Ethics Review: Levy
Rozman (GothamChess) on Alekhine and the Nazis
Welcome to another Ethics Review, where ethics, as it should always be, is number one!
Lionizing collaborators
Today I am reviewing a YouTube video that purports a “historical
deep dive” on world chess champion Alexander Alekhine (1892-1946). I argue below that the video is an egregious
failure, for it unabashedly and enthusiastically celebrates and lionizes someone
who was a widely influential propagandist for the Nazi regime at the
highest levels. In this role, Alekhine befriended and accepted a well-paying job from Hans Frank, a genocidal war criminal.
Why a chess video?
I have written before on chess [1] and my father was heavily
involved, winning the State championship of North Carolina several times. More importantly, the entrepreneurial
attitudes expressed in the video are symptomatic of a larger cultural
problem. The ubiquitous norm in our
social-media era is to prioritize attention: likes and views over what is just and true.
For influencers, who ply the trade of charisma, it is very
tempting to push decency to the side. The
power of persuasion translates into money and fame, reaped from an anonymous,
scattered internet audience. If accumulating
the most clicks becomes the focus, far above, or even to the exclusion, of the humane
norms necessary for social stability, the consequence is a devil’s bargain.
Most important of all --
Never Forget!
The evils of the Nazis should never be
forgotten is an essential, axiomatic moral claim. Nazism should never be downplayed,
normalized, minimized or dangled as ornamental click bait.
“Never Forget” and “Never Again” are mottos on many Holocaust
memorials. The latter originates
from prisoners freed from Buchenwald. Sadly,
instead of what is clearly right, our glitzy culture fixates on sales. Coin and adoration. The result is a primitive level of ethics, buried below an avalanche of logos and commercials, accompanied by moraines of resplendent
barkers, who arrest our attention and broker our trust.
Considerations of right-and-wrong track with the health and compassion of a society,
the overall quality of life. The lower
the level of ethics technology, the more barbaric, greedy and cruel the country. The worst case scenario is might-makes-right under a malignant narcissist, which results in a pyramid of ogres atop a mountain of broken
wings.
Forgotten horrors
Many people are completely uneducated on the horrors of
Hitler, including the delusional, narcissistic, macho toxicity which dragged the
globe into World War 2.
We have forgotten the hate.
The cruelty. The sadistic
bullying and beating of people in the streets.
The shameless, ubiquitous vandalism.
The castigation and mockery. The
raping. The burning of books by jeering,
rabid crowds. The knee-bending pall of fear,
punctuated by spikes of terror. The juif
badges, the consignment of human beings to ghettos, then slave labor and death.
Perhaps we remember the concentration camps and the arid stench from the crematories, but only as plot-twists for the assembly
line of the entertainment industry, where the main goal is adrenal hedonism for
mass consumption.
It can happen again
We must embrace advanced ethics technology [2]. Otherwise, decadence and complacency seduce
and dominate. Without the guardrails of a mature conscience, we walk in a vulnerability of social landscapes prowled by opportunists:
It is all too easy to imagine that the Third Reich was a
bizarre aberration. It’s tempting to
imagine that the Germans were (or are) a uniquely cruel and bloodthirsty
people. But these diagnoses are
dangerously wrong. What’s most
disturbing about the Nazi phenomenon is not that the Nazis were madmen or
monsters. It’s that they were ordinary
human beings.[3]
Who is GothamChess?
Levy Rozman, known as GothamChess, is am influencer with global
status. Since the pandemic, chess has
surged in popularity. As the game expands,
so does the clout of its spokespeople.
In his wikipedia entry, Rozman is given an impressive title:
Often referred to as “The Internet's Chess Teacher,” he
produces content on the online platforms Twitch, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram,
and YouTube.
Rozman began streaming on Twitch in August 2018. His YouTube
channel gained rapid popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic and the release of
The Queen's Gambit in 2020. His YouTube channel became the first chess channel
to surpass one billion views.
A video on Alekhine
About a month ago, Rozman put up a video on Alexander
Alekhine, titled “The Most Notorious Chess Player of All Time.” [4] At the time of this writing, it has approximately
305,000 views. Part of being notorious,
Rozman tells us, is the chess champion’s “alleged” ties with Nazis and authorship of antisemitic newspaper articles, which circulated across Europe.
One problem with this video is that the behaviors in
question are not up for serious debate. Overwhelming evidence is easily available on
the web. Rozman lionizes and celebrates a
man who was highly complicit in the spread of Nazi propaganda on a massive
scale. Calling Alekhine “notorious” is
more than inaccurate. Try monstrous. Diabolical.
As well, Alekhine accepted a well-paying propaganda job arranged
for him by Hans Frank, the leader of occupied Poland. Frank, a chess enthusiast, was responsible
for sending millions of people to concentration camps, such as Auschwitz. He was sentenced for these heinous crimes at the
Nuremberg Trials and hung to death.
In addition to millions of Jews, Frank murdered hundreds of
thousands of Polish citizens. I am going to quote extensively from the US
Holocaust Memorial Museum website. It’s
painful to read, but Nazism must be faced, not swept under the rug:
The Nazis considered Poles to be racially inferior. Following
the military defeat of Poland by Germany in September 1939, the Germans
launched a campaign of terror intended to destroy the Polish nation and culture
and to reduce the Poles to a leaderless population of peasants and workers
laboring for German masters.
