Cricket, Hitler style.
May 3, 2010 by Diana Horner
Unreliable Sources by John Simpson
One chapter in the recently published book ‘Unreliable Sources: How the Twentieth Century was Reported’, by John Simpson, drew the excited attention of journalists around the world.
‘Blue shirts and blitzkrieg? It’s just not cricket’ ran the headline from Ben McIntyre, in the Times Newspaper (18.03.10). Simpson refers in his book, to an incident reported in the Daily Mirror in 1930 under the headline ‘Adolf Hitler as I Know Him’ written by Oliver Locker-Lampson.
Locker-Lampson, an MP for Birmingham Handsworth, spoke of hearing a fascinating tale from British officers who met Adolf Hitler during their time as German prisoners, in the First World War. Hitler was recovering nearby, from wounds he sustained on the Western front, and according to these officers, during his recovery he went to the POW camp to watch a game of cricket.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Hitler needed clarification on the finer points of this unfamiliar, and complex sport. The British officers were pleased to assist, according to Locker-Lampson, and ‘wrote out the rules for him in the best British sport-loving spirit.’
Hitler went to work immediately, forming a team, and then challenged the British players to a friendly game only a few days later. We can only imagine the outcome of this match, and the subsequent impact on Anglo-German relations, as no record of the result has emerged. However, we can assume that things did not go the way Hitler would have liked, given his reported plans to recreate the game afterwards.
Hitler’s cricket would be played Nazi style; no pads for his men, and a larger, harder ball. Ben McIntyre writes:
“He wanted speed and violence. Not for him the gentle thwack of leather on willow, but rather the crunch of a harder, larger ball against unprotected shins. His rewritten rules for the game attempt to blend cricket and blitzkrieg: blitzkricket.”
Further speculation in the years that followed, led to the rumour that persists to this day in some parts of the world; that Hitler killed a German cricket team. No evidence has emerged to support this wild theory, nor the claim that Hitler banned cricket in Germany as it was too time consuming.
In the absence of a match report, we are left to guess how the German players fared, against a determined and practiced POW XI, and to wonder how Adolf Hitler himself coped with the steady strategy of a game of cricket. Did he play, or simply manage? Was his impatient nature frustrated by the lack of opportunity to push individual players to the edge of their physical achievement, and to confront opponents aggressively?
Sports participation, and particularly the opportunities that sport offered the Nazi movement to dominate on a world stage, was a vital component in Hitler’s plans to build a master race. No wonder then, that cricket, that most gentlemanly of sports, was not top of Hitler’s list.