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. In the early years, they embraced him as the savior who would pull Germany out of a long economic depression and make their country great again. There was a lot of emphasis on national pride. The Nazi Party promised young Germans a new future in a brand-new Germany, and millions of children eagerly joined the Hitler Youth and similar clubs. Not only were the outings fun, but the youth enjoyed wearing uniforms, waving flags, and earning badges.

But not all of the young people in Germany and other Nazi-occupied areas were deluded by the propaganda. In a time when free speech could have deadly consequences, some wrote and distributed pamphlets denouncing the Nazi regime. Others hid Jews or spied for the underground. Some even stole weapons and sabotaged Nazi operations.

Here are their stories:

10 Helmuth Hubener

In 1939, the Nazis passed a law banning all foreign radio broadcasts, even threatening people with execution for listening to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and other Allied broadcasts.

In 1941, 16-year-old Helmuth Hubener (center above) began secretly listening to the BBC. As he listened to British war reports and compared them with German reports, he discovered that he had been deceived. The BBC reported victories and defeats on both sides of the war. The German news only reported German victories.

He held a secret after-hours meeting with his two best friends, Karl-Hinz Schnibbe (right above) and Rudolf Wobbe (left above). All three were fascinated by the broadcast. Helmut located a typewriter, carbon copy paper, and a swastika stamp. He wrote essays including “Hitler the Murderer” and “Do You Know That They are Lying to You?”^[1]

Hubener enlisted his two friends to distribute the flyers. They placed them in apartment buildings, mailboxes, and telephone booths. As a result, the Gestapo arrested all three. They were found guilty of high treason, and Hubener was beheaded on October 27, 1942, aged only 17.

9 Hans And Sophie Scholl (The White Rose)

As a young lad, Hans Scholl eagerly embraced the Hitler Youth. He became a squad leader of 155 boys. He formed an elite squad to train future leaders for the Fatherland. Eventually, however, he became disenchanted.

In 1942, Hans and a few of his med school classmates started the White Rose. Dismayed by all the surrounding propaganda, they wanted to challenge people with the truth. They printed thousands of leaflets on a hand-crafted duplicating machine, stuffed them into stamped envelopes, and addressed them with random numbers from the phone book. Sophie Scholl, Hans’s sister, soon joined the White Rose. Sophie believed that Hitler was trying to destroy Christianity and replace it with Nazism.

When Hans and his friends received orders to spend their semester as medics on the Russian Front, the White Rose temporarily stopped production. Being on the front lines gave these students an even greater desire to wake up the German people. They had seen horrendous conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto. They knew the German army was losing the war, even as German papers boasted of victory. When they returned to school, they stepped up their operation with renewed zeal.

On February 18, 1943, Hans and Sophie arrived early in the morning to distribute White Rose pamphlets in the classroom buildings at Munich University. Eager to share all the leaflets, they climbed to an atrium above the building and tossed the remaining pamphlets to the floor just as students entered the building.

They were spotted, however, and a Nazi officer arrested them. After a four-day trial, Hans and Sophie were beheaded by the Gestapo. Sophie’s final words summed up her mission: “But what does my death matter, if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?”^[2]

8 Knud Pedersen And The Churchill Club

Knud Pedersen, 14 years old, was outraged when the Germans invaded Denmark in 1940. In less than one day, Denmark surrendered to the Nazis. In 1941, Knud (upper right above) and seven classmates at Aalborg Cathedral School formed the Churchill Club, named after one of their heroes, Winston Churchill.

They began their war with blue paint in broad daylight. They poured paint on German roadsters that lined the streets and splashed paint on German barracks and Nazi headquarters. They turned newly placed German road signs in the opposite direction or sometimes destroyed them. They told their parents they were playing bridge.

