A bespectacled preteen in a Rue 21 graphic T-shirt and neon pink pants sat wedged in a makeshift reading nook between the bed and the wall, propped against a pile of soft pillows. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and conviction tightened in her chest. The source: The Boy Who Dared by Susan Campbell Bartoletti.
That year, I read the juvenile historical novella half a dozen times. I researched its real-life figures, wrote fan fiction, and filled notebooks with historical re-imaginings. It was, in essence, what I still do when something captures my curiosity. Yet this felt different. The black cobblestone streets of Hamburg wound through my imagination as vividly as Laura Ingalls Wilder’s prairie trails or the New York tenements of the Samantha American Girl books.
At sixteen, I hunted down an out-of-print copy of When Truth Was Treason, the adult counterpart to The Boy Who Dared, a memoir by Karl-Heinz Schnibbe, Bartoletti’s real-world inspiration. Later, while browsing YouTube, I discovered a trailer for a film of the same name, starring Haley Joel Osment. The images lingered: blood-red flyers fluttering across darkened streets, beams from flashlights cutting through shadow, the heavy footfall of the pursuing Gestapo, and the sharp clack of a typewriter.
For years, I tracked the films progress, returning to see if the project had moved beyond that haunting trailer. A decade later, I stumbled on a crowdfunding campaign by a different studio. By then, I had built a life defined by conviction, a principle I recognized as the moral current running through both the Bible and in-part Bartoletti’s story. Thus, I donated. Not much, just what a first-year teacher and recent college graduate with an IBR student loan repayment plan could afford. But I gave what I could. Living out the central message of Truth and Treason, to give what you can to the cause you believe in.
The Production Value
The production value of Truth & Treason, from Angel Studios, stands as a clear demonstration of the studio’s evolving cinematic ambition.
According to reporting by Theatre Ears, director Matt Whitaker chose to film Truth and Treason on location in Lithuania, where the relatively unchanged architecture and meticulous set design convincingly evoke the streets of a German city during the second world war. The decision grounds the film in a tangible sense of history, allowing the story’s moral tension to unfold within a world that feels both authentic and lived-in.
Cinematographer Bianca Cline employs a muted palette and strategic use of light-and-shadow to heighten the tension and realism. The film’s aesthetic, rich in period detail, lean in narrative and visually deliberate, is exactly what we have come to expect from Angel Studios, who promoted content which aims to “amplify light” paired with production standards that challenge the presumption that faith-inflected films must be modest in scale or cinematic execution while rich in moral expostulation.
At center stage is the striking performance by Ewan Horrocks, who plays Helmuth Hübener. A handsome young lad with a shock of floppy dark hair and deeply expressive eyes. He uses that gaze to effect, conveying fear, conviction, sorrow, and youthful determination with subtlety. His portrayal anchors the film’s moral core, and one genuinely suspects he is set to rise rapidly as a star. His energy, combined with Angel Studios’ assured production style, makes the film feel both intimate and cinematic, a telling sign of the studio’s commitment to delivering meaningful stories with major-studio polish.
A Story of Truth in a Period of Civil Strife
A story about conviction in the face of grave evil will always strike a chord, no matter the era, but it feels especially resonant now, in a chapter of American life that even mainstream outlets like The Atlantic describe as a time of civil strife.
And Helmuth Hübener, a 16-year-old student in Nazi-era Hamburg, embodies a love for truth in its purest form. When his interrogator sneered, asking whether he truly believed his words could turn a nation against Hitler, Hübener replied with disarming clarity: “I thought I would write the truth and let it overthrow the Reich.”
His awakening began not in grand politics but in the everyday brutality of the Hitler Youth, their thuggishness, blind devotion, and delight in domination. Outraged, he addressed one of his clandestine pamphlets directly to them: “German boys! Do you know the country without freedom, the country of terror and tyranny? Yes, you know it well, but are afraid to talk about it… Yes, you are right; it is Germany—Hitler’s Germany!”
However, it was his friend Salomon Schwarz, a Jewish German Mormon, who became the catalyst for Helmuth Hübener’s moral awakening. When the Nazis abducted and executed Salomon, the loss radicalized Helmuth. After being forced to write a propagandist essay filled with lies, he resolved never to write another false word again. Hübener’s devotion to both truth and friendship, especially to a Jewish friend in a time when neither was safe, became an act of rebellion, a stand for conscience in a world that punished integrity as treason.
That conviction feels urgently relevant today. As I scroll through X, I see high profile public figures on both the right and the left, Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Hasan Piker, Jerry Nadler, and Ilhan Omar, flirting with or outright amplifying anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. They recycle centuries-old tropes: “blood libel,” claims of Jewish control over media or finance, or suggestions that Israel engineers global unrest and shadowy assasinations. These ideas, once relegated to the dark corners of iFunny and 4chan, now flow freely through mainstream platforms.
Consider the reaction to Hamas’s decision to break the cease-fire and kill Israeli soldiers: much of the world rushed to condemn the Jews for defending themselves, echoing the same moral inversion once used by revisionists who blamed Holocaust victims for their own destruction, accusing them of not resisting hard enough.
The comment sections on Reddit, BlueSky, and X thrum with this same lies, vitriol, and the casual cruelty of conspiracy. Yet, what chills me most is the silence. Self-proclaimed moderates, wary of losing followers or ad revenue, rarely challenge it. Instead, they dog whistle, placate, or retreat. That is why Truth and Treason feels so profound now. It is not just a film about courage in Nazi Germany, but a reminder that truth is never fashionable, that conviction always costs something, and that silence, more often than speech, is what allows evil to endure.
When one considers Hübener’s courage as he stood before the People’s Court in Berlin, a boy so young he had yet to shave, it is impossible not to feel disgust at the cowardice of grown men who now shrink from offending the radicals within their own parties. They weigh polls, audiences, and ad revenue as if these could outweigh moral clarity. Some appear to believe that anti-Semitism, wielded subtly or otherwise, can galvanize a base—at least for a time.
The contrast is nauseating: a teenager facing beheading for speaking truth beside adults too timid to risk disapproval. Yet, it was Hübener’s words to the judge who sentenced him that linger most powerfully. “My time is now,” he warned, “but your time will come.”
Conclusion
Truth and Treason is a mirror held up to the present, reminding viewers that courage is rarely convenient and truth is always costly. For those who believe stories like Helmuth Hübener’s deserve to be told, make sure your local theater is showing this film, and I encourage you to bring your teens. In an age that often rewards silence, supporting a film that champions conviction is, in itself, an act of defiance.
