Germany, the football-crazy nation, once absorbed cricket and played the game with immense pride. But history and its ruler’s has changed the dimension of the country. Ideological difference and most importantly the World Wars have seen the growth of world’s most popular sports football and cricket, which become a popular sport during the Victorian age, face contrasting graph of popularity in Germany.
The long forgotten story of German cricket depicted by two new books by Dan Waddell’s “Field of Shadows” and BBC’s World Affairs broadcaster’s John Simpson’s “Unreliable Source”.
In 1937, the Gentlemen of Worcestershire toured Nazi Germany. Despite prevailing tensions by then between the two countries, the team was given a warm welcome by Hitler’s Nazi Germany. The team was taken in Nazi Germany’s cars with swastika flying from the wings.
The Englishmen’s tour of Germany got special coverage from the German press. Some of them carried out feature on the tour that had a historical significance. The Das Fußball Megaphon published a special feature on the tour headlined “Wilkommen Worcestershire!”
The book written by Dan Waddell revealed how the group of 12 players came to be invited by keen German cricket fan Flexi Menzel take part in three match series in Berlin.
The English team was ordered by Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) that a loss will not be tolerated by the custodian of cricket laws.
Worcestershire was lead by County Cricket Club captain Maurice Jewell. They didn’t disappoint as Worcestershire won all three matches including the last match at the Hitler’s famous Olympic Stadium.
The job made easy for Worcestershire after Germany didn’t allow their best player Albert Schmidt to play the match as he was a Jewish. Schmidt played the role of umpire in the game. Sadly he was later gassed at Auschwitz.
Waddell said the team, made up of “men of leisure”, found it somewhat strange to play in the country which was in the grip of the Nazis.
“They are given a really good welcome and effectively given a free pass into a highly bureaucratic and closed country at that time. They were assigned Nazi cars with swastikas on the front and could go where they wanted,” he said.
Despite general enthusiasm among the Germans, the English team had seen some disturbing moment.
Waddell, said, “They enjoyed the hospitality, but it is fair to say they found Germany in 1937 a very strange place.
The writer after long research found a piece of an article, where a player described a night in Berlin.
“One night they witnessed a torch-lit procession in Unter Den Linden, one of the main thoroughfares in Berlin. Thousands of troops holding torches marching very slowly. One of the cricketers described it as really eerie.
They also said that many of their cricket matches were played out with the sound of gunfire in the background. It shows how Germany was at that time. They never actually saw any guns being fired but it was somewhat disconcerting.”
The team also had to give infamous Nazi salute to Hitler. Waddell also revealed what inspired him to write this book. He said 1984 author George Orwell’s one of the article inspired him to take up the research.
Even cricket was not as much popular in England as in Germany. A letter written by Miss Blandish Orwell stated, “Cricket is not in reality a very popular game in England – it is nowhere so popular as football, for instance – but it gives expression to a well-marked trait in the English character, the tendency to value ‘form’ or ‘style’ more highly than success.
“For the whole nation, it is bound up with such concepts as ‘good form’, ‘playing the game’, etc. The Nazis, for instance, were at pains to discourage cricket, which had gained a certain footing in Germany before and after the last war.”
Waddell also found that cricket was a very popular game in Germany until Nazi Germany took over the reins. During their tour of Germany Berlin’s 12 teams reduced to only four.
Waddell read an article written by Orwell entitled German Cricket: A Brief History, which contained details of the Gentlemen of Worcestershire’s adventure.
He said, “Cricket was actually very popular in Germany until the Nazis came to power – but they hated it.”
German Fuhrer’s unsuccessful attempt to use cricket for train the Wehrmacht (Army)
John Simpson , in his book “Unreliable Source” mentioned Adolf Hitler’s once fall in love of gentlemen’s game of cricket. A report was written by Hitler sympathizer Oliver Locker-Lampson, then a British right-wing MP appeared in Daily Mail in 1930 that revealed: During the rise of Nazis, the Reichstag the Fuhrer thought cricket would be the perfect preparation for war.
“He desired to study it as a possible medium for the training of troops off duty and in times of peace,” Locker-Lampson wrote in his article, under the headline “Adolf Hitler As I Know Him”.
The Story, published on September 30, 1930, that described Fuhrer’s fateful encounter with cricket.
Hitler, then lance corporal in the German army, during that time was recovering from his wounds in nearby hospital, The Times reported.
“He had come to them one day and asked whether he might watch an eleven of cricket at play so as to become initiated into the mysteries of our national game,” Locker-Lampson wrote.
“They welcomed him, of course, and wrote out the rules for him in the best British sport-loving spirit.”
Hitler then returned to play a “friendly match” where he was out for a duck and they lost the match.
Immediately after the match, Hitler declared the game “insufficiently violent” for German Fascists.
Locker Simpson then wrote, “He had conned over (sic) the laws of cricket, which he considered good enough no doubt for pleasure-loving English people,” wrote Locker-Lampson.
“But he proposed entirely altering them for the serious-minded Teuton.”
Since then cricket was never played in this state until his regime got over and modern Germany woo the noble sport at the horizon of the21st century. This the 25th year DCB has become a member of ICC.
But, the popularity of the game never reached the heights in Germany like before. It is a remote game for Germans. Now only football runs in their blood.
However, cricket was not that popular in the world and not even in Germany. And whether Hitler played the game or not is not confirmed as the book that revealed that he played the game entitled the name: “Unreliable source.”
Also, Hitler had many people to kill, but cricketers were not the one.