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.
Chapters 4-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Learning to Breathe”
Danes show their patriotism with gestures like buying “King’s Badges” (39) in jewelry shops and refusing to speak German at school. Some Danish businesses collaborate with the Germans, providing the army with housing and weapons.
The Churchill Club begins its sabotage. As in Odense, they vandalize German directional signs. They also paint their insignia, a tilted swastika with “arrows shooting out of the top of each arm, like thunderbolts” (34), around Aalborg.
The club decides to aim for a larger target. It chooses the Fuchs Construction company, a German collaborator which makes airport equipment that helps the Nazis attack Norway. Knud, Eigil, Helge, and Børge tell their parents they are playing bridge and head to the airport, which is heavily patrolled by Germans. When they get there, Børge smashes out three windows with a stick, making a loud noise that causes Eigil to wet his pants from fear. The boys enter an office and smash a framed portrait of Hitler. They set fire to it along with a pile of architectural drawings, receipts, and business cards. They also steal a typewriter and leveler.
The next day, the other boys point out that they did not leave a calling card to make their message clear. Knud wrecks the leveler with a sledgehammer and writes a message on it: “Get out of our country, you stinking Nazis” (42). A few nights later they return it to the Fuchs office. They see it has not burned down, but they are pleased with the damage they have done to the documents and portrait.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Flames of Resistance”
Denmark seems idyllic even well into the war in the first months of 1942. Politicians, business leaders, and citizens hobnob with Nazis.
The Churchill Club’s starts to target German vehicles. They find “three large German transport trucks unguarded in a field” (45) and set them on fire. Another day they find a German tractor in an airfield. They try to command Børge to go get petrol, but he ignores the older boys’ orders and throws a lit match into the gas tank, igniting the truck.
Knud and Børge grow close. Although Børge looks like the “innocent type,” Knud says, he is “hot-tempered” and “fearless” (47). Børge and Knud share a similar sense of humor and a desire for action. They often work together on sabotage missions and find they can communicate without speaking. One day Børge distracts a German soldier while Knud steals a pistol from a German roadster: “More and more, weapons became our obsession”(48).
The club becomes adept at disabling German vehicles. The boys want to destroy some parked in Budolfi Square, right outside the monastery, but a German guard is always watching the vehicles. The club discusses how they can distract him and debate whether they could kill him if he catches them, but two members object to the potential killing. When they started the club, the boys had vowed that they could kill if necessary: “But when the time came we were woefully unprepared”(50). They decide to postpone the mission. The aborted sabotage is “bitterly disappointing” (50), especially in light of a letter Jens receives from their cousin Hans, telling them they he destroyed 15 German roadsters as part of a RAF Club operation.
Chapters 4-5 Analysis
In Chapters 4-5, the Churchill Club raises the stakes of their sabotage, leveling up from vandalism to arson of German vehicles and equipment. In another important step, they steal their first gun, which marks the beginning of an obsession with acquiring weapons. The pistol brings into question the possibility of killing. Although the boys promised they could do it if the time comes, they balk at the idea of killing the guard in Budolfi Square. In reality, they are still young boys who have led comfortable lives and are relatively innocent. However, they gradually start to shed this innocence as they consider the possibility of taking a life, a much more serious action than spraying graffiti. As they continue their sabotage activities, the boys of the club also learn how to improve the outcome of their endeavors. In their naïveté, they expected the Fuchs office to burn down when they lit the pile of papers on fire. Later, they learn to use gasoline for arson and become skilled at disabling German cars.
Meanwhile, their fellow Danes continue to be largely complacent. Those who want to resist the German occupiers do it with small, harmless gestures while others openly collaborate with the Nazis for profit without suffering any negative consequences. Above all, the Churchill Club wants its activities to inspire other Danes to resist more boldly and to shame those who collaborate. Its sabotage is important primarily for its symbolism rather than the physical damage it does to the German army. Knud and the other boys know that the vandalism of signs does not represent a significant advance in the war, but it is important to them that their “actions were noticed by people in the streets” (40).
In these chapters, Børge’s impulsive nature starts to become apparent. Although he is the youngest boy, he does not take orders and seems to be among the bravest and most reckless members of the Churchill Club. He and Knud get along well because they have the same irreverent humor and craving for “bold action” (36), in contrast to boys like Jens and Eigil, who are more cautious and fearful.
Competition is a strong feature of the dynamics among the boys. At the end of Chapter 5, a rivalry develops between the RAF and Churchill Clubs. Knud and Jens are also competitive with each other, as are the other members of the Churchill Club. This contest of teenage egos often leads to bickering and jealousy, yet it also prods the boys further in their resistance work as they try to outdo each other.
