was brutal in its approach to numerous religious sects. The Latter-day Saints were not generally a part of the German Christian community that mixed politics, Aryan racial theory, and Christianity, so Latter-day Saints may have felt a bit exposed at times. The Latter-day Saints and the Third Reich did share an interest in genealogy and Christian traditions that may have kept the Mormon Church from becoming a target of the government, despite the fact that it was not a mainstream German faith community. Many Latter-day Saints elders, including leaders in Helmuth and Karl-Heinz’s own congregation,were members of the Nazi Party. The structure and disciplines of the Latter-day Saints Churches did not attract the attention of the National Socialist Party the way the Jewish faith and Gypsy traditions did. The ethnic makeup of the Latter-day Saints in Germany was quite similar to the German nation as a whole and the National Socialist Party and that probably also provided some protection to the members. The Hubener Group owed much credit to their Church and families for the principles and values that drove them to risk everything and oppose their own government in wartime, but it seems likely that the organizing principle for this group of young people was Helmuth’s keen intellect, dedication to the truth, and his disdain for the propaganda lies of the German government.
“The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the TRUTH becomes the greatest ENEMY OF THE STATE.”
— Dr. Joseph M. Goebbels - Hitler's propaganda minister
By all accounts, Helmuth was a very intelligent young man and a natural leader. He was an avid reader and a keen intellect eager to engage in philosophical debate. Kark-Heinz Schnibbe’s account states Helmuth enjoyed political discussions with adults and particularly enjoyed dissecting errant reasoning. Schnibbe remembers some adults felt Helmuth was arrogant, but Schnibbe believes Helmuth’s intention was to make people think about what they were saying, and to challenge them to use logic and evidence critically. Helmuth may have been a bit brash and outspoken.
The Goebbels quote above suggests Helmuth’s interest in intellectual analysis and honesty put him squarely at odds with the intent and designs of his own country. It’s not clear if there were reasons other than intellectual orientation why Helmuth would become an enemy of his own state. Helmuth’s family origins were a little unusual. He was raised primarily by his grandparents. His mother was a war widow who remarried an ardent Nazi. Helmuth was known variously by his mother’s maiden name Gudat, or by her first husband’s name Kunkel, before he was adopted by his stepfather Hugo Hubener and became finally Helmuth Hubener. Helmuth did not like his Nazi stepfather, but that may not be the reason that Helmuth developed his disdain for the Third Reich. Helmuth had two older half brothers, Hans and Gerhard Kunkel, who shared his lack of affection for step-father Hugo Hubener, but neither Hans or Gerhard took any part in the activities of the Hubener Group. Hans and Gerhard were not in any known active resistance to the Third Reich. It’s possible that a certain lack of stability of Helmuth’s childhood could have made Helmuth feel like an outsider even in relation to his own family. The various names he was known by as a child carry their own story about his uncertain status and may have contributed something unique to his personality and independent point of view. Despite some possible family instability, Schnibbe’s remembers that Helmuth’s grandparents doted on him. Helmuth appears to have been a sociable, affable young man who was generally respected and well liked. It’s possible that Helmuth’s family dynamics may have served to reduce the influence of powerful cultural traits of conformity and an almost unquestioning respect for authority that blinded many Germans to the actual state of the world, the true nature of the Third Reich, and their collective responsibility for German military aggression and genocide. Our ability to really know Helmuth is limited by his short life.
One thing that is known is that one of Helmuth’s half-brothers returned to the grandparents’ home from National Labor Service in March or April 1941 and brought a radio set with him. The brother was drafted into military service and left the home again almost immediately. The radio set was left behind. Helmuth’s grandparents went to bed early most nights and the radio was available to Helmuth many nights after his grandparents retired. Listening to foreign radio broadcasts was outlawed by the Decree about Extraordinary Radio Measures of September 1, 1939. The second section of this decree specified the death penalty for severe cases of willful distribution of foreign broadcasts.
There are moments in life that arise and demand an important choice. One of these moments for Helmuth came when he tuned the radio to a BBC broadcast and started listening. He was facing a simple decision in that first moment. He probably did not realize it was a life and death decision. He listened to the BBC broadcast. It is likely that he was predisposed by his intellectual, inquisitive nature to do nothing else. All of the conditions were present that would lead to Helmuth’s execution.
