Product Description

In 1942 at the centre point of the Second World War an extraordinary event took place not on the battlefield but in a municipal stadium in Kiev. A match was arranged between a German Luftwaffe side and a team of impoverished Kievans from a local bakery - Start FC - that became the subject of legend. This is the true story of courage, team loyalty and fortitude in the face of the most brutal oppression the world had ever seen. When Hitler initiated Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, he caught the Soviet Union completely by surprise. At breathtaking speed his armies swept East, slaughtering the ill-prepared Soviet forces. His greatest military gains of the entire Second World War were made in a few short months, and the largest single country that he conquered was the Ukraine, roughly the size of France. Ukraine's capital, Kiev, was circled, assaulted and overrun, and among the city's defenders who were captured and incarcerated were many of the members of the sparkling 1939 Dynamo Kiev football team, arguably the best in Europe before the war . Captured Kiev was a starving city whose population were deported in vast numbers as slave labour. However one man determined to save not just the surviving players from the Dynamo side but other athletes. He offered them work, shelter and, most valuable, bread, as workers in his bakery. Inspired by the charismatic goalkeeper Trusevich, the Dynamo side was re-formed as Start FC and a series of fixtures was arranged, all of which the team win handsomely. To such an extent that they inspired Kievan spirits. The final fixture against the Luftwaffe was agreed by the German authorities: a well-fed team from the Fatherland would vanquish the upstart Ukrainians, especially if the game was refereed by an SS officer. The match is an allegory of resistance; its consequences are brutal. Andy Dougan has discovered the truth behind a legendary encounter, sorting fact from fiction and restoring to the centre of WW2 a moment of extraordinary poignancy and complex bravery, of which the clichi is demonstrably true: football is not a matter of life or death; it's much more important than that.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #105682 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Nazi occupation of Kiev during World War II was a singularly brutal period in the history of the Ukraine. It is hard to imagine how the outcome of a football match could matter to a people who lived under constant threat of starvation, disease and death--but it did. In Dynamo--Defending the Honour of Kiev, journalist Andy Dougan tells the extraordinary story of how the players of Ukranian club side Dynamo Kiev--renamed FC Start--were saved from exportation to Nazi labour camps and became a beacon of hope for a city under the heel of the jackboot. Their finest hour was to be when a team of malnourished former Kiev stars took to the pitch against a Luftwaffe XI, and sought to deliver the propaganda coup of the war.

Dougan puts this extraordinary match in context, sketching the bloody history of the region, and reflecting on the roots of a fierce, nationalist spirit which was to express itself in the first half of the 20th century in the face of the totalitarian ideologies and genocidal instincts of both the Soviets and the Nazis. Dynamo became a popular focus of that spirit and its role as an embodiment of Ukrainian pride was never more significant than during the Nazi occupation, in face of astonishing brutality:

The Nazis had such institutionalised contempt for their prisoners that on some occasions they did not even consider them worth a bullet. Some sick prisoners who could not work were savagely beaten senseless and buried alive, in the knowledge that if they did regain consciousness they would not have the strength to free themselves from their shallow graves.

But this is no glamourised, Escape To Victory-style account of sporting pluck and stiff upper-lips. As in any chronicle of an occupation, the moral certainties of peacetime sit uneasily with the necessities of survival, and Dougan is an unflinching observer of the reality behind the legend. The result is a moving, challenging book, which will put the importance of your team's next match into perspective. --Alex Hankin

Synopsis
In 1942, at the centre point of World War II, an extraordinary event took place not on the battlefield but in a municipal stadium in Kiev. This is the true story of courage, team loyalty and fortitude in the face of the most brutal oppression the world had ever seen. When Hitler initiated Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, he caught the Soviet Union completely by surprise. At breathtaking speed his armies swept East, slaughtering the ill-prepared Soviet forces. His greatest military gains of the entire war were made in a few short months, and the largest single country that he conquered was the Ukraine, roughly the size of France. Ukraine's capital, Kiev, was circled, assaulted and overrun, and among the city's defenders who were captured and incarcerated were many of the members of the sparkling 1939 Dynamo Kiev football team, argaubly the best in Europe before the war. Captured Kiev was a starving city whose population were deported in vast numbers as slave labour. However one man was determined to save not just the surviving players from the Dynamo side but other athletes as well. He offered them work, shelter and, most valuably, bread, as workers in his bakery.

Inspired by the charismatic goalkeeper Trusevich, the Dynamo side was re-formed as Start FC and a series of fixtures was arranged, all of which the team won handsomely, to such an extent that they inspired Kievan spirits. The final fixture against the Luftwaffe was agreed by the German authorities: a well-fed team from the Fatherland would vanquish the upstart Ukrainians, especially if the game was refereed by an SS officer. The match is an allegory of resistance; its consequences are brutal.

About the Author
Andy Dougan is a writer for the Glasgow Evening Times and the author of six previous biographies, of Martin Scorcese and Robert De Niro amongst others.

