It’s never easy to admit when you’re wrong – especially when it means standing up to your own people.

In the opening scenes of “Truth & Treason,” we see a young Helmuth Hübener craft his “patriotic statement.” It’s 1941, in Hamburg, Germany, and Hübener’s statement is the 16-year-old’s final task to obtain an internship at city hall. In it, he writes:

Never before has Germany been more fatherland to us than it is now in this Athenian age, the dawn of the national-socialistic millennium. Examine the unblemished faces you pass on the street, their strong builds. … Today our nation stands strong and tall on the shoulders of our Führer, Adolf Hitler.

Hübener appears to genuinely believe these words. For now.

But the first cracks in Hübener’s loyalty to the Third Reich appear when his friend, who is a quarter Jewish, is banned from attending church.

Soon after, his brother comes home with an illegal radio that picks up news and music broadcast from as far as Great Britain and Russia. As Hübener listens to the foreign reports of Germany’s actions on the world stage, which are notably different from the local papers, the cracks in his loyalty widen.

A few days later, his part-Jewish friend is kidnapped, and Hübener’s loyalty to the Third Reich is finally shattered.

Armed with righteous indignation, his illegal access to BBC News, and his typewriter, Hübener begins a campaign to cover Hamburg with anti-Nazi pamphlets. With the help of two friends, Hübener succeeds in getting these messages all over the city. In mailboxes, on car windshield wipers, even in coat pockets, Hamburg residents everywhere soon find messages against the Fuhrer.

Thirty-nine pamphlets later, Hübener gets caught. The 16-year-old is arrested by the Gestapo, beaten, tortured, and sent to prison. When faced with the opportunity to recant and lighten his sentence during his Berlin trial, Hübener uses his voice, this time with a large courtroom audience, to undermine Hitler, calling his fellow Germans to oppose the evil leader.

“Hitler says whatever he can to cover the truth,” he declares. “His thirst for power has cost millions of lives!”

These final words remove any opportunity for a lower sentence, and Hübener is executed for treason in October 1942, at the age of 17.

Hübener’s story, though undeniably heartbreaking, is particularly powerful. It’s powerful, first, because Hübener was willing to admit that he was wrong. A former Hitler Youth, someone who believed in the goodness of the Nazi regime for Germany, Hübener did not have to change his mind. He could have done what most of us do when faced with information that might make us adjust our beliefs: deflect and ignore. He could have gone with the party line and demonized the messengers and those on the other side. He could have put himself in an echo chamber where all he heard was confirmation of German greatness.

But he didn’t. Instead, he was willing to listen to the truth, even when it came from people labeled as enemies. In amazing fashion, Hübener wanted to know and accept the truth more than he wanted to be right.

The second reason this story is so powerful is because Hübener was willing to speak the truth even when it meant going against, for lack of a better phrase, his own people. As a white German, Hübener was a member of the prioritized and privileged demographic. The only way he would get in trouble was by opposing the Nazi regime.

Hübener could have prioritized his own safety, perhaps under the reasoning of future influence, more than speaking the truth now. But Hübener willingly invited his own ostracization, his own banishment from his community, and eventually his own death, by standing up for the truth against his own people.

Hübener’s story is a reminder that the most powerful voices aren’t the ones which have been steadfast from the beginning, but the ones who are willing to accept the truth, even when it forces them to admit they were once wrong. It’s a reminder that the effect of our voice is largest inside the camp, not outside. It’s a reminder that you and I can impact our culture dramatically when we are willing to speak truth to those close to us, to “our own people.”

Because, let’s be honest. The hardest, most powerful kind of courage isn’t standing up to our enemies. It’s standing up for the truth when it goes against our own side and what we once thought was right.

“Truth & Treason” is a reminder that, even though it may be difficult, telling the truth is always worth it.

This article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal. 

Image Credit: YouTube/Angel