Beyond Glory

by David Margolick

  As conditions for Jews and other victims of Nazi persecution worsened, some reporters grew impatient with Schmeling’s gripes about past American mistreatment. “Look, Max, you’re a nice guy and we all like you a lot and admire the way you keep in shape, etc., but let’s not have any more of this complaining about how you’re being jobbed,” wrote a Boston columnist. “Because it could be a lot worse. You might have been born a Jew in Germany and then, no doubt, you’d have been glad to be one of us.” In a letter sent to Speculator, a Brooklyn prosecutor asked Schmeling whether he supported the extermination of Jewish life in Germany. There was no way to keep politics out of the prefight publicity. “If this dirty nigger Joe Louis dares to beat our Max Schmeling, we’ll kill him,” some Bundists told the Amsterdam News. (The Bund denied the accusation, calling it “an old Jewish trick to put our organization on the spot.”) Two days before the fight, a federal grand jury in New York indicted eighteen Germans on espionage charges.

  Some thought Schmeling seemed more burdened than before. The last time he fought Louis, expectations were low and he had nothing to lose, while now he was the uncrowned champion and a national idol. Others found him more cocksure than ever, “under orders to speak arrogantly and to carry on the tradition of his home government that victories can be won by sweeping assertions of determination and power,” wrote Heywood Broun. Schmeling avoided discussing Louis. “He’s willing to gab about food, wild life, ornithology, architecture, golf, sculpture, books, but mention of Louis or the fight is pretty much taboo,” one reporter noted. Told of Louis’s vow to win in two, Schmeling feigned indifference. “He made his prediction. Let him have his fun,” he said. “It used to be that Louis’s opponents did all the talking before a fight, and he just did like this,” he continued, putting on a glum, pouting face. Nor was he concerned that everyone, the referee and promoter included, wanted him to lose. All he needed was his right hand, and no one could deprive him ofthat.

  By Saturday, June 18, the rematch was only five days away. Detroiters held a going-away party for Dorothy Darby, a black aviatrix—perhaps the only black woman in the world with a pilot’s license—bound for Pompton Lakes. Her cargo included a petition of support for Louis with 100,000 signatures attached, along with letters from the governor of Michigan, the mayor of Detroit, and Louis’s mother. “May the best man win, for you are the best,” she’d written. Louis reportedly tucked it into his shirt pocket and read it again and again. That same Saturday, four thousand fans crammed into Pompton Lakes. Many got in for nothing, after ripping their suits on the barbed-wire fence installed after freeloaders stormed the place the week before. On Sunday, hundreds had to be chased off the roof of the indoor gymnasium for fear it would collapse. The spectacle, with celebrity guests and smaller fry from Lenox Avenue tenements “attired in regalia that made Hollywood look positively dowdy and the clubhouse lawn at Santa Anita seem drab and colorless… could happen nowhere else in America and might not happen again,” one southern reporter wrote. His afternoon’s labors done, Louis, along with his bodyguard and Blackburn, left the camp for a while, hoping the crowd would disperse. But when they returned a few hours later, a thousand people still awaited him.

  While he proved a bigger draw than ever, Louis’s boxing was still confounding. On Saturday, he was completely unimpressive. After counting half a dozen clean shots to Louis’s jaw, Bill Cunningham of the Boston Post called him “as wide open as Boston Common.” But on Sunday, Louis dazzled everyone. This time, his people promised, there would be no pussyfooting around for the newsreels. “You can bet all the marijuana in Harlem he won’t be klieg-conscious,” the Brooklyn Eagle wrote. “His title is on the line. And it’s worth more than movie money.” Louis was adamant that the referee not stop the fight; he’d shown he could take a licking, and he wanted to see if Schmeling could, too. Louis was so sharp on Sunday that Blackburn gave him Monday off. That morning, while three hundred laborers began assembling the ring and placing thousands of seats on the Yankee Stadium infield, Louis did only a bit of roadwork. In Speculator, enormous crowds watched Schmeling wrap things up. In Liberty magazine, Schmeling now predicted another deliberate, methodical fight. “I think in our first round we will feel each other out,” he wrote. After that, nothing much would happen right away; he would just wait for Louis to make his usual mistakes, then shoot over a right hand and beat him.

