• During World War II, Joseph Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda, ordered German chess masters to visit hospitals and barracks to play exhibition chess matches.
• Chess was very popular in the air raid shelters and POV camps.
• Sonja Graf was the ladies woman champion of Germany, but she was not allowed to play on the German chess olympic team by a Nazi edict. She went on to play at large under the banner of "Liberty."
• Many chess masters in England were recruited as codebreakers. Harry Golombek, Stuart Milner-Barry, and Hugh Alexander were on the team which broke the German Enigma code.
• In September 1939, when WW II was broke out, prominent chess players, participants of the 8th Chess Olympiad (Najdorf, Frydman, Stahlberg, Eliskases, Michel, Engels, Becker, Reinhardt, Luckis, Feigins, Czerniak, Rauch, Winz, Gromer, Sulik, Pelikan, Skalička, Raud, Kleinstein, Seitz, de Ronde, Sonja Graf, Paulette Schwartzmann, etc.) had decided to stay permanently in Argentina.
• Reuben Fine spent World War II as a translator (he spoke 7 languages) and worked on mathematical models to predict movements of enemy submarines.
• Alexander Alekhine was supposed to play a title match with Paul Keres, but World War II broke out. Alekhine and Keres played both in 1942 at Salzburg and Munich, and in 1943 at Prague and Salzburg.
• After World War II, world champion Alexander Alekhine was not invited to chess tournaments because of his alleged Nazi affiliation.
• Many notable masters played in chess tournaments in Nazi ruled countries. Some of them even seemed to support the Nazi politics, e.g. Alexander Alekhine and Efim Bogoljubow. The Latvian master Karlis Ozols was accused to have taken part in atrocities during World War II. After the war, he fled to Australia. He became Australian champion in 1958. Ozols was a senior officer in the pro-Nazi Latvian militia.
• One of the world's strongest chess players was a Latvian named Vladimirs Petrovs. During World War II, the Soviets occupied Latvia (1940-1941 and again from 1944 to 1990). Petrovs was critical of a Communistic regime, so in 1942 he was sent to a forced labor camp in Vorkuta and never returned (died in 1943).
• Ossip Weinstein was a top Russian master and editor of the Soviet chess magazine Shakmatny Listok before World War II. He became a civilian casualty of the German bombardment of Leningrad during World War II.
• Ossip Bernstein (UKR, FRA) was exiled in Paris, only to be driven out to Spain by the German nazists.
• Akiba Rubinstein (POL) was put in an insane asylum in Belgium during World War II to protect him from the German nazists.
• Miguel Najdorf's (POL, ARG) entire family died in German concentration camps during World War II.
• During World War II, Savielly Tartakower (POL) escaped the German occupation in France and served as a Lieutenant Colonel (Cartier) under Charles de Gaulle. After World War II, he was granted French citizenship.
• When World War II broke out, George Koltanowski of Belgium was in Central America. He then came to the US and became a US citizen. Many of his family members died in concentration camps.
• Rashid Nezhmetdinov was a decorated veteran of World War II and grandmaster strength.
• Walter Korn fled Czechoslovakia during World War II, and came to the USA.
• Larry Evans learned chess from his older brother. His brother was later killed in action as a bomber crew member during World War II.
• World women's chess champion Vera Menchik died in 1944 at the age of 38 during a German bombing raid on the city of London. Her sister Olga also died from the bombing raid.
• During World War II, Alexander Kotov improved mortar and was awarded the Order of Lenin for his work.
• Top Serbian chess master Bora Kostic spent some time in a German concentration camp.
• Hungarian champion László Szabó survived a forced labor camp during World War II, but was still not invited to chess tournaments after World War II.
• Alexander Ilyin-Zhenevsky was killed during the siege of Leningrad. He was on a barge when a shell struck. He was the only one killed in the incident.
• In 1940 David Przepiorka, a Polish master, died in a mass execution outside Warsaw.
• In 1941 Karel Treybal, one of the strongest Czech players of his period, was executed by the Nazis in Prague.
• In 1942 Ilya Rabinovich, Leonid Kubbel, and Alexei Troitzky starved to death in the siege of Leningrad.
• Klaus Junge was an officer in the 12 SS-battalion defending Hamburg. In April 1945 when he was asked to surrender, he stood up, shouted "Sieg Heil!" and was shot.
• Teodor Regedzinski (1894-1954), one of the strongest Polish players, during WWII worked in III Reich (Germany, General Gouvernment) as an interpreter and played, under name Reger, in chess tournaments (among others in Bad Oeynhausen (7th GER-ch. 1940), in Krakow/Warsaw (2nd GG-ch. 1941). After war he was arrested (a forced labor camp) in Poland for 4 years, then he played again (Katowice POL-ch. 1952).
• Prominent chess players lost during World War II included Isaak Appel, Zoltan von Balla, Sergey Belavenets (killed in action in Novgorod), Gunnar Friedemann, Henryk Friedman, Achilles Frydman, Edward Gerstenfeld, Alexander Ilyin-Zhenevsky, Klaus Junge, Jakub Kolski, Leon Kremer, Arvid Kubbel, Leonid Kubbel, Salo Landau, Moshe Lowekl, Moshe Lowtzky, Olga Menchik, Vera Menchik, Vladimirs Petrovs, Karol Piltz, Henryk Pogoriely, David Przepiorka, Ilya Rabinovich, Ilmar Raud, Vsevolod Rauzer, Nikolai Riumin, Vladimir Silich, Endre (Andreas) Steiner, Mark Stolberg, Abram Szpiro, Karel Treybal, Alexei Troitzky, Pavel Votruba, Ossip Weinstein, Heinrich Wolf.
• During World War II, prominent chess players that died included Emanuel Lasker, Jose Capablanca, Rudolf Spielmann, and Frank Marshall.

Sources

• Bill Wall

Chess