In the book, “The Boys Who Challenged Hitler” by Phillip Hoose, the theme of resistance is very prevalent. The book is about a boy, Knud Pedersen, and his brother, Jens Pedersen, who absolutely despise the Germans who occupy Denmark, their country. They hate how their government didn’t resist at all and let the Nazis take over. They realized that if their government and their army wouldn’t do anything to fight the oppressors, they would. They started a group called the Churchill club, named after the British prime minister that they admired, Winston Churchill. The group operates mostly in secret, and they have trouble finding others to join, because they don’t know who they can trust to keep their secret, as many Danish people are in favor of the German occupation at the time. This club connect to the theme of resistance because it is about how these boys resisted accepting the German occupation. While their resistance wasn’t super effective short term, their club inspired many other Danes to rise up. Resistance doesn’t have to be with tons of weapons and waging military-style armed battles, and it doesn’t have to be doing anything like blowing up entire cars. However, the members of the Churchill Club were only teenagers, and they did steal weapons and smash or vandalize German vehicles. This connects to the reading I read yesterday about Denmark’s large resistance later in the War. One thing that they did was when they received word that all the Jews in Denmark were going to be shipped to extermination camps in Germany, they helped over 7,000 Danish Jews escape to Sweden, which was neutral. Those who couldn’t escape were hidden too. This makes me think that the while the Churchill club resistance didn’t do much immediately, they caused much greater things to happen.

In the book that I am reading, “The Boys Who Challenged Hitler” by Philip Hoose, one character has stood out to me, Jens Pederson. He is the older brother of Knud Pedersen, the “protagonist” of the story and the first person to suggest starting a club for sabotaging the German Army within their home country, Denmark.  The reason that Jens is significant is because he was the only person in Knud’s family that was in, or even told about, the Churchill Club. Knud didn’t tell either of his two younger brothers or his younger sister. Jens was also one of the first people who was in the club, as well as a very active member. Jens is the oldest in his family, and he is the “perfect child” from his parents point of view. He is neat, he did well in school, and he was, as far as his parents knew, very innocent. Knud Pedersen said, “My parents saved money to send Jens-the family golden boy-off to college. And who could blame them? Jens was already respected as the best math student at Cathedral School.”pg. 71 Furtheremore, within the Churchill Club, Jens is bold, but usually weighs all his options to make the safest choice. However, he does occasionally do something in the moment that may be a bad idea. The text reads, “At a skating rink, Jens had skated up behind a German Soldier and kicked him in the leg. The guy howled in pain and took off after Jens, who was chased down and taken to the police station.”pg. 74 This shows that while Jens is usually a person who thinks things through, he, like any human being, makes mistakes. The last significant detaail about Jens is that while he and his brother spend lots of time together, they do argue often and are very competitive, even though they are close.