This review was originally written for British Chess News. As BCN is down at the moment, and I hope this book will be of interest to members of Richmond & Twickenham Chess Club, I am, with permission from BCN, publishing it here.

From the publisher’s blurb:

“The USSR is famous as the first totalitarian state to promote chess. Less well known is that Nazi Germany was the second. The Third Reich gave chess a tremendous financial and propaganda boost in hopes of making Germany a dominant chess power. Yet this aspect of the Nazi era has received scant attention in later German literature, and even less in English. This book fills that gap.

Using a multitude of German sources, the author has crafted a narrative showing how the Nazis completely remade German chess into a monolithic structure to showcase the supposed cultural and intellectual superiority of the “master race.” Many games by German masters are presented–Bogoljubow, Richter, Sämisch, Rellstab, Kieninger, Junge, and more–and by others who came under Nazi rule: Alekhine, Keres, Eliskases, et al. Important political figures are featured: Otto Zander, Erhardt Post, Hans Schemm, Josef Goebbels, and especially Hans Frank. Politics affecting chess are detailed, both external (e.g., the annexations of Austria and Czechoslovakia) and internal (rivalry between the Grossdeutscher Schachbund and Kraft durch Freude), as of course are the effects of the war and persecution of Jews.”

“Taylor Kingston holds a Class A over-the-board USCF rating and was a correspondence master in the 1980s. His historical articles have appeared in Chess Life, New in Chess, Inside Chess, Kingpin, and Chess Café website. He lives with his wife Emily in Paso Robles, California.”

There are stories that demand to be told, and books that demand to be read. This, if you’re interested in the intersection between chess and the real world, and, specifically between chess and politics, is one.

The story of how the Soviet Union promoted chess and used the game for political ends has been told before, although there’s still much that’s new to be discovered and written about. In this timely book, Taylor Kingston tells us how Nazi Germany tried to do the same thing.

You may well know about Alekhine’s alleged Nazi sympathies, but that’s only a small part of this story.

Like all good historians, Kingston contextualises his material, placing the chess played in the Third Reich within wider worlds of both chess and politics.

We start with two short chapters: firstly a brief history of chess in Germany up to the First World War, and then chess in the Weimar Republic. 

Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 brings us to the meat of the book. Hitler himself seems to have had little interest in chess, but several of his colleagues, most notably Hans Frank, did. Another important figure was the chess master and administrator Erhardt Post, a Nazi sympathiser who would play a major part in the promotion of the game in Greater Germany. (I wonder why he’s Erhardt throughout the book and Ehrhardt in online sources.)

From 1936 onwards, each year gets a separate chapter, the exception being 1941-42, which are combined to relate the connection between Alekhine and Frank.

1936 was the year of two Olympics, the Olympic Games in Berlin (you won’t need me to tell you about Jesse Owens) and the unofficial Chess Olympiad in Munich. This was designed to celebrate the superiority of German chess, but their team only finished 3rd behind the Hungarian and Polish teams, both with strong Jewish representation. Najdorf, playing on 2nd board for Poland, won a board prize, a gold medal presented by Hans Frank, who, just three years later, would be responsible for the extermination of his family.

Here, from earlier in the year, is Frank holding Sämisch to a draw in a blindfold simul. Click on any move for a pop-up window.

Of course, trying to promote chess in a central European country in the 1930s while at the same time persecuting Jews was never going to be especially successful, but the Nazis, deluded by the concept of supposed Aryan superiority, were never going to appreciate this.

Interspersed with the commentary we have 135 games and part-games, annotated by the author with the aid of Stockfish. Alekhine, as you’d expect, is well represented, along with other greats who, for one reason or another, took part in events in Nazi Germany: Keres, Bogoljubov, Euwe, Eliskases and others. There are also many games, not all of them impressive, played by lesser lights.

Kingston is on occasion very critical, remarking of a game between Pichler (Romania) and Rellstab (Germany) that he has seldom seen (a game) with so much bad play by both sides at any level.

Some of you might remember Rellstab unexpectedly winning the 1972-73 Hastings Challengers, going on to beat Tony Miles in the following year’s Premier.  He played a lot better in this entertaining miniature from the 1937 Berlin Championship.

The narrative continues through to the 1939 Olympiad in Buenos Aires, where Germany, perhaps rather fortuitously, took the gold medals, and the outbreak of war. In 1940 a new edition of the venerable Lehrbuch des Schachspiels was published, with the names and best games of Jewish players such as Steinitz, Lasker and Rubinstein purged.

Perhaps the most important chapter is that covering the years 1941-1942, and Alekhine’s collaboration with Hans Frank and the rest of the Nazi régime. Kingston suggests that, appalling as the articles appearing under his name were, Alekhine, fearing for his own safety, would have felt that, unless he could arrange a match in the Americas, he had little choice but to do as he was told. 

As the course of the war turned against Germany, there was a decline in chess activity, with Kingston concluding his book by looking at the post war fortunes of some of the players featured in the book.

One of the most tragic stories is that of Klaus Junge who lost his life on active service just three weeks before the end of the war. Here’s a game.

Meticulously researched, and with copious photographs and other illustrations, this book is, as you would expect from McFarland, beautifully produced, in a large format softcover. It’s unfortunate, but understandable, that they are no longer publishing new books in hardback.

It’s probably not a book that will do a lot to improve your rating, even though there’s much interesting chess within its pages. Nor, given the subject matter, is it a book just to be read for fun. But there will be few more important chess books published this year, and I would expect to see it on the Chess Book of the Year lists come December.

If you’re at all interested in chess or political history this book is recommended without reservation. It must have been a labour of love for both Taylor Kingston and McFarland: congratulations to everyone involved in this book.

Richard James, Twickenham 19th April 2025