Some people think football is a matter of life and death, I assure you, it’s much more serious than that. Dubbed Der Wunder von Bern,…
Some people think football is a matter of life and death, I assure you, it’s much more serious than that.
Dubbed Der Wunder von Bern, the match was a clash between pre-tournament favourites and a team of underdogs that the Hungarian side had trounced 8-3 in an earlier match held in the group stage.
West Germany won the match 3-2.
The aftermath of the war had been a horrific episode in German history. Defeat did not end with the people being subjected to inevitable physical and material privations of what came to be known as “Zero Hour”. Widespread anti-German sentiment meant that they suffered pogroms across the continent, while German females were victims of mass rapes conducted by soldiers of the Red Army. They were also subjected to sexual abuse and exploitation by occupying allied soldiers. Across Europe, ethnic Germans had been ejected from lands on which they were long settled such as East Prussia, the Sudetenland and Volga-Land.
As Joachim Fest the German historian put it, the game marked the “true birth of the country.”
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