All club members pledged to create acts of sabotage. They stole weapons from the Germans and used them to make explosives. They stored the weapons in the Cathedral School. When the Gestapo uncovered the weapons at the school, all eight members of the Churchill Gang were arrested and sent to Nyborg State Prison.^[3]

In 1942 and 1943, most of Denmark’s resistance came from the Churchill Club. By 1944, Denmark became known for its underground. Smuggled guns were buried in people’s gardens. Underground newspapers revealed the truth about the war, and massive labor strikes challenged German authority.

7 Irene Gut

Irene Gut (later Opdyke) became the live-in housekeeper for Major Eduard Rugemer, a prominent Nazi. Already involved the Polish resistance, she soon began sheltering 12 Jews in the former servants’ quarters located in the basement of the house.

All went well for eight months, until Major Rugemer found three Jews in his kitchen. After getting over the initial shock, he offered Irene a deal: The Jews could stay if she would be his mistress. Irene, though shocked and humiliated, agreed.

Irene confessed the arrangement to a country priest. Years later, she would remember his judgement: “I was expecting him to say ‘Well, you had no choice, a human life is more important’ but instead he told me that I had to turn everyone out, that my mortal soul is more important than anything else. Well, I could not agree with this.”^[4]

Irene Gut Opdyke spent the last 30 years of her life traveling the United States to tell her story to American schoolchildren.

6 Stefania Podgorska

At age 14, Stefania Podgorska was living with the Diamants, a Jewish family in Poland. When the Diamants were forced into the ghetto, they begged Stefania to stay in their apartment. Stefania smuggled food into the ghetto. Eventually, Mrs. Diamant was sent to Auschwitz.

One night, several weeks later, Max Diamant (Mrs. Diamant’s son) knocked on Stefania’s door. He had jumped off a train bound for a concentration camp. Even though she knew she could face the death penalty, she began hiding him. His brother’s fiancee escaped the ghetto and also moved into the house. In a short time, 11 more Jews were living in the attic.

For the last eight months of the Occupation, Stefania was ordered to allow two German nurses and their boyfriends to live in her house. The Jews remained in the attic, quiet and motionless, until the war was over. They all survived.

After the war, Max Diamant, her first tenant, changed his name to Josef Burzminski and asked Stefania to marry him.^[5] They moved to the United States.

5 Diet Eman

Diet Eman was planning her wedding when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands. She watched the soldiers marching into the Jewish neighborhood. They broke windows and set synagogues on fire. Her friends received official deportation letters. They were expected to report to the railroad station with a single suitcase. She knew they would be sent to concentration camps.

She and her fiance joined the Dutch Resistance. They located hiding places for Jews and stole identification papers and ration cards from the Germans. They assisted downed pilots in Nazi territory. As Diet biked across Holland, she sent reports to the Allies of German troop movements.

In May 1944, Eman was arrested and sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp. After four months, she managed to convince the Gestapo that she was harmless and feeble-minded. When they released her, she returned to resistance work.^[6]

4 Hortense Daman

Hortense Daman (later Clews) was only 14 when Germany occupied Belgium. She began her resistance work delivering La Libre Belgique (The Free Belgium), an underground newspaper. Soon, she was carrying critical messages across the country.

Hortense became an excellent courier, able to remain cool under pressure. It was difficult for German officers to take the beautiful blonde seriously. Since her mother owned a grocery store, delivering food became a convenient cover for her spy work.

Before long, she was also delivering explosives. One day, she was delivering grenades hidden under a load of eggs. When intercepted by a German officer, she offered him some eggs (a great delicacy during the war.) He snatched the eggs from her hand before waving her away.^[7]

Hortense and her parents were betrayed and arrested. Hortense and her mother were sent to Ravensbruck, her father to Buchenwald. Hortense became the subject of horrific experiments while incarcerated. Miraculously, however, she and her parents all survived.

3 Fernande Keufgens

In 1942, Fernande Keufgens (later Davis) boarded a train headed to a German munitions factory in Poland, which she had been drafted to work at. She had been told that her father would go to prison if she did not get on the train. She and three others, however, jumped off the locomotive before it crossed the German border.^[8]

After jumping from the train, Fernande walked for miles through the countryside to find her uncle Hubert, a devout priest working for the Army of Liberation, a Belgian resistance group. She begged him to let her join the resistance.

She delivered false identification papers and food stamps to help Jews escape Belgium. She was accosted many times by the Nazis. Because she spoke German, however, officers were more likely to trust her.

2 Swing Youth

On March 2, 1940, German police raided a dance party in Hamburg. They found teens dancing to forbidden swing music from Great Britain and the United States. The young people wiggled and gyrated. They formed circles with jumping and clapping. Girls were wore makeup and painted their nails.

The Swing Youth rejected the Nazi lifestyle. They clearly preferred British and American culture to German nationalism. They rejected wearing uniforms, marching, drilling, and regulated hairstyles. Even though most Swing Youth did not openly criticize the Nazis, the Third Reich considered them a threat to the Nazi philosophy.

Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, ordered all leaders of the Swing Youth to be sent to a concentration camp. A special youth camp was opened for them in Moringen in 1940. A camp for girls opened in 1942.^[9]

1 Edelweiss Pirates

The Edelweiss Pirates began as a hiking group in the 1930s. They also rejected the strict rules and regimentation of the Nazi party. They dropped out of school to avoid the Hitler Youth programs and became skilled draft-dodgers. Many of these teens were raised in Communist families, and almost all grew up in poverty. Many had seen their parents arrested and even murdered for their political views.

The Edelweiss Pirates often fought street battles with the Hitler Youth. They were easy to spot with their long hair and brightly colored shirts. They wore the Edelweiss emblem on their collars or hats. “We wore our hair long, we had a knife in our sock and he would not march.” stated former Edelweiss Pirate Jean Julich.^[10]

As the war progressed, they became more involved in resistance activities. They produced anti-Nazi graffiti and stole food and explosives to supply adult resistance groups. They found shelter for German army deserters. Jean Julich and his friends threw bricks through military factory windows and poured sugar into the gas tanks of Nazi vehicles. The Gestapo often rounded up gang members, shaved their heads, and then released them.

They also faced more serious consequences, however. The Gestapo arrested Julich and his friends for their alleged involvement in a plot to bomb the Cologne Gestapo headquarters. At 15, Julich was sent to a concentration camp, where he endured beatings, starvation, and typhus until the Americans liberated him in 1945. The Nazis executed Julich’s friend, Barthel Schink, along with seven adults and five other “pirates.”

Lou Hunley has enjoyed sharing books with children as a teacher and children’s librarian. She created Librarian Lou, a blog about children and young adult books. When she’s not reading or writing, she enjoys playing pickleball, biking, and zip lining.

Celebrities, whether they act, sing, play sports or even just enjoy the limelight as politicians, seem to get away with a lot more than the average person does. Or maybe that’s just our perception because the things celebrities do are under scrutiny so much. But there has long been a history of well known men taking an interest in remarkably young women, which is to say children, that has gone on for quite a while and is often overlooked or shrugged off as just something these kinds of men do.

10. Pablo Escobar Met His Wife When She was 12 and Cheated with Many Underage Girls

Pablo Escobar achieved fame by being one of the most notorious drug dealers in the world. He was also one of the wealthiest criminals in history with an estimated fortune of at least $25 billion. He was a drug lord, he reportedly killed around 4,000 people and he also met his wife Maria Victoria Henao when she was 12. He was 23 at the time.

The two got married in 1976 when Henao was only 15 years old. She said she fell in love with his great desire to help people and his compassion, if that gives you any idea either how well he was able to pretend to be something he wasn’t. And even as his true colors must have come to light, she stayed with him until 1993 when he was killed despite claiming to hate everything he’d become.

Escobar cheated on Henao frequently as well, also with underage girls as he clearly had a preference. The show Narcos was criticized for unjustly romanticizing him and making him look almost heroic by ignoring details like this and many others.

9. Grover Cleveland Met His Wife As a Baby

Grover Cleveland has a few claims to fame, one of them being he’s the only president in American history to serve two non-consecutive terms. In the modern era of social media that may not have happened since more people might know that he met his wife when she was a baby and then took over a semi-parental role for her after her parents died.

Cleveland married Frances Folsom when she was 21, and he was 48. Folsom’s father, a good friend of Cleveland’s, died when she was 11. She used to call him Uncle Cleve. Some sources state that Cleveland then became her legal guardian at this point while others say that’s not true. What does seem to be true is that, if not legal, he was certainly a strong influence in her life.

Frances’s mother, the widow of Cleveland’s friend, expected that the future President would ask her to be his wife since he had taken over a provider role for both mother and daughter. The press thought this as well and asked Cleveland why he hadn’t married. His answer was “I’m waiting for my bride to grow up.”

8. Rolling Stones Bassist Bill Wyman Slept With His Wife When She Was 14

If you’re not familiar with the name Bill Wyman, he was the bass player for the Rolling Stones. As with many musicians he clearly had a pretty wild and crazy life. But Wyman’s story goes into levels of weirdness you might expect on a soap opera, and also includes the fact he started sleeping with his wife when she was 14.

Wyman was 47 when he first saw his future wife. She was 13, and he said that he felt like he was hit on the head with a hammer. They got married when she was 18 and Bill was 52. His wife, Mandy Smith, long held onto the lie that they never had a sexual relationship until she was of age, but then later backtracked and admitted it started when she was 14. The two got divorced when she was 20.

In what qualifies as a hu
gely unpredictable twist to this story, Wyman’s son from another relationship would go on to marry the mother of Mandy Smith who was, at least for a time, his own step grandmother.

7. Steven Tyler Got Guardianship of a 16-Year-Old Girl and Impregnated Her

To this day, Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler is one of the biggest names and most iconic voices in all of rock n roll. The band rose to fame in the 1970s and had a string of huge hits in the 90s as well. All of this fame and notoriety has been saddled with the rumors of Tyler’s behavior back in the 70s as it related to a girl named Julia Holcomb.

Tyler was a rock star, a drug user at the time, and a man in his late twenties. He met Holcomb when she was 16 and became enamored with her. He managed to convince Holcomb’s mother to sign over legal guardianship so he could cross state lines with the girl. Holcomb’s mother had gone through some hard times herself but Tyler evidently told the woman he needed the paperwork to help her daughter enroll in school. She didn’t even learn this from her own mom; it was Tyler who told her. Within a few months she was pregnant with his child. She claims he later coerced her into having an abortion. Tyler has acknowledged that the relationship and the abortion all happened as well.

6. Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers Admitted to Having Sex with a 14-Year-Old

The Red Hot Chili Peppers have made a career out of singing about California and in one way or another but less well known is that singer Anthony Kiedis knowingly and admittedly slept with a teenage fan in Louisiana when he was 23-years-old. He says they had sex only minutes after meeting and spent the night together.

The following day, the band was set to play Baton Rouge, so they took the girl along. Kiedis said that, along the way, she told him her dad was the chief of police in Baton Rouge and the whole state was looking for her since she’d been gone all night. Also, she was only 14.

In response to this news. Kiedis said he wanted her to get home but then also admits he had sex with her one more time, after acknowledging he was aware of her age. He went on to write a song called “Catholic School Girls Rule,” inspired by the event.

5. Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page Had a Relationship with a 14-Year-Old

If you’re keeping track, this is the 3rd story about a musician from a hugely popular band with a 14-year-old girl. This time, Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page is involved, and the girl was Lori Maddox, who we’ll see again shortly. Maddox was a model and Page had seen her photos before meeting her in Los Angeles.

He tried to pick her up several times. Once, he followed her into the bathroom at a club and began kissing and groping her in front of everyone in the room as she tried to get him to stop. She said her friends warned her that he would be violent. At some point, Page had the band’s manager “kidnap” her and bring her to Page’s hotel. They had dinner together and then slept together, keeping the relationship secret for a time thereafter, perhaps not so much because of her age but because he was also in a relationship at the time. That ended when he went to a party with his real girlfriend but left, publicly, with Lori.

4. Ted Nugent Admitted to Dating Many Underage Girls

Ted Nugent is best known these days for getting involved in politics and even occasional punditry but he achieved fame for being a musician in the 70s. It’s also long been rumored that he’s had a number of encounters with underage girls.

Nugent himself has admitted to a lot of his own behavior at one time or another. The man actually sang a song called “Jailbait.” In a Behind the Music episode on VH1 it’s claimed that he started a relationship with a 17-year-old girl and got her parents to sign over guardianship though that particular claim has not been verified elsewhere.  In his own words he got her parents “stamp of approval” however, whatever that means.

Nugent used the word “addicted” to describe his feelings about girls back in the 70s and then explains that the parents were on board because “better Ted Nugent than some drug-infested punk in high school.”

3. David Bowie Also Had a relationship with 14-Year-Old Lori Maddox

Remember Lori Maddox? Also known as Lori Mattix, she was the girl that Jimmy Page was involved with. Well, before she met Page, she met David Bowie. He had a relationship with her when she was 14. He would have been somewhere in his 20s at the time.

People love David Bowie and his legacy is one of a brilliant musician who walked his own path, so few people are willing to bring up the fact he also engaged in such things. According to Maddox he wanted to take her back to his hotel the moment he met her, but she refused. However, he came back to town 5 months later and that time she did not. They went to dinner, then back to his hotel room with one of Maddox’s friends. She said Bowie asked her to bathe him in the tub and the two later had sex. Later they had a threesome with her friend.

2. Prince Was the Guardian of His Future Wife When She was 17

Prince died in 2016 but to this day he remains a beloved and influential musician whose style, voice and oddly quirky behavior made him an icon for decades. Less well known about the Purple One was that he had once been married to a woman named Mayte Garcia. Prince met her in 1989 and proclaimed that she was his future wife. She was 16 at the time. Prince was 31. This was after his relationship with 17-year-old Anna Garcia.

Garcia was a dancer, and her parents wanted her to work with Prince so she auditioned. Clearly he was impressed and the song “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” was written about her.

Garcia says they became friends and he would call her and write to her frequently. She was never allowed to call him. She started singing for him at 17 and he became her legal guardian at that time. She made $300 a week and had to sneak food from room service carts in hotel hallways.

But by the time she was 18 he promised she’d be dancing on his tour. She says he saw some cookies on her station once and, even though they weren’t hers, he docked her pay for it because she needed to maintain her figure. He once sent her home for showing up in sweatpants.

When the tour was over, Prince told her it was time to get on birth control. She was 19 by that time and she lost her virginity to him.The couple later had a child but in 1996 he passed away. She claims Prince avoided her and refused to come see her in the hospital after she developed an infection. She became depressed and later had a miscarriage. She says Prince told her he had to work. He then met a fan online, invited her to come work with him, and would later make her his second wife.

After they divorced, Garcia learned he burned everything that reminded him of her from their home. He even got rid of their son’s ashes.

1. Larry Hillblom of DHL Shipping Fathered Many Children with Underage Girls in Asia

Larry Hillblom may not be a household name, but he was definitely a prominent figure in the business world. If you have heard of DHL Shipping, then you know Hillblom. He was the “H” in the company name.

Thanks to his business he was a millionaire but the man also had a penchant for travel and would frequently go to Asia. What no one realized for some time was that Hillblom was going on sex vacations where he fathered at least four children in Palau, Vietnam and the Philippines. Hillblom had travelled extensively and paid for sex with underage girls. Paternity tests confirmed him as the father of several children after he died in a plane crash, forcing his estate to provide millions of dollars for the children after initially resisting the accusations.