In the Summer of 1938 Villa toured Germany where they created International headlines by refusing flatly to give the Nazi salute, unlike the England team of the time who had complied with DEMANDS to do so. The England team who played in Berlin lost 6-3 to the German National Team.It was an episode that rekindled pride in British Independence and made Villa many friends. The Incident caused much Embarrassment to the British Government who were trying to appease the German Dictator. In England Villas gesture was generally applauded and made the club many friends.
The next game between the two teams, and the last to be played before World War II, was again in Germany, a friendly at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin on 14 May 1938, played in front of a crowd of 110,000 people. It was the last occasion on which England played against a unified German team until the 1990s. This was the most controversial of all the early encounters between the two teams, as before kick-off the English players were ordered by the Foreign Office to line up and perform a Nazi salute in respect to their hosts. How compliant the players were with this situation has been a matter of debate, with a feature in The Observer in 2001 speculating that they were "perhaps merely indifferent players (who had undoubtedly become more reluctant, to the point of mutiny, by the time the post-war memoirs were published)."[5]A BBC News Online report published in 2003 reported that the salute was calculated to show: "that Germany, which two months earlier had annexed Austria, was not a pariah state. The friendly game effectively helped clear the way for Chamberlain's "Peace for our time" deal with Hitler, which, in turn, led to Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia."[6] England won the match 6–3, but according to German writer Ulrich Linder, author of the book Strikers for Hitler: "To lose to England at the time was nothing unusual because basically everybody lost to [them] at the time. For Hitler the propaganda effect of that game was more important than anything else."
I wonder how many more little gems like this there are out there.
One of our players (can't remember who just now) played in both games. We actually played a stronger team than England did as our opponents were a Germany and Austria XI. First game we were asked to salute and refused. Second game we were told to and did, after a fashion.
According to Chris Nawrat and Steve Hutchings' The Sunday Times Illustrated History of Football, England were determined that Germany should not benefit from the Anschluss in this match and obtained an agreement that the German team would not include any Austrian players on the condition that Aston Villa would play a friendly match the next day against a combined German and Austrian team.
Eric Houghton was a brilliant, hard-shooting winger for Villa and England in the 1930s, an FA Cup-winning manager with the club in the 50s and a director in the 70s. No one laid better claim to the title Mr Aston Villa. But Eric was no Europhile and he hated the Germans with a passion. On the BBC’s wonderful oral history of the game Kicking and Screaming in the 1990s he gleefully told the tale of taking a penalty against German opposition on a Villa tour. “The keeper came off his line and said to me ‘You English pig, you English pig’, trying to put me off. I said ‘You get back on your line Fritz and I shall endeavour to knock your square head into a round one’. And the ball shot just past him on the way in, hit the stanchion then almost got him again as it came out.”
According to this site, the only Villa player of the X1 for the England game was Frank Broome. No mention of Eric Houghton. http://www.englandfootballonline.com/Seas1900-39/1937-38/MS216Ger1938.htmlQuoteAccording to Chris Nawrat and Steve Hutchings' The Sunday Times Illustrated History of Football, England were determined that Germany should not benefit from the Anschluss in this match and obtained an agreement that the German team would not include any Austrian players on the condition that Aston Villa would play a friendly match the next day against a combined German and Austrian team. However, Houghton is mentioned here.http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/aston_villa/article4652386.ece?token=null&offset=84&page=8QuoteEric Houghton was a brilliant, hard-shooting winger for Villa and England in the 1930s, an FA Cup-winning manager with the club in the 50s and a director in the 70s. No one laid better claim to the title Mr Aston Villa. But Eric was no Europhile and he hated the Germans with a passion. On the BBC’s wonderful oral history of the game Kicking and Screaming in the 1990s he gleefully told the tale of taking a penalty against German opposition on a Villa tour. “The keeper came off his line and said to me ‘You English pig, you English pig’, trying to put me off. I said ‘You get back on your line Fritz and I shall endeavour to knock your square head into a round one’. And the ball shot just past him on the way in, hit the stanchion then almost got him again as it came out.”
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Topic: A Little Reminder of When Villa Were The Greatest Club In The World (Read 17206 times)
