His resistance movement started quietly. When 16-year-old Helmuth Hübener’s (Ewan Horrocks) Jewish friend disappeared at the hands of German Nazis, he began listening to banned short-wave radio stations at low volume after dark.
The foreign news radio provided answers about Hübener’s missing friend that he urgently craved. Broadcasters illustrated an oppressive Nazi Germany radically different from the one previously presented to him. He was convinced the Nazi regime was racist — and losing the war.
An enlightened Hübener decided his fellow Germans, particularly his close friends, were entitled to the truth.
Using a borrowed typewriter from his workplace, Hübener launched an anonymous resistance campaign, writing and printing leaflets exposing the regime’s lies and challenging its propaganda.
At night, the teenager spread the red-papered leaflets across his hometown of Hamburg.
But he wanted to cover more ground. So Hübener enlisted friends from his congregation, Karl-Heinz Schnibbe (Ferdinand McKay) and Rudolf Wobbe (Daf Thomas), fellow members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to join his movement.
After spreading dozens of impassioned leaflets across town, Hübener’s borrowed typewriter exposed his secret resistance to a colleague — sending the teenager and his friends to the People’s Court on counts of treason.
When director Matt Whittaker heard Hübener’s story, he pulled out a phone book, found Hübener’s friend Karl-Heinz Schnibbe’s number, and gave him a call.
Schnibbe answered. He lived in Salt Lake City, about 45 minutes north of Whittaker, and invited him for a visit.
It was 2001. Schnibbe was in his late 70s, but still “filled with energy,” Whittaker said. He was “an energetic, lively man.”
Schnibbe gave Whittaker the abridged version of his experience in Hübener’s resistance group. But it was enough. “I was so moved by it,” Whittaker said.
“I remember walking out of his house just thinking, ‘I have to tell this story as a filmmaker,’” he added. “And so we did.”
In a more than 20-year undertaking, Whittaker and Ethan Vincent co-wrote the script for the upcoming Utah-based Angel Studios release, “Truth & Treason.”
It’s based directly on the true experiences of Hübener, his friends and the Hamburg community, as shared with Whittaker — who spent more than two decades immersed in this story and now calls Schnibbe “a dear friend.”
“One of the greatest gifts of my life, actually, is that friendship with Karl (Schnibbe).”
The true story behind ‘Truth & Treason’
Following his visit with Schnibbe, Whittaker traveled to Hamburg with the aging German to record his story on film for a 2002 PBS documentary, “Truth & Conviction.”
Schnibbe took the filmmakers to the locations where the dangerous youth resistance unfolded, such as the cells the teenagers were locked in after being charged with treason.
Whittaker captured Schnibbe’s entire account on camera. He also interviewed other members of the Hamburg community who remembered Hübener and the other teenagers. They visited the Latter-day Saint congregation Hübener attended, and spoke with longtime members of that congregation.
Then, they visited a national memorial site dedicated to Hübener. A photo of Hübener, Schnibbe and Wobbe hangs on the wall. While filming, a group of young students visited the memorial. A member of the film crew introduced the students to Schnibbe, pointing to his young photo.
“I watched as Karl (Schnibbe) was telling these kids what he was doing when he was their age,” Whittaker recalled. “I was seeing the emotion in their faces and in their eyes, and I began to realize this is going to be a really good little PBS documentary — but this story is much bigger than that. This can reach a worldwide audience."
Shortly after his experience at the memorial site, Whittaker started drafting a script for the theatrical version of the story. For “many years” Whittaker, and his co-writer, Vincent, chipped away at a script.
The film is less stiff than the documentary, but still “almost completely” based on fact, Whittaker said.
“When you adapt a true story into a narrative film — into a theatrical film — there has to be license taken," he added. “To tell something in two hours, that was a much bigger story, you have to fill in blanks. You have to kind of put meat on the bones of a skeleton that only has so much there.”
Whittaker “took some liberty” here and there, such as expanding on a reported romantic relationship Hübener had, or adjusting the location or timing of an event to fit it into the plot, but the entire film is “based on historical fact,” he says.
He added that while they sought to avoid “gratuitous violence” in the film, they don’t give audiences a “Hallmark version of Nazi Germany.”
“This really happened and, and it was brutal. I think that for us to really appreciate the light, we have to experience the darkness.”
Lessons from Hübener
Spending two decades absorbed in Hübener‘s experiences and forming a friendship with Schnibbe “changed” Whittaker’s life and the way he interacts with others, he says.
He believes spending two hours with Hübener’s story will leave a similar, if less profound, impact on audiences.
“We can learn from somebody else who has been through really dark times, and then come through them, to appreciate the light,” Whittaker said. “The end of this film is filled with light, but it’s passed through some really dark places to get there.”
Whittaker appreciates Hübener‘s example of peaceful resistance. In the past several years, he has routinely attempted to employ peacemaking in his own life.
He looks for opportunities to stand up for others and share what he believes is true and right.
Our world, he says, could benefit from Hübener-like peacemaking. But mostly, Whittaker hopes audiences are entertained and enjoy the movie, no matter the weight of its impact.
“I hope people will come and realize that they’re going to laugh, they’re going to cry ... but they’re also going to be inspired and moved by it. I really hope that people just thoroughly have a cathartic and enjoyable experience,” Whittaker said.
“Maybe some of them will walk out asking themselves, ‘What would I have done and what will I do now?’ Because that’s what I’ve been asking myself for the past two decades.”
When does ‘Truth & Treason’ come out?
“Truth & Treason” will be released in theaters nationwide on Friday, Oct. 17. It is rated PG-13 for violent content, thematic images and smoking.