Salute - John Leonard

One sporting image stands out as the most divisive and controversial in English football history: the sight of the England team making the Nazi salute in Berlin on 14 May 1938. This book examines how and why England's footballers made a gesture that would haunt them for the rest of their days.

To Hitler, England's Nazi salute in the Olympic Stadium, Berlin, was a political victory. For the British government, it was passed off as a mere act of sporting courtesy.

Salute explores botched British diplomacy, using sport as propaganda during the 1930s while pretending to do the opposite. Fascist dictators worked as overt and clinical propagandists. The book charts the political flashpoints of the 1930s, as English football established international relations with the fascist states of Italy and Germany. But it includes a tale of redemption: how one of the England players making the Nazi salute then rescued one of the fans watching him, a teenage German-Jewish refugee.