The Third Reich, under the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, ruled Germany for 12 years. Their reign of terror changed the world forever.
Many Germans were deceived by Hitler’s promises. In the early years he was hailed as the saviour who would pull Germany out of a crushing economic slump and restore national greatness. Youth groups flourished, with children eagerly joining the Hitler Youth, donning uniforms, marching in parades, and earning badges – a seemingly harmless pastime that masked a dark indoctrination.
Yet not every youngster bought into the propaganda. In a time when speaking out could mean death, a handful of brave teens wrote and distributed anti‑Nazi leaflets, hid Jews in secret rooms, spied for underground networks, and even sabotaged German war machines. Their stories prove that courage knows no age.
Why These 10 Young People Matter
10 Helmuth Hubener
In 1939 the Nazis outlawed any foreign radio broadcasts, even threatening the death penalty for anyone caught tuning into the British Broadcasting Corporation or other Allied stations.
Two years later, 16‑year‑old Helmuth Hubener slipped a tiny receiver into his room and began secretly listening to the BBC. The contrast between the British reports – which mentioned both victories and defeats – and the German press, which only boasted of triumphs, opened his eyes to the regime’s lies.
He gathered his two closest friends, Karl‑Hinz Schnibbe and Rudolf Wobbe, for a clandestine meeting. Using a typewriter, carbon paper, and a swastika stamp, Helmuth drafted incendiary essays such as “Hitler the Murderer” and “Do You Know That They Are Lying to You?”.
The trio scattered the flyers in apartment complexes, mailboxes, and telephone booths. Their daring distribution led the Gestapo straight to them. Convicted of high treason, Helmuth was beheaded on 27 October 1942, just 17 years old.
9 Hans And Sophie Scholl (The White Rose)
Hans Scholl entered the Hitler Youth with enthusiasm, eventually becoming a squad leader of 155 boys and training future “leaders” for the Fatherland. Over time, however, his idealism soured.
In 1942 Hans, together with a handful of medical students, launched the White Rose resistance. Their mission: expose the regime’s cruelty by printing thousands of leaflets on a hand‑crafted duplicator, stuffing them into stamped envelopes, and mailing them to random addresses drawn from phone books. His sister Sophie soon joined, convinced that Hitler was eroding Christianity and replacing it with a brutal ideology.
After a stint as medics on the Russian Front, the siblings returned with fresh horror – they had witnessed the Warsaw Ghetto’s devastation and recognized that Germany’s war machine was faltering despite propaganda claims. Reinvigorated, they resumed leaflet distribution.
On the morning of 18 February 1943, Hans and Sophie entered Munich University’s atrium, scattering the remaining pamphlets onto the floor just as students streamed in. A Nazi officer spotted them, leading to their arrest. After a swift four‑day trial, both were executed by guillotine. Sophie’s final words echoed her resolve: “What does my death matter if through us thousands awaken and are stirred to action?”
8 Knud Pedersen And The Churchill Club
Fourteen‑year‑old Knud Pedersen was outraged when Germany invaded Denmark in 1940, forcing the nation’s swift surrender. In 1941 he rallied seven classmates from Aalborg Cathedral School to form the Churchill Club, named for their hero Winston Churchill.
Their first acts of rebellion were bold and colorful: they splashed blue paint on German roadsters, vandalized Nazi barracks, and reversed newly installed road signs – all under the pretense of playing bridge with their parents.
The club swore to sabotage the occupiers. They pilfered weapons, fabricated explosives, and stashed the armaments within the school itself. When the Gestapo uncovered the cache, all eight members were arrested and dispatched to Nyborg State Prison.
Between 1942 and 1943 the Churchill Club became the backbone of Danish resistance. Their daring inspired underground newspapers, massive labor strikes, and the burial of smuggled guns in gardens, all of which strained German control.
7 Irene Gut
Irene Gut, later known as Irene Opdyke, worked as the live‑in housekeeper for Major Eduard Rugemer, a prominent Nazi officer. Already engaged with the Polish resistance, she began sheltering twelve Jews in the servants’ quarters beneath the house.
Eight months later Major Rugemer discovered three of the hidden Jews in his kitchen. Shocked, he offered Irene a disturbing bargain: the Jews could stay if she became his mistress. Humiliated but determined, Irene reluctantly agreed.
She later confided the arrangement to a country priest. Decades afterward, she recalled his chilling verdict: “I expected you to say ‘You had no choice, a life is more important.’ Instead, he told me to turn everyone out, claiming his mortal soul mattered more.” Irene spent the next thirty years touring the United States, sharing her harrowing testimony with schoolchildren.
