Rudi Wobbe (1926–1992)

"There are times and places where children do not dream any more about how to commit pranks, but about how to take the government to task."
— Stephan Hermlin

Rudi Wobbe grew up in Nazi Germany. As a boy his family joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (also known as the LDS or Mormon Church) and he eventually became friends with two other LDS boys, Helmuth Huebener and Karl-Heinz Schnibbe. Rudi resisted joining the Hitler Youth despite the intense pressure, and as he and his friends watched the Nazis exercise power and control over the people they recognized it for the evil that it was. With Helmuth he began listening to BBC radio broadcasts that gave a very different picture of how the war was going than what the government said. Eventually the friends began secretly distributing leaflets (written by Helmuth) denouncing Hitler.

In this short book, Wobbe tells the story of how he and his teenage friends were caught by the Gestapo and put on trial for "Preparation to High Treason" against the nation. Helmuth bravely defended himself and his friends before the "Blood Tribunal," but the sentences handed down were unusually harsh because of the political nature of their crimes. His friend Helmuth was executed by guillotine, while Wobbe and Schnibbe were sent to prison. He tells of the brutality he endured in concentration camps, as well as the kindness of some fellow prisoners and even a few guards and wardens. It's not as polished of an account as you might expect to find in professional biographies, but it's told in his own words and feels that much more powerful because of it.

“It may be easy with the retrospect of history to see how bad the Nazis were. But to grow up in the midst of that environment, being taught every day that Germany had the best and finest government on earth and still to have the insight and courage to break free of the propaganda, took a man of a high and special caliber. ”
— Rudi Wobbe (speaking of his friend Helmuth)… (más)

Rudi Wobbe, one of the survivors of a small anti-Nazi clique in Hamburg, Germany, during World War II, provides personal insight into this tragic story that resulted in the execution of its leader, Helmuth Huebener, the youngest political prisoner to be executed at the infamous Ploetzensee facility in Berlin, in July of 1943. The amateur underground group used hand duplicated flyers to question Nazi propaganda about the prosecution of the war, based on information they had obtained by listening to the BBC, itself an illegal act. This is a tragic and emotional side story to the war that unfortunately is not widely known. It is nonetheless a window on the brutality and inhumanity that characterized the Nazi regime and is applicable to most totalitarian regimes in the world, whether fascist or communist.… (más)