Association football during World War II
Encyclopedia
When World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 was declared in 1939, it had a negative effect on association football; competitions were suspended and players signed up to fight, resulting in the deaths of many players.

League football

Austria

The Republic of Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

 had ceased to exist with the Anschluss
Anschluss
The Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....

in 1938 and the Austrian league had become a part of the German football league system
German football league system
The German football league system, or league pyramid, refers to a series of hierarchically interconnected leagues for association football clubs in Germany that consists of over 2,300 men's divisions, in which all leagues are bound together by the principle of promotion and relegation...

, under the name of Gauliga Ostmark
Gauliga Ostmark
The Gauliga Ostmark, renamed Gauliga Donau-Alpenland in 1941, was the highest football league in Austria after its annexation by Germany in 1938...

. League football resumed in a now independent Austria again in 1945.

England

The 1939–1940 season was the 65th season of competitive football in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. In September 1939, shortly after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 was declared, most football competitions were abandoned as the country's attention turned to the war effort. Regional league competitions were set up instead; appearances in these tournaments do not count in players' official records. A few leagues, such as the Northern League
Northern League (football)
The Northern League is a football league in North East England for semi-professional and amateur teams. Having been founded in 1889, it is the oldest surviving football league in the world after the Football League....

, did manage to complete a season, but more than half of the teams were unable to fulfil all their fixtures and resigned. Many footballers signed up to fight in the war and as a result many teams were depleted, and fielded guest players instead – Crystal Palace
Crystal Palace F.C.
Crystal Palace Football Club are an English Football league club based in South Norwood, London. The team plays its home matches at Selhurst Park, where they have been based since 1924. The club currently competes in the second tier of English Football, The Championship.Crystal Palace was formed in...

 fielded 186 different players during the seven wartime seasons. The FA Cup was resumed for the 1945-46 season and The Football League
The Football League
The Football League, also known as the npower Football League for sponsorship reasons, is a league competition featuring professional association football clubs from England and Wales. Founded in 1888, it is the oldest such competition in world football...

 for the 1946-47 season
1946-47 in English football
The 1946–47 season was the 67th season of competitive football in England.-Overview:The 1946–47 season was the first to feature a full football programme since the 1938–39 campaign. Eighty-eight teams competed over four divisions. Liverpool went top of the First Division with a 2–1 away win over...

.

Germany

The 1939-40 season started in August 1939, but with the outbreak of the Second World War shortly after, league football was suspended. It only resumed at the end of October, with a number of local city-championships having been played to bridge the gap. As the war progressed, top-division football became more regionalised. It also expanded into occupied territories, some of them annexed into Greater Germany, increasing the number of tier-one Gauligas considerably from the original 16 in 1933. The last German championship was played in 1944 and won by Dresdner SC
Dresdner SC
Dresdner SC is a German multisport club playing in Dresden, Saxony. Founded on 30 April 1898, the club was a founding member of the German Football Association in 1900...

, but the last official league game was played as late as 23 April 1945, being the FC Bayern Munich
FC Bayern Munich
FC Bayern Munich , is a German sports club based in Munich, Bavaria. It is best known for its professional football team, which is the most successful football club in Germany, having won 22 national titles and 15 cups....

 versus TSV 1860 Munich derby in the Gauliga Oberbayern
Gauliga Bayern
The Gauliga Bayern was the highest football league in the German state of Bavaria from 1933 to 1945. Shortly after the formation of the league, the Nazis reorganised the administrative regions in Germany, and the five Gaue Bayreuth, Munich-Upper Bavaria, Swabia, Main Franconia and Franconia de...

, ending 3-2. The final years of league football saw the rise of military teams, like LSV Hamburg, who reached the 1944 German championship final, since most top-players were drafted into the German armed forces
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...

 and ended up playing for these sides. Representative teams like the Rote Jäger
Rote Jäger
The Rote Jäger were a short-lived German military football club active during World War II . The team was assembled by Hermann Graf, a fighter ace and commander of German fighter pilots...

 also had a number of German internationals playing for them.

