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People want their legends, like Robin Hood., If the game and its legend did not exist, Alexander Dovzhenko, a pioneering Ukrainian film director of the first half of the 20th century, once said, We would have had to invent it.. Why did it happen and did British and German soldiers really play football in no-man's land? Today, Start Stadium hosts summer matches by amateur and semiprofessional teams, whose players do not always wait until the final whistle to fortify their fitness with beer and cigarettes. It was the last island that the U.S. needed to capture to establish bases and launch an assault on the Japanese mainland. He tried to engage the best players in Kyiv. And then you get a little strand of something. Today, Start Stadium in Kiev hosts summer matches by Ukrainian amateur and semiprofessional soccer teams. Then he played at Mississippi State for two years. BISSINGER: Well, it was sort of prophetic in its own way. Now, I must say, I love the research. DAVIES: Right. But the Japanese - if their goal was to kill as many Americans as possible, they succeeded. But - you know, so you get frustrated. There's a good day. You know, it's like anything in life; the athletes hang together. Defenders were dug in and committed to fighting to the death. So they were well-known. His new book is The Mosquito Bowl. DAVIES: Let me reintroduce you. [23], Historian Volodymyr Hynda showed that defeats of German teams against local clubs happened regularly. The final score was 5-3. [11] The Gestapo arrested them as potential NKVD agents who could organise sabotage acts in Kyiv.[12]. Let me read that first. Because players were not getting paid regularly, the football team of Dynamo for some time had a shortage of playing staff (only eight players). Let's take one of them, David Schreiner. He was incredibly self-effacing. An amphibious assault is planned for beaches on the western end of the island. You do immersive journalism about people you can speak to directly. They're easy to get. We're speaking with Buzz Bissinger. We outman them. And the Marines hated everybody else. Survivors reported that the bodies were thrown into the mass graves of Babi Yar. The German director Joseph Kordik, an engineer from Moravia, encouraged them to form a football team: FC Start. And they both - it just amplified the hate between the two. We had it on 9/11. But by June 1942, a kind of soccer tournament was apparently organized, featuring two Ukrainian teams and garrisons representing Germany, Hungary and Romania. On Sept. 19, 1941, the Nazis occupied Kiev. The Start players listened, but ultimately decided to proceed with the match. And these men were brothers. So the game was over. You know, so it's pride. But that was all part of the relentless terror of this battle. BISSINGER: At the time, college football was huge. And I pointed to a reading DAVIES: You might want to share with us here. The names of the German players are given in cyrillic letters on the poster: Harer, Danz, Schneider, Biskur, Scharf, Kaplan, Breuer, Arnold, Jannasch, Wunderlich, Hofmann. And, you know, they called it Death Valley. So it does question all this great generation stuff. They weren't terrified by much. Napalm sticks. In retaliation, the Germans are reported to have shot one of every three prisoners in the work brigade. : [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: As Buzz Bissinger correctly reported in his book, Barney Poole played at the University of Mississippi, not Mississippi State, as Bissinger mistakenly says in this interview.]. DAVIES: Yeah, still probably not as well-remembered that as it should be. When the legend is better than the truth, print the legend.. And I must say, the amount of military records that are online is phenomenal. They spent only nights in the camps; Komarov was chosen by the SS as a Kapo. [12][26][28], Three players of the former club Lokomotiv Kyiv were incorporated into the new team. But their sacrifice, their sense of duty, it was - it blew my mind. According to this 1985 account, the game began roughly and the Start goalkeeper, Nikolai Trusevich, was knocked out. A World War I sculpture in Stoke-on-Trent, England, celebrates the Christmas Day truce, during which rival . But more, I wanted people to get the sense of what war really is. The men who served, it was a great generation. Flakelf translates to Flak 11, suggesting the German team was composed mainly of those who manned antiaircraft guns around Kiev. DAVIES: So they - so this idea of a football game gets talked of. Discover how the beautiful game of football brought World War 1 to a standstill on Christmas Day 1914. Five surviving players received the Medal for Battle Merit: Volodymyr Balakin, Makar Honcharenko, Mikhailo