Held on June 22, 1938, in Yankee Stadium, the second
Louis-Schmeling fight sparked excitement around the globe. For all
its length-the fight lasted but two minutes-it remains one of the
most memorable events in boxing history and, indeed, one of the
most significant sporting events ever. In this superb account,
Lewis A. Erenberg offers a vivid portrait of Joe Louis, Max
Schmeling, their individual careers, and their two epic fights,
shedding light on what these fighters represented to their nations,
and why their second bout took on such international importance.
Erenberg shows how in the first fight Schmeling shocked everyone
with a dramatic twelfth-round knockout of Louis, becoming a German
national hero and a (unwilling) symbol of Aryan superiority. In
fact, the second fight was seen around the world in symbolic
terms-as a match between Nazism and American democracy. Erenberg
discusses how Louis' dramatic first-round victory was a devastating
blow to Hitler, who turned on Schmeling and, during the war, had
the boxer (then serving as a paratrooper) sent on a series of
dangerous missions. Louis, meanwhile, went from being a hero of his
race-"Our Joe"-to the first black champion embraced by all
Americans, black and white, an important step forward in United
States race relations. Erenberg also describes how, after the war,
the two boxers became symbols of German-American reconciliation.
With Schmeling as a Coca Cola executive, and Louis down on his
luck, the former foes became friends, and when Louis died,
Schmeling helped pay for his funeral. Here then is a stirring and
insightful account of one of the great moments in boxing history, a
confrontation that provided global theater on an epic scale.
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