The accession of Germany and the Soviet Union to FIDE

The first lecture on Saturday was given by Prof. Frank Hoffmeister on the three accessions of the German Chess Federation to FIDE: as “Deutscher Schachbund”, delayed in 1926 after the foundation of FIDE because of the First World War, a second time in 1938 as the Greater German Chess Federation whose automatic succession to the DSB was contested in FIDE because of the Aryan Paragraph, and a third time in 1950 with two federations (one in West-Germany after hesitant denazification and one in East-Germany after Soviet take-over).

The second part of the presentation was the admission of the Soviet Union, which only took place in 1947. Hoffmeister showed that the driving motivation was to establish the regime-loyal Botvinnik as world champion. This may also explain that the “Winterthur 6” (i.e. Botvinnik, Smyslov, Keres, Reshevsky, Fine and Euwe, who had been nominated by the FIDE congress) agreed in September 1946 not to play in Prague, where Najdorf won. Despite the earlier agreement that the winner of the Prague agreement would have the right to participate in the next world championship match, the FIDE congress in The Hague in summer 1947 decided otherwise. This decision also paved the way to Soviet accession at the very congress and the promise to hold the championship in 1948 in The Hague and Moscow. As Botvinnik won the tournament in due course, the plan was very successful and constituted the start of Soviet domination of the World Chess Federation. Stefan Löffler added to the topic from an Austrian perspective, underlining the need of the Austrian Federation to accommodate both American and Soviet presence in the country until 1955.