helped as the club won its third Danish Championship in 1937. At the end of the 1920s, the number of members in the youth department increased steadily, and AB began to level divide the teams. With a strong coach team led by Carl "Skomager" Hansen, the youth department achieved great success in this period and won the juniors tournament in 1928, 1929, 1930, 1932, 1933, 1937 and 1938. Golden era In 1939, AB celebrated the club's 50th anniversary on restaurant Nimb in Copenhagen. At the same time, the club began a period of great success. In 1939, the advent of the World War II could be felt in Europe. On the sports front, the war meant that much international sports cooperation was interrupted, but also that interest in sports increased as the offer of leisure activities was limited. Membership in AB increased to over 1,000 during the war period. The attendance to AB's matches was about 30,000 during this period, and in 1944, a total of 43,000 spectators saw AB play the final in the Danish Championships against BK Frem. During the 1940s, a new generation of talented players such as Knud Bastrup-Birk, Georg Dahlfeldt and Karl Aage Hansen were raised, which helped ensure AB great success in the following years. The team already had a strong base of established players, consisting of among others Eyolf Kleven and Knud Lundberg who were in the national team in three sports (football, handball and basketball). With the former AB player Arne Kleven as coach, AB won several Copenhagen Cup finals and Danish Championships in the 1940s. The club won the Danish Championship in 1943, 1945 and 1947, silver medals in 1942, 1944 and 1949, and bronze medals in 1946 and 1948. AB won the Danish Cup final in 1942, 1944, 1945 and 1949, and were furthermore in the final in 1946. At the Olympic Games in London in 1948 where the Danish national football team won bronze, AB had six players on the team: Karl Aage Hansen, Knud Bastrup-Birk, Knud Lundberg, Poul Petersen, Ivan Jensen and Holger Seebach. In December 1948, AB's first-team squad went on a training trip to Barcelona in Spain and Algiers in Algeria where the team played two matches against FC Barcelona each of which was attended by around 40.000 spectators. The first match ended 1-1, while the second match was lost 1–2. AB's success continued into the