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

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.