RIP Max Schmeling

[ethics]

Not sure many of you know him nor care but I thought that Max, despite being used by Hitler as a pawn, was a stand up guy during the whole thing and after the war.

<a href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/box_obit_schmeling">May he rest in peace. </a>

[BigDeputyDog]

To me, this says a lot about his character... Although he had lunched with Hitler and had long discussions with his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, Schmeling angered the Nazi bosses in 1935 by refusing to join the Nazi party, fire his Jewish-American manager, Joe Jacobs, and divorce Ondra, a Czech-born film star.


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.

My father, a boxing fan, spoke highly of Schmeling.

RIP Max...

BDD...

[Arc]

This past Wednesday one of the great sportsman and human beings in the world of sport died. Max Schmeling was 99. The man was a genuine hero in the true sense of the word.

I grew up watching and studying boxing. Like most Americans of my generation I always was taught or understood that the former Heavyweight Champion and German was a Nazi who was thoroughly beaten by the great fighter and American Joe Louis. It was only years later that I learned when in Europe about the real Max Schmeling.

From today’s Los Angeles Times and Earl Gustkey is an article about Schmeling and Louis’s two fights together. We pick it up with the first fight where the undefeated Louis was a huge favorite to destroy the aging and considered over the hill Schmeling.

After studying films of Louis' fights — the Detroit fighter had knocked out 23 of his 27 opponents — Schmeling said he had seen a weakness he thought he could exploit: When Louis missed with his left hand, he was wide open for a right-hand counterpunch.

Schmeling, in footage of the fight, can be seen cautiously looking for that instant when Louis would miss with a left hand, leaving the left side of his head unprotected.

It happened in the fourth round. Louis reached out tentatively, with a lazy left jab. Schmeling, an 8-1 underdog, rocked back slightly, then delivered a short, smashing right to the left side of Louis' face.

Louis staggered backward, and Schmeling rushed in, unleashing a flurry of punches. A second big right caught Louis flush in the face, and he went down.

For the next eight rounds, Louis fought like a sleepwalker, unable to emerge from the daze that Schmeling's first big right had created. Afterward, Louis told reporters he could remember nothing after the third round.

Schmeling ended it in the 12th, catching his opponent with a thunderous right that knocked Louis down. The American sat on his haunches briefly, tried to rise but crumpled, and referee Arthur Donovan counted Louis out as he rolled over on his stomach.

Schmeling's victory over Louis, though, sent him to the top of the popularity charts in Germany. In 1937, Adolf Hitler asked Schmeling to appear at an outdoor reception in Munich for Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. According to an Associated Press report, the ovation for Schmeling exceeded that accorded Hitler.

But Schmeling, during his boxing career, always carried more popularity with the German people than with the Nazi hierarchy. During the 1930s Nazification of Germany, his two main advisors were American Jews: his manager, Joe Jacobs, and his trainer, Max Machon.

Schmeling was scolded once in the mid-1930s by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, who said, "Max, you are the only German athlete who is advised by Jews."

Schmeling, however, refused to sever his Jewish connections, refused to join the Nazi party and hid Jewish friends in his apartment during Kristallnacht, the campaign of violence and intimidation by Nazi hoodlums against German Jews in November 1938.

By then, Schmeling had lost his rematch with Louis …on June 22, 1938, Louis was the heavyweight champion, having beaten James J. Braddock for the title. And Schmeling, sportswriters never failed to point out, albeit incorrectly, was Hitler and Goebbels' fair-haired boy. "Der Max," they called him.

…Schmeling was 33, Louis 24. Louis had said little about Schmeling in the two years between the fights, but was surely affected when told of Goebbels-inspired articles in German newspapers stating that Schmeling's 1936 victory proved that black athletes "lacked the essential courage and mental capacity to stand up under a white boxer of equal ability."

For 1 minute and 25 seconds, Louis was a determined but careful aggressor. Then, the beating began. Louis backed Schmeling into the ropes and threw a solid right to Schmeling's jaw. That wobbled Schmeling's head. Louis threw two more savage punches, Schmeling turning toward the ropes. But there was nowhere to hide.

