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

In the summer of 2000, Phillip Hoose goes on a bicycle tour of Denmark. In Copenhagen, he visits the Museum of Danish Resistance, where he learns about the Churchill Club, a group of teenage boys who committed acts of vandalism, arson, and property destruction between December 1941 and May 1942 to resist the German occupation of Denmark. Hoose explains that while Denmark’s resistance to the Nazi invasion is famous, the Danes struggled to get it started for the first two years of the occupation, which lasted between 1940 and 1945. The Churchill Club played an important role in inspiring their countrymen to revolt against Hitler.

Hoose learns from the curator that some of the boys are still alive. He contacts Knud Pedersen, the most famous and knowledgeable member of the club, who replies that another American writer has already contracted the story. Hoose files away the email correspondence for nearly a decade. In 2012, Hoose is looking for a project and comes upon the emails in his file. He writes to Knud, inquiring about the other American’s book. Knud replies that the other book project has fallen through, and that now Hoose is free to write the story of the Churchill Club.