Churchill Club

The Churchill Club (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 17-year-old Knud Petersen, 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. Even after imprisonment, they managed to escape at night to continue their sabotage activities.

Knud Pedersen has written four books about the Churchill Club: Churchillklubben (1946); Breve fra fængslet (1964); Sidste krigsår (1966); and Sagen om Churchillklubben fortalt gennem kilder (1979). All were republished in an omnibus edition in 2005.

The popular 1991 movie The Boys from St. Petri or Drengene Fra Sankt Petri is based on the Churchill Club but goes beyond the facts of the case.

Sources and external links

 * Website about the Churchill Club
 * Knud Pedersen, the leader of the group, gives a short overview of the Churchill Club with photographs in a video presentation (in Danish): Et medlem af Churchill-klubben (retrieved 23 April 2008)