The Death Match

Monument to the Death Match at Dynamo Stadium

The Death Match is a name given in postwar historiography to the football match played in Kiev in Reichskommissariat Ukraine under occupation by Nazi Germany. The Kiev city team Start which represented the city Bread Factory No.1 played several football games in World War II The team was composed mostly of former professional footballers of Dynamo Kyiv and Lokomotyv Kyiv who worked at the factory under the occupation authority.

The game took place on 9 August 1942 at the Kiev city stadium. The Ukrainian team, FC Start, was made up of former footballers who were now required to work at a bread factory by the occupation authority. They played against the German team Flakelf, made up of air defense artillery football players. The final score was Start 5, Flakelf 3. The Soviet government made a great deal of propaganda of the match, claiming that the Germans used soldiers with dogs to keep the audience under control, and that the referee was an SS officer who favored the German team. Allegedly, the Soviet players all wore red in communist solidarity. After the match, according to propaganda, the Soviet players were all murdered by the SS. However, after the fall of the Soviet Union, new investigation called most of these claims into question: the referee was not an SS officer, the Germans played fair, German soldiers with dogs did not keep the audience under control, and while some of the players were indeed murdered by the Germans, they were killed some time after the match, and were not killed specifically as an act of revenge for the match.

A monument to the Death Match was built in 1971 and placed in the entrance of Dynamo Stadium.

The Death Match in "Drang von Osten"

In 2043, German troops used Dynamo Stadium to regroup after their lines were overrun by the Chinese. Two soldiers, Jürgen Sack and Bruno Scheurl, saw an unusual monument. Scheurl, who had some Russian, translated for Sack, explaining the monument was dedicated to the Death Match which took place during the last war.