How did helmuth hubener die?

Answer 1

On February 5th 1942, Helmuth Hübener was arrested by the Gestapo at his workplace in the Hamburger Bieberhaus. While trying to translate the pamphlets into French, and trying to have them distributed among prisoners of war, he had been noticed by Nazi Party member Heinrich Mohn, who had denounced him.

On August 11th 1942, Hübener's case was tried at the Volksgerichtshof in Berlin, and on 27 October, at the age of 17, he was beheaded by guillotine at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin.[1]His two friends, Schnibbe and Wobbe, who had also been arrested, were given prison sentences of five and ten years respectively.

Volksgerichtshof's proclamation from 27 October 1942 announcing Hübener's execution

As stated in the proclamation (at right), Hübener was found guilty of conspiracy to commit high treason and treasonous furthering of the enemy's cause. He was sentenced not only to death, but also to permanent loss of his civil rights, which means he could be (and was) mistreated in prison, with no bedding or blankets in his cold cell, for instance.

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.

Hübener's lawyers and his mother, and the Berlin Gestapo appealed for clemency in his case, hoping to have his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. In their eyes, the fact that Hübener had confessed fully and shown himself to be still morally uncorrupted were points in his favour. The Reich Youth Leadership (Reichsjugendführung) would have none of it, however, and stated that the danger posed by Hübener's activities to the German people's war effort made the death penalty necessary. On 27 October 1942, the Nazi Ministry of Justice upheld the Volksgerichtshof's verdict. Hübener was only told of the Ministry's decision at 1:05 p.m. on the scheduled day of execution and beheaded at 8:13 p.m.