The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club

Jens is just as fiercely angered by the Nazi occupation as Knud, but he is calmer and more considered than his brother. Whereas Knud can be impulsive and rambunctious, Jens prefers to plan. When they share a cell in King Hans Gades Jail, Jens, who is by nature neat, is annoyed by Knud’s messiness and noise. The relationship between the brothers is characterized by a rivalry that keeps them from speaking their minds with each other and culminates into their fight at the jail. Jens, like Knud, is extremely brave and plays an important leadership role in the Churchill Club. While he is generally more cautious than Knud, he can also be impulsive; he kicks a German solider at an ice skating ring, causing his name to be entered into an official registry of occupation resisters.

Jens is intellectually gifted. A star math student, he receives a perfect score on his university admissions exam and goes on to study engineering. After completing his studies, he takes a post in India, but he becomes depressed there and returns to Denmark. He struggles with depression until his death in 1988. Knud tells Hoose that Jens “died in a hospital after a very unhappy life,” and that, “his death was the result of a high intelligence combined with a low tolerance for jails and/or maybe wars” (169). As with several other members of the Churchill Club, the trauma of the war and his time in prison leaves Jens with lasting psychological damage.

Knud describes his parents as “activists, public people, community leaders” (93). Like their children, Margrethe and Edvard Pedersen fiercely and bravely oppose the Nazis, turning their home into a haven for resisters. The couple has a strong sense of integrity and patriotism. Although they do not know about Jens and Knuds’ sabotage work, they do not punish the boys when they find out, and Knud suspects that their parents are proud of them. Like his sons, Edvard can be brash. He preaches provocative anti-German sermons at his church and once nearly shoots Margrethe while boastfully brandishing a gun given to him by the resistance. Margrethe is caring, generous, and sensitive to Knud’s feelings. While Knud is in prison she becomes the “master of the house” (144).

Eigil is a teenage boy from Aalborg, the son of a flower shop owner. Knud describes him as “a sharp character, always well dressed, talking loud and laughing louder, good with the girls” (29). Eigil’s mother is Jewish. As the only boy of Jewish heritage in the Churchill Club, he faces a bigger hurdle of fear than the other boys. In Chapter 4, for instance, he wets his pants on the Fuchs mission and, later, scared for his family’s safety, pleads with the Churchill Club to cease its activities: “His nerves were raw and his emotions very turbulent” (75). Eigil shows immense courage by committing sabotage despite his fears and delivering documents for the official Allied resistance after his release from prison. Prison affects Eigil deeply, as it does the other members of the Churchill Club. He suffers from loneliness, a sense of a loss of identity, and suicidal thoughts. As an adult, the sentence leaves him with what he calls “prison scars” (170), and he suffers from depression, nightmares, and short-term memory loss.

Nicknamed “the Professor,” Mogens is the quietest member of the Churchill Club. A gifted physicist, he has special access to the school’s physics lab and is put in charge of building explosives for the club. His work in the laboratory at the monastery produces few results at first, drawing taunts from the other boys. Eventually, he deduces how the stolen grenades work, making an important contribution to the club’s largest mission: the explosion at the railway yard. After prison, Mogens is bored at school and misses the excitement of the club.

Recruited by Eigil, Uffe joins the Churchill Club later than the other boys, becoming an important member: “His blond good looks and steady manner inspired calm and trust” (53). His clean-cut appearance belies his anger, bravery, and dedication to the resistance. Airplanes are Uffe’s passion, and one of his main contributions to the club is recruiting three older members—Alf, Kaj, and Knud Hornbo—from his model airplane club. As an adult, he becomes a pilot.

The son of a wealthy chemical factory owner, Helge is one of Knud’s first friends at the Cathedral School. Helge panics on his first mission but eventually grows more accustomed to sabotage work, pulling off the risky transfer of weapons to his family’s garden across Limfjorden bridge. Helge has the briefest sentence in prison of 18 months.

The youngest member of the Churchill Club, Børge is the son of a tobacco factory owner from the town of Nibe. He is the Churchill Club’s most reckless member, as illustrated by the incidents in which he smashes the windows of the Fuchs office, throws a lit match into the gas tank of a German vehicle, and secretly recruits a member for the Churchill Club in Nibe. Børge and Knud form a close working friendship based on a shared irreverent sense of humor and love of “bold action” (36). As partners in sabotage missions, they find that they can communicate without speaking. Knud describes Børge as “fearless and smart” as well as “hot-tempered and mouthy” (47). In appearance, Børge is deceptively small and innocent-looking: “With blond curls, twinkling blue eyes, and a sweet smile, he seemed angelic” (47). Børge is too young to go to prison with the other boys, but the officials call him in for the jail photo to make the group look younger and more sympathetic. After the war, Børge leads a small religious movement and has 12 children.

A “beautiful” (146) 17-year-old English girl who becomes orphaned during the war, Patricia admires Knud from afar and shows bold initiative by deliberately befriending his family. Patricia provides an important emotional outlet for Knud after the war by listening to him unburden his thoughts and validating his feelings. She also proves herself to be brave in her work raising money for the resistance. She finds Knud good-looking, brilliant, funny, and thinks highly of his sabotage. Although there is romantic tension between Patricia and both Knud and Jens, she does not enter into a relationship with either of them. She maintains a lifelong friendship with their sister Gertrud, with whom she raises thousands of kroner for the Danish resistance movement.

The RAF Club is a resistance unit started in Odense in 1940 after Hitler invades Denmark. The group consists of Knud and Jens, their cousin Hans, Knud’s best friend, Knud Hedelund (known as “Little Knud”), and a boy named Harald Holm. The name of the club is inspired by valiant pilots of the British Royal Air Force. The inexperienced members commit acts of sabotage against the German army on bike. They vandalize directional signs and cut telephone wires leading to German barracks. Later, in 1944, Hitler confiscates unsold bikes when other Danes take up bicycle-resistance. When Knud and Jens move to Alborg, they recruit new members and form the Churchill Club. Whereas the Churchill Club is reluctant to enact violence, the RAF Club easily destroys 15 German roadsters. The RAF Club eventually expands and leads strikes, most notably on a factory that makes mobile homes for soldiers. When the RAF boys are caught by the authorities, due to a letter the youngest member wrote in an attempt for the club’s safe passage to Sweden, they are sent to German-run prisons, unlike like Churchill Club. The RAF members suffer greater hardships in prison, and Hans eventually dies there.