The pre-war Olympiads
The second lecture of the CH&LS General Meeting was given by Matthias Johansson on the subject of the Chess Olympiads before the Second World War. As we can see, these Olympiads were strongly influenced by the political events of this troubled period in history.
Here is an extract from the presentation text for the General Meeting on 13 and 14 September 2024.
In the following presentation, the Swede Matthias Johansson reported very interesting details on the pre-war Olympiads with a special focus on Stockholm 1937. He showed that the amateur character of the tournament was abolished when the United Kingdom accepted to allow professional players as participants. Generally speaking, Hungary dominated the competition with victories from 1926-1928 while the United States conquered three consecutive titles from 1931-1935. In 1936, Nazi Germany organised a team competition in Munich, which was not recognised as a FIDE Olympiad. However, FIDE had allowed its members to participate voluntarily since the German Federation had suspended the Aryan paragraph (which excluded Jewish players in Germany) for the tournament.
In 2022, a photo book by Ferenc Chalupetzky, who was part of the Hungarian delegation in the Munich 1936 Chess Olympiad was published in Hungary. The Hungarian chess historian László Jakobetz turned this valuable testimony into a beautiful book, which was published on the occasion of the 2024 Olympiad. Among other things, it shows the friendly relations between the Hungarians and the Greater German Chess Federation. Hungary won the tournament despite the enormous efforts of the National Socialists, who would have liked to win the gold medal and for this reason had the tournament played on eight boards. Two years later, the Greater German Chess Federation was accepted into FIDE.
Matthias Johansson: Pre-war Olympiads
The presentation as PDF file: