The Boy Who Dared

Last night I finished my most recent book, The Boy Who Dared by Susan Campbell Bartoletti. It is a work of historical fiction based on the life of Helmuth Hubener. Helmuth was a young boy in Germany during the time that Hitler was coming to power. He was awed by the men in uniform and envious of the older boys who got to be part of the Hitler Youth. Helmuth wanted to help Germany be a strong nation again.

But things started to change. Hitler outlawed anything that wasn't German, which included listening to non-German music, reading non-German books, and fraternizing with people who were not really German - like the Jews. Although Helmuth's Mormon faith told him to give respect to those in government, Helmuth believed he could not go against his conscience. Although to the outside world he acted like a good Nazi, late at night he began to write and distribute pamphlets that spoke about the truth of what was really going on in Hitler's regime, based on the information he learned from the BBC radio broadcast out of London.

Eventually Helmuth was suspected of acting against the Nazis. He was put in jail, convicted of treason, and was executed a little over two months later.

The story is told in third person, beginning on the morning of the day that will be Helmuth's last. As he is waiting to find out if he will be executed, he goes back in his mind and remembers what brought him to this place. Therefore, the story is told almost exclusively in flashback. That does help to increase the suspense a bit, but overall, the telling of this story was pretty tame. It was educational to read a novel from this angle of history. But I would be more interested in reading the memoirs of Helmuth's two friends who also distributed the illegal pamphlets. If you would like to check them out, here are the titles:

Before the Blood Tribunal by Rudi Wobbe
The Price by Karl-Heinz Schnibbe

By the way, The Boy Who Dared is not the only fictionalized account of Helmuth Hubener's life. Another book entitled Brothers in Valor was published by Michael Tunnel seven years before this book hit the shelves. Have any of you read these books? Let me know what you think of them!