1,322 words

“Chess is like life, only life is a total war, and chess is a limited war.”

-Robert Fischer

Aleksander Alekhine was an outstanding Russian world chess champion, an opponent of Bolshevism, a grandmaster of the Third Reich, the author of an essay on “Aryan and Jewish chess”, and is rightly considered a chess legend. He is not only the only world champion who passed away with this title, but also the owner of the most stormy and tortuous biography of all the world’s chess celebrities.

Born in 1892 into a Moscow noble family, Alekhine entered the world chess elite at the age of 21, taking third place at the St. Petersburg tournament in 1914 after Emmanuel Lasker and Jose Raul Capablanca. The Bolshevik revolution almost ended his career at its peak. In the fall of 1918, he moved from Soviet Moscow to German-occupied Odessa. After the capture of Odessa by the Reds in April 1919, Alekhine was arrested by the Extraordinary Commission and sentenced to death. He was saved from certain death only by the intervention of a high-ranking Bolshevik who was fond of chess. Alekhine, who was released and returned to Moscow, was there in 1920. He was arrested a second time, an extremely commissian, on suspicion of being an employee of Denikin’s counterintelligence. Newly released and deciding not to tempt fate any longer, Alekhine in 1921, with the help of his wife, a Swiss journalist, managed to escape from Soviet Russia to Latvia. From there he headed to Germany, from which a few months later he moved to France, where he settled, receiving French citizenship in 1925.

In 1927, Alekhine won the world title match against the considered invincible Jose Raul Capablanca and then dominated the competition for several years, winning the biggest tournaments of his time by large margins over his opponents. Twice (in 1929 and 1933) Alekhine defended his title in matches against Efim Bogolyubov, in 1935 he lost the match to Max Euwe, but two years later he won in a rematch and held the title of world champion until his death.

Upon Alekhine’s return to Paris after his victory over Capablanca in 1927, a banquet was held in his honor at the Russian Club. The next day, emigrant newspapers published articles quoting Alekhine’s speech, who wished that “… the myth of the invincibility of the Bolsheviks would be dispelled, just as the myth of Capablanca’s invincibility would be dispelled.” Soon, an article by Nikolai Krylenko appeared in the Soviet magazine “Chess Bulletin”, which said: “After Alekhine’s speech at the Russian Club, everything is over with citizen Alekhine – he is our enemy, and from now on we must treat him only as an enemy.” However, relations between Alekhine and the Soviet authorities were not completely interrupted – the issue of his possible arrival at the tournament in Moscow or a match with the leading chess player of the USSR Mikhail Botvinnik was periodically discussed. An agreement with the latter was reached in 1938, but events that soon broke out canceled the plans of the parties.

In 1939, Alexander Alekhine’s older brother Alexey was shot in the USSR. Alekhine could not obtain any information about the fate of his sister, who also remained in Soviet Russia. When World War II began on September 1, 1939, Alekhine was in Argentina, where he participated in the Chess Olympiad as part of the French team. In January 1940, he returned to France and, after the German attack on it, volunteered for the French army as a translator. After the end of hostilities, he left the territory occupied by the Germans and settled in the south of France. At this moment, Alekhine’s cooperation with the German authorities begins. In an interview given a little later to the Spanish press, he mentioned the simultaneous playing sessions that he gave in Paris for the German army in the winter of 1940-1941.

While in exile, he wrote a chess column in the newspapers of Russian nationalists, Parizhskiy Vestnik (the journal of the Russian community in German-occupied France), and Novoe Slovo (the journal of the Russian emigration in the Third Reich since 1933).

At the beginning of 1941, Alekhine wrote a series of articles under the general title “Jewish and Aryan Chess”, which were published from March to July in German newspapers published in France and the Netherlands – Pariser Zeitung and Die Deutsche Zeitung in den Niederlanden, and then reprinted in the Deutsche Schachzeitung. This series of articles had the subtitle – “A psychological study of world chess champion Alekhine, based on chess experience, showing the lack of conceptual strength and courage among Jews.”

Their main idea was to contrast the offensive Aryan style of play with the defensive Jewish one, based on waiting for the opponent’s mistakes. Here are some excerpts from them:

What actually is Jewish chess and what is the concept of Jewish chess? This question is easy to answer: 1. Material gain at all costs. 2. Adaptation. Adaptation taken to the extreme, which seeks to exclude the slightest possibility of potential danger and pushes through the idea (if one can even use the word “idea” here) of defense as such. With this idea, which in any kind of struggle is tantamount to suicide, Jewish chess, in the light of the real future, dug its own grave.

Are Jews a nation particularly talented at chess? Having thirty years of experience behind me, I dare to answer this question as follows: yes, Jews have the highest ability to use their intelligence and practical acumen in chess. But there has never been a Jew who was a true chess artist.

During the return match with Euwe in 1937, the collective chess Jewry was again excited. Most of the Jewish masters mentioned in this review were present as reporters, coaches and seconds on Euwe’s side. By the beginning of the second match, I could no longer deceive myself: I was fighting not with Euwe, but with the united chess Jewry, and my decisive victory (10: 4) was a triumph over the Jewish conspiracy.

Alekhine cited, among others, Chigorin, Bogolyubov and Capablanca as examples of Aryan chess players, and Steinitz and Lasker as examples of Jewish ones. In an interview with the Spanish press in September 1941 before leaving for Munich for the European Chess Tournament, Alekhine stated that his series of articles was the first attempt in history to examine chess from a racial point of view. In another, he mentioned his intention to give a series of lectures on Aryan and Jewish chess. When asked about the chess players he most revered, he answered, in particular: “I will especially note the greatness of Capablanca, who was called upon to overthrow the Jew Lasker from the world chess throne.”

At the Munich European Chess Tournament in September 1941, in which Alekhine participated as a representative of Vichy France, his table was decorated with a swastika flag. In addition, Alekhine gave simultaneous playing sessions for Wehrmacht officers several times. He was especially patronized by the great chess lover Dr. Hans Frank, the Governor-General of occupied Poland, with whom Alekhine also played several games. In 1942-1943. his main place of residence was Prague. From the end of 1943, Alekhine lived mainly in Spain and Portugal, taking part in chess tournaments there as a representative of the Third Reich.

The end of World War II found Alekhine in Spain, from where he moved to Estoril, Portugal, in January 1946. In chess circles, a boycott and persecution campaign was launched against him for his collaboration with the Germans, but in February 1946 he received a challenge from Botvinnik to a match scheduled before the war and agreed. On March 23, 1946, the FIDE executive committee decided to hold the Alekhine-Botvinnik match in London in August of the same year, but the next morning Alekhine was found dead in his hotel room. According to the official medical report, he died of asphyxia caused by a piece of steak, while a number of newspapers listed the cause of death as angina or heart failure. Thus ended the path of the outstanding Russian chess player and theorist Alexander Alekhine.