Game, set and Nazis

YOU'LL REMEMBER that Fred Perry was the last Brit to win Wimbledon and there's nothing Andy Murray can do to change that now, not for another year at any rate. If you've been keeping up with the constant references you'll also know that it was in the championships of 1936 that Perry won his third and last Wimbledon, when he did his opponent not so much in straight sets but in cold blood, 6-1, 6-1, 6-0.

The victim was a German who'd suffered a bump in a taxi on the way to the final, but that's not mentioned so much. His name was Gottfried von Cramm. Full name: Baron Gottfried Alexander Maximilian Walter Kurt von Cramm. He was the third of seven sons born into nobility in a castle in Lower Saxony. He was married to, and divorced from, one of the richest women on earth. He was drafted into the army and won the Iron Cross medal for bravery when fighting in Moscow. He was groomed as a diplomat but he wanted to be a tennis player. He was a man of extraordinary grace on a court and enormous principle off it. He won two French Open finals. Perry, Don Budge of America and Von Cramm were the holy trinity for a period.

He was blond of hair and green of eyes. To look at him with his upright gait and his slicked back hair he was the archetypal Aryan. Looks were deceptive in this case. In that last final with Perry, Joachin von Ribbentrop, subservient to Adolf Hitler to the day he was hanged, was watching from the stand. From von Ribbentrop right up to the Fuhrer himself, they all tried to get Von Cramm to sign up to the Nazi party.

He refused. He called Hitler a housepainter.

The Nazis didn't give up. Von Cramm was such a beloved figure in Germany and so well respected everywhere tennis was played, his endorsement was important. To win him over, Field Marshal Hermann Goering tore up all the mortgages held on Von Cramm property by Jewish banks.

"Now you are free," smiled Goering.

"All the more reason for me not to join your party," replied Von Cramm.

Another thing about Von Cramm. According to his family, he was on the periphery of one of the plots to kill Hitler, not a central figure, but certainly in touch with some of the leading members of the Resistance. Almost 5,000 conspirators were executed. The Von Cramm family say he was spared partly because of his profile and also because he was a tennis pal of King Gustav of Sweden. Hitler wanted to do business with Sweden.

Oh, one more thing. Von Cramm was homosexual. In 1931 he had fallen for a Jewish actor, Manasse Herbst, and they were together for three years before they split. Herbst blackmailed him and in 1938, just a year after he competed in the finals at Wimbledon and at the US Open, the courts jailed him. The newspapers reported the judge's summation as Von Cramm having sought a "perverse compensation for an unhappy married life." He was guilty of moral delinquency.

Sentenced to a year at Lehrterstrasse prison in Berlin, Von Cramm suspected, and the world of tennis agreed, that this was the Nazi party's revenge for him shunning them.

VON CRAMM was one of the most elegant tennis players there's ever been, turning up on court in striped blazers and pressed flannel trousers with not a hair out of place and a smile for everybody. Between 1934 and 1937 he played in eight of what we would now call Grand Slam events and made the final in seven of them.

His battles with Perry were legend. The Englishman beat him in the finals of the French and at Wimbledon in 1935, Von Cramm won the French in five sets in '36 but Perry retaliated by beating him at Wimbledon later that year.

Perry knew that Von Cramm was struggling with a leg knock in that '36 match. As Jon Henderson writes in The Last Champion: The Life of Fred Perry, the Englishman was tipped off by an indiscreet masseur, the masseur "even adding that the challenger (Von Cramm] would be most inconvenienced when reaching to his right. Under the guidance of the faithful Pop Summers, the Perry camp had already been doing intelligence work on Von Cramm. Waiters, chambermaids and other helpers at the Savoy, where the German was staying, were among a network of spies who reported back on everything from what he ate to how he slept."

Perry had something else up his sleeve. Or, to be more precise, in his pocket. Von Cramm's sartorial elegance was an obsession and Perry thought of an incredibly basic but wholly successful psychological ploy to distract him. He simply put his hand into the pocket of his own trousers and pulled out the lining and left it hanging there. He was sure that the sight of a pair of slacks being treated with such cavalier disrespect would annoy Von Cramm no end.