  Betting was sporadic, and a bit hesitant. “Harlemites who daily risk 600 to 1 odds on the numbers were skeptical about supporting Louis at 9 to 5,” wrote Ted Poston in the Post.

  An astrologer noted that Schmeling had beaten Louis the last time just as Pluto was setting, and Pluto was now due to set again between 9:24 and 9:32 p.m. Eastern time. Jack (“Wrong Again”) Tulloch of the Alexandria (Virginia) Gazette, who always picked losers, opted for Louis, leading Lem Houston of the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star to go with Schmeling. “Everything I could beg, borrow, and beg again has been bet on the Brown Bomber,” a Harlemite named John McClain told the Amsterdam News. “I’m therefore picking round one for the end of Herr Moxie.” But a Harlem social worker named Guildford Crawford reluctantly disagreed. “I think Schmeling is going to win,” he said. “You can’t beat the Germans. They win in everything.” A couple on West 111th Street argued passionately about the outcome; she heaved a glass pitcher at him, then a pot of boiling water, and was held on $500 bond. At Small’s Paradise, 138 people participated in an “Honest Opinion Poll” tacked on the wall. Twelve of them picked Schmeling, but their bravery had its limits: they referred to themselves as, among other things, “Uncle Don,” “Dimples,” “Popeye,” and “Shirley Temple.” In Birmingham, Alabama, Mr. O. Kay—listed as “Kay, O.,” picked Schmeling. A Kansas City police captain who’d guessed every heavyweight winner since 1892 went for Schmeling. So, too, on a radio station in Memphis, did a Welch’s Grape Juice executive. “I think he will whip the nigger again,” he said. Blacks whose churches used the drink during communion promptly announced they would boycott the company.

  A numbers man from Detroit bet $25,000 that Louis would win before the eighth. Louis boosters in Harlem posted placards inviting Schmeling fans to make bets, or went to Yorkville to find them. (They might have found some action in Berlin, where the betting for Schmeling was two to one, and Louis money, understandably, was scarce.) Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., had $20 riding on Schmeling. Doris Duke placed a very small part of her fortune on Louis. Toots Shor put $5,000 on him. One fight veteran insisted that politics, and sentiment, had warped the wagering: half the experts favored Schmeling, he said, but Jews had lengthened the odds by refusing to bet on him. In a pool at his local saloon, Joseph Mitchell of the World-Telegram bought three chances at fifty cents apiece; all turned out to be for Schmeling. But he refused to bet on him, and traded one of them, Schmeling in the eleventh round, for Louis in the first. Mike Gold of the Daily Worker had wanted to bet on Louis, but in his circle, no one would take Schmeling. So he bet a dollar that when Schmeling did lose, he would cry “Foul!” “A young Christian Science lady, who wants to hold beautiful thoughts about even the meanest of God’s creatures, took the other side of the bet,” he wrote.

  The last time they’d squared off, Louis in one round seemed like a good bet. “Come early and don’t drop your program,” one paper had advised in 1936. But despite Louis’s grand pronouncements, bookmakers were betting ten to one against a first-round victory now. In an office pool in Charlotte, North Carolina, a man who drew Louis in the first tossed his ticket disgustedly on the floor. A Memphis man offered to bet his restaurant on Louis, against $3,500 for Schmeling. Marva put up $15, picking her husband in the fourth. In a daily feature called “Joe or Max? Max or Joe?” the World-Telegram asked celebrities for their picks. On the Yankees, Tommy Heinrich, Frank Crosetti, and Joe DiMaggio picked Louis, while Lou Gehrig and Red Rolfe chose Schmeling. George Halas of the Chicago Bears picked Louis, who, next to Bronco Nagurski, he said, “hits harder than any man alive.” Dizzy Dean and Henny Youngm
an picked Louis. So did Edgar Bergen, but Charlie McCarthy picked Schmeling. Robert Taylor picked Schmeling, but Amos and Andy picked Louis. When Babe Ruth picked Schmeling, the odds against the German fell. That the Bambino was making his debut coaching first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers would normally have dominated the sports pages, but not now. “Now, let’s see,” wrote Lester Rodney of the Daily Worker the day before the fight. “Babe Ruth and — oh, hell, tomorrow’s the night and that’s all there is in sports until it’s over.”