With the end of the war, ethnic German football clubs in the parts of Germany that were awarded to Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 and the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 disappeared. Clubs like VfB Königsberg
VfB Königsberg
VfB Königsberg was a German association football club from the city of Königsberg, East Prussia.-History:The club was established on 7 July 1900 as Fußball-Club Königsberg, later being renamed VfB Königsberg in 1907...

 and Vorwärts-Rasensport Gleiwitz
Vorwärts-Rasensport Gleiwitz
Vorwärts-Rasensport Gleiwitz was a German association football club from the city of Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia, today Gliwice, Poland.-History:...

, who had successfully competed in the German championship on quite a number of occasions disappeared for good. In Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...

, where the ethnic German minority in the Sudetenland
Sudetenland
Sudetenland is the German name used in English in the first half of the 20th century for the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans, specifically the border areas of Bohemia, Moravia, and those parts of Silesia being within Czechoslovakia.The...

was forced to leave the country, clubs experienced the same fate. A few, like BSK Neugablonz, where reformed by these refugees in West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

.

Some of the events of the war continue to affect German football today. Within the first couple of weeks of the re-development of the Mercedes-Benz Arena in 2009, home of the VfB Stuttgart
VfB Stuttgart
Verein für Bewegungsspiele Stuttgart 1893 e. V., commonly known as VfB Stuttgart, is a German sports club based in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg. The club is best known for its football team, which has participated in all but two Bundesliga seasons...

, 18 undetonated bombs left over from air raids on Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....

 during the Second World War were found on the construction site. The stadium was originally built, like so many others in Germany, on rubble left over from the war.

Italy

The Italian Serie A
Serie A
Serie A , now called Serie A TIM due to sponsorship by Telecom Italia, is a professional league competition for football clubs located at the top of the Italian football league system and has been operating for over eighty years since 1929. It had been organized by Lega Calcio until 2010, but a new...

 continued to operate during the war, up until 1943. A regional championship
Campionato Alta Italia 1944
This championship was disputed during the second World War and wasn't recognized by the FIGC until 2002, though Spezia's Scudetto is considered a "decoration"....

 was played in 1944, before resumption of the league in a limited form in 1945.

Switzerland

Football was affected less in World War II than it was during World War I
Association football during World War I
When World War I was declared in 1914, it had a negative effect on association football; in some countries competitions were suspended and players signed up to fight, resulting in the deaths of many players...

.

England

England played 29 unofficial wartime internationals between 11 November 1939 and 5 May 1945, 14 against Wales and 15 against Scotland.

Germany

With the outbreak of the Second World War, Germany
Germany national football team
The Germany national football team is the football team that has represented Germany in international competition since 1908. It is governed by the German Football Association , which was founded in 1900....

 did not cease to play internationals but was limited to neutral, allied and puppet states. Its first war international was held on 24 September 1939, a loss to Hungary
Hungary national football team
The Hungary national football team represents Hungary in international football and is controlled by the Hungarian Football Federation....

 in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...

. All together, the country played 35 internationals during the war, its last on 22 November 1942, against Slovakia
Slovakia national football team
The Slovakia national football team represents Slovakia in association football and is controlled by the Slovak Football Association , the governing body for football in Slovakia. Slovakia's home stadium is Štadión Pasienky and their head coach is Vladimír Weiss...

.

Wales

Wales played seventeen wartime unofficial matches for which the players were not awarded caps, and a further six matches in aid of war charities.

Football for morale

Football was seen as a moral booster during the horrors of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, for both soldiers and civilians. Tom Finney
Tom Finney
Sir Thomas Finney, OBE is a former English footballer, famous for his loyalty to his league club, Preston North End, and for his performances in the English national side....

 captained Army football teams, and organised friendly matches in Austria and Egypt.