Melnik, Vassyl Sukharev, Mikhailo Sviridovsky. A number of organizations have used the tale for educational purposes. [6] According to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, about 32 million spectators in total saw it in the Soviet cinemas. And he said, yeah. As the story goes, the owner of the bakery, also described as a bread factory, had been a big fan of Dynamo. So if anyone would've been at that game, it would have been my dad. And then early in April, there were some Army units that were getting the snot kicked out of them. We are speaking with Buzz Bissinger. Water was poured on the goalkeeper to revive him, but while he was still dazed, the Germans scored three goals. It didn't matter in World War II. All the eyewitnesses denied the version that the Dynamo players were murdered specifically as revenge for the German defeat in the game. And when I read that, I said, I have to try to do this, if nothing else, as a memorial and a constant reminder of what war is like and what these men faced and what they went through without complaint. Well, you know BISSINGER: You're at sea. Christopher Furlong/Getty Image "Pravda o Matche smerti'", in: Kyivskie Novosti, 22 October 1992, p. 8. He became the director of the stadium in Karaganda in the Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan. I know they're remembered on Veteran's Day and Memorial Day and certain holidays. And why, in his 1985 account, Goncharenko said that before Trusevich, the goalkeeper, was shot to death six and a half months after the match, his final words were, Long live Stalin, long live Soviet sport., According to Dougan, Goncharenko had been very scared.. And that was the big use of the kamikazes. The Kyiv archives document the cases of Olexander Tkachenko and Mikola Korotkykh as both not having played on Dynamo's first team before the war. I am Terry Gross. And the most immense sense of duty I've seen, except for maybe 9/11 and the firemen at 9/11, same thing. And it's my same - namesake. Goncharenko gave a similar account of an ordinary match to a Ukrainian newspaper in 1996. I mean, they realized, as amphibious assault developed, that that was a key. BISSINGER: Yeah. I didn't know this till I read this in your book. With Kiev under Nazi occupation during World War II, a group of Ukrainian players defeated a military team of Germans thought to be from artillery and perhaps Luftwaffe units. It was - you know, saltwater showers, very little fresh water. Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules. It was the ultimate hunt-and-peck. And I could never - Dave, I could never figure out - and I thought about this - why were the Army teams of 1944 and '45 their best in history and one of the best in the history of college football? And then the Marines came in to try and take them off, including the ones that you had followed from the 6th Marine Division. Wooden planks in the grandstand, like neglected teeth, are mostly loose or missing. Maybe it could defend a base or supply an ammo depot. DAVIES: The other element of the reasons that the Army and the Navy hated the Marines was that the Marines - you know, there was a whole romantic thing. In the film, Russian communists are fighting against the German occupiers. Im pretty certain there would have been a warning, that they had had their fun.. The Death Match (Ukrainian: , Russian: ) is a name given in postwar Soviet historiography to the football match played in Kyiv in Reichskommissariat Ukraine (abbreviated RKU) under occupation by Nazi Germany. Ukrainian historians are convinced that this version was the real reason for the arrest; also because the three former Lokomotive players in FC Start were not prosecuted by the Gestapo. W hen the 1939-40 Football League season kicked off on Saturday 26 August 1939, players were wearing numbered shirts for the first time. BISSINGER: Yeah. [11], In 1965, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR awarded posthumously the Medal "For Courage" to these four Dynamo players murdered by the Germans . We would beat you any game, any day you want to play. And I don't want these men to be forgotten. BISSINGER: I think in between. . These men were brothers. Who would want to go? Seventy years ago, on Aug. 9, 1942, the stadium became the site of one of soccer's most infamous and disputed games, the so-called Death Match. BISSINGER: Well, the 6th Marine Division actually thought, man, this is a piece of cake. I don't think they knew much about Japan. Some men landed in the sea and sort of lost their mental capacity and just swam off. But they closed the case in 2005, saying they found a lack of any evidence that the Start players were purposely killed for defeating the Flakelf team on that late afternoon in 1942. They were in charge of 50 or 60 kids - kids. Give us a sense of that. It seemed that war was inevitable. But his report in the newspaper Izvestiya did not mention the football match. The American forces combat was about 180,000. And they're trying to seize a hill called Sugar Loaf Hill. DAVIES: And those Navy ships that were just anchored there BISSINGER: Well, in Okinawa, they - not only were they sitting ducks, you had the kamikaze. Describe the physical BISSINGER: And I think that was a beautiful, symbolic time. He hated firearms. 10 Facts About Football In The Second World War On 8 September 1939, the Football Association (FA) declared that all football except that organised by the armed forces was suspended 'until official notice to the contrary'. "Beyond the Death Match: Sport under German Occupation between Repression and Integration, 1941-1944" in Nikolaus Katzer, Sandra Budy, Alexandra Khring, Manfred Zeller (eds. Makar Honcharenko and Mikhailo Sviridovsky had to repair shoes for the Wehrmacht. With Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine, Pel, Bobby Moore. DAVIES: You know, in the Pacific War, there were real rivalries among the service branches. And the most important thing I found out is if you're going to be on one of these ships and it's four or five to a bunk, take the top. I think 18 were either drafted and would be drafted by the pros. [62], In 2008 Willie Gannon a senior Bleacher Report writer wrote an article about the Dynamo's "Death Match" that starts with the following "This is a true story that I was told by my father"[63] Mr.Gannon claims that Germans entered Kyiv "with little or no resistance" and Major General Ebenhardt was rushing to stage a game between a German team and no other else but Dynamo Kyiv. You know, politicians would go to Roosevelt and saying, hey; you know, can we make doctors exempt? : " ", "English: Match Start-Flakelf 6 august 1942. [30], The final score was 53 in favour of Start. Both cases do not show any context of the "Death Match": After three weeks in the Gestapo prison, eight of the former Dynamo players were deported to the Syrets concentration camp next to the valley of Babi Yar in the outskirts of Kyiv. He had already played at Mississippi State. ", The Death Match: Dynamo Kyiv vs. the Nazis, Hot summer of the forty second ( ), World War II Soccer Match Echoes Through Time, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Death_Match&oldid=1130462534, Military history of Ukraine during World War II, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles containing Ukrainian-language text, Articles containing Russian-language text, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0, Kyiv Radio broadcast an interview with former Dynamo player. They were left out in the open. And the statue behind the crumbling grandstand helps perpetuate the legend of the Death Match. The Start players who survived the Nazi occupation did not appear in public. But we're going to get them. And I think there were some brutal command decisions made that resulted - one of the guys I write about was told, you have to go secure Sugar Loaf. We had no idea where they were. A match the prisoners are determined to win, no matter what happens Directors Dominik Sedlar Jakov Sedlar Writers Gary Hertz Stephen Ollendorff Dominik Sedlar I still can't fathom it. So I think at Okinawa, the entire week before was constant, constant bombardment. The Death Match (Ukrainian: , Russian: ) is a name given in postwar Soviet historiography to the football match played in Kyiv in Reichskommissariat Ukraine (abbreviated RKU) under occupation by Nazi Germany. You know, my father was a pacifist. We didnt want to lose., He also said that a Gestapo officer visited the team before the match, introduced himself as the referee and told the players they should raise their right arms and make the Nazi salute on the field in a pregame greeting. Sorting out the priorities was a constant dilemma throughout the Pacific War. And a lot of the book is about their magnificence and the heroism and the tragedy. You're a long way from home. Not one document can prove any of these things, said Kirill Boyko, manager of the Dynamo fan club. They want people to remember. Also in 1958, Piotr Severov and Naum Khalemsky published their novel The Last Duel (Posledni poyedinok).[5]. [44] Pavlo Komarov, Mikhail Putistin and Fedor Tyutchev worked as electricians outside the camp. Georgi Kuzmin, a Ukrainian journalist who has covered soccer for more than 40 years, said that Goncharenko told him in 1991 that no one asked the Start players to throw the match and that Goncharenko did not believe the players were deliberately killed for winning. Hollywood, Sergey Mikhaylenko, the president of the Dynamo Kiev fan club, said with a laugh. That's what it was about. Were they killed because they won a soccer match? According to the archives, some of the Start players said during the NKVD interrogation that they had been denounced to the Gestapo by Rukh trainer Georgi Shvetsov. I don't know how any, any, any of these men did it. [58] Radomski had been killed on 14 March 1945.