Pyrenean Victory  | TheArticle

As the Angel of Death passes over the land, following a similar south to north trajectory as that taken by The Black Death of 1348, scapegoats now, as then, have to be found. In the

fourteenth century guilt was often directed towards the Jewish population. During the current health crisis, blame for the deaths tends to fall on Boris Johnson and the UK government, who

did, or did not, institute the lockdown at the right time, either too early, or too late, according to taste. Another popular scapegoat is the migrant community, in particular illegal

immigrants, displaced persons and refugees, said to be arriving in dinghy loads in the environs of Dover. Nigel Farage was, apparently, even admonished by the police for contravening the

Coronavirus curfew by taking his binoculars on a day trip to the White cliffs, to observe the invasion forces in action.

It is worth recalling, though, that even a reigning World Chess Champion twice found himself in such unenviable circumstances. Alexander Alexandrovitch Alekhine (pictured above), one of the

most brilliant and charismatic figures in the history of the game, was World Chess Champion from 1927 (when he defeated Capablanca) to 1935 and again from 1937 (when he regained the title

from the Dutch Grandmaster Max Euwe) until Alekhine’s death in 1946.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917 Alekhine already cast himself in the role of émigré. There was no way such a free spirit could possibly have existed for long within the intellectual

straitjacket of the fledgling USSR. Alekhine, therefore, found a way to escape to France and start life anew as a chess professional.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, Alekhine was still a resident of France, thus, unfortunately, falling into the hands of the Nazi occupation forces, who quickly recognised the

propaganda value of exploiting the presence of the World Chess Champion.

Indeed, in the early 1940’s Alekhine won some of his most brilliant games and notched up several impressive tournament victories. In these Nazi-run events Alekhine completely outclassed the

great Paul Keres the Estonian Grandmaster who had triumphed at the elite AVRO super-tournament of 1938.

Had Alekhine confined himself to playing chess, all might have been well. Tragically for him, he had also unwisely allowed his name to become associated with widely publicised anti-Semitic

slurs in the Nazi controlled Pariser Zeitung against such eminent Jewish titans of the game as Emanuel Lasker, Aron Nimzowitsch and Samuel Reshevsky. For this reason perhaps, Alekhine had

been denied a visa to America, where a much anticipated rematch for the world title might have been staged between him and his erstwhile victim, Capablanca.

Quite possibly these clumsy articles were forgeries, as he was later to claim, but if so, Alekhine did insufficient at the time to distance himself from them. If, on the other hand, they

were genuine, as many still suspect, it was an entirely superfluous gesture to cultivate favour with his Nazi overlords. The mere fact of Alekhine being World Champion and gracing Nazi

tournaments in Salzburg, Munich, Krakow and Prague with his illustrious presence, would have been quite sufficient for propaganda purposes.

By late 1943, though, it had become clear to Alekhine that the Nazi imperium was tottering and it was time to depart. After turning up late for a chess display against the German officer

corps in Paris, Alekhine departed by train to the Spain of Generalissimo Franco, where a variety of chess events were conceived in his honour. It seems that Alekhine had no trouble passing

from France to Spain, and he arrived in Madrid, pockets bulging with Reichs Marks, which had still retained their value at that time.

For other eminent members of the European intelligentsia, though, crossing the Pyrenees to escape the Nazis was far more of an ordeal. In order to reach Spain by the officially approved

route, it was necessary to hold an exit visa from France, an entry visa to Spain and, on top of all that, a letter of transit. Shades of the movie Casablanca, which describes exactly that

kind of bureaucratic nightmare.

One strangely Quixotic figure, the American Varian Fry, even set himself up as a kind of anti Nazi Scarlet Pimpernel, with an ambitious programme to rescue prominent Europeans from the

Damoclean Swastika. On his list of potential exiles were Andre Gide, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp and Andre Breton, none of whom, as it happened, needed to be rescued, since most of them were

already in New York. Those whom Fry did help to escape included Thomas Mann’s brother and son, Heinrich and Golo, not to mention Franz Werfel, at that time married to the serially

polyandrous Alma Mahler, who also formed part of the exodus.

Apart from visa complications, the fleeing intellectuals were also advised to travel light, since the train journey, across the Pyrenees, usually involved stopping at Cerbère on the French

side of the frontier, before proceeding to the station at Port Bou on the Spanish section of the border.