In the weeks following the German attack on Poland, German
SS, police, and military units shot thousands of Polish civilians, including
many members of the Polish nobility, clergy, and intelligentsia. In the spring
of 1940, the German occupation authorities launched AB-Aktion, a plan to
systematically eliminate Poles considered to be members of the “leadership
class.” The aim was to remove those Poles seen as most capable of organizing
resistance to German rule and to terrorize the Polish population into submission.
The Germans shot thousands of teachers, priests, and other intellectuals in
mass killings. Nazi officials sent thousands more to the newly built Auschwitz
concentration camp, to Stutthof, and to other concentration camps in Germany
where non-Jewish Poles constituted the majority of inmates until March 1942.
A merry tone
Even if it were actually the case--which it is not--that
there is uncertainty regarding Alekhine’s behavior, Rozman’s flippant tone is
wholly inappropriate in dealing with the issues that he dangles before his audience. The talented influencer does not take a single moment to memorialize the victims of the Holocaust. Not one sentence to warn us about the
evils of the Nazis and their collaborators.
“I love this story!” he effuses in his video, describing Alekhine’s life. Near the end, he perkily remarks, “Yo,
Netflix, pick this up, man!” and calls for “movies and documentaries” to be
made about “one of the most fascinating chess players to ever walk the Earth,
if not the most.”
With a silver-tongued wand of insouciant eloquence, Rozman
buries the lessons of history and becomes a de facto apologist for a man deeply connected with a war criminal.
A not-so-deep dive
In the video, Rozman claims, more than once, to have done a
“historical deep dive.” With an upbeat tone, he describes the chess champion’s associations with Nazis as “alleged,” and suggests they are moot. But there is a solid bed of evidence for Alekhine’s malevolent acts. Evidence that is excellent, unchallenged, and easily available on the internet.
Rozman is either unaware of the strong evidence against Alekhine, or chose not to present it. He spends a lot of time in the video chortling about roguish trivia. Things like Alekhine’s four wives. His lying about a PhD. His cat named “Chess” …
Parroting Alekhine’s own excuse
Rozman flippantly suggests that perhaps Alekhine aided the
Nazis only to protect his wife and, as well, his “wealth and properties in
France.” Leaving aside the repugnant
idea that it is acceptable to aid the
Nazis to protect your foreign assets, the idea that Alekhine was focused on
protecting his wife is contradicted by the in-depth research of Christian
Rohrer, presented below.
After WWII, Alekhine mobilized this very excuse--that he was protecting
his wife (and protecting himself). And yet it should go without
saying that someone’s own denial is not a reason to exonerate them.
How could Rozman miss the evidence?
If I could find the information so fast, why not
Rozman? Rozman brings up a point that was first uncovered by Dr. Rohrer;
namely, that Alekhine lied about having a PhD [5]. It's odd. Was Rozman unaware? It is standard
research practice, as well as common sense, to know your source.
Rohrer’s work is a
tour de force, nonpareil on the topic of Alekhine and the Nazis. He provides trenchant, meticulous,
comprehensive coverage, over a hundred pages. It comes up easily on an engine search. So, again--
Why did Rozman’s “historical deep dive” leave it all out, while including a single tidbit about Alekhine's fake PhD?
A deeper dive
It only took me only about five minutes on Google to find
the Rohrer article and get a feel for its
professionalism. With a little more
digging, I was able to see the respect and credibility the Stuttgart professor has garnered in the chess world, since publication in 2021.
The launchpad for my investigation was simple. I typed “Alexander Alekhine nazi articles,” into
the search engine.
Vetting Christian Rohrer’s work
Because Rohrer is the ultimate source for the damning claims
against Alekhine, I took some effort to check the level of respect and
acceptance it has received. Within
twenty minutes or so, I found several supportive articles. At the same time, I found none whatsoever in
rebuttal. [6]
For instance, in a 2021 article titled, “The wrong side of
history: racism, gender, Alekhine and
the Nazis,” Raymond Keene writes:
Great controversy has arisen over the question of whether
Alexander Alekhine, World Champion from 1927–1935 and again from 1937–1946, was
a Nazi. Vast amounts of ink have been expended on this question, but now Dr
Christian Rohrer of Stuttgart University has published a paper which must
surely represent something approaching the last word on this sensitive matter. [7]
Keene goes on to discuss Rohrer’s analysis, including
extensive quotes.
Ripples from 2021 to the present
Rohrer’s influence ripples beyond 2021 to the present. In 2025, Jennifer Shahade cites Rohrer on her
site. While describing the contents of a
linked video, she writes:
Fabian and I [in the video] also talk about Alekhine’s
unfortunate final chapter, in which he collaborated with Nazis and then died in
mysterious circumstances in 1946. Alekhine claimed that he was compelled to
align with Nazi ideology to survive. But 2021 research by historian Dr.
