Sven Hassel, the pen name of the Danish-born Børge Willy Redsted Pedersen, who wrote novels set during World War II. One of the most sold Danish authors, at most second to Hans Christian Andersen

Sven Hassel was the pen name of the Danish-born Børge Willy Redsted Pedersen (19 April 1917  – 21 September 2012) who wrote novels set during World War II. In Denmark he used the pen name Sven Hazel.

Hassel claimed that at the age of 14 he joined the merchant navy as a cabin boy and worked on ships until his military service in 1936. However, while his two-years-younger brother Tommy Redsted Pedersen^[11] was entered in the army levy roll for Copenhagen in 1937 when he turned 18^[16] and his four-years-younger brother Uffe Redsted Pedersen^[11] was entered in the same roll in 1939 when he turned 18,^[17] Pedersen was not entered in the roll from 1934 through 1940.^[18] Rather, in 1935 he entered the social welfare system of Copenhagen as Arbejdsmand (laborer) Børge Villy Redsted Petersen.

In 1937, to escape the Great Depression, the unemployed Hassel moved to Germany to join the army. In an interview in 1990, he said, "Germany happened to be closer than England, I went to a Wehrmacht recruiting office to enlist, but it wasn't as easy as I had thought. Only German citizens could serve. After six months of trying to join up, the Seventh Cavalry Regiment finally accepted me on the condition that I became a naturalized German."

Hassel served with the 2nd Panzer Division stationed at Eisenach and in 1939 was a tank driver during the invasion of Poland.^{[citation needed]} A year later he attempted to escape. He served with the 2nd Cavalry Regiment and later the 11th and 27th Panzer Regiments (6th Panzer Division) on all fronts except North Africa and was wounded several times. Eventually he reached the rank of lieutenant and received the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd class.

On 23 August 1942 the resistance newspaper De Frie Danske reported that on 13 August a Cadillac registered to leader of DNSAP Frits Clausen had crashed in Copenhagen. A Børge Petersen involved in the crash first disappeared but was later apprehended and awaited trial. DNSAP subsequently issued a statement that due to his prior convictions Børge Petersen was not and could never be a member of DNSAP. De Frie Danske opined that if this statement were true there would hardly be any members at all in DNSAP. The author Erik Haaest claimed that the criminal record of Børge Willy Redsted Pedersen shows that he was the aforementioned Børge Petersen and that he in connection with the car crash impersonated a police officer and that he was living at Høffdingsvej 21^[21] with his parents. Haaest's implication is that Pedersen's claim that he was a naturalized German citizen fighting with the German armed forces is contradicted by his arrest in Copenhagen as a civilian with several prior convictions.

He claimed to have surrendered to Soviet troops in Berlin in 1945 and to have spent the following years in prisoner-of-war camps in various countries^[15] but in reality he was arrested in Denmark in 1945 after the liberation and was held in prison there, first as a suspect and then as a convicted criminal.
He began to write his first book, Legion of the Damned while he was interned.
Hassel was released from prison in 1949 after having served four years out of his ten-year prison sentence.^[8]