Churchill Club

Churchill Club
Churchill-klubben
Participant in World War II

Churchill Club

Churchill Club
Active 1941-1945
Leaders Knud Pedersen
Headquarters Knud and Jens' rooms
Part of Danish resistance movement
Opponents Nazi Germany German Occupying Forces

The Churchill Club (Danish: Churchill-klubben) was a group of eight teenage schoolboys from Aalborg Cathedral School in the north of Jutland who performed acts of sabotage against the Germans during the occupation of Denmark in the Second World War.

The Churchill Club was probably the earliest resistance group to be formed in Denmark. Under the leadership of 15-year-old Knud Pedersen, their activities began at the end of 1941 when they began to target the German occupation forces in Aalborg as a result of the German treatment of occupied Norway. They succeeded in carrying out 25 acts of sabotage before they were arrested by the police in May 1942.[1] Some of those acts of sabotage included stealing weapons and destroying vehicles, blueprints, and plane parts. The boys were charged with 1,860 million kroner for the destroyed Nazi property; their sentences ranged from two to three years in prison. Even after imprisonment, they managed to escape at night to continue their sabotage activities.[2]

Books

Knud Pedersen has written four books about the Churchill Club; all were republished in an omnibus edition in 2005.

Bjarne Reuter's fictional book Drengene fra St. Petri is based on the activities of the Churchill Club. It has been published in English as The Boys of St. Petri.[3]

The popular 1991 movie, The Boys from St. Petri (in Danish: Drengene Fra Sankt Petri), is based on the Churchill Club but goes beyond the facts of the case.[4]

Phillip Hoose's non-fiction book, The Boys who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pederson and the Churchill Club (2015), is based on the Churchill Club.[5]

References

  1. Per Eilstrup, Lars Lindeberg (1969), De så de ske under Besættelsen. Gå til modstand. Forlaget Union. Copenhagen.
  2. "Fængselstiden". Churchill-klubben. Archived from the original on 25 March 2008. Retrieved 23 April 2008.
  3. Reuter, Bjarne B. (1996). Boys from St. Petri. Turtleback Books. ISBN 978-0-7857-7851-6.
  4. "Movie: The Boys From St Petri". The New York Times. 1991. Retrieved 23 April 2008.
  5. Hoose, Phillip (2015). The Boys who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pederson and the Churchill Club. Farrar Straus Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-30022-7.

See also

RAF Club


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