99 pages • 3 hours read
Phillip M. HooseThe Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club
Nonfiction | Biography | YA | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 12-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 12 Summary: “King Hans Gades Jail”
Hours later, the boys are taken from jail to court. In a matter of minutes, the judge extends confinement in jail to four weeks.
At the Cathedral School, the principal makes an announcement about the arrest of the boys. Some students run out of school and stand outside the jail cheering, but the boys do not hear because they are in court. In light of the arrest, it is hard for the students to focus on their schoolwork. Knud’s woodshop teacher, who has long disliked him, makes a table for the Pedersen family to amend for his frequent berating of Knud. When news about the club breaks, “gossip rage[s] in shops, offices, schools, and factories” (97).
German and Dane officials enter intense negotiations over how the boys will be judged. Germans do not want to antagonize the Danes by punishing the boys too severely, but neither do they want to appear to let the boys off easy. The city of Aalborg sends a letter to German officials apologizing for the actions of the Churchill Club. Germany permits Denmark to hold the trial, under the conditions that the principal of the school be removed and exiled, and that the trial will be held under the watch of a German overseer reporting back to Berlin.
The boys are “star prisoners” (98) of the jail. The guards admire their actions and like the young boys better than the usual drunks and thieves they watch. Local cafés send the boys pastries, including the Café Holle, whose waitress had identified them for the police.
The boy revel in irreverent humor, making jokes with the doctors sent to evaluate their mental states and staging funny plays that mock the authorities. The plays always end in a death penalty for the Churchill Club: “No doubt about it, we were deeply worried about being executed” (100). They write to the police commissioner asking to smoke on their outdoor breaks and are granted permission.
Jens and Knud are forced to share a cell and the tension that has been building between them over the past months comes “pouring out” (101). Knud is too noisy and messy a cellmate for Jens, who tells him to shut up. They each accuse the other of leading to the arrest and start to physically fight. Guards place them into separate cells.
One day the boys are lined up in the yard to take a photo. The guard tells them to look “serious and sad” (102) because the photo is going to Berlin and possibly Hitler himself. To make the boys look less threatening, Børge, the youngest and smallest member, is brought in from the youth correctional facility where he has been kept.
The boys give testimony in court throughout the summer of 1942. The stolen weapons are a key point in the trial. The Danish judge and lawyers want the boys to say that they stole them as toys or souvenirs, not intending to use them against the Germans. Knud refuses to lie about the club’s intentions for the weapons, to the fury of his lawyer Grunwald.
Kaj Munk, a famous Danish poet and playwright, writes a sympathetic letter to Knud and Jens’ parents. In an aside, Hoose explains that Munk is a Danish national hero who wrote plays attacking Hitler and was killed by the Gestapo in 1944.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Walls and Windows”
The boys plot an escape from jail to Sweden, which is neutral in the war and a destination for many refugees. First, they rip an opening through the net atop the jail yard. The jailers notice it, however, and start watching the boys during their yard time. Knud and the others try to coordinate their escape plans with Preben, Børge’s older brother, who was at the original meeting of the Churchill Club but was too scared to join. Preben writes back, informing them that their plan is crazy and that he will have nothing to do with it.
After nine weeks of jail, Knud and the others are taken to court to hear their sentencing. They are found guilty as charged with arson, destruction of property, and theft. The sentences depend on the number of counts against and the ages of the boys. Knud and Jens each get three years, Eigil two, Helge Milo one year and six months, and the older club members five years. They are also ordered to pay court’s fees and to reimburse the German army for the destruction they caused. The judge tells Knud he has done all he can for him and tearfully begs him not to try to escape again.
Family visitation day at the jail is just after sentencing. The boys enjoy a festive gathering with their families. Relatives bring them food, tobacco, and reading material, and Alf’s brother passes him a hacksaw blade in a magazine. Jens and Alf work “like demons” (113) to create a trick bar in his window, while Knud makes noise to cover the sound of the sawing. Jens designs a mechanism to make the removable bar look real to avoid detection by the guards. The boys also break a window during their yard time in order to steal some wet caulk during its repair to finish the window. Once the trick bar is complete, however, the boys are transported to the formidable Nyborg State Prison.
Chapters 12-13 Analysis
As leaders of the Churchill Club and hosts to its meetings, Knud and Jens have been under a lot of pressure. The tense circumstances of the past year and their essentially different personalities culminate in the fight in the jail cell. Knud says that separately they can “combine [their] talents productively” (102). An example of the combined use of their different talents is evident in Chapter 13, when Jens engineers a trick mechanism for the removable bar in the window while Knud makes noise to hide the sawing.
In jail, Knud and the others rely on irreverent humor to keep their spirits up and to cope with their fears. Using art as therapy, they stage plays that mock the authorities and end in their own deaths. The boys fear that their punishment could be execution, and this fear underscores the courage they show in going forth with their actions. The comedic plays allow them to subtly keep resisting and also serve as an outlet for their fears of execution. Later, in Chapter 17, Knud draws on humor again to recount the traumatic experience of prison for his sister’s friend, Patricia.
The strategy of the Danish authorities involved in the case of the Churchill Club is to portray them as young children who were play-acting rather than engaging in serious, deliberate sabotage of the German army. The intended effect is to preserve good relations between Denmark and Germany and to lessen the punishment of the Churchill Club. Knud, however, intentionally thwarts this plan—he wants to disrupt the complacency of Denmark, even if it costs him his freedom.
The arrest of the boys stops their sabotage activities, yet it accomplishes one of their goals by bringing the topic of resistance into the open among the Danes. Students and adults alike discuss the club. Danish silence about the occupation begins to crack. Inspiring Danes to resist by showing them that it could be done is the main goal of the club, ahead of the physical damage they cause to German property. For this reason, Knud refuses to lie about the club’s motives for stealing weapons, even though it lengthens the boys’ prison sentences. He wants other citizens to see that the club is a serious resistance unit, not merely children goofing around. To the judge and lawyers, Knud’s truth-telling appears to come from childish obstinacy and spite, a similar view held by other Danes who oppose the club’s actions.