The fourth punch was a crushing right to Schmeling's left kidney, a punch that broke Schmeling's back. Later, his handlers would cry foul. They would also display X-rays, showing a cracked vertebra.

More thundering punches, and Schmeling was desperately in need of a nine-count. But he remained standing. His right hand still clutching the top rope, he looked left, for his corner men, but couldn't see them. Then he faced Louis again. He looked alone — and afraid.

He stood there, dazed, while Louis rushed in again. A short left preceded a tremendous right. Schmeling's head wobbled uncontrollably, and his hair shook like a mop as he plummeted, face-down, to the canvas.

It was high drama, and the entire Yankee Stadium crowd was on its feet, roaring. Thousands who had cheered Schmeling in the introductions had switched allegiances in less than two minutes. In Germany, millions listened at dawn to a hysterical German announcer.

Two lefts and two rights sent Schmeling down again, to all fours. Again, he arose. Again, Louis was on him quickly. He hit Schmeling with another right to the same kidney area and followed with a right to the jaw. Schmeling fell for the third time, and another roar rose up like a great wave from the throng. The count reached four when a towel from Schmeling's corner sailed into the ring, a European signal — not recognized in America — for the referee to stop the bout.

Donovan, who refereed the second fight as well as the first, stopped counting, threw the towel out of the ring, and started to resume his count. Schmeling's corner men, however, had by then climbed into the ring.

After 2 minutes and 4 seconds, it was over — possibly the most dramatic and explosive two minutes in American sports to that point. Afterward, Schmeling spent two weeks in a New York hospital, recovering from the cracked vertebra.

As brutal a beating as he had taken, Schmeling said in 1975: "Looking back, I'm almost happy I lost that fight. Just imagine if I would have come back to Germany with a victory. I had nothing to do with the Nazis, but they would have given me a medal. After the war, I might have been considered a war criminal."

Bill Westerman, a Coca-Cola executive, told of Schmeling's visit to Mexico City in 1975 with a group of Coke executives.

"The group was bused to the ancient Teotihuacan pyramids, north of Mexico City, one day," Westerman recalled. "It was hot, and some of the executives began to complain about having to walk several hundred yards to the pyramids. Max was appalled at their physical condition and said so.

"He was very proud of his good health. To prove it, he ran to the top — he was 70, mind you — of the highest pyramid [210 feet], turned and waved to them down below. It simply amazed everyone."

Schmeling and Louis became life long friends afterward. Louis who suffered from being severely taken advantage of financially and professionally by his “managers” suffered first the stings of lifelong financial ills and then later the ravages of the punches he took in his career as well as poor overall health. When he died broke, Max paid for the funeral.

Several years ago when Max finally began to get the recognition he deserved instead of the false label as a Nazi, Sports Illustrated interviewed Joe Louis’s son for an article on Max. According to Joe’s son, Max never spoke to him about his father without getting a tear in his eye.

If you like movies that just tell true stories without any embellishment for Hollywood or “action” than I recommend ”Joe and Max’ the 2002 made for TV movie that picks up with their first fight and ends circa the fifties.

There is an especially poignant scene where Max travels to visit Joe after many years of having not seen each other. They reminiscent about their careers, their fights, and how those around them used them both. Later when Max is leaving their final words at the train station that day and the embrace they share is symbolic of a bond that can only be shared by two humans that shared the experiences and battles they did. Twice they stood in front of each other as opponents and pawns of two countries. However, both knew that what was really at stake was what was between them and what the contested for in the ring. After their fights they stood together the rest of their lives as friends. Together they literally made the world stand still for on two nights two years apart with two fights that happen at the brink of a world descending into madness and destruction. Schmeling and Louis proved that the decency and friendship of two men forged in battle could in the long run supplant decades of hate and a world war.

Max was truly a "Most Unforgettable Character." Unlike Louis who was also, Max just never got the worldwide credit for it. At least not until now.


The Times article is here (http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-schmeling5feb05,0,6269873.story?coll=la-home-obituaries)

[Coot]

Thanks for posting that link OD, I saved the LA Times article. Far too many people bought the line that Max was a tool of Hitler.