I don’t think it’s possible to understand Helmuth outside the historical context of his times, so I have to do a short history of Germany for the first third of the twentieth century: Germany was in a state of crisis after World War I. This is going to be 30 years of history in just a few pages, it’s going to be relatively painless, and somewhat accurate, if incomplete.
The German government between the first and second World Wars was known as the Weimar Republic. The Republic was essentially a parliamentary democracy with a president elected by a constitutionally more powerful assembly or legislative body. The Weimar presidency was designed to be a weak, French model as compared to a stronger, American form of president. Unfortunately, Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution gave the President the right to govern by decree in emergencies. This Article was later exploited by Adolph Hitler to subvert the Weimar Republic’s democratic government plan and weak executive model. Early challenges to the Weimar Republic came from communists who dreamt of a Bolshevik Germany modeled on Bolshevik Russia. The communists organized strikes and riots in March 1919 and the German government responded by sending in the brutal Free Corps. A thousand people were killed within a few days and these early political troubles were put down. A long-term German dislike for Bolsheviks was established in the process. Hitler would later exploit the anger against communists in 1933 to consolidate his control of Germany. Hitler would also be able to use German resentment against Bolsheviks to send communists to concentration camps along with Gypsies, Jews, and dissidents. Longer-term challenges to the success of the Weimar Republic came from economic impacts of World War I and its peace-truce agreement.
The Treaty of Versailles which ended World War I had a crushing impact on the German economy. Many Germans felt the burden of reparation payments to the Allies were extreme and punitive. Economist John Maynard Keynes calculated that scheduled reparation payments exceeded Germany’s ability to pay by 300%. A few Germans realized the even more important economic impact caused by the losses of population, arable land, mineral deposits, industrial and communications infrastructure that were ceded to the Allies under the Treaty of Versailles. Germany’s economy sputtered in the early years of the Weimar Republic. Germany suffered runaway inflation or hyper-inflation in the early 1920’s. A loaf of bread that cost less than a mark in 1918 cost 250 marks by January 1922. By July 1922, a loaf of bread was priced over 3,400 marks. Commodities literally increased in price as German workers stood in line to buy them. Inflation impact was felt primarily by the German middle class and the union labor population. German industrialists and large scale agriculturists worked out a system of inflation profiteering at the expense of the Central Bank and the German people. Moderate Weimar Republic leaders like Gustav Streseman failed to unite the middle class in the post-war period because of earlier political positions that divided the country. Other moderate leaders, like Walther Rathenau and Matthias Erzberger, were assassinated by right-wing nationalist, anti-semitic fanatics. The vacuum of leadership in the middle of the political spectrum was apparent as early as 1923 and led to the challenge which has been called the “Republic without republicans.” Most threatening to the German parliamentary democracy was the rise of the National People’s Party known as the DNVP. The DNVP traced back to a monarchist group known as Prussian Junkers, but as a political party the DNVP took advantage of the parliamentary institutions and fashioned itself into a comprehensive coalition of the political right. The DNVP appealed to many Germans through their patriotic feelings and it became the second largest party in the parliament behind the Social Democatic Party. The DNVP was involved in the politics of the Weimar Republic, but never relinquished its fundamental distaste for parliamentary democracy.
Adolph Hitler led the small, but vocal German Workers Party in 1923. Hitler attempted a coup d’etat in Munich in 1923. The coup failed and Hitler fled, was arrested and served a year in jail during 1924-25. Many Germans thought this was the end of Hitler’s party and his political ambitions. Germany’s economic situation stabilized between 1923 and 1929, but the stock market crash in the American economy in October 1929 led to the withdrawal of American short-term loans which had been helpful to Germany. The 1930 parliamentary elections proved to be Hitler’s political comeback. The center right government of Heinrich Bruning was surprised by the sudden strength of both Hitler’s National Socialist (Nazi) Party and the Communist Party. Paul von Hindenburg was elected President by a narrow margin over Adolph Hitler in 1932. Hitler and his Nazi party refused to cooperate meaningfully in a coalition government and created a governmental crisis. Hitler and his chief political operative Hermann Goering maneuvered aggressively and threatened to further undermine the Weimar Republic and parliamentary democracy unless Hitler was appointed Chancellor. President Hindenburg resisted appointing Hitler as Chancellor, but the Nazi party formed a coalition with Franz von Papen’s Young Conservatism and the Nazi conservative revolution assumed power on January 30th 1933. Hitler promptly drove the Communist Party underground, marginalized von Papen and his allies, and the Weimar Republic was no more.
