Product Description

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 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 World War II a moment of extraordinary poignancy and complex bravery, of which the cliche is demonstrably true: football is not a matter of life or death; it's much more important than that.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #207899 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

Review
'Just as you think you've read every good book about the war another one is published!I cannot help but think that it would seem wrong to try and forget what happened during the last war until all stories such as this one have been told.' Philip Kerr, Sunday Times 'This is clearly a labour of love.' Independent

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

Customer Reviews

Frustrating
For the first 200 of the 250 pages this is a great book, giving a real human dimension to the harshness of life in both pre-war and occupied Kiev. Although I appreciate that research must have been difficult, it is still deeply frustrating that the story of FC Start's players builds up layer upon layer of detail, only to suddenly run out of steam and out of facts in the final very rushed 50 pages.

I've never finished a book with so many unanswered questions - about people and events initially described in fine detail, then set aside and dropped. How did half of the team manage to survive the death camp at Sirets? (According to Wikipedia there was a revolt at the end of its days in which 15 prisoners escaped, and the remaining 300 were executed). Was the kommandant ever caught? Did all those players and relatives who escaped the occupation survive the war? (for example Trusevich's wife and child, who are periodically mentioned throughout, or Konstantin Shchegotsky, who is the main character in the first 90 pages) Even writing that he doesn't know would be something, instead of making it feel like a chapter or two is simply missing.

So, for the most part an excellent read, but a shame that it doesn't feel finished...

Recommendation: Read this book!
I just finished reading this incredible book called : Dynamo, Defending the honour of Kiev. It's the true story about FC Start, a football team created in Kiev during the second world war after the capture of the city by the Nazis. It consisted mainly from ex-Dynamo players with some additions of Lokomotiv players. They started playing against teams made by the new rulers of the city, facist-Ukrainians and German and allied soldiers. They finished the 'championship' unbeaten and then where challenged to play against the Flakelf a team composed by well-trained, well-fed german soldiers, the elite of the SS army. They knew that beating this team would have consequences... But in front of an enthusiastic crowd of poor-morale Ukrainians they played... and humiliated the germans with a 5-3 victory. Then they were all arrested and placed in a concentrations camp. 4 of them died in there. It's a truely tragic story.... You should all read that and realise that football is not only a game... It's more than that....

Good Account: Great Story
A little thin perhaps, but nonetheless an inspiring account of resistance in the most trying of cicumstances. The story of FC Start, mythologised by the leadership of the USSR, is told in full for the first time here, from the 1941 battle for Kiev, through a harrowing account of life in the city, to the liberation and the comeback of Dynamo Kiev after the war. In between, we are told how Start, a team composed mainly of ex-Dynamo players, played a heroic series of games against axis teams in Kiev, winning all of them.
Thought-provoking and inspiring, if a tiny bit thin.