Ring of Hate by Patrick Myler

Author:Patrick Myler
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 2940000960233
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Published: 2011-12-08T10:00:00+00:00

12

BOMBER COMMAND

In the spring of 1938, Louis was in Washington as guest of honor at the Colored Order of Elks national convention. President Roosevelt, spotting a propaganda opportunity, invited the world heavyweight champion to the White House. During a brief conversation, the Harvard-educated aristocrat from New York said to the sharecropper’s son from Alabama, “Lean over, Joe, so I can feel your muscles.”

Having satisfied himself as to their steely quality, FDR said, “Joe, we need muscles like yours to beat Germany.” Newspapers embellished the quote to read: “Joe, beat Schmeling to prove we can beat the Germans”

Julian Black, who accompanied his fighter on the visit, reported that Louis was hugely impressed on meeting the president and only his natural restraint kept him from going overboard in his enthusiasm. Black writer Earl Brown came away with a different impression after he had spoken to the man himself. Louis, conscious that Roosevelt had not fulfilled his preelection promises on racial equality, told Brown, “I didn’t think nuttin’ of it.”

Schmeling’s apprehensions were proved well founded when the SS Bremen docked in New York on May 9 after a six-day transatlantic voyage. A noisy group of picketers lined the quayside to jeer and shout abusive remarks. A banner proclaimed: Schmeling Go Home. Another urged: Boycott Nazi Schmeling. Pale and clearly disturbed, he was ushered to a waiting limousine by promoter Mike Jacobs and whisked by a circuitous route to his hotel, only to find more demonstrators waiting there.

Jacobs had tried to cushion Max from the hostile reception by hiring a tugboat so that reporters could interview Schmeling aboard the Bremen. It was evident, however, that the atmosphere in America had changed dramatically since his last visit. Newsmen, many of whom he considered friends, asked questions about boxing but were more concerned with Hitler and race issues. Did he, they wanted to know, consider himself a member of the “super race”? Was he afraid of what would happen to him in Germany if he lost?

Schmeling pleaded, “I am a fighter, not a politician. I am no superman in any way.”

Whenever he stepped out onto Broadway or Fifth Avenue, he was greeted with insults and mock Nazi salutes. The memory was still vivid when he wrote nearly forty years later:

I was desperate. It was only two years since the same city had congratulated me so enthusiastically. Now for the first time I began to realize it was no longer a matter of business. The goal that united all of them, promoters, editors, and boxing functionaries, was of a political nature. They had accepted a German champion in 1931, but a world champion that came from Hitler-Germany was unacceptable to all.

Of course, he could have made things much easier by taking the advice of American friends, including Jack Dempsey, to stay on and take U.S. citizenship. But, while reiterating that he was not a Nazi, he said he was proud of his nationality. “Once a German, always a German,” he declared. In any case, Goebbels had ensured

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