“No, it is not we that have deserted Christianity, it is those who came before us who deserted Christianity. We have only carried through a clear division between politics which have to do with terrestrial things, and religion, which must concern itself with the celestial sphere. There has been no interference with the doctrine (Lehre ) of the Confessions or with their religious freedom (Bekenntnisfreiheit ), nor will there be any such interference. On the contrary the State protects religion, though always on the one condition that religion will not be used as a cover for political ends... National Socialism neither opposes the Church nor is it anti-religious, but on the contrary it stands on the ground of a real Christianity.... For their interests cannot fail to coincide with ours alike in our fight against the symptoms of degeneracy in the world of to-day, in our fight against a Bolshevist culture, against atheistic movement, against criminality, and in our struggle for a consciousness of a community in our national life... These are not anti-Christian, these are Christian principles! And I believe that if we should fail to follow these principles then we should to be able to point to our successes, for the result of our political battle is surely not unblest by God.
Adolf Hitler, in his speech at Koblenz, to the Germans of the Saar, 26 Aug. 1934
The Nazi Party had plans for an industrial and military revitalization of Germany that appealed to a beleaguered nation. The Nazi government legislated their Aryan agenda with programs like the 1933 Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service which dismissed Jews and Nazi opponents from the civil service. Hitler consolidated the Nazi party under his control during the “Night of the Long Knives” on June 30, 1934 when leaders of the maverick wing of the Nazi party were assassinated. Many Germans chose to overlook these early indications of brutality and injustice and were content with economic revival after the great national humiliation and economic pain of the previous decades. Hitler continued to play on the emotions, aggressions, and frustrations of the German people to gradually revoke the military and economic constraints of the Treaty of Versailles and build popular support for his consolidation of power. Britain, France, and the United States were distracted and weakened by the global economic depression and failed to take action to curb growing German military power and ambition. The Allies probably also realized belatedly that the overly harsh Treaty of Versailles had created conditions which were ripe for a reactionary German revolution, but there was no way to go back in time and repair the damages of a bad peace treaty. The second round of the World War I, the war to end all wars, was on the horizon.
Hitler and the Nazi Party were aware its military ambitions could not be realized without a large, vigorous standing army. The Nazi politic intrigue of the 1920’s was not forgotten by the moderate Social Democrats, but economic distress and a leadership vacuum left German moderates without the political power or means to limit Germany’s militarization under Hitler’s plan. The Social Democrats has withered as a political power. The Nazi Party set out to recruit German youth into its activities during the 1930’s. A German army was in short pants.
Germany had a strong and long tradition of youth programs. It is estimated that there were two thousand active youth programs and organizations in Germany during the 1920’s. The most popular of these was the Wandervogel. Wandervogel was formed in 1901 and emphasized sports, weekend retreats, hiking, camping, and wilderness survival. Wandervogel’s emphasis on land and wilderness instead of modern conveniences and technology of the day probably reflected latent resistance to the Germany of Kaiser Wilhelm and the Weimar Republic. The youth movement groups of the 1920’s were more specifically a rejection of Weimar Germany. Numerous political groups and intellectuals who desired the support and numbers of the youth movement courted these groups to further their political ends.
The Nazi Party initiated its youth programs in 1926. The German youth movement had some natural inclination toward the Nazis because of its rejection of the Weimar Republic. The Nazis calculated correctly that if the youth movement enjoyed the outdoor experience, they would also love an outdoor experience with firearms and paramilitary features. The Nazi youth programs were organized by the Schutzstafel or SS and included most of the outdoor activities common to the youth movement and expanded the common activities to include use of weapons.
"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith.... We need believing people."
--Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933
Youth membership, indoctrination, and recruitment were integral to Hitler’s plans. Nazi indoctrination was a virulent mix of patriotism, racism, and a nationalistic Christianity. The established German churches failed generally to discriminate the political message and direction of the Nazi Party from the religious language that accompanied the political message. It’s likely that many fervent Nazis were similarly unable to untangle the political and religious threads in the Nazi world view and would not generally have seen any reason to do so. In general, the German churches were of little help to the German people with the moral and ethical questions posed by Hitler and the Nazis. German children of the 1930’s grew up steeped in the caldron of patriotism and racism and stirred with religious talk. Membership in the Hitler Youth became mandatory in March of 1939, but to a great extent, the Hitler Youth movement was fully in place several years before that. The Hitler Youth curriculum emphasized Aryan race science. All Nazi education was imbued with political content. Mathematic word problems might be about the cost of maintaining insane asylums or calculating ammunition quantities. Hatred of Jews and other “sub-humans,” like the mentally ill, permeated all activities. The Hitler Youth was remarkably successful. Hitler membership was slightly over 100,000 in 1932 and grew to almost 8 million participants by 1940. It’s hard to look back at Adolph Hitler and realize that beyond the monster we see so clearly, there was a brilliant politician who was extremely stubborn, persistent, and who seldom retreated from his plans.
“He alone, who owns the youth, gains the Future.” Adolph Hitler, 1935 at Reichsparteitag
The Nazi efforts to recruit German youth were remarkably successful, but they could not guarantee complete success. Several anti-Nazi youth movements or groups developed spontaneously. The Edelweiss Pirates and the Swing Kids are the best known of the anti-Nazi youth groups. The Edelweiss Pirates were firmly and passionately opposed to the aims of the Nazi Party. The Pirates attacked Hitler Youth frequently and appeared to live mainly for that purpose. The Swing Kids culture revolved around American jazz music and dancing rather than an anti-Nazi message. The resistance of the Swing Kids to the Hitler Youth existed primarily on a cultural level. Helmuth and Karl-Heinz found the Hitler Youth unappealing, but they did not belong to the Edelweiss Pirates or the Swing Kids either. This small group of young people functioned much more like an insulated cell of resistance to Hitler and the Nazi Party.
In March 1939, Hitler bullied Czechoslovakia into allowing Germany to occupy the Czechoslovakian western frontier. France and Britain confronted Germany and came away with a promise of no more incursions, and especially no incursion into Poland. On September 1st, 1939, the German army invaded Poland. The German armies swept away Poland’s defenders swiftly. Many Germans were elated by the swift victory and felt they had finally taken care of the “Polish problem.” Briitain and France declared war on Germany on September 3rd, 1939 in response to the invasion of Poland. Even in the patriotic glow of the blitzkrieg victory over Poland, Helmuth recognized that a German war against France and England isolated Germany from its industrial trading partners. He felt there was little chance for Germany to do well through an extended conflict. Helmuth’s pessimism about the war was not shared by most of his countrymen. There was general support for the war in German society. There was a sense that Germany was finally doing something about communism. German armies swept aside the Finnish army and occupied Finland in March 1940.
Adolph Hitler was a very popular leader with the German people. He was a powerful speaker with firm convictions. Hitler was an accomplished politician. "If only the Führer knew!" was a common cry of ordinary Germans who were frustrated by actions of the Nazi regime. Hitler’s personal popularity was always higher than that of his party, the military, or any institution in Germany. There was general recognition of the oppressive tactics of the Nazi Party, but Hitler was generally regarded as a moral leader who had no part in the oppression or failings of the bureaucracy. Somehow, Hitler was generally regarded as above the fray of politics.
It took less than three months for German armies to roll over and occupy Norway and Denmark. In May and June of 1940, the German armies rolled through the low countries of Holland and Belgium. German armies proved much too strong for France and Paris fell to Germany in June 1940. Helmuth’s doubts about the wisdom of the German war were in a distinct minority in Germany. The Reich of 1000 years was announced. The Battle of Britain began in July 1940. German armies had military campaigns going in North Africa, in East Africa, in Dakar, and in Greece during 1940. It looks clear in retrospect that Germany was overextended, but it was not clear to the German people. Nations intoxicated by dreams of empire are usually blind to the limits of their own power.
It was very difficult for Germans to be unaware of the Gestapo surveillance. The surveillance was a part of everyday life in Germany. There was normal patriotic reluctance to confront or complain about the war effort when soldiers were risking their lives on battlefields. The press was not free or able to carry news that the government did not approve. All avenues for wide political discussion and dissent were closed.
