Max Schmeling Helped Pay For Joe Louis's Funeral

The Indiana Jones movies, the Jesse Owens Olympics, and the Schmeling/Louis fights, provide the myth that the USA waged a Cold War with Germany in the 1930's over the issue of racial tolerance.

I'll forgive Lucas and Spielberg, who were consciously filming works of fiction in pursuit of an honest dollar, but most of what we read and hear about Owens and Louis do not, and can not, compute in light of the Jackie Robinson story. Such myths are created in order to pretend that the American people, who were (and are) full of all kinds of bigotry and hatreds, were very supportive of the success of blacks in the 1930's, as if Hitler's main source of race-baiting and popularity was by demonizing blacks in America, as opposed to Jews in Germany.

All down the line, such a narrative is self-evidently and stupendously ridiculous. Any participant in this charade, whether at PBS, Discovery, the History Channel, or ESPN is no better than a Soviet propagandist.

But it was even celebrated, in a roundabout way, in Rocky IV.

It is also true, however, that Max Schmeling, dying yesterday at the age of 99, seems to be one of the classiest and honorable of men that anyone could imagine. The article linked to here is not an obit - Google hasn't caught up to that yet - but it is a brief overview of a courageous and conscientious man.

Max Schmeling