It’s often not the strongest, the toughest or wisest among us who have the courage and common sense to know the difference between right and wrong, who have the guts to do something about injustice when the unjust have brainwashed everyone around you.

That point is simply introduced and then hammered home in the new drama “Truth & Treason,” a true story about German teenagers who figured out that Hitler was leading a nation of “Seig heiling” lemmings over a horrific and morally indefensible cliff to their doom.

The teens figured this out on their own, using their “free will” to read what banned books had to teach them, secretly listening to news from abroad that was a lot closer to the truth about the regime ruling them than what their propagandists were telling them.

“Truth & Treason” is a sturdy and suspenseful historical thriller about the life of Helmuth Hübener, a literate, compassionate German teen who saw the ugly truth even when his family, his peers, his church and his country did not.

But when we meet Helmuth (Ewan Horrocks), he’s the meekest among his quartet of pals, the last one to dive off a bridge for a summer swim in the river, the one not tough enough to stand up to the bullies in their Hitler Youth squad.

Karl-Heinz (Ferdinand McKay) is the tough one. Rudi (Daf Thomas) goes with the flow. And Salomon (Nye Occomore) is the guarded, considered one.

It’s 1941, and Nazi Germany is at its peak, rolling through Russia and North Africa, occupying France and much of the rest of Europe. Even the boys’ Mormon church is on the band wagon, beginning services with a “Heil Hitler” with their bishop (Daniel Betts) stressing Mormon tenets of “obedience” to kings and heads of state in his sermons.

Helmuth’s half-brother is in the army and his stepfather (Sean Mahon) is an officer. With connections like that, and a recommendation from his bishop, the kid becomes the youngest clerk at Hamburg city hall.

But the day he sees his church post a “No Jews may Enter” sign on the door, when he doesn’t buy his bishop’s equivocating response to his mild challenge, opens his eyes. And when Salomon — passing himself off as Mormon until the church bans him — is beaten up and then arrested and “disappeared,” Helmuth decides to act.

Salomon’s fate wakes him up. That archive of “banned” books by Thomas Mann and Schiller and Shakespeare, “All Quiet on the Western Front” and the like that is locked in Hamburg city hall gives him inspiration.

“Jesus fought with words,” not swords, he knows. Those red cards denoting offensive pages in the banned books are just the right size for typed leaflets. Helmuth starts to write literate, exquisitely argued screeds warning of “the abyss” the “clown,” “madman” Hitler is leading Germans into. He posts them on bulletin boards, tucks them on windshields and shoves them into mailboxes.

Helmuth resists, and soon he enlists his best friends in his scheme. It takes some doing, as he’s turned out to be the bravest of the lot.

All of which gets the attention of the smart but sadistic army policeman Ewin Mussener (Rupert Evans) who begins a fanatical hunt for this literary type via his incriminating typewriter, determined to root out “traitors” even as the first British air raids are pounding Hamburg and sending his family fleeing underground.

“Truth & Reason” concerns itself more with history than emotions, more with a cat-and-mouse hunt than with the idealism these kids bond over. So it’s more “solid,” sturdy and engrossing than moving.

We see the risks and blunders of a very young man — listening to BBC shortwave broadcasts, smuggling red cards home, using an American made Remington typewriter with tell-tale failings. And we see the “consequences” his faith has taught him to accept, a trial in a courtoom where it’s not The State vs. Helmut, but “Adolf Hitler vs. Helmut Hübener.

And we hear samples of the eloquent writing that so infuriated his pursuer and his persecutors.

Director and co-writer Matt Whitaker is uniquely-qualified to tell this story. He scripted the Mormons fighting in WWII drama “Saints and Soldiers” and directed a documentary about young Helmuth Hübener, “Truth & Conviction.”

The movie is well-cast even if the script rarely allows their performances to rise to affecting. Evans has the trickiest role to play, and the script doesn’t quite sell the fanatic who tortures but sympathizes with a talented writer. A love interest (Sylvia Varcoe) is introduced, and banned music (composer Felix Mendelssohn) is one of the subtexts.

But the production values are quite good. And “Truth & Reason” easily bears the weight of “an important movie” for its target audience — “Sound of Freedom/I Can Only Imagine/Homestead/Cabrini” conservative faith-based filmgoers — well enough to recommend.

History has a lot to teach us about the present, and Whitaker and his cast aren’t so subtle that the viewer can’t see their and hear their message. Faith in the wrong prophets can be disastrous. Callous cruelty and barbarism are never right or righteous. And we remember not just the monstrous villains, but those who saw the threat and sounded the alarm, not the thugs who “followed orders” or blindly enlisted in a creed that was anything but Christlike.

Rating: PG-13, violence, torture

Cast: Ewan Horrocks, Ferdinand McKay, Sylvia Varcoe,
Joanna Christie, Daf Thomas, Nye Occomore, Sean Mahon, Daniel Betts and Rupert Evans

Credits: Directed by Matt Whitaker, scripted by Ethan Vincent and Matt Whitaker. An Angel Studios release.

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