The other night I caught part of a fascinating PBS documentary about a boxing match that took place in 1938 between the American heavyweight Joe Louis and a German named Max Schmeling. Now, I normally have about as much interest in boxing as I do in watching dust collect on the window ledges, but this particular bout represented much more than a mere sporting event. It was a battle of ideas and symbolism in which the racist philosophies of Hitler’s Third Reich (symbolized by Schmeling) confronted the reality of the so-called lesser races (Louis was black).
Schmeling himself was not a Nazi, but Hitler’s propagandists had made the handsome boxer out to be the ideal to which all good Germans were supposed to aspire. Louis was legendary as “the Brown Bomber,” but he’d lost to Schmeling once before, in 1936. Both nations were counting on its man to emerge triumphant, with the Nazis eager to crow about Aryan supremacy and the Americans wanting to bloody Hitler’s nose. The stakes were high, and the end results both spectacular and unexpected: Louis knocked out Schmeling two minutes into the first round.
If this fight had been a scene in a movie, it would’ve been the triumphant climax of a classic underdog story. The screen would’ve faded to black a moment later and the credits would’ve rolled over a stirring fanfare. But life isn’t a movie, and there was much more to tell about Max Schmeling than those few moments inside the ring.
Schmeling died a few days ago at the age of 99, and even though I’d only vaguely heard of him until I saw that doc on television, I was absolutely fascinated by the details of his life.
The thing I find so compelling about Schmeling’s story is that, even while the Nazis sought to use him for their own nefarious purposes, he was actively opposing their policies and their ideas. According to the article linked above, “Schmeling angered the Nazi bosses in 1935 by refusing to join the Nazi party, fire his Jewish-American manager, Joe Jacobs, and divorce [his wife] Ondra, a Czech-born film star.”
The article goes on to describe numerous small acts of heroism and nobility:
During the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Schmeling extracted a promise from Hitler that all U.S. athletes would be protected. He hid two Jewish boys in his Berlin apartment during Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass) in 1938, when the Nazis burned books in a central square and rampaged through the city, setting synagogues on fire. He reportedly used his influence to save Jewish friends from concentration camps.
After the war, Schmeling was nearly destitute and fought five more times for the money. … [he] used the money from the bouts to buy the license to the Coca-Cola franchise in Germany and grew wealthy in the postwar era. …
Over the years, Schmeling treasured his friendship with Louis and quietly gave the down-and-out American gifts of money. He also paid for Louis’ funeral in 1981.
Call me a softie, but that last bit really gets me… can you imagine becoming friends with the man who publicly defeated you? Could any one of us find the courage to resist the pressure the Nazis surely brought to bear on this celebrity? I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure I could do either.
I said a moment ago that Schmeling’s story was not a movie… but it ought to be. And coming from me, that means a lot. Rest in peace, Max.
