Max Schmeling: Hitler’s favourite boxer?

As a child in 1930s Budapest, a whole new world opened up for me when I learned to read. In the beginning I read only street advertisements. Later my main interest turned to sports news. In Hungary, sport events took place mainly on Sunday afternoons and were reported in the Sport News that appeared in the late afternoon with its characteristic green colour. This was a Sunday evening entertainment. Most people were  interested in only a few sports results and discarded the journal as soon as they had read those. All we children needed to do was to pick them up from the pavement. 

The headlines were very often about boxing. The boxer whose photograph I saw most often was Max Schmeling. Anything German was widely praised in the Hungarian press at the time. It was the policy of Admiral Horthy, Hungary’s authoritarian Regent.

Let me say a few words about Max Schmeling, the leading German boxer of the time. He was born in 1905 in Germany. He became interested in boxing when he saw a film with his father on the career of Jack Dempsey, a celebrated  heavyweight boxing champion of the world. Still in his teens, the young Schmeling decided to become a professional, a decision that his father accepted with a moderate amount of enthusiasm.  

The country where boxing was most popular was the United States. That is where Schmeling went in 1928 in search of glory. He became world heavyweight champion two years later when his opponent was disqualified for a low blow. He defended his title in several matches but lost it to Max Bear in 1933. 

Meanwhile the world had changed. In January 1933 Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany and brought with him theories of racial purity. Blacks and Jews became Untermenschen (inferior people). There was something new in boxing as well. A new contender arose in the person of Joe Louis. He was certainly not born with a silver spoon in the mouth. He was the seventh child of a black couple and his mother was a slave’s daughter. Her husband succumbed to a mental  disease when the children were still young. Then Joe’s mother married for the second time. She wanted her seventh child to be a musician. But Joe was not interested in music. He used the violin case to carry his boxing gloves out of sight of his mother. In boxing, however, he made a phenomenal debut. Starting his professional career in the middle of 1934, he won all 12 of his matches in that year, a feat he repeated in 1935 when again he won all 10 of his matches. One of those was against the former world champion, Max Bear. It became clear that if Schmeling wanted to regain the world championship, he must fight Louis.  

The fight was scheduled for June 1936. Max Schmeling was looked upon in America as a Nazi. Conversely, Louis was regarded in Germany as a member of an inferior race. The controversy was therefore bitter. At the time many white boxers would refuse to fight a black opponent. Joe Louis changed all that. For the first time in history a black man became an all-American hero. 

He had even come to the attention of  President Roosevelt himself. Feeling  Louis’ muscles, FDR said: “These are the muscles we need to beat Germany.” Schmeling could have avoided the hostile reception had he accepted his American friend’s advice to apply for American citizenship. He did not want to take that step (“Once a German, always a German”, he said), but the Gestapo made sure that under no circumstances would he do so by retaining  his wife and mother in Germany, effectively as hostages — a practice that had already been widely used in the Soviet Union.

The Schmeling-Louis match was scheduled for June 1936. As it happened, Schmeling won in the 10 th round. Germany was celebrating. America was in mourning. Some people actually wept. Goebbels immediately saw the propaganda value of the victory. He sent a telegram to Schmeling: “I know you won it for Germany. We are proud of you. Heil Hitler!” The Führer wrote separately: “Most cordial felicitations on your splendid victory.” 

Schmeling returned to Germany in style on the Zeppelin named after Hindenburg. The Führer immediately invited him, his wife and some of his friends for lunch at the Reich Chancellery. But this was not the end of the story. There was to be a rematch two years later. By 1938 the political background affected the match even more than in 1936. The beginning of the Second World War was hardly a year away and the Spanish Civil War was still bitterly fought. 

The result of the rematch was entirely unexpected. Schmeling was knocked out in the first round. The German reaction was easy to guess. Schmeling became a non-person. Nobody in Germany had ever taken an interest in the former celebrity. Hitler put him in the paratroopers’ regiment, the most dangerous  assignment in any army.  I cannot escape  the suspicion that Hitler wanted him dead. I think this was analogous to the story of Uriah. King David put Uriah in the first line of battle to die so that he could marry Beer Sheba, Uriah’s wife. 

Yet that was not the end of the story either. Schmeling was wounded in the parachute assault on Crete in 1941, but he survived. Many years later, after the war, he visited Louis in Chicago. They became good friends. Schmeling offered financial help when Louis fell on lean times. They remained friends until Louis died at the age of 66. Schmeling was one of his pallbearers.

So what can we say in conclusion? Was Schmeling really Hitler’s favourite boxer? For a while he no doubt was — as long as he was a champion. Was he a Nazi? It must have looked that way from America: “A man who dines with Hitler must be a Nazi.” But if you live in a dictatorship you do not have much choice. If Hitler invites you to the Reich Chancellery you cannot say: “Sorry, tonight I am too busy.”  That would mean playing with your life. 

I would argue that  Schmeling went as far as he could, and maybe even beyond that, to prove that he was not a Nazi. He never joined the NSDAP  (German National Socialist Workers’ Party), in spite of being under pressure to do so from Hitler himself. He made it clear to the Sports Minister that he was just  a boxer, no more, and he claimed to know nothing about politics. In spite of Goebbels’ exhortations, he refused to get rid of his Jewish manager, Joe Jacobs. It also happened that when Jacobs visited Germany and his hotel booking was cancelled on account of being Jewish, Schmeling confronted the hotel manager and told him in no uncertain terms that he should restore Jacobs’ booking. If he does not do so he will never again receive an American guest. The hotel manager complied. 

This gesture required courage. However, Schmeling’s bravest deed became known only fifty years later. During the Kristallnacht outrages in 1938, he offered shelter in his hotel room to two sons of a Jewish friend of his. If this had been found out at the time, his career would surely have been ended immediately. This, far more than any exploits in the boxing ring, was Max Schmeling’s bravest act.

A Message from TheArticle

We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important contribution to make, one that’s needed now more than ever, and we need your help to continue publishing throughout these hard economic times. So please, make a donation.