Churchill Club
The Churchill Club (Danish: Churchill Klubben ) was a local group from the early days of the Danish resistance consisting of Aalburg students and young people who carried out minor resistance actions against the German occupiers and was headed by Knud Pedersen, who was seventeen at the time. After some arms theft and minor acts of sabotage , such as property damage and arson, the group was rolled up by the Danish criminal police in May 1942 and its members were sentenced to prison terms of up to five years.
The Danish underground newspaper "De frie Danske" claimed in a propaganda story in July 1942 that the young people had testified at the trial before the Copenhagen City Court: "If the adults here in this country cannot raise themselves to resist, then we are forced to." the group became - unlike similar small groups - nationwide famous, inspired imitators and also facilitated the recruitment efforts of the emerging larger resistance groups, such as the communist BOPA and the right-wing nationalist Holger Danske .
literature
- Phillip Hoose: The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knut Pedersen and The Churchill Club , Farrar Straus Giroux 2015, ISBN 978-0-374-30022-7
Web links
- Film , (english)
- Churchill-Klubben , homepage of Aalborg Katedralskole , (Danish)
Individual evidence
- ^ Matthias Bath: Danebrog against Hakenkreuz, The Resistance in Denmark 1940-1945 , Wachholtz 2011, ISBN 978-3-529-02817-5 , p. 72
- ^ Matthias Bath: Danebrog against the swastika, The Resistance in Denmark 1940-1945 , p. 72 f.