NEW YORK — Though he remains the only German to win the
heavyweight championship, Max Schmeling’s place in history is less
about a title he briefly held than about an era and a set of
circumstances — the 1930s and 1940s, his relationship with the
Nazis, and his two famous bouts with Joe Louis.
Schmeling was an enormous underdog when he fought Louis in 1936.
He was 31, an ex-champion past his peak, viewed as just another
appetizer for the 22-year-old Louis, who was plowing through the
heavyweight division like a steamroller. Schmeling, though, was a
student of fundamentals, and he had spotted in fight films of Louis
the most fundamental of flaws: Louis tended to drop his left after
jabbing, leaving himself open to Schmeling’s powerful right hand.
After twelve rounds of battering, Schmeling put Louis down for good
with one more right. It is still one of sports’ greatest
upsets.
That victory made Schmeling into “Hitler’s fighter,” and the
Fuhrer had films of the fight shown across Germany. Schmeling was
feted by Hitler and Goebbels, but he rejected urgings from Hitler
to join the party. Many years later, when asked why he had dined
with Hitler, he said, “I had turned der Fuhrer down four times, and
you don’t turn him down five times. That did not make me a Nazi. I
also had dinner with Franklin Roosevelt. That did not make me a
Democrat.”
That’s much easier to understand today than it was in 1938, when
he and Louis fought their rematch in Yankee Stadium. Given the
context of the times, there was no realistic way to expect a public
response different from what occurred: probably the most
politically tinged sporting event in history. It was Schmeling for
Hitler, anti-Semitism, and aggression; Louis for Franklin
Roosevelt, democracy, and civil rights. Louis’s destruction of
Schmeling in two minutes of the first round was celebrated as a
great victory for freedom over fascism. That’s the way it way it
seemed, anyway, for many years afterwards.
After the war, Schmeling was still associated by many with the
Nazis, enshrined in history as villain to Louis’s hero. That image
finally faded with time and with information that made clear
Schmeling was no Nazi.
The most powerful evidence of Schmeling’s decency only became
public in 1989, when Henri Lewin, then president of the Sands Hotel
in Las Vegas, gave a dinner in Schmeling’s honor. Lewin told his
guests that in 1938, during Kristallnacht, the infamous Nazi
pogrom, Schmeling had harbored him and his brother in his hotel
suite as the Nazis rampaged in the streets below. Eventually,
Schmeling helped them get out of the country. If the Nazis had
found them, Lewin said at the dinner, “I would not be here this
evening and neither would Max.”
The public revelation of these Schindleresque deeds, along with
Schmeling’s other refusals of Hitler and his decency as a man, has
contributed to a pendulum swing in his reputation. This is all to
the good, but it would be a disservice to history if Schmeling
emerges from his unjust villain’s role into a not-quite-earned new
role as dissident saint. Shades of gray remain, inevitably.
DAVID MARGOLICK, WHOSE BOOK on the Louis-Schmeling fights will be
published later this year, gets at some of these ambiguities in his
New York Times obituary. Margolick suggests that Schmeling had
to make small compromises all along the way during the Hitler
years, that he defended the regime in the 1930s “with disconcerting
ease,” and that his autobiographies “dance around many issues.”
This is easy to believe. Schmeling’s stature as Nazi Germany’s
most famous athlete made it impossible to separate himself entirely
from the evils of his government. He was a boxer pursuing success
and wealth; he was a German who loved his country; and he was a
decent man who by all accounts did not share the Nazis’ racial
views. His life during those years, like those of many other
successful, non-Nazi Germans, entailed walking a fine line between
staying in the good graces of the regime and looking himself in the
mirror the next morning.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Schmeling and
Kristallnacht is that for over 50 years he never mentioned it. Try
to imagine that today, when the slightest accusation about someone
brings a public counterattack, if not a lawsuit. It says a lot
about a man, accused of complicity with Hitler, who can keep such a
thing to himself, and we can read into his silence what we will.
Inherent modesty is one interpretation. Penance for his own less
heroic moments is another.
Whether it was penance or the filial bond boxers often share,
Schmeling became quite a friend to Joe Louis, whose later life was
fraught with difficulty. When Louis needed financial help,
Schmeling came through with assistance. And when Louis died in
1981, Schmeling paid for the funeral.
It seems that, all in all, the mirror will look back at Max
Schmeling and let him pass. He was a good man caught in horrible
circumstances who tottered at times but did his best. As two young
Jewish boys could testify, his best was goodness itself.
He was a pretty good fighter, too.