Customer Reviews

Football, Soviet history - a perfect combination
I really enjoyed this book. It's a great combination of Ukrainian and Football history. I've never read much about the Russia and the ex-Soviet bloc, but this not only part-filled a gap but opened up a desire to find out more. More of a gap-creator than a gap-filler.

This book tells the history of Ukraine up to and during the 2nd World War. Whilst the main focus of the book is on football, a large part of the book also deals with pre-WWII history and how Ukraine fared during the German occupation. That Ukraine is an incredibly resource rich country has meant that it has been invaded many times and was one of the first countries entered when Hitler went into USSR.

The football side of the book recounts the establishment of the game in Ukraine and Russia and the forming of the Soviet league. It tells the story of Dynamo Kiev, who were one of the first teams to be established in USSR. They were one of the top pre-war teams, but after the abandonment of the league following Hitler's invasion, the team, like most other teams, was broken up.

Then during occupation, a bakery owner and sports-lover employs a number of ex-sports stars at his bakery to keep them in employment and away from trouble. Working at this bakery are the remnants of the Kiev team and players from other teams. To increase morale in Kiev, the occupying German forces allow a league to be formed and this is where the joy of the book comes out. As expected, the bakery team demolish all other other teams, culminating in a game against the Germans which they can't afford to win....

If you love football or Soviet history, or if you want a different type of book to read, this book is worth looking at.

Football against the enemy
Dougan's clear, well-written account delves behind the myth to present the truth about FC Start's brief expression of defiance and solidarity under the yoke of Nazi oppression.

It is a story about the bravery of individuals set against a historical backdrop of great suffering, where cruelty & death were commonplace and every day a battle to survive.

During the early chapters, 'Dynamo' gives a potted history of the Ukraine (a long bloody one of numerous invasions), of Ukrainian football, and the development of Dynamo Kiev and its personalities including the charming Konstantin Shchegotsky. Shchegotsky's prominence in the early chapters - he managed to escape the Nazi encirclement of Kiev - prefigures the bond that would unite the Dynamo players under Nazi occupation. Falsely accused during the Great Terror, none of Shchegotsky's team-mates informed against him including his polar opposite, and fellow striker, Makhinya, a committed Stalinist.

It was a team spirit shown again after the Nazi invasion and subsequent brutal occupation of Kiev with Dynamo players under particular threat as their team had been linked to the secret police.

In an cynical effort to win the hearts and minds of the Kievan people, the Germans policy of "pacification through normalisation" saw the Ukrainians allowed to field football teams but, as Dougan depicts, it became a policy that backfired dramatically on the Germans with FC Start becoming an expression of national solidarity and defiance for the Ukrainian people against the invader.

Dougan details the tension of FC Start's rematch (August 1942)against Flakelf, the German side, such as the sinister message delivered to the FC Start team by the SS referee before the match and their defiant refusal to perform the Nazi salute. As a consequence, the team did not celebrate their victory as they only knew too well its likely outcome.

Dougan separates truth from legend - he reveals that one of the team incarcerated in Siretz, the notorious death camp, informed against his colleagues - to present a fascinating story of men defying brutal occupiers and expressing themselves as footballers.

My main criticism of the book echoes a previous review. Too little information is given about the fates of too many of the personalities in the story like the vicious Siretz commandant, Paul Radomsky, or of Nikolai Trusevich's Jewish wife and child. We never learn if they survived and in this sense, the account of FC Start ends rather too abruptly. There are also a lack of photographs such of as the granite monument outside the Dynamo stadium dedicated to the four players murdered by the Nazis .

Fine football book
I think that many people have heard part of this tale, at least the more popular version: the Ukranian footballers who in Nazi-occupied Kiev defied the Wehrmacht in what was to be a friendly football match they were supposed to lose, and died for it. Much of the myth around the legendary side Dynamo Kiev is built up on this. Andy Dougan largely follows the story; he tries to demystify the myth of the heroic players who defied all odds for their love of the game; most were men trying to survive a war, and had been working at a bakery managed by a sports-crazed Ukranian, who decided to make a football team from all the former stars to play in a football tournament set up by the German occupiers.
The team outperformed all, even humiliating a German side. But that is where the story somehow questions whether the team actually was torn apart because of that victory: many of the players continued in Kiev, some survived the war, and some were sent to Siretz, a prisoner camp known for its barbarism on the outskirts of Kiev. Three of the great players of Dynamo Kiev were executed at Siretz, a part so well described in the book that one feels the grueling suffering the prisoners went through. The ones shot were Ivan Kuzmenko, Alexei Klimenko and the great Nikolai Trusevich, who had been one of the best goalkeepers in the world at the time. And here, Mr. Dougan adds to the legend telling how Trusevich last words were "red sport will never die" and wearing his goalkeeper jersey!
The book is excellent, as it puts the dilemmas of the war into the trivial world of football; how football was seen both as a means to motivate people, and as an outlet for political protest in an environment where life was worthless (this book is interesting to read in conjunction with Simon Kuper's "Ajax, the War and the Dutch", also about the world of football during WWII).
If one is interested in sports, football and history, this is well-worth a read!