The Boys Who Challenged Hitler by Phillip Hoose Post #1

“If the adults would not act, we would”- Knud Pedersen

This quote is significant for multiple reasons. First, it shows how devoted Knud and his friends in the RAF club and later, in the Churchill club, were. They would try to stand up for what they believed if no one else would do so. Second, it shows how they, even though they weren’t adults, wanted to make some kind of change in their lives and the lives of many other people. It is inspiring to many younger people, including me, because later in the story, the members of the Churchill club will use the limited resources they have as kids to start something way bigger than the club, a big rebellion against the German occupation. This quote stood out to me because even though it is short, it conveys its message simply and easily. Also, the quote foreshadows what happened in the book because the club members acted when the adults didn’t, and it caused a major ripple effect, where many other children and adults alike saw that there was this rebellion and wanted to help and make a change. And still, after the adults did act, the Churchill club didn’t stop and let them do the rest, they continued to do as much as they could until they were physically unable to. This quote can connect to larger thematic issues such as Patriotism. The boys wanted to act, and later did, because they felt that their government just let Hitler and the Nazis occupy their country, despite all the atrocities the Nazis were committing in Norway and other places they invaded. They wanted their Country to fight for itself, like how Norway was, because the way that Denmark handled the Situation made them feel bad to be in Denmark. The adults who were running the country decided to do nothing about the Nazis, so they were going to fix that by doing everything in their power to sabotage the Nazis.

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