1941 arrived and the German armies continued their conquests. Yugoslavia, Greece, Crete, Iraq and Syria came under German control by mid year. In June Hitler and the Nazis made a fatal miscalculation and turned their eyes to Russia. The Battle of Britain was proving to be difficult. The Brits had found a hero in Winston Churchill. Hitler had come face-to-face with a worthy opponent. The Russian winter of 1941 lay in wait for a German army. The “best” of World War II was over for Germany.
One of Helmuth’s half-brothers returned to the grandparents’ home from National Labor Service in March or April 1941 and brought a radio set with him. The brother was drafted into military service and left the home again almost immediately. The radio set was left behind. Helmuth’s grandparents went to bed early most nights and the radio was available to Helmuth many nights after his grandparents retired. Listening to foreign radio broadcasts was outlawed by the Decree about Extraordinary Radio Measures of September 1, 1939. The second section of this decree specified the death penalty for severe cases of willful distribution of foreign broadcasts.
There are moments in life that arise and demand an important choice. One of these moments for Helmuth came when he tuned the radio to a BBC broadcast and started listening. He was facing a simple decision in that first moment. He probably did not realize it was a life and death decision. He listened to the BBC broadcast. It is likely that he was predisposed by his intellectual, inquisitive nature to do nothing else. All of the conditions were present that would lead to Helmuth’s execution.
Political systems that stifle broad discussion and dissent carry the seeds of their own destruction within themselves. Bad news and opposing points of view are crucial to an ongoing political process of understanding one’s own situation, adjusting, changing course, strategizing for success. A political system that does not allow a wide range of facts and theories to be on the table and in discussion works at a significant disadvantage in the world. This kind of closed system is unlikely to succeed over any long term period. The closed system worked for Hitler until raw facts about German army casualties could no longer be denied. The closed system was especially repugnant to military commanders who knew very well that the German army was overextended and was not going to be able to roll over Russia as it had Poland, France, and so many other countries.
Helmuth observed the world as best he could from the familiar neighborhoods of Hamburg. He knew the households and families where family members in uniform had died and been buried. He extrapolated the incidence of Hamburg neighborhood grief across the German nation and estimated military losses. Helmuth listened to glowing Nazi reports about war successes. Late at night in the quiet of his grandparents’ home, he tuned in the BBC war broadcasts and compared British accounts of war campaigns with the Nazi accounts. Helmuth appears to have been an analyst by nature. He almost certainly recognized that BBC broadcasts served a propaganda purpose, but when he calculated losses at home, war time material shortages, British and German accounts of the war, Helmuth concluded the war was going poorly for Germany.
Helmuth worked days in a local government office. He had access to a typewriter and he was allowed to take it home. Helmuth started typing informational flyers that described the actual state of the war as he could gauge it. The flyers mixed diatribes against the Nazi government with war status information. The flyers began to show up in Hamburg neighborhoods. They would appear on bulletin boards late at night. They were found in random mailboxes. Helmuth had found his voice. He was 16 years old.
Helmuth was an adolescent. He needed support of friends. He needed allies to help distribute the flyers. Helmuth began to speak with a few friends and share his thoughts about Hitler and the war. He invited a few friends to his home in the evening and tuned in the BBC radio broadcasts. Karl-Heinz was among the few friends recruited into Helmuth’s resistance cell. A country’s laws and security during wartime often impose restrictions on dissent during wartime. By contemporary understanding, the flyer activity was treason. What can be done when a person weighs their country’s activities and motives and sees a great wrong? Do we answer to a moral law that transcends a country’s law?
The Hubener Group never became a large cell. The “Group” was Helmuth and his three friends. They were all teenagers. They had no adult direction. They made childish mistakes. They did the work of angels. They failed.
Only a few of Helmuth’s flyers were delivered to the Nazis in Hamburg. Many were read and passed around surreptitiously. They may have caused a quiet sensation in the Hamburg area. A few months after drafting his three friends to help him with his resistance, Helmuth decided the flyers needed to be distributed on a wider basis and in several languages. He approached an acquaintanance at his government day job about help with translation. Discussions were overheard and reported within the workplace which automatically meant they were reported to the Nazi Party. Helmuth and his friends were arrested and the Hubener Group’s resistance to Nazi Germany was over. Helmuth’s active resistance lasted about six months.
