Four years before the start of the second world war,
Germany were invited to play at a club with a large Jewish following
By The Squall, a new magazine from The Blizzard
When it was announced in October 1935 that
England football’s next home match would be against Germany, there were misgivings; when the venue for the match was confirmed as White Hart Lane, home of
Tottenham Hotspur, a club noted for its significant Jewish following, there was consternation. In September that year, Germany’s Nuremberg race laws had prohibited intermarriage and criminalised sexual relations between “Jews” and “persons of German or related blood” effectively turning Jewish Germans into second-class citizens. What was the
Football Association thinking? Not much, was the answer.
There was, it was explained, no underlying malicious intent. The choice of venue had been made on purely utilitarian grounds. Between the wars, England matches were not played at Wembley but at prominent league grounds, almost always in
London.
Arsenal had already hosted three such games and Tottenham one. It was simply Spurs’ turn.