Ajax, the Dutch, the war
Subtitle: the strange tale of soccer during Europe's darkest hour
By: Simon Kuper
Publisher: Nation Books
Published: 2012
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 274
ISBN-13: 9781568587233
Subjects: Ajax (Soccer team); Soccer; Jews; Soccer and war; History
Description: " ... explores the myths of Holland's "Good War" -- the brave nation that hid Anne Frank from the Nazis -- by using the story of soccer in Holland and the Amsterdam club Ajax to puncture the tales that post-war Holland lives by. Through interviews with Resistance fighters, survivors, wartime soccer players and more, Kuper uncovers a history that has been largely ignored. Ranging far beyond the Netherlands and examining the stories of soccer and war in England, German and France, Kuper writes an alternative history of Europe at its darkest hour. He helps change the way we understand ordinary people's experience of the war in Europe." -- Back cover.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 259-264) and index.
Table of contents: title: L.; title: Orange Soldiers -- -- 2.; title: A Sunday Before the War -- -- 3.; title: A Friendly Salute: International Football in the 1930s -- -- 4.; title: The Warm Back of Eddy Hamel: an American in Amsterdam and Birkenau -- -- 5.; title: The Lost Memories of Meijer Stad -- -- 6.; title: Sparta: A Football Club in Wartime -- -- 7.; title: Boom: The Rise of Football in the Occupied Netherlands -- -- 8.; title: Strange Lies: Ajax, World War II and P. G. Wodehouse -- -- 9.; title: Captain of France, Collaborator in Gorcum: Soccer and the Annals of Resistance -- -- 10.; title: The Netherlands Was Better Than the Rest -- -- 11.; title: Soldier Heroes: British and German Soccer in the War (and Long After) -- -- 12.; title: Of Bunkers and Cigars: The Holocaust and the Making of the Great Ajax -- -- 13.; title: The Most Popular Team in Israel -- -- 14.; title: Football Songs of the Netherlands ---- Disneytown and the Secret Monuments.