The Hubener Group appear to have had no meaningful impact on the Nazi Party or the course of the war. They hid no Jews in their homes. Helmuth was executed. The rest of the group were sent to the concentration camps and survived the war.
Can we learn something from the failure of Helmuth Hubener and his young friends? I think we can and should. Anything that we may learn is a tribute and extends their work. It’s a way of honoring these young people.
It’s likely that Helmuth and his friends were primarily unsuccessful in their resistance to the Third Reich because the system they opposed recognized the potential danger they posed and dealt with perpetrators with the harshest possible punishment. One lesson of the Hubener Group is to assess the system you oppose and its potential for obliterating you quickly and easily. I don’t want to suggest that soldiers of conscience should be timid or fearful, but the brutality of the system being opposed should be a primary consideration when choosing activities and approaches. A government that has little or no consideration for basic human rights greatly hampers the effectiveness of conscious angels. This mortally dangerous environment will serve to isolate resisters. To survive, conscious angels will usually choose to work in very small groups or cells and only communicate the work with completely trusted fellow resisters. I don’t think this necessarily means that conscious angels cannot succeed against brutal systems, but the personal dangers are likely higher and the chance of success may be similarly lower.
So, Lesson One from the Hubener Group: Know the system you oppose and its capacity for brutality. Use this knowledge in planning the form and direction your activities will take. Getting killed very quickly after you begin your work will usually reduce your long-term effectiveness and is just not generally the outcome we choose for ourselves or our family members. Helmuth may have understood that he faced the death penalty for his activities. I don't think his friends realized this.
A harshly oppressive system like the Third Reich can be expected to have very tight control on the press. The actual circumstances of the regime’s oppression, brutality, and criminality will likely exist only as rumor. Reported facts of the systems’s brutality will often be suppressed instead of reported as fact that could openly discussed to evaluate public policy. One of the lessons we may take away from Nazi Germany is the absolute necessity of a free press even in wartime. Even in the most critical, and probably, especially in the most critical periods of a country’s existence, the presence of a relatively free and unbiased press cannot be overstated.
Lesson 2 that we might gain from the Hubener Group: If there is no free press, work to establish the free press first. Because the principle of a free press is not itself fact-laden, it should be probably be considered as the first and most important arena for confronting and resisting a government that has lost its ethical moorings. It may also be one of the safest areas for initial resistance to a brutal system because the principal of a free press is less likely to be seen as treasonous than the stories that a free press might choose to report.
A person’s patriotism may be questioned aggressively when they push for relatively complete and broad press coverage of society’s actual condition, but a charge of inadequate patriotism and a charge of treason are generally very different in their consequences for the resister. Arguing for a free or freer press may be seen as less treasonous than arguing for any other right or outcome. I don’t suggest this avenue as an alternative to an active resistance and opposition to specific activities of a criminal government, but perhaps as a critical first step that may allow the resistance to survive long enough to become more successful in helping the society or culture regain its ethical footing. In particular with regard to German communities in the Third Reich, it is likely that many individuals were able to remain sufficiently uninformed about the excesses and atrocities of their government and thus, could continue to provide material support to a monstrously corrupt system. Human beings do not like bad news that is likely to have an impact on their personal circumstances, hence the persistent danger of being the bearer of bad tidings. Societies and cultures may be more tolerant of a free press, even yellow journalism, as the messenger of bad news than they might be of individual servants of conscience. I suggest this only in a large abstract sense and with the goal of making angels effective. Each of us must in the last analysis follow our own inner voice and calling. Much like the courage of the battlefield, the courage of resistance springs to life of its own accord, and serves its own purposes. It may be that in certain circumstances, there is nothing to do but choose to be true to your own conscience and die, or lose your integrity and survive.
Stop in again. I am rewriting, editing, reposting every few days. Thanks for the interest. Namaste.
Sources: When Truth was Treason by R. Blair, Holmes and Alan F. Keele Inside Nazi Germany, Conformity, Opposition and Racism in Everyday Life by Detlev J.K. Peukert
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