October 27, 1942: Helmuth Hübener is executed by guillotine at the Plötzensee Prison in Berlin. At 17, he was the youngest German executed for acts of resistance to the Nazi regime.
He was born on January 8, 1925 in Hamburg. He belonged to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (a.k.a. the Mormons) and the Boy Scouts. But in 1935, the Nazis banned scouting. As they required, he joined the Hitler Youth, but quit after Kristallnacht in 1938.
A friend introduced him to foreign radio broadcasts, which the Nazis had banned. He copied some of those broadcasts and printed them up as leaflets that he spread. He wrote of the Nazis, "Through their unscrupulous terror tactics against young and old, men and women, they have succeeded in making you spineless puppets to do their bidding."
He was working at the Hamburg Social Authority, and used his down time to translate his pamphlets into other languages, hoping to distribute them among prisoners of war. A co-worker, Heinrich Mohn, noticed this, and ratted him out. On February 5, 1942, Hübener was arrested at work by the Gestapo. On August 11, he was tried for treason, and convicted. He faced the judges, and said, "Now, I must die, even though I have committed no crime. So now, it's my turn, but your turn will come."
It was highly unusual for the Nazis to try an underaged defendant, much less sentence him to death, but the court stated that Hübener had shown more than average intelligence for a boy his age. This, along with his general and political knowledge, and his behaviour before the court, made Hübener, in the court's eyes, a boy with a far more developed mind than was usually to be found in someone of his age. For this reason, the court stated, Hübener was to be punished as an adult. The punishment was carried out on October 27.
A school in Hamburg has been named for him.
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October 27, 1942 was a Tuesday. Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And the NHL season started 4 days later. So there were no scores on this historic day.
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