How Popular Was Max Schmeling?

He was Hitler's Aryan Superman until the Louis rematch, after he was the only popular German athlete that fought in WW2, Schmeling got injured parachuting during the German occupation of Crete.

 

Popular to the point where he was trading stamps with President Roosevelt who would turn up and watch him train

 

Hitler adored him until Louis beat him, as did the rest of Germany. He was seen as a symbol of Aryan superiority, proof that their race was the best of them all. Needless to say, they didn't hold this same enthusiasm when he lost to Joe Louis.

 

Schmeling was very popular in the U.S. and in Germany throughout most of his career.

Germany was sort of a haven for artists and intellectuals in the early part of the 1930s. When Schmeling won the heavyweight title, he socialized with all the famous actors, artists and writers in the U.S. and Europe.

Max remained popular after he lost a decision to Sharkey, because the perception at the time was that it was a bad decision.

He fought in the U.S. regularly. His non-title fight with Max Baer drew more than 50,000 people to Yankee Stadium. It was a huge sporting event.

And when Schmeling knocked out Joe Louis, there were celebrations across the U.S. (as well as Germany).

From 1936 to 1938, the perception of him changed drastically, though.

Max kind of turned his back on a lot of his artist and theater friends when Hitler rose to power and those people fell out of favor (particularly his gay friends). When he was embraced by the Nazis, he tried to walk the tightrope of being a good citizen and enjoying the benefits of being a propaganda tool, but, when outside Germany, saying he really wanted to avoid politics. And when the Nazis fell, Schmeling played off the propaganda stuff and said he really wasn't a part of all that, which allowed him to benefit during the war (with the Nazis) and after the war (with the Allies).

So, by playing both sides, he proved to be a very good opportunist ... which helped him survive and also THRIVE during the war and afterward.

But a lot of his close friends before the war weren't his friends afterward.

I have an article written before the Patterson-Johansson fight in Miami in 1961, where the writer was complaining that the champion Floyd Patterson and an American hero Joe Louis had to stay away from the hotel where Johansson, Schmeling (who was a big player at Coca-Cola) and all the sports writers were staying, because blacks couldn't stay at the same hotel as whites in Florida.

And the writer was like how are Louis and Patterson staying in a bad hotel on the black side of city, and the hotel that's housing everyone else for the big fight thinks it's fine for "a Nazi" to be staying here?

So Max was adept, even in his later years, at smiling and glad-handing and riding whatever wave was going on at the time.

The young Klitschko brothers worshipped Schmeling and used to visit him at his home. I'm not sure Max would've stood up to Putin, though, like they did. Schmeling was an expert politician, but he never ran for office. He just looked for ways to get something out of whatever was happening at the time.

 

Nonsense.

Hitler only received him once and was never into Sports especially Boxing..................a Photo up at best.

Goebbels created all the Superman propaganda, he was the driving force .

Schmelling got the General Coca Cola franchise for Germany after the war so he was taken care of.

 

What are you talking about? Hitler was a huge boxing fan, he even mentioned that in Mein Kampf. He even wanted to make it, alongside jiu-jitsu, mandatory training for Hitler Youth and the SS. To quote Hitler himself:

"There is no sport that so much as this
one (boxing) promotes the spirit of attack,
demands lightning decisions,
and trains the body in steel dexterity."


"And so sport does not exist only to make
the individual strong, agile, and bold;
it should also toughen him
and teach him to bear hardships."


"Boxing and jiu-jitsu have always
seemed to me more important....
...physical culture must inoculate the individual
with the conviction of his superiority
and give him that self-confidence which lies
forever and alone in the consciousness
of his own strength; in addition,
it must give him those athletic
skills which serve as a weapon..."

 

I remember thinking that Max Schmeling was very well liked in my area of the United States. Most people I knew believed he would beat Jimmy Braddock for the title and Jimmy was from my home state. It's interesting that, when he got his shot at the belt with Joe Louis, most in my area thought Joe would beat him that time, but I never heard anybody say they thought it would only go partway through the 1st round.

 

When you were a young man- was there many conversations about Sam Langford or Jack Johnson? I’m wondering how guys like that were talked about in the distant past. Did Greb ever get brought up?

 

He was very popular in the USA, before it was apparent that the war would happen.

After that the politics took over.

 

When I was young, they were spoken of with reverence, by family members and friends of the family, who were boxing fans. Some thought Johnson was the greatest who ever put on gloves. Some thought Dempsey deserved that honor. Greb was often mentioned as the fighter who beat Gene Tunney. (I didn't hear as much about Greb, and Langford, as about Johnson. Langford was legendary for competing successfully in so many weight classes. Nobody who I knew, however, thought that Langford or Greb could have beaten a prime Dempsey, but some thought Johnson could have.

 

The fact he looked like Dempsey was played up a lot prior to the war wasn’t it? I remember it being brought up a ton in old commentary.

 

Yes, but the main thing was that he was getting stoppages, even against the most durable fighters of the era.

He was teaching guys like Risko, and Stribling, what a stoppage loss looks like.