Overview

One sporting image stands out as the most divisive and controversial in English football history: the sight of the England team making the Nazi salute in Berlin on 14 May 1938. This book examines how and why England's footballers made a gesture that would haunt them for the rest of their days. To Hitler, England's Nazi salute in the Olympic Stadium, Berlin, was a political victory. For the British government, it was passed off as a mere act of sporting courtesy. Salute explores botched British diplomacy, using sport as propaganda during the 1930s while pretending to do the opposite. Fascist dictators worked as overt and clinical propagandists. The book charts the political flashpoints of the 1930s, as English football established international relations with the fascist states of Italy and Germany. But it includes a tale of redemption: how one of the England players making the Nazi salute then rescued one of the fans watching him, a teenage German-Jewish refugee.

Full Product Details

9781801507103

Table of Contents

Reviews

"""While the infamous salute - given by the England team on 14 May 1938 - serves as the cover image and focal point of the book, there's much more to this story than a gesture that would haunt the players forever more. Salute! details how fascist regimes in Germany and Italy used sport to spread their philosophy, while an appeasement driven UK government and a deferential English FA played a haplessly complicit role... An intriguing but depressing tale."" * When Saturday Comes * ""I can highly recommend."" -- Duncan Mackay * founding editor Inside the Games and UK Sports Journalist of the Year * ""This excellent book by Leonard delivers in the depth of research and knowledge about the months and days leading up to the match, as well as helping to bring to life an era that is hard for anyone these days to comprehend. And then there is the remarkable aftermath, including an astonishing story that Leonard brings wonderfully to life in which one England player found a positive redemption to take from the situation, and one that deserves to be so much more well-known than it is currently."" * On Magazine *"

""While the infamous salute - given by the England team on 14 May 1938 - serves as the cover image and focal point of the book, there's much more to this story than a gesture that would haunt the players forever more. Salute! details how fascist regimes in Germany and Italy used sport to spread their philosophy, while an appeasement driven UK government and a deferential English FA played a haplessly complicit role... An intriguing but depressing tale."" * When Saturday Comes * ""I can highly recommend."" -- Duncan Mackay * founding editor Inside the Games and UK Sports Journalist of the Year * ""This excellent book by Leonard delivers in the depth of research and knowledge about the months and days leading up to the match, as well as helping to bring to life an era that is hard for anyone these days to comprehend. And then there is the remarkable aftermath, including an astonishing story that Leonard brings wonderfully to life in which one England player found a positive redemption to take from the situation, and one that deserves to be so much more well-known than it is currently."" * On Magazine *

"""While the infamous salute - given by the England team on 14 May 1938 - serves as the cover image and focal point of the book, there's much more to this story than a gesture that would haunt the players forever more. Salute! details how fascist regimes in Germany and Italy used sport to spread their philosophy, while an appeasement driven UK government and a deferential English FA played a haplessly complicit role... An intriguing but depressing tale."" * When Saturday Comes * ""I can highly recommend."" -- Duncan Mackay * founding editor Inside the Games and UK Sports Journalist of the Year *"

Author Information

John Leonard is a news and sports journalist of almost four decades' experience, spending most of his career at ITN as a programme editor for both ITV News and 5 News. Earlier in his career he worked as a sports news editor for ITN. His other books include Flight to Bogotá: England's Football Rebel, Neil Franklin, which was longlisted for Football Book of the Year at the 2021 British Sports Book Awards.

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