Alekhine possessed the necessary documents, so his transition in 1943 would have presented no problems to him. Those taking the Cerbère route, who had the required documents, were permitted

to stay in comfort on the train, for the crucial leap from Cerbère to Port Bou. For the group assisted by Fry, things were less simple. Initially the border crossing was controlled by Vichy

French officials, who were quite relaxed about the requisite paperwork. As hostilities progressed, the Nazis took control and escape became that much more arduous.

Alma Mahler, for example, was told to bring one suitcase. She brought twelve, packed with her jewellery and copies of Gustav Mahler’s musical compositions. At Cerbère she was obliged to

detrain, clamber clandestinely over an unguarded small hill, and rejoin the same train with her luggage (guarded by the faithful Fry) at Port Bou.

Others were less fortunate. The German/ Jewish philosopher and essayist Walter Benjamin, made it to the haven of Port Bou, only to be turned back by the border equivalent of the Guardia

Civil. Overnight, unable to face the prospect of deliverance into the hands of the Nazis, who would undoubtedly have sent him to a concentration camp, Benjamin committed suicide by taking a

large dose of morphine. A few tablets were left over and another celebrated (Hungarian) Jewish writer, Arthur Koestler, also attempted to kill himself by ingesting the remainder. These

turned out to be insufficient and Koestler had to wait another four decades before successfully self-terminating. Not long after, Stefan Zweig himself, though in Brazil and in little danger

from the Nazis, would also take the suicide route, writing: “My own power has been expended after years of wandering homeless.”

Koestler it was who, having eventually reached the safe haven offered by the United Kingdom, went on to coin the term “Mimophant” to describe the mercurial Bobby Fischer, Alekhine’s later

successor as World Chess Champion; a Mimophant being a “hybrid species, a cross between a mimosa and an elephant. A member of this species is sensitive like a mimosa where his own feelings

are concerned, and thick-skinned like an elephant trampling over the feelings of others.”

As for Alekhine, his circumstances in the Iberian Peninsula gradually worsened. During the war years, organising chess events was not at the top of the agenda and Alekhine turned to drink.

His results deteriorated, leading to some embarrassing defeats against opponents whom he could normally have thrashed in simultaneous displays.

He ended his days, a tragically displaced person, holed up at The Palace Hotel, Estoril, in the environs of Lisbon, out of money, out of luck and out of opponents, an invitation to the

London 1946 Victory tournament having been rescinded when protests were made concerning his alleged authorship of the anti-Semitic Pariser Zeitung diatribes.

In 1985 I interviewed the long-standing barman at the Palace Hotel, who remembered Alekhine well, asserting that a down at heel World Chess Champion of Franco-Russian background blended

rather well with the international assortment of agents, spies and generally rootless usual suspects who had congregated around Lisbon at that time.

A final lifeline was thrown, when a challenge to Alekhine for the world title was issued by Mikhail Botvinnik, via the Soviet Chess authorities. The British Chess Federation was to be the

host, and it would have been a fascinating clash of ideas. Sadly it was not to be, since Alekhine, the only champion ever to die in possession of the title, choked on a piece of meat and

passed away on the evening of March 25, 1946.

Alekhine was unfortunate in selecting both his enemies and his friends. As a Russian aristocrat, he enraged the nascent but increasingly influential Bolshevik chess fraternity by defecting

to France after the Russian Revolution. Worse, he befriended chess enthusiast Hans Frank, Gauleiter of the Nazi controlled Generalgouvernement of Poland during the occupation, later to be

executed at Nuremberg for war crimes. Finally, Alekhine alienated the post-war Jewish chess community by failing to distance himself with sufficient clarity from the Pariser Zeitung 

fulminations against Jewish chess grandmasters.

I conclude by giving a link to a curiosity, a consultation game played at The Belvedere Palace in Warsaw, against Grandmaster Efim Bogolyubov, twice challenger for the world title,

partnering SS Sturmbannfuhrer Helmuth Pfaffenroth, with Alekhine and the notorious Hans Frank on the winning side. A Pyrrhic victory indeed, since such close associations with prominent

Nazis were later to contribute to the denial of his American visa and his final days of destitution as a refugee in an entirely different kind of Palace.

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