Soldiers

Some players, such as Norman Corbett
Norman Corbett
Norman George "Norrie" Corbett was a Scottish footballer who played as a right-half.As a schoolboy, Corbett captained the Falkirk team that won the Scottish Schools Trophy. He also played for Scotland Boys and, while at Musselburgh, played for Scotland Juniors...

, have expressed the opinion that the War ruined their careers. Other players died during the war, such as the Hungarian Jewish international footballer József Braun
József Braun
József Braun was a Hungarian football half back who began his career in Hungary before finishing it in the American Soccer League. He earned 27 caps, scoring 11 goals, with the Hungarian national team. After retiring from playing, he coached for several years...

, who died in 1943.

Many German players, drafted into the Wehrmacht, saw their careers shortened or interrupted. Fritz Walter
Fritz Walter
Friedrich "Fritz" Walter was a German footballer. In his time with the German national team, he won 61 caps and scored 33 goals.-Early club career:...

, captain of the 1954 World Cup-winning team of Germany who made his debut for the country during the war in 1940, missed many years of his career due to serving in the military from 1942 and spending time as a POW after the war. Fritz Walter served as a paratrooper
Paratrooper
Paratroopers are soldiers trained in parachuting and generally operate as part of an airborne force.Paratroopers are used for tactical advantage as they can be inserted into the battlefield from the air, thereby allowing them to be positioned in areas not accessible by land...

 and also spent time in a Soviet labour camp.

Many German football clubs suffered heavy casualties from Hitlers
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

 war. An amateur club like SVO Germaringen
SVO Germaringen
The SVO Germaringen is a German association football club from Germaringen, Bavaria.The clubs most successful era was the 1970s and early '80s, when it played in the tier-four Landesliga Bayern-Süd. More notable however is its qualification to the first round of the German Cup in this time...

 saw ten of its eleven players that had won a local youth championship in 1940 not return from the battle fields. TSV 1860 Rosenheim
TSV 1860 Rosenheim
TSV 1860 Rosenheim is a German association football club from the town of Rosenheim, Bavaria. The roots of the association are in the establishment on 20 October 1860 of the gymnastics club and community fire brigade Freiwillige Turnerfeuerwehr Rosenheim....

 had 170 of its club members drafted into military service, of those, 44 were killed in action and another 15 are missing. Those that did return found the clubs facilities completely destroyed by air raids on the town in October 1944 and April 1945. Rosenheim
Rosenheim
Rosenheim is a town in Bavaria at the confluence of the rivers Inn and Mangfall. It is seat of administration of the district of Rosenheim, but is not a part of it.-Geography:...

 was on an important rail- and road intersection.

The Holocaust

A number of Jewish footballers died during the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...

. The Hungarian football manager Árpád Weisz
Árpád Weisz
Árpád Weisz was a Hungarian football player and manager. Weisz was Jewish, and died during World War II at Auschwitz.-Playing career:...

 died at Auschwitz
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...

 in 1944. Henrik Nadler died at an unknown camp
Nazi concentration camps
Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps set up in Germany were greatly expanded after the Reichstag fire of 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...

 working as a labour serviceman. Julius Hirsch
Julius Hirsch
Julius Hirsch was a German international footballer who was killed during the Holocaust. He helped Karlsruher FV to win the 1910 German championship....

, the first Jewish player to represent the German national team
Germany national football team
The Germany national football team is the football team that has represented Germany in international competition since 1908. It is governed by the German Football Association , which was founded in 1900....

, died at Auschwitz
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...

 in May 1945. Hirsch had served for four years in the German Army in the First World War, had been decorated with the Iron Cross
Iron Cross
The Iron Cross is a cross symbol typically in black with a white or silver outline that originated after 1219 when the Kingdom of Jerusalem granted the Teutonic Order the right to combine the Teutonic Black Cross placed above a silver Cross of Jerusalem....

 and was a German patriot, unable and unwilling to believe that his life could be at risk.

