Nazism, racism, glory, in the fists of two men

ON June 22, 1938, America and Europe were more caught up in a sporting event than they had ever been before or were ever likely to be again. The heavyweight champion, Joe Louis, a black sharecropper’s son from rural Alabama, was fighting a rematch with former champion Max Schmeling, the man chosen by the Nazi party to carry the banner of Aryan supremacy. The world, or at least that portion of it ready to plunge into war, held its collective breath.

The triumph of the racehorse Seabiscuit has been touted by revisionists as the most inspiring sporting event of Depression-era America, but as David Margolick points out in his epic retelling of the Louis-Schmeling saga, “Beyond Glory,” on the night the two men stepped into the ring at Yankee Stadium there were more people listening -- perhaps 20 million more -- than tuned in later that year to follow Seabiscuit in his famous race with War Admiral. Perhaps half the population of the United States heard the fight, more than would hear any of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats. Someone estimated that more journalists covered the fight than had been present at Versailles to cover the end of World War I.

There are some sports stories so great that they transform into myth. They are so much with us, so much a part of our national fabric, that there seems to be nothing new to say about them except perhaps to tell them to a new generation. Joe Louis-Max Schmeling might be the greatest of 20th century sports stories, yet, incredibly, the events surrounding their two fights have never been recounted in a satisfying historical narrative -- or, for that matter, in a big-budget feature film. (There have been a couple of made-for-television films and a 1953 biopic, “The Joe Louis Story,” with all the believability of a B-movie fairy tale.)

Writers such as Hemingway and Mailer have made much of boxing as symbol and metaphor, yet when Hollywood depicts a real-life boxer, it’s almost always a semi-great, such as Jake LaMotta, Hurricane Carter or Jim Braddock. The Louis-Schmeling story has not received its due from Hollywood probably for the same reason that it has eluded historians: the racial, political and sociological implications of the bouts were simply too large to put into perspective. (A.J. Liebling, regarded by many as the greatest of all boxing writers, never wrote about either Louis-Schmeling fight.)

Now that boxing has all but receded from the national consciousness -- it’s doubtful if one sports fan in 10 could name one of the men claiming to hold the current heavyweight title, let alone all three (or is it four?) with championship belts -- the significance of Louis and Schmeling and their two legendary meetings comes into focus.

Neither fighter was prepared to carry the burden of racial iconography. Unpretentious and amiable, the 30-year-old Schmeling, the leading European fighter of his generation, was past his prime by 1936, when the two first fought, and he was regarded by many as no match for the dynamic young black challenger. Louis, shy and taciturn, rose to prominence under a cloud cast by the only previous black heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson, who outraged white America (and even some of black America) chiefly by his habit of squiring white women. America may not have been ready for another dominant black heavyweight, but it always loved the big puncher. As Louis’ trainer told him, for a black man to have any chance he had to be “very good outside the ring and very bad inside.”

Nine years younger than Schmeling, Louis was generally regarded by fight fans around the world as the uncrowned champion before that first fight. Schmeling was supposed to be merely another fading ex-champion whose name would be added to Louis’ victory ledger. But Schmeling did not see it that way, spotting a fatal flaw in Louis’ armor: Louis would drop his right hand after throwing his lethal left jab, making him vulnerable to an opponent’s right-hand counter. Weathering Louis’ early attack, Schmeling fought the fight of his life, scoring a 12th round knockout that shocked sports fans everywhere.

The fight’s reverberations went far beyond sports. “The Nazis,” writes Margolick, “believed that Schmeling had deserved a title shot” -- after beating Louis -- “and that New York Jews had killed it, and it was hard to argue with either point.” Schmeling had indeed earned a shot at the world heavyweight title, held by American Jim Braddock (the “Cinderella Man”), and was denied by the boxing establishment, which was based almost entirely in New York, because Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party had become Schmeling’s biggest fans.

The debate would rage for decades as to whether or not Schmeling was a Nazi, or even a sympathizer. Margolick’s conclusion is that Schmeling “never said any more than he had to to stay in the Nazis’ good graces. He did not spout Nazi rhetoric or wrap himself in the swastika.” Though, “[w]henever the Nazis asked him to pitch in, he obliged.” He maintained something of a dual citizenship in the two extremes of the boxing world, Nazi Germany and New York, and as Margolick puts it: “In the United States, boxing meant New York, and New York, in large part, meant Jews.” (His manager, Joe Jacobs, was Jewish; in fact when Jacobs was chastised by his friends for managing a German, he replied that he was “500 percent Jewish.”)

Louis embodied not only the hopes and expectations of his own race but also those of millions of American and European Jews. Temporarily crushed by his defeat, he mounted a comeback, took the heavyweight title from Braddock and finally, two years later, faced off again with his Aryan nemesis. By this time he had become so popular that perhaps two out of three white Southerners were pulling for him. “For Joe Louis, then,” says Margolick, “much of the bigotry that afflicted America was briefly and selectively suspended.”

Even if you’ve never seen a boxing match, “Beyond Glory” is an irresistible read. For fans it is indispensable. I was brought up by my father to worship Joe Louis and memorized every punch thrown in both Louis-Schmeling fights, yet over the last 150-odd pages my pulse raced; by the book’s end I felt as if my ears were ringing with the roar that swept through the Yankee Stadium bleachers on the night of their rematch.

I hope I won’t be giving away anything to tell you that Louis and Schmeling eventually became pals, and once, when Schmeling visited Louis in Chicago, they went out to a black nightclub together. And why not? Each probably wanted to talk to the only other man on the face of the Earth who understood what he had lived through.

Allen Barra, a sports columnist for the Wall Street Journal, is the author of “The Last Coach: A Life of Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant.”