  In a technological breakthrough, NBC tracked down eight former heavyweight champions and put them on the air simultaneously two nights before the fight. Jim Jeffries in Los Angeles, Jack Johnson in New York, Jess Willard in Lawrence, Kansas, and Jack Dempsey in Philadelphia all picked Schmeling (though at other times and to other reporters Dempsey either picked Louis or hinted at a draw); Tommy Burns in Seattle, Jack Sharkey in Boston, and Max Baer in New York picked Louis. In Stamford, Connecticut, Gene Tunney remained on the fence, though leaning slightly toward Louis. The two champions the network couldn’t corral, Jimmy Braddock and Primo Carnera, each picked Louis in an early round.

  Jimmy Powers of the Daily News pushed to have Joe Jacobs reinstated because, he wrote, Louis already enjoyed all of the advantages: a friendly referee (the man who’d officiated at most of Louis’s fights in New York, Arthur Donovan, would likely work this one, too); friendly boxing commissioners; a promoter who had every reason to be friendly because he effectively owned him; and a friendly gallery. “Because there has been a revolting pandering to racial prejudice, poor Max has been blamed for all Hitler atrocities from Vienna to Cologne,” Powers wrote. “The crowd definitely will be biased.” (Collyer’s Eye took the conspiracy one step further. While Schmeling had spurned $50,000 to take a dive, it claimed, “it is understood the ‘proper arrangements’” had been made for Louis to win. “The cards are stacked against Schmeling,” it added two weeks later. “Jacobs and his Mob, who won’t stop at anything to retain their hold on the heavyweight championship, can be expected to resort to various means in order to be assured that Schmeling will not be returned the winner. Jacobs again may beat Schmeling for the world’s heavyweight championship.”) Though Powers’s colleagues were far more divided than they’d been the last time around, a majority of them still backed Louis. Two of Louis’s greatest champions, Dan Parker and Lester Rodney of the Daily Worker, foresaw the shortest fight: Louis in three. Others, convinced Louis had slipped, predicted he would eke out a decision. Some picking Schmeling did so with reservations; a single mistake, wrote one, and the German would be “as stiff and cold as a stalactite.” Others, who thought the deck was stacked for Louis, thought Schmeling needed a knockout, and Bill Cunningham of the Boston Post thought that’s what he’d get. “Herr Hitler has our title,” he predicted glumly.

  Al Monroe picked Louis in nine—or sooner, if he abandoned bobbing and weaving and reverted to “the Joe Louis of old.” Walter White had Louis in seven. Louis would normally win in five, wrote Mabe Kountze in the Boston Chronicle, but the fix against him was in; Schmeling would win, thereby setting the stage for another natural: Schmeling against Baer, German against (supposed) Jew, for the title. Only one reporter at the Daily Worker picked Schmeling, and only because he felt that given what awaited any loser in Nazi Germany, he was essentially fighting for his life. “There are a few things of which we may be reasonably certain,” wrote Wilbur Wood of the Sun.

  That Schmeling will be jabbed early and often; that Louis will be tagged at least once by Schmeling’s right to the jaw; that Arthur Donovan will referee; that Louis will be the betting choice, probably at 11 to 5 ringside; that Announcer Harry Balogh will introduce the fighters with only a few million words; that Joe Jacobs will have the longest cigar in the Stadium; that photographers jumping up to take pictures will block others’ views of the ring as soon as something happens that all wish to see; that Louis will not tear out of his corner swinging with both hands at the opening bell.

  “The fight may not go more than six,” wrote Jack Troy of the Atlanta Constitution. “But I think you could safely bet your shirt that it won’t, as Louis says, end in one.”

  Box-Sport polled seventeen German experts; all picked Schmeling (while acknowledging that because he was really taking on an entire country, he could never win on points, and would have to knock Louis out). The Angriff offered 200 marks to the first person to pick the winner and the round. Four German correspondents in New York differed only on when Schmeling would win. A cartoon in the sports magazine Der Kicker showed a large-lipped Louis in bed, dreaming of victory. “Joe Louis has a big mouth once again … which was stuffed by Maxen’s iron fist before,” it stated (using a variation of Schmeling’s nickname), suggesting Louis faced a second helping of humiliation. A leading Roman newspaper forecast that Louis would keep his pledge to come out swinging. “On this point we can agree with the presumptuous Negro: that he will combat like a beast, with sheer, brute, savage force,” Il Popolo d’Italia declared. “And for this reason also we desire Max Schmeling’s triumph, because boxing, a combat sport, must also represent the fusion of force with intelligence.” But that was a hope, not a prediction.

