The Death Match

The Death Match is a name given in to a 1942 football match played in Kiev, Ukraine, during the occupation by National Socialist Germany, with a German team losing to an Ukrainian team.

History

Communist propaganda alleged various German interferences with the match as well as that some of the Ukrainian players later were killed as revenge.

Later investigations have debunked the Soviet version. Furthermore, historian Volodymyr Hynda showed that defeats of German teams against local clubs happened regularly. The Ukrainian press, controlled by the Germans, published many reports about these matches. Hynda found information about 150 matches and documented the results of 111 among them: the Ukrainians won 60 matches and lost 36 matches, 15 were draws.

The match has inspired films, books, and articles. Some fictional depictions have changed the match to have occurred in other locations while still depicting the myth of German crimes, notably the 1981 film Escape to Victory.