6 Stefania Podgorska
At fourteen, Stefania Podgorska lived with the Diamant family, a Polish Jewish household. When the Germans forced the Diamants into a ghetto, they begged Stefania to stay in their apartment. She smuggled food into the ghetto, and after Mrs. Diamant was deported to Auschwitz, the danger intensified.
Weeks later, Max Diamant, who had escaped a death‑train, knocked on Stefania’s door. Despite knowing the death penalty loomed, she hid him. Soon, his fiancee and eleven more Jews found refuge in the attic, while two German nurses and their boyfriends were forced to share the house.
For eight months the hidden Jews remained silent in the attic, surviving the occupation. After the war, Max, now Josef Burzminski, asked Stefania to marry him. They emigrated to the United States and built a new life together.
5 Diet Eman
When the Nazis rolled into the Netherlands, Diet Eman was planning her wedding. She watched soldiers storm Jewish neighborhoods, shatter windows, and set synagogues ablaze. Friends received deportation orders, forced to march to stations with a single suitcase – a one‑way ticket to concentration camps.
Diet and her fiancé joined the Dutch Resistance, locating safe houses for Jews, stealing identity papers and ration cards, and aiding downed Allied pilots. She cycled across Holland, sending intelligence on German troop movements to the Allies.In May 1944 the Gestapo captured Diet and sent her to Ravensbrück. After four months she convinced the Nazis she was feeble‑minded and harmless, securing her release. Undeterred, she returned to resistance work.
4 Hortense Daman
Only fourteen when Germany occupied Belgium, Hortense Daman (later Clews) began smuggling the underground newspaper La Libre Belgique. Her duties soon expanded to delivering critical messages across the country.
Her striking looks – blonde hair and a charming smile – often disarmed German officers, allowing her to slip past checkpoints. Her mother’s grocery store provided the perfect cover for moving food, while Hortense also ferried grenades hidden beneath egg cartons. When a German officer intercepted her, she offered him fresh eggs; he snatched them and waved her away.
Eventually, the Gestapo betrayed Hortense and her parents. Hortense and her mother were sent to Ravensbrück, her father to Buchenwald. She endured horrific medical experiments but survived, as did her parents.
3 Fernande Keufgens
In 1942, Fernande Keufgens (later Davis) was slated for a German munitions factory in Poland. Threatened that her father would be imprisoned if she didn’t board the train, she and three companions leapt from the locomotive before it crossed the border.
She trekked miles through the countryside until she reached her uncle Hubert, a devout priest in the Army of Liberation, a Belgian resistance group. She begged to join their cause.
Fernande then supplied false identity papers and food stamps to help Jews escape Belgium. Her fluency in German often earned her the trust of occupying officers, allowing her to slip past dangerous checkpoints.
2 Swing Youth
On 2 March 1940 German police raided a dance hall in Hamburg, discovering teenagers swaying to forbidden swing music from Britain and the United States. The youths formed circles, jumped, clapped, and painted their nails – a vivid rebellion against Nazi cultural strictures.
The Swing Youth rejected the Hitler Youth’s uniformity, instead embracing British and American fashions, music, and hairstyles. Though many did not openly denounce the regime, the Third Reich saw their subculture as a dangerous threat to Nazi ideology.
Heinrich Himmler ordered the leaders of the Swing Youth sent to concentration camps. A special camp for boys opened at Moringen in 1940, followed by a girls’ camp in 1942.
1 Edelweiss Pirates
The Edelweiss Pirates began as a hiking club in the 1930s, but they quickly rejected the Nazi regime’s strict rules and militaristic indoctrination. Many members dropped out of school to avoid the Hitler Youth, becoming adept draft‑dodgers. Most grew up in impoverished, Communist‑leaning families, with parents often arrested or killed for their beliefs.
They frequently clashed with the Hitler Youth in street battles, recognizable by their long hair, bright shirts, and the Edelweiss emblem sewn onto collars or hats. “We wore our hair long, we had a knife in our sock and we would not march,” recalled former pirate Jean Julich.
As the war progressed, the Pirates expanded their resistance: they spray‑painted anti‑Nazi graffiti, stole food and explosives to support adult resistance groups, and hid German army deserters. Jean Julich and his comrades shattered factory windows with bricks and poured sugar into Nazi vehicle fuel tanks.
The Gestapo eventually cracked down. Julich, only fifteen, was sent to a concentration camp where he endured beatings, starvation, and typhus until liberation in 1945. The Nazis executed his friend Barthel Schink alongside seven adults and five other “pirates.”