And it is this that makes the Trautmann story even more amazing than I was led to believe as a child. In fact, Trautmann was a high-achieving Nazi who fought on the eastern front, embraced Hitler wholeheartedly, and was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class for bravery in battle. Bert, we were told, was different from the Nazis who had made it their mission to wipe out the Jews and the Slavs and the Gypsies and the gays he was the good German.īut the reality was very different. And yet, so close to the war, we could take our tolerance only so far. It was a good decade since he had retired, but he still represented everything that was great about City: bravery beyond the call of duty, tolerance, the new postwar world in which the German god in goal was embraced by one and all as “our Bert”. When I was growing up as a Manchester City fan, learning about Trautmann was a rite of passage.
Hostility towards Germans was, understandably, still high. He joined Manchester City in 1949, only four years after the end of the second world war. But Trautmann’s story is far more remarkable than his broken neck.