If Wimbledon was the great dream for Von Cramm, the Davis Cup was more important to the Fhrer. In 1936, Germany had a chance to upstage the Americans and opportunities like that almost had the attention of the Third Reich. Von Cramm wanted to win, too. But he wasn't prepared to compromise his principles.

The nations were level by the time the doubles came around, Wilmer Allison and John Van Ryn were up against Von Cramm and Kai Lund. In the fifth set, the Germans had match point. Von Cramm and Lund both went for a shot simultaneously, Lund getting there a fraction early and hammering home the winner.

What a victory for the Fatherland!

Von Cramm didn't move. He just raised his hand to attract the attention of the umpire and said that Lund's winner had brushed off his racket. It was a fault. The point was the Americans' by right. They played on. And the Americans won 8-6 in the fifth. From there they took the tie easily.

Heinrich Kleinschroth, the German captain, went crazy at Von Cramm. "You've disgraced your country!" he shouted. The baron was dispassionate in his response.

"When I chose tennis as a young man," he said, "I chose it because it was a gentleman's game, and that's the way I've played it ever since I picked up my first racket. Do you think that I would sleep tonight knowing that the ball had touched my racket without my saying so? Never, because I would be violating every principle I think this game stands for. On the contrary, I don't think I'm letting the German people down. As a matter of fact, I think I'm doing them credit."

Von Cramm's sportsmanship did nothing for the Nazi party. But they'd have their revenge soon enough.

When Perry turned professional the following year he was excluded from Wimbledon so the championship came down to two men; Von Cramm and Budge, the son of a Glaswegian who played for Rangers in his youth before emigrating to America. They met in the final, Budge winning in straight sets.

When Budge left the amateur ranks, he too was excluded from playing at SW19. At last it looked certain that Von Cramm would take the elusive Wimbledon title. At that point his past caught up with him.

Von Cramm and another star player, Henner Henkel, went on a world tour later in 1937, the terms of which were set by the National Socialists. They were to promote Germany while they were away. Henkel did, for he was a believer in the government. (He was later killed in the Battle of Stalingrad). Von Cramm lauded the country and its people but criticised those in power. Word got back to Berlin – via Henkel, it was suspected.

When Von Cramm returned home the Gestapo came for him. He was charged with "sex irregularities" and duly sentenced to a year in prison. Many top American athletes signed a petition of support for him, Joe DiMaggio among them. The Nazis weren't listening. He served five months and upon his release he went to live in Sweden, from where he launched his next bid for Wimbledon.

In 1939 there didn't look like anybody who could stop him. Budge had turned pro so he was out of the picture along with Perry. Bobby Riggs looked like his only danger but the German always had Riggs' number. The American was not in Von Cramm's class. Proof of that came at Queen's Club where Von Cramm slaughtered Riggs 6-0, 6-1 in the semis. The shame of it was that Wimbledon would not allow him in the gate in '39. He was a convicted felon and nobody with a criminal record was allowed to enter the tournament. In his lamentable absence, Riggs won the title.

After the war, Von Cramm continued to play. He won German national titles in 1948 and 1949 and in 1951 at the age of 42 he returned to Wimbledon. He lost in the first round against a young gun but only after pushing him to 9-7 in the opening set.

Von Cramm married the Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton, who'd been married five times before (to two princes, a count, the playboy Dominican Republic motor racing driver Porfirio Rubirosa and the Hollywood superstar Cary Grant). Hutton was addicted to drugs and alcohol. Von Cramm didn't really want to marry her. But he did want to save her. They divorced after five years.

His business empire saw Von Cramm travel the world, Egypt becoming more of a regular stop as the 1970s progressed. It was there where he made his new life and there where it came to an end, on the road to Cairo in the autumn of '76. His car hit a truck and he died in the ambulance.

Nine years later a German won Wimbledon. Boris Becker said later that it was cool to win because Germany never had a tennis idol before. It was July 7. Von Cramm would have been 76. On this coming Tuesday he would have been 100. He's worth remembering.

1936 v 2009

PRIZE MONEY

This year, the winner will take home 850,000. Prize money wasn't introduced until 1968.

THE RACKETS

These days, players use frames from graphite, carbon and titanium with synthetic strings. Back then, it was laminated wooden frames with cat gut.

THE KIT

All whites still reign at SW19 but in 1936 it was trousers and shirts. Now it's any range of upper-body apparel, and of course, shorts.