Soccer under the Swastika

September 1, 2016
Most readers probably haven't thought about the role of soccer, or any sport, in WWII. Given the horrors of the Holocaust, how could sports matter? But the game did have a part to play in soccer-mad Europe, as Simpson ably demonstrates, whether as propaganda, distraction, symbolic warfare, or acts of resistance. This thoughtful, carefully documented work offers both big-picture context and individual stories, including those of players on both sides of the Nazi terror and of some whose situations were more complicated. One particularly memorable chapter offers a more nuanced and accurate account of the legendary Match of Death played between a half-starved team of Ukrainians and a hand-picked Nazi team in Kiev. Much of the book focuses on the fact that soccer, almost unbelievably, was indeed played in concentration camps, serving as a means to reestablish order and restore some moral authority to prisoners' profoundly limited choices. Simpson's focus in this book in no way trivializes the horrors of war and genocide; in fact, the humanizing capacity of the beautiful game makes them all the more real.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)