This just about sums up how big the fight between Louis and Schmeling actually was. It was so much more then then USA vs Nazi Germany, Capitalism vs Fascism or any of that. It was really Humanity vs Nazi Germany. It's a shame that a good guy like Schmelling had to be the representitive for these terrible things but even he said that in hindsight it was a good thing he lost.

It's an excerpt from a Humanities article from July 1, 2004 about the fight. You want the whole fight just tell me because it is a really nice piece.

"...The fight was broadcast in four languages-English, German, Portuguese, and Spanish. In Germany, soldiers woke up at 3 a.m. to listen. Louis staggered Schmeling with twelve blows to the chin in less than a minute and a punch to the body that made him scream. "He screamed like a woman screams. His scream went all through the stadium," remembers Truman Gibson, Louis's attorney. Louis won in two minutes and four seconds. Fred Morton remembers himself as a young Jewish boy in Austria, hearing the fight with his father and cheering for Schmeling's defeat: "For the first time there was an inkling that Hitler might somehow be stopped."..."


In November of 06 the radio broadcast was put in the National Recording Registry to be preserved forever. The registry said that 60 million American radios were tuned into the fight. That's at least half the population of America at the time, and that's just if each person had their own radio. So in all likelyhood, just about everybody in America heard the call for this one. I would have hated to have been alive for the war but I would give anything to watch that fight live.