Theme Analysis of The Boys Who Challenged Hitler

 

            The chief theme of The Boys Who Challenged Hitler is universal and simple: with courage, anyone has the power within him to create change in the world. Many times people feel overwhelmed and overcome by their circumstances. None truer than the Danes when the Germans invaded their country in 1940 during World War II. However, one group of Danish boys lead by Knud Pedersen fought back. They called themselves the Churchill Club after British leader Winston Churchill. These youths chose to be agents of change when their parents, government, and king would not.

 

           The author, Phillip Hoose, divulged, “As these events transpired, fourteen-year-old Knud Pedersen, a lanky schoolboy growing up in the industrial city of Odense, Denmark, experienced deep emotions, some for the first time. He was at once outraged by the German invasion, inspired by the Norwegians’ courage, and ashamed of the Danish adults who had taken Hitler’s deal.” (Hoose 6)

As Knud and his friends coped with the German occupation, they were compelled to take action. “Together on that snowy afternoon we Middle A classmates, along with Jens, resolved to form a club to fight the Germans as fiercely as the Norwegians were fighting. We would take the resistance to Aalborg…Already transformed from the cheerful holiday shoppers we had been an hour before, the Churchill Club adjourned.” (Hoose 33)

 

           The author again proved the theme: “Between their first meeting in December 1941 and their arrest in May 1942, the Churchill Club struck more than two dozen times, racing through the streets on bicycles in well-coordinated hits. Acts of vandalism quickly escalated to arson and major destruction of German property. The boys stole and cached German rifles, grenades, pistols, and ammunition-even a machine gun. Using explosives stolen from the school chemistry lab, they scorched a German railroad car filled with airplane wings. They carried out most of their actions in broad daylight, as they all had family curfews…The Churchill Club’s sabotage spree awakened the complacent nation.” (Hoose 3-4)

 

             The exploits and feats of Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club speak to the weighty theme that it only takes one action or idea to spark change. Anyone can be a catalyst that is if one is brave enough.

 

Bibliography

Hoose, Phillip. The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers, 2015.