Football Through Two World Wars & Postwar Recovery

The History of Football

Chapter 6 · Football Through Two World Wars & Postwar Recovery

This chapter covers real football history at its most human and most political at once — a wartime legend that's been genuinely overstated, two footballers' battalions on opposite sides of the border who paid a real, devastating price, a dictator who turned a tournament into propaganda, and two real postwar shocks that reshaped how the world saw the game.

World War I: A Real Truce, and an Overstated Legend

The Christmas Truce of 1914 genuinely happened — real, documented firsthand testimony describes British and German soldiers meeting between the trenches, shaking hands, and sharing photographs. The famous football match, though, is a real, honest case of popular memory outrunning the evidence.

The organised match is likely a myth — real evidence points to informal, chaotic kickabouts breaking out in a handful of places, with dozens of participants and no fixed rules, not a single famous match with a final score. One soldier recorded that the Germans "wanted to play us at football, but unfortunately we hadn't got one." The photograph most often used as proof of the match was actually taken roughly 1,600 miles away, in Salonika, Greece — a full year later.

The Footballers' Battalions: England and Scotland Both

Real professional footballers enlisted together in genuinely large numbers on both sides of the border. In England, the 17th (Service) Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment — the real "Footballers' Battalion" — formed at Fulham Town Hall in December 1914. Clapton Orient became the first entire Football League club to enlist together; by March 1915, 122 professional footballers had signed up, and roughly 200 in total joined with connections to over sixty clubs. By the war's end, more than 1,500 men who had served with the Footballers' Battalions had died.

McCrae's Battalion — Heart of Midlothian's Own Real, Devastating Loss

Scotland's own parallel is McCrae's Battalion, the 16th (Service) Battalion of the Royal Scots, raised in November 1914 and named after Colonel Sir George McCrae, a former Liberal MP for Edinburgh East — the first of the real "footballers' Pals battalions" of the war. Sixteen Heart of Midlothian players enlisted together, along with 500 supporters and ticket-holders, while Hearts were genuinely leading the Scottish League at the time. Players from Hibernian, Raith Rovers, Falkirk, Dunfermline Athletic, East Fife, and St Bernard's joined too. On 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, Hearts lost several players in a single day — Duncan Currie, Ernest Ellis, Jimmy Hawthorn, Jimmy Morton, James Scott, and Harry Wattie among them. Others died later — Tom Gracie, Jimmy Todd, and George McLay, killed at Passchendaele in 1917. The battalion was inducted into the Scottish Football Hall of Fame in 2014, and a memorial cairn stands at Contalmaison, on the Somme, to this day.

Between the Wars: 1934 as Fascist Propaganda

Italy hosted and won the 1934 World Cup, defeating Czechoslovakia in the final at the Stadio Nazionale del PNF — the National Stadium of the National Fascist Party — in Rome. Benito Mussolini treated the tournament as a genuine propaganda opportunity, pledging over 3 million lira to help secure the hosting rights, backing more than 300,000 promotional posters, and presenting the winning Italian team with a custom-built trophy of his own creation, the Coppa del Duce — physically larger than the official FIFA prize itself.

World War II: The Tournament That Didn't Happen

The scheduled 1942 and 1946 World Cups were both cancelled outright because of the war, leaving a real twelve-year gap between the 1938 tournament in France and the next one, in 1950.

1950: Two Real Postwar Shocks

The "Miracle" of Belo Horizonte: USA 1-0 England, 29 June 1950

England arrived as heavy favourites — professional players from England's own domestic leagues, with a real post-war record of 23 wins, four losses, and three draws. The United States fielded a hastily assembled amateur side that included a dishwasher, two mailmen, a teacher, and a mill worker. Haitian- born forward Joe Gaetjens scored the only goal, and the USA won 1-0 — still remembered as one of the greatest upsets in the sport's own history.

The Maracanazo: Uruguay 2-1 Brazil, 16 July 1950

Brazil, the host nation, needed only a draw in the tournament's real deciding match to win the World Cup for the first time. Uruguay won 2-1 at the Maracanã, in front of an official crowd of 173,850 — still a real World Cup attendance record. The result devastated Brazil: the stadium's own medical officer treated 169 fans, six were hospitalised, and reports at the time described at least one death from shock among listeners following the match on the radio. The defeat is still known in Brazil today as the Maracanazo.

Questions to Sit With

Reflection 1

The Christmas Truce football match has become far more famous than the historical evidence actually supports. Why do you think this particular story, out of everything real that happened during the war, became the one people wanted to remember?

Reflection 2

McCrae's Battalion took an entire winning football team out of competition and into the trenches within months. What does the real, willing scale of that sacrifice suggest about how central football already was to civic identity by 1914 — in Edinburgh and beyond?

Reflection 3

Mussolini used the 1934 World Cup for real, deliberate political purposes. Is a sporting achievement won under those circumstances diminished by the propaganda surrounding it, or does the result on the pitch stand on its own regardless of who exploited it?

Quick Reference — Football Through Two World Wars

  • The 1914 Christmas Truce was real; the famous organised football match is likely an overstated legend, and its "proof" photo is actually from Greece, a year later
  • England's Footballers' Battalion (17th Middlesex) and Scotland's McCrae's Battalion (16th Royal Scots) both saw real, mass footballer enlistment and devastating losses
  • Hearts lost multiple players on the first day of the Somme, 1 July 1916, after 16 players and 500 supporters enlisted together in 1914
  • Mussolini used the 1934 World Cup as real, deliberate fascist propaganda, complete with his own oversized Coppa del Duce trophy
  • No World Cup was held between 1938 and 1950 — a real, twelve-year gap caused by the Second World War
  • 1950 delivered two genuine shocks: the USA's amateur side beating England, and Uruguay's Maracanazo defeat of host Brazil in front of a record crowd

What's Next

Next chapter: Tactical Evolution: South American & European Styles Diverge — how the game's own real, distinct regional playing styles took shape after the war.