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.
Themes
Justified Disobedience in Wartime
The dedication of The Boys Who Challenged Hitler reads: “For young people everywhere who have the courage to make up their own minds” (v).The members of the Churchill Club choose to follow the dictates of their own values rather than the rules of the complacent Danish regime. Their actions of vandalism, arson, and theft would normally be considered the actions of wayward and delinquent teens—and indeed they are by some Danish citizens—but in this case they commit crimes to combat a larger injustice.
The writer Kaj Munk addresses the conflict between the convictions of individuals and the wrongdoing of nations in the letter he writes to Knud’s parents: “Of course what [the boys]have done is wrong; but it is not nearly so wrong as when the government gave the country away to the invading enemy. […] Now it is time that good people in our Lord Jesus’ name must do something wrong” (103). The invocation of Jesus points to a higher set of values than civic rules. Margrethe and Edvard Pedersen, a religious and community-minded couple, are of a similar mind to Munk. They do not fault their sons for their sabotage work, but view it as necessitated by the times.
War and the Loss of Innocence
War, sabotage work, and imprisonment change, disillusion, and mature Knud and the Churchill Club. They lose their childish innocence in stages. Knud is 14 when the Nazis occupy Denmark and 18 when Germany is defeated. Those years are inherently ripe with change, but even more so for Knud as he is forced to confront the failure of adults in Denmark to defend the country and the harsh realities of wartime. At 14, Knud knows little about politics and lives in the happy, comfortable atmosphere of family and church community. After the occupation, he becomes politically aware, the first stage in his disillusionment. The activities of the Churchill Club increase in danger and seriousness until the boys consider using their cache of stolen weapons to kill. They cannot go through with it—they neither have the training nor the nerve. They plan, however, on learning how to kill. As they discuss killing Germans and ratchet up the damage of their sabotage work, they shed their childhood innocence. Imprisonment is another important step in their maturation, taking them out of their comfortable family homes and placing them under harsh conditions that will haunt them for the rest of their lives. After his release from prison, Knud finds himself unable to take comfort in the big family party thrown for him, as he would have only several years ago. The changes that occur in Knud show the effect of war on children and teenagers, who are forced to confront violence and human failings beyond their years.
The Psychological Power of Resistance
The primary goal and accomplishment of the Churchill Club is not military but psychological. “These exercises weren’t winning the war,” Knud says of their destructions of German signs, “but we were getting practice and our actions were noticed by people in the streets. Someone was not giving in” (40). It is important to the club that other Danes see this evidence of resistance, a break from conformity, so that they can retain some defiance rather than sinking into the mentality of a surrendered nation. The sabotage also helps the boys personally to feel less ashamed and cowed by the Germans. Eventually, the example of the Churchill Club, promoted by British propaganda, inspires the nation at large to protest the Nazis openly. The boys’ irreverent humor, the plays they stage in King Hans Gades Jail, and Knud’s disobedience in prison are other examples of acts of resistance that help to keep the boys their humanity and stay motivated to fight.
The Trauma of World War II
By the end of The Boys Who Challenged Hitler, the traumatic effects of the war on the Churchill Club start to become apparent. Knud’s return from prison is marked by depression, alienation, and anger, akin to the feelings of a returning soldier’s. For the rest of his life, he suffers from serious claustrophobia. Jens struggles with depression for the rest of his life and Eigil seeks counseling for his “prison scars” (170), which leave him with depression and an inability to focus. Although the boys come out of World War II as Danish national heroes, having resisted bravely and effectively, and have not died or suffered like many millions of others at the time, they nevertheless suffer serious damage to their psyches.