However, some people also survived the concentration camps. Leo Goldstein
Leo Goldstein
Leo Goldstein was an American-Israeli association football referee.-Early life:Goldstein, who was Jewish, was a survivor of the concentration camps of World War II.-Career:...

 survived the camps to become a FIFA international referee. Goldstein is also a member of the National Soccer Hall of Fame
National Soccer Hall of Fame
The National Soccer Hall of Fame is a private, non-profit institution established in 1979 that honors soccer achievements in the United States.-History:...

. Hungarian coach Alfréd Schaffer
Alfréd Schaffer
Alfréd Schaffer was a Hungarian footballer who has the distinction of playing for a record number of professional clubs; he played for a total of 21 clubs in a 15 year career which lasted from 1910–1925....

 was interned at Dachau, and was liberated by the Allies. He died naturally in the nearby town of Prien am Chiemsee
Prien am Chiemsee
Prien am Chiemsee is a municipality in the district of Rosenheim, in Bavaria, Germany.-Geography:It is situated on the western shore of the Chiemsee lake, 16 km east of Rosenheim.-Famous resident:...

 a few months later.

Collaborationism

Some footballers also collaborated with the Nazis. Alexandre Villaplane
Alexandre Villaplane
Alexandre Villaplane was a French football player in the role of midfielder....

, who was captain of the French national side
France national football team
The France national football team represents the nation of France in international football. It is fielded by the French Football Federation , the governing body of football in France, and competes as a member of UEFA, which encompasses the countries of Europe...

, worked actively with the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...

 and eventually became a SS
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...

 lieutenant. He was executed in December 1944. The Estonian international goalkeeper Evald Mikson
Evald Mikson
Evald Mikson , was a goalkeeper in the Estonian national football team, winning 7 caps between 1934 and 1938. He has been accused of playing an active role in the murder of Jews in Estonia during his service as Deputy Chief of the Estonian Sicherheitspolizei in the Tallinn-Harju district during...

 was accused by the Simon Wiesenthal Center
Simon Wiesenthal Center
The Simon Wiesenthal Center , with headquarters in Los Angeles, California, was established in 1977 and named for Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter. According to its mission statement, it is "an international Jewish human rights organization dedicated to repairing the world one step at a time...

 (in particular by Efraim Zuroff
Efraim Zuroff
Efraim Zuroff is an Israeli historian of American origin, who has played a role in bringing Nazis indicted for war crimes to trial...

) of committing serious war crime
War crime
War crimes are serious violations of the laws applicable in armed conflict giving rise to individual criminal responsibility...

s against Jews during the War, when he was working as Deputy Head of Police in Tallinn
Tallinn
Tallinn is the capital and largest city of Estonia. It occupies an area of with a population of 414,940. It is situated on the northern coast of the country, on the banks of the Gulf of Finland, south of Helsinki, east of Stockholm and west of Saint Petersburg. Tallinn's Old Town is in the list...

.

Decorated footballers

Scottish footballer Willie Thornton
Willie Thornton
William Thornton was a Scottish footballer and manager. His entire senior playing career was spent with Rangers, and he is considered to be one of the greatest players in the club's history...

 won the Military Medal
Military Medal
The Military Medal was a military decoration awarded to personnel of the British Army and other services, and formerly also to personnel of other Commonwealth countries, below commissioned rank, for bravery in battle on land....

, while German goalkeeper Bert Trautmann
Bert Trautmann
Bernhard Carl "Bert" Trautmann, OBE is a German former professional footballer who played for Manchester City from 1949 to 1964. Brought up during times of inter-war strife in Germany, Trautmann joined the Luftwaffe early in the Second World War, serving as a paratrooper...

 won a total of five medals, including an Iron Cross
Iron Cross
The Iron Cross is a cross symbol typically in black with a white or silver outline that originated after 1219 when the Kingdom of Jerusalem granted the Teutonic Order the right to combine the Teutonic Black Cross placed above a silver Cross of Jerusalem....

.
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