  On the morning of June 22 in Germany, fight stories had to vie with reports of Goebbels’s speech the previous day to 120,000 fanatical followers in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, in which he pledged to drive the Jews out of the capital. In many cities, Schmeling got higher billing, sometimes even crowding the propaganda minister off the front page. “150 Million Will Listen to the Schmeling-Louis Bout Tonight,” the Berliner Zeitung am Mittag proclaimed. A photograph of a smiling Schmeling ran next to the newspaper’s logo. “We’ll keep our fingers crossed, Maxe!” ran the caption. If millions of hearts were beating for Maxe tonight, the 8 Uhr-Abendblatt declared, it was out of gratitude for his service to the Fatherland. Schmeling was “full of confidence without bragging like the Negro,” proclaimed the Fränkische Tageszeitung of Nuremberg, which boasted that already “America’s boycott Jews” had been knocked out.

  Schmeling spoke periodically to Germany while training, either in print or on the air, promising not to disappoint the Heimat and thanking it for its loyalty. “To feel that the homeland is standing behind me will make me twice as strong,” he said in one interview. “W.G.”—probably the boxing promoter Walter Gratenau—shared with readers in Hamburg the telegram Schmeling had sent him. “Have correct fighting weight and feel like I’m in top shape STOP,” it read. “Will box Louis as opportunities arise without fixed plan STOP Didn’t notice anything of a Jewish boycott or hostile mood against mein America STOP Blacks and Jews are against me STOP All others have a fair attitude STOP No incidents in the training camp STOP American press by and large stayed neutral STOP Believe the referees will be correct STOP If the temperature tomorrow is like today I’ll be fine STOP Don’t think Joe Louis is stronger in this fight than in the last STOP.” The Berliner Volkszeitung reminded readers to set their alarms; maybe, it said, everyone could go back to sleep after a few minutes.

  As vital as boxing was in Nazi culture, as important as Schmeling had become to the German psyche, as much as Germany coveted the heavyweight crown, some activities couldn’t cease; persecuting the Jews mattered even more. Even as the fight loomed, teams of Nazi marauders fanned out through Berlin, beating Jewish shop owners, smashing their windows, defacing storefronts. Every third store along the Kurfürstendamm had “Jude” painted on it. Outside a jewelry store, a Western reporter heard the “screams of terror” of a Jewish man set upon by “one of the Jew-hating gangs.” “The crowd closed in, and the screams were shortly changed to moans,” he wrote. “In Jewish homes there is a fresh pang of anxiety whenever the bell rings, or there is a screeching of brakes outside the house and the sound of heavy footsteps.” The reports found their way into New York’s papers, intercepting readers en route to the sports pages. One reporter called Germany’s Jews “a doomed people,” and noted that a prominent Nazi had already called
for their extermination.

  This didn’t make things easy for the two Jacobses. “Mr. Joe Jacobs must think that of all times the Hitlerites could have chosen for their exhibition of barbarism the present is the worst, when he is trying to get an indulgent public opinion for his prize fighter,” the Chicago Tribune wrote. But Hitler didn’t have to choose between pogroms and prizefights; he could have both. The American public either had grown inured to events in Germany, or saw the fight as a way to strike back, or had grown tired of protests, as even the league conceded. “New York City has been overrun by men and women pickets for more than a year, each one flaunting pasteboard banners, shouting messages against this, that or the other thing,” it stated. “The medium has become commonplace, has lost its zip. It receives as much public attention as a bridal party in Niagara Falls.”

  The New York press barely mentioned the protests, and usually only to belittle them. “For humanity’s sake, heed the cries of torture of those cursed with Hitler’s terror and stress the Schmeling boycott,” an activist wired Joe Williams. “If you boycott Schmeling don’t you boycott Louis at the same time?” Williams replied. “And what has Louis ever done to anybody?” “We have kept Schmeling waiting long enough,” stated a letter to The New York Times. “He is probably too old now to defeat Louis again, anyhow. But now that he is finally getting his great chance, let’s give Schmeling, the sportsman, fair play and forget Schmeling, the commodity.” Jews remained divided on the topic, sometimes embarrassingly so. The American Israelite reported that an officer of the Anti-Nazi League had bought a block of tickets for the fight.