European Football During the Second World War

When German troops marched into Poland on 1 September 1939, this also affected sport – sometimes dramatically. Official propaganda no longer viewed football as a game that was played for fun, but one that could be instrumentalized for political goals and military strategy. Due to the unpredictability of the game, football did not appear to be well suited to such a purpose. However, as the sport was able to create a politically neutral space that offered exciting entertainment and an escapist distraction, it was eminently important for the dictatorship. Soldiers and the civilian population benefited from this, as did the National Socialist regime itself. Football was vital for the war effort and also helped to stablilize the system precisely because it was not a vehicle for political propaganda. In this edited volume, an international team of authors examines the development of football during the Second World War in a dozen European states. The volume concludes with essays on the representation of the topic in the arts and the media.

Markwart Herzog PhD is a philosopher of religion and sports historian and director of the Schwabenakademie Irsee. He works on topics related to the history of religion and history of sport. His main research interests include the cultural history of football, the commemorative and funerary culture of club football, the history of women’s football, sport in the National Socialist period and the media history of sport. He is a member of the International Society of Olympic Historians (ISHO), International Society for the History of Physical Education and Sport (ISHPES), Rotary Club Kaufbeuren, Deutsche Akademie für Fußballkultur and 1. FC Kaiserslautern. Fabian Brändle PhD is a historian and author with a research focus on «history from below», the history of folk and mass culture, the history of poverty, the history of childhood and youth, the history of the two world wars, Alsace, Tyrol and Ireland as well as the social and cultural history of sport, football and ice hockey in Switzerland.