[59]. Bykova, the historian, said evidence indicates the Germans played fairly and did not injure the Start goalkeeper, at least not on purpose. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. Can we make this exempt? The exact number of victims was given: four Dynamo players were murdered by the Germans the goalkeeper Nikolai Trusevich, an ethnic Russian, defender Olexi Klimenko and striker Ivan Kuzmenko, who together had played on the vice champion team of 1936,[10] as well as midfielder Mikola Korotkykh, who had left Dynamo in 1939. (SOUNDBITE OF THE WESTERLIES' "FROM THE VERY FIRST TIME"), DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. DAVIES: And there were, like, 150,000 or so civilians? There were no heavily armed soldiers with dogs in the stadium. Only the first half of the match is documented: The Germans opened the score but Ivan Kuzmenko, and Makar Honcharenko scoring twice, made the score 31 at half time. And that's what I wanted to get across. And this was fascinating to me. It's about violence. [51] Tyutchev died in 1959, before the surviving Dynamo players became stars of Soviet propaganda. I mean, it was a little bit friendly. And to know what happened to him, to know what happened to others, it's such a tragedy. DAVIES: We're speaking with Buzz Bissinger. They won every single game, usually with crushing score lines. I do not want it during a football game. Stuttgarter Zeitung, 5 December 1973, p. 9. Buzz Bissinger revisits a football game among Marines that took place on a Pacific island in 1945, while they were waiting to engage in the assault on Okinawa. On Aug. 6, 1942, Start is said to have routed a German Flakelf team by 5-1. This is a piece of cake. When I did the book proposal, I finally said, I might as well look up his records, see who he was and what he did there. [12] None amongst the Start players had played for the Dynamo team in the years immediately before the war, although some of them had left the club only a couple of years before. The truth remains elusive. And then they were embedded. DAVE DAVIES, BYLINE: My guest, Buzz Bissinger, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who's best known for "Friday Night Lights," his book about Texas high school football, which was a bestseller and was adapted into a movie and a TV series. And they were magnificent men, of which my dad was one. They'd certainly never been there. On 15th March, 1939, Adolf Hitler ordered the German Army to invade Czechoslovakia. It may well have been sheer chance, but these were not just three players, but three very good players, he said. DAVIES: Right. And boasts and trash talk in 1944 about which regiment had the better talent led to a one-of-a-kind game played on a dirt-and-coral field on the island of Guadalcanal. And there were moments where I said, God, I wish they were alive. I did it in "The Prayer For The City" when I followed Ed Rendell when he was mayor in the 1990s. Komarov, before World War II Dynamo's penalty specialist, left Kyiv with the Germans. Both served in the Ukrainian police. Uruguay won the Copa America on home soil mere months before the lost competition of 1942 was scheduled to be played. He was really handsome. By some accounts, the stadium was ringed with soldiers, SS officers and police dogs, though others discount this. The red jerseys worn by the Start players were not specifically intended as a symbol for communist spirit; rather the players were simply given them to wear by the Germans. According to a widely disseminated photograph, players from both teams stood together for a postgame snapshot, some of them smiling. These firemen would risk everything. As Buzz Bissinger correctly reported in his book, Barney Poole played at the University of Mississippi, not Mississippi State, as Bissinger mistakenly says in this interview. Fear of being seen as Nazi collaborators. According to legend, the Germans warned the local team beforehand or at halftime that it had better lose the match, and when the Ukrainians ignored the threat and prevailed, key members of the team were killed in retribution. In contradiction to the Soviet version not all of the Start players were prosecuted by the Gestapo. Everyone told us: What are you doing? BISSINGER: Yeah. As you pointed out, a lot of guys were getting out of the draft. I look at their pictures. But competitive instincts prevailed. His latest book focuses on a group of Marines who fought in the Pacific theater during World War II, many of whom had been college football stars before the war. Buckner was an Army general. The Ukrainian press, controlled by the Germans, published many reports about these matches. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. Dave Schreiner was a second-round draft pick. They built goal posts. And I want combat. [40] The Gestapo arrested neither Georgi Timofeyev, for having played in the "Death match", nor Lev Gundarev who was named on the poster but did not take part in the match. The final score is they beat the crap out of each other. The score was 0-0. And a lot of guy - that's how most guys got hurt because it blows up with infection because it's Guadalcanal, and it's hot. At that time "Dynamo" (Kiev) was the champion of the Soviet Union. Perhaps the Gestapo suspected players of being members of the N.K.V.D., the police and state security precursor to the K.G.B. This is FRESH AIR. But 150 - you know, I just - let that settle in. Toggle Historical accounts and analysis after the dissolution of the USSR subsection, Toggle The fates of the Kyiv players subsection, Historical accounts and analysis after the dissolution of the USSR, Revenge match against Flakelf on 9 August 1942, Forced labour in the concentration camp Syrets, Execution of three players in the concentration camp, Today it is known as Start Stadium located in the, Note that "Flakelf" is an abbreviated combination of the German words. Unless that competition is totally contrived and has nothing to do with football. I've thought about that for five years. And they certainly did not. Some guys don't even know how to swim. They were popular. You can't be as cinematic because I'm not going to make things up, you know? BISSINGER: For the first three years, I kept saying, what the hell am I doing? And, you know, they figured the Japanese are going to be tough. BISSINGER: Yes. He had so much life ahead of him. We're going to go back to Guam and party and cases of beer. That means the stream of napalm is much stronger, much longer. A poster on display at a museum in Ukraine advertising a rematch between the Start team and a Nazi team. One player, Mykola Korotkikh, is reported to have been killed several weeks after the match on suspicion of serving in Stalins internal security force. The 50th anniversary of the "Death Match" in 1992 marked the beginning of eyewitness reports in Ukrainian mass media: All these reports contradicted aspects of the Soviet version: There were no SS officers being referees or threatening the Start team. We're done - no one there. [1] Prior to World War II, Fomin also played for Lokomotyv. There's no way. But you can only do what you can do in a circumstance like this. And they realize that there's actually three hills - there's Sugar Loaf, and there's two others. Can I get something? His new book is "The Mosquito Bowl: A Game Of Life And Death In World War II." But I was blown away. A monument honoring F.C. And I could never get my dad to talk. They lasted for 82 days. "Byli i niebyli nasheva futbola". [56] As Soviet authorities did not collaborate on the case, it was closed in March 1976. Bissinger's book is "The Mosquito Bowl: A Game Of Life And Death In World War II.". I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR. They may have been suspected at the bakery of putting ground glass into bread to be eaten by Germans. Were football players sought after by the Marines? Tkachenko, one of the three policemen in FC Start, had beaten up a German in Kyiv and therefore was arrested by the Gestapo. There were these two regiments of the 6th Marine Division, the 4th and the 29th, that had all these college football stars, some in each. Days later, more than 33,000 Jews were killed at Babi Yar, a ravine on the outskirts of the battered capital. Well, you know, an order is an order. You know, we think of everybody rushing to sign up after Pearl Harbor, but in fact, you had to get people, not all of whom were excited about it. And the 29th's - no, you're not. And I got to tell you, as I did the research, I'm so immensely proud of him that I wish I had probed. They were allowed to be boys doing something they loved, and they loved football. I mean, think about that. (Huston's film has a deus ex machina ending which conflicts with the original Soviet story when the spectators storm the field at the match's end and the POWs escape in the resultant confusion, but as no event similar to this actually occurred in the West during World War II, it is generally assumed that this film was inspired by the legendary/propaganda version of the Death Match. And many did. (SOUNDBITE OF TODD SICKAFOOSE'S "WHISTLE"). BISSINGER: Yeah. I saw their transcripts. And they had a different relationship with the press. Who won? Maybe they just say, all right, that's it. By many accounts, F.C. Such was FC Start's