Nazis and boxing
In early February the Aryan Nazi who was neither, died at the age of 99 in his native Germany.
There are not that many million people still around who actually heard the radio broadcast of June 19, 1936 when Joe Louis knocked out Max Schmeling in the first round of their heavyweight championship bout in New York. Like me, I'm certain a lot of you have heard the gravely voice of the ring announcer if you listen to historic moments in sports. "The German is down ... the count is nine ... the men are in the ring. The fight is over."
And here was Schmeling, used as a racial tool by Joseph Goebbels Propaganda Ministry. Aryan superman? Schmeling was darker than Hitler and actually looked a lot more Silesian than Baltic. His wife of 72 years, Czech movie star Anny Ondra, was the blonde blue-eyed beauty the Nazis so cherished. Schmeling never joined the Nazi party and his manager, Joe Jacobs, was a Jew.
Schmeling had won the heavyweight championship over Jack Sharkey on a foul call. Sharkey won the rematch and when the first bout between Schmeling and Louis was scheduled, 10-1 underdog Schmeling got all the Louis films he could locate and studied them in hopes of finding a weakness, which he did. After Louis unleashed his savage left, he dropped his arm. Schmeling figured out how to attack the weakness and recorded a 12th round KO in a non-title fight.
The Schmelings were guests of Adolf Hitler at Berchtesgaden and the German chancellor tried, along with Goebbels, to convince the boxer that it would be a good idea for him to join the Nazi party. Schmeling refused. Had he become a Nazi, it would have been difficult for him after the war.
It was no different for Schmeling than most other Germans of that era as he wound up in the military and was a paratrooper in the famous battle at Crete that cost the Germans so dearly that Hitler refused to use airborne troops again. Schmeling was regarded as a hero and posed for pictures and an article in Signal magazine that gained wide circulation. Signal magazine was the German version of Life or Look.
Schmeling did some boxing after the war, but never challenged for the title again.
While life was relatively good to Schmeling, the same was not true of Louis. He was bilked out of what money he didn't throw away and finally degenerated to the point where he became a nightclub greeter in Las Vegas.
After that, Louis seemed to vanish, a fact Schmeling learned on a visit to the United States a few years before Louis' death. He wanted to see the Brown Bomber but was unable to find him. Finally, Louis was located in Denver just before Schmeling was scheduled to depart for Germany. Schmeling postponed his return and went to Denver where he located Louis. The two of them talked and Louis always said he was quite pleased that Schmeling remembered him after all the years and cared enough to visit.
In knowing more about Schmeling than the bare fact that he was once heavyweight champion and lost that famous bout to Louis it comes to mind that more than an athlete, Schmeling was a true sportsman.