In late March 1938, around ten weeks before the World Cup was due to begin, the Austrian soccer federation sent a telegram to FIFA. “Sorry to cancel World Cup enrolment,” it read. “Austrian football federation is gone.” It wasn’t just the soccer federation.

On July 25, 1934, Dollfuß was assassinated by Austrian Nazis as part of a failed putsch. Unifying the two countries was a long-term goal for Hitler, who had been born in Braunau am Inn, just south of the border, and grew up in Linz and Vienna, but it became more pressing after April 1937 when Hermann Göring, who was in charge of the Four Year Plan to get Germany ready for a European war by 1940, told senior ministers there was a need to annex Austria so Germany could take control of its steel production.

Within a few months, Hitler had accepted that Austria would have to be taken by force, and at the beginning of 1938, he stepped up the propaganda campaign, calling ever more vociferously for a union.

That left just two candidates for FIFA to decide between at the congress in Berlin: Germany and France.

At the same time, Austrian Nazis plotted a coup, plans for which were uncovered in a raid on their headquarters on January 25. On February 12, the Austrian chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg met Hitler and agreed to appoint various Nazi figures to key posts in exchange for Hitler reaffirming Austrian sovereignty.

Just eight days later, though, Hitler gave a speech to the Reichstag in which he insisted that “the German Reich is no longer willing to tolerate the suppression of ten million Germans across its borders.” Clearly aimed at Germans living in Austria and Czechoslovakia, it was broadcast by Austrian radio and further heightened tensions. Schuschnigg was concerned enough to do deals with both the Socialists and the Social Democrats, effectively ending the oneparty system in return for their support in a plebiscite on Austrian independence, which he announced would be held on March 13.

Insisting the vote would be subject to fraud, Hitler said that Germany would not accept the result. On March 11, he issued an ultimatum, threatening an invasion unless power was handed to Austrian Nazis. Schuschnigg resigned, accepted Hitler’s terms to avoid the shedding of Bruderblut, and, on March 12, German troops marched into Austria.

Not only did they face no opposition, but they were also actively welcomed by enthusiastic crowds. On March 15, in the Heldenplatz in Vienna, Hitler announced the absorption of Austria into the German Reich.

Argentina, assuming the World Cup would alternate between Europe and South America, thought it would host the 1938 tournament. With the Continent in turmoil, though, there was even less appetite for transatlantic travel on the part of the European powers than there had been in 1930. When Argentina then withdrew from the tournament, there were riots outside the Argentine Football Association (AFA) offices in Buenos Aires.

That left just two candidates for FIFA to decide between at the congress in Berlin: Germany and France. Recognizing both the contribution of Jules Rimet to the World Cup and the fact that France was unlikely to exploit the tournament as Italy had in 1934, the congress voted 19–4 in France’s favor. The Berlin Olympics, which began two days later, gave a clear indication of the spectacle they’d managed to avoid.

But the political tensions inevitably had an impact. Spain, embroiled in civil war, did not enter. Japan pulled out following its invasion of China, leaving the Dutch East Indies to take the sole Asian berth.

No World Cup has been less about the self-aggrandizement of the hosts and yet no World Cup has ever been so overtly political as the 1938 tournament.

There were other withdrawals. Six Central and North American teams scratched, leaving Cuba to qualify. Egypt, which was part of European qualifying, objected to being asked to play during Ramadan, giving Romania a walkover. The Romanians, to widespread shock, then lost in the first round to Cuba, which was hammered 8–0 in the quarterfinal by Sweden. And the British nations, as ever, remained aloof, England rejecting a late offer to step in for Austria. So the World Cup went ahead with fifteen teams, twelve of them European.

Although French administrators had played a leading role in the foundation of FIFA and the establishment of the World Cup, there was no great soccer culture in France. The first clubs had been founded by British expats in the late nineteenth century, and though there were French devotees, notably Rimet, it was only after troops were exposed to the game in the trenches in the First World War that soccer gained anything approaching a widespread following. Major work had to be done to bring the infrastructure to the required level.

No World Cup has been less about the self-aggrandizement of the hosts and yet no World Cup has ever been so overtly political as the 1938 tournament, as exiles from Germany and Italy took the opportunity to make very public their opposition to fascism. It was almost midnight when the world champion Italy arrived in Marseille, but between three thousand and four thousand protesters had gathered at the station to greet the team with boos and jeers.

Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia in 1935 and subsequent need for military support from Germany pushed Italy into a closer alliance with Hitler that, in turn, led to the imposition of anti-Jewish legislation. Pozzo absented himself from the directorate of the federation when it voted unanimously to expel “non-Aryan” members in November 1938, making the excuse that he had a preexisting commitment to coach the regional team of Lombardy before a friendly against Alsace.

Slowly, his team began to take shape.

Alongside his friendships with Hugo Meisl and the Inter and Bologna coach Árpád Weisz, who died at Auschwitz, that can be taken as evidence that he disapproved of the prevailing anti-Semitic mood but equally that he felt powerless to do anything about it beyond making sure he didn’t offer any overt endorsement.

The political situation had other consequences with a number of oriundi, most notably Enrique Guaita, returning to South America for fear of being called up to fight in Abyssinia. Raimondo Orsi had already gone back to Argentina to look after his sick mother, and Luis Monti had retired. Italy’s squad in 1934 had been extremely experienced; Pozzo knew that there would have to be a complete overhaul for 1938.

There were changes in his life too. In November 1934, Italy traveled to London to play England, a meeting of the world champion and the team that believed itself the best in the world.

It was a violent, unsatisfactory affair: Monti broke a bone in his foot in the second minute and England scored three times in the quarter of an hour that followed, but after two England players also suffered broken bones, Italy came back in the second half and lost only 3– 2.

Two days before the game, Pozzo had sat in his room at the Metropole Hotel and written to his second wife, Concetta Longo, whom he had married in 1930 and with whom he had a child, to tell her that he no longer loved her. They separated the following year, but there was no possibility of divorce.

The evolution of his team went well. Italy won the Central European International Cup for a second time in 1935 and, with what was essentially a student team, claimed Olympic gold in 1936. Slowly, his team began to take shape.

Three players from his Olympic side became regulars: the Juventus fullbacks Alfredo Foni and Pietro Rava, and the Inter left half Ugo Locatelli.

Aldo Olivieri, il Gatto Magico (the Magic Cat), who had survived a fractured skull that required drilling to save his life and left him with chronic headaches, became the first-choice goalkeeper. His agility had been sharpened, it was said, by the ballet lessons imposed by his coach at Lucchese, Ernő Erbstein—like Weisz, one of the many Hungarian Jews who shaped Italian football between the early 1920s and the imposition of the Nuremberg Laws in 1938.

Gino Colaussi took Orsi’s place on the left wing and the prolific and versatile Lazio forward Silvio Piola came in at center forward. Only two players played in both the 1934 and 1938 finals, the inside forwards Giovanni Ferrari and the great Giuseppe Meazza.

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Excerpted from The Power and the Glory by Jonathan Wilson, copyright © 2025 by Jonathan Wilson.  Used with permission of Bold Type Books, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.