Churchill Club

The Churchill Club
Churchill-klubben
Participant in World War II
The early Churchill Club and friends in front of their monastery. Back row (left to right): Eigil, Helge, Jens, Knud. Front row (left to right): unknown, Borge, unknown, Mogens F.
The early Churchill Club and friends in front of their monastery. Back row (left to right): Eigil, Helge, Jens, Knud. Front row (left to right): unknown, Borge, unknown, Mogens F.
Active 1941-1945
Leaders Knud Pedersen
Headquarters Hospital of The Holy Ghost, Aalborg
Area of operations Aalborg, Denmark and surrounding cities
Size 8
Part of Danish resistance movement
Allies RAF club
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 to imitate the resistance of Norwegian soldiers.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.

  • Pedersen, Knud (1946). Churchillklubben.
  • Pedersen, Knud (1964). Breve fra fængslet.
  • Pedersen, Knud (1966). Sidste krigsår.
  • Pedersen, Knud (1979). Sagen om Churchillklubben fortalt gennem kilder.
  • Pedersen, Knud (2005). Bogen om Churchill-klubben: Churchill-klubben, Breve fra fængslet, Sidste krigsår, Sagen om Churchill-klubben (Omnibus of the previous four books ed.). Copenhagen: Lindhardt og Ringhof.

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 story of Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club is also told in a book by an American author, Phillip Hoose, titled The Boys who Challenged Hitler. It features the story as told by Knud Pedersen himself, and also talks about the RAF Club, another sabotage club founded by Knud when he lived in the city of Odense, Denmark.

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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