Book 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 cliché is demonstrably true: football is not a matter of life
or death; it's much more important than that. '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 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.