dominance that the Nazis put together the team Flakelf for a match on 6 August, but they lost heavily 5-1. I wish I could get more of the game. He'll be back to talk more after this short break. He said, I don't know. And there was an Army unit, the 27th, that got decimated. And this is - it's a big island, like 60 miles long. A British soldier kicked a football onto the battlefield to begin a day, and a match,. The Kyiv city team Start (Cyrillic: ), which represented the city's Bread Factory No.1, played several football games in World War II. So to be a football star - and these players who played in the Mosquito Bowl - three were All-Americans. So I really debated. BISSINGER: There were many mind-boggling elements in the book, including the relentless horror that these men faced and how they died. BISSINGER: That may be the worst part of war. This is when an SS officer entered the locker room and complimented the skill of the Start players. Let me reintroduce you. Part of the problem was there was no record of the game. And this isn't just set here. But what was the real story behind the truce? Ukrainian youth over 15 years and adults under 60 years old were submitted to labour obligations. The players are shirtless, holding hands, boldly resistant. For the NFL, late June is the time for no competition. An estimated 2,000 spectators, paying five rubles apiece, were said to have attended the rematch at Start Stadium, then known as Zenit Stadium. [1] The team's captain Konstantin Shchegotsky even tried to escape to Dnipropetrovsk, where he played for FC Dynamo Dnipropetrovsk, but was forced to come back. How about typewriter repairmen? Get an education. I mean, he had the goods. The book is "The Mosquito Bowl: A Game Of Life And Death In World War II.". When the Marines would go on an amphibious landing, for example DAVIES: They would have these Navy ships anchored offshore DAVIES: Battering the defenses to make it - you know, to soften up the enemy. And I say, man, wouldn't that be incredible if he was at that game? They said the Marines were there for one or two battles. I mean, I think that football players, given sort of their macho-ism and, frankly, their sense of violence, wanted to join the Marines. So they were all known. The story of the impromptu football match during the 1914 Christmas Truce of the First World War has been well publicized. The Soviets could show that people would go to their death for the sake of Soviet ideology. They played a number of matches during 1942 against other Ukrainian teams - including Ruch, formed by and made up of Nazi sympathisers - and also Germans. We are loaded. It's different. DAVIES: We are speaking with Buzz Bissinger. Do you know? Maybe some journalist - I mean, who the hell is going to know? KIEV, Ukraine There are few striking features about Start Stadium except its disrepair. And I had to read that several times. Dave wanted combat, and he got combat as a first lieutenant. BISSINGER: Vomit travels downhill. Nikolai Trusevich, Olexi Klimenko and Ivan Kuzmenko had to work in a group of street builders. This was the last time that I think they were allowed to be boys. The Navy existed to sink other ships. And the Marines had a certain swagger and arrogance that drove the Army nuts and the Navy nuts, and the Marines basically said, I don't care. The problem is when you get up, you hit your head on a pipe. DAVIES: Describe the defenses 'cause this is pretty remarkable - how they were dug into mountains and where they would (inaudible) the artillery. They're always tough. You served with duty. One player who popularized the legend seemed to tell as many versions of the story as there were goals in the match, both burnishing the myth and betraying it. You're going south. They looked like my dad. We won World War I. They want people to remember what our country went through, what the 6th Division went through, what the Navy went through, what the Army went through in the entirety of that war. [21], The first genuine historical studies of the "Death Match" confirmed the reports of the eyewitnesses. And then, the guys on the ladder would vomit. The title of Bissinger's latest book, "The Mosquito Bowl," also refers to a football game, but it's not really a sports story. They may have been suspected of ties to the N.K.V.D. His new book is "The Mosquito Bowl: A Game Of Life And Death In World War II." But I always knew that. [11] After the match a German took a photograph of both teams, showing an apparently relaxed atmosphere. Everybody hated the Marines. We will sacrifice ourselves at any cost. The former Zenit Stadium, where the match had taken place in 1942, was renamed as the FC Start Stadium.[14]. [12][50], Putistin and Tyutchev fled from the camp in September 1943 when the Germans left Kyiv.