#max schmeling

Max Schmeling makes a comeback at 41

Anny Ondra, 1920s.

Joe Louis squaring up to his German foe Max Schmeling in 1938 in preparation for their fight. It took Louis a little over two minutes to win the match which many see as the first time white America rooted for a black person over a white one. This was due to tensions between the United States and the German Nazi Party. Years later, Louis would state:

On This Day: Joe Louis Knocks Out Max Schmeling

Joe Louis avenged the first loss of his career with a first round knockout of German Max Schmeling in a fight billed as a battle between America and Nazi Germany.

The “Brown Bomber” Is Victorious Joe Louis, a 22-year-old son of Alabama sharecroppers, had won his first 23 career fights when he stepped into the ring against 30-year-old German Max Schmeling on June 19, 1936. Schmeling was the clear underdog, but he had detected a flaw in Louis’ form while studying film: Louis tended to drop his left hand after a left jab, a weakness that Schmeling exploited in a shocking 12-round knockout victory. Schmeling was greeted as a hero in Germany and portrayed by the Nazi regime as a symbol of Aryan superiority. “Schmeling's victory was not only sport,” wrote a Nazi journal. “It was a question of prestige for our race.” Louis, meanwhile, was humiliated. Though he went on to win the heavyweight title when he beat James Braddock in 1937, he said, “I don't want nobody to call me champ until I beat Schmeling.” Louis got his chance a year later, when he faced Schmeling in a rematch at Yankee Stadium. The fight took on a fiercely political tone; Franklin D. Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler had each openly visited his respective countryman before the fight, and a worldwide audience viewed the bout as a symbolic battle between America and Nazi Germany. “It had tremendous political implications in the battle of democracy against fascism,” says Lewis Erenberg, author of “The Greatest Fight of Our Generation, Louis vs. Schmeling.” “And it had tremendous implications about race and racial ideology.”  Over 70,000 fans were in attendance for the fight, while millions listened on radio. The Nazi government lifted its 3:00 a.m. curfew so that Germans could listen to the fight in bars. Having repaired the faulty post-jab, left-hand drop that Schmeling had exploited in their first meeting, Louis quickly laid into his stunned opponent with a barrage of quick, close jabs. Clearly outmatched, Schmeling was unable to connect more than two punches in the entire fight, falling to the mat four times...