Christian Rohrer, tells a detailed, evidence-rich story, which led me to
another conclusion. [8]
The Johannes Fischer article
Again, in my quick vetting of the academic value, the
intellectual heft, the chess-world cred of the Rohrer article, I found it has
been accepted as impressive and definitive.
No one has outed it as wrong, or challenged the meticulous research.
The first article I found in relation to Rohrer was in Chess
News, by Johannes Fischer. It is titled,
“Alekhine and the Nazis: a historical
investigation by Dr. Christian Rohrer” [9].
It took me a moment to realize that this was indeed an
article on an article, the former praising the latter. Why write so specifically? Johannes Fischer says of Rohrer’s work that
it is “detailed, fascinating and well-worth reading.”
In the summary, he remarks, “After research in archives all
over Europe, Rohrer comes to a number of new insights into Alekhine's fate and
personality … and at the same time provides a fine example of how the study of
chess history can help to gain insights into larger historical contexts.”
Key points distilled by Fischer
The Rohrer article is actually the length of a short book,
99 pages without the bibliography and 123 pages with it. The research is exquisitely detailed, well-organized
and fine-toothed. This broaches a
question: What did Fischer choose to highlight in his
article in praise of Rohrer?
The title of Rohrer’s article is “World Chess Champion and
Favorite of Hans Frank? Assessing Alexander Alekhine’s closeness to the
National Socialist Regime” [10]. Not
surprisingly, Fischer focuses on the Nazi criminal Hans Frank, drawing from the
analysis by Rohrer:
In 1941, Alekhine played a tournament in German-occupied
Krakow in Poland and came into contact with a number of influential Nazis, most
notably Hans Frank, the Governor General of Poland. As Governor General, Frank
was largely responsible for the persecution and murder of millions of Jews, and
after the war he was sentenced to death at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial and
executed on 16 October 1946.
Frank was a great chess fan who maintained a friendly
relationship with Alekhine, and these contacts helped Alekhine to get a
well-paid job at the Institut für Deutsche Ostarbeit (Institute for German Work
in the East), IDO for short.
Another point Fischer chose to emphasize was Alekhine’s
willing participation in Nazi propaganda, various articles which reached audiences all
over Europe and the world. In regard to Alekhine’s
guilt, Fischer choose a direct quote from Rohrer:
Alekhine, whether every word is his or not, bears
responsibility for these articles. They appeared under his name in the
German-language press and were able to develop their effect there with the
weight of his name. I consider it impossible that the articles appeared against
Alekhine's will. Alekhine himself boasted in Spanish newspapers in September
1941 about his treatment of chess from the 'racial point of view'.
The Rohrer article itself
Rohrer’s article linking Alekhine to Hans Frank is a nonesuch
on the topic, a treasure trove of elaboration, enumeration, and well-supported
conclusions. Insights build through
exacting steps, accompanied by punctilious use of references. The main goal
is none other than the revelation of Alekhine’s intentions. We can’t get inside anyone’s head, but Rohrer
comes close. What he concludes is that Alekhine
was motived by two factors: a desire to
brandish his status as a chess champion and, secondly, to maintain the
highbrow lifestyle he had enjoyed before WWII.
In short, Alexander Alekhine worked with the
Nazis for fame and luxury.
A sample from Rohrer:
Like many of his colleagues, for example, players from
Becker’s team, who remained there until 1945 and sometimes beyond, Alekhine
could have waited in South America with his wife for the end of the war or gone
north to the USA. However, he returned
to Europe in February 1940. Alekhine first stopped off in Portugal, where he
gave simultaneous displays, still accompanied by his wife Grace.
When he returned to Paris, his plans continued to revolve around chess.
(p.17)
There are many other points of such nature, accumulating and
connecting as Rohrer reinforces his thesis.
A full enumeration of the evidence is beyond this review, and would
expand it by dozens of pages. The
following is from the concluding section of the article:
Leaving all open questions aside, the results of the
present study provide a changed picture of Alekhine’s closeness to the National
Socialist regime. Not least, the hermetic shield that first Alekhine himself
and later his apologists had forged to exonerate him for his actions … has been broken … This shield was a fallback
position when other arguments were not convincing, and consisted of the
diversely varied narrative that Alekhine had acted under duress from the
National Socialist regime. This, of course, can be used to justify basically
anything. … With source material used for the first time in this study, this
fallback position can be considered obsolete: Alekhine certainly had room for
manoeuvre vis-à-vis the National Socialist regime, and he used it … He did not
behave like a prisoner of the National Socialist regime, but rather tactically
and in the face of the GSB [Greater German Chess Federation] and
Generalgouverneur [Hans] Frank, he sought the best solution for himself.
In view of his room for manoeuvre, Alekhine’s anti-Semitic
outbursts also appear in a different light. Such passages by Alekhine are
nowhere to be found as programmatically as in the articles dated March–April
1941, which were first printed in the Pariser Zeitung. But they were also not
an isolated case. Rather, with the exception of Portugal, such statements
appeared in newspapers everywhere Alekhine stayed for a longer period of time …
If Alekhine had room for manoeuvre, then he could at least have avoided
publishing anti-Semitic passages from autumn 1941 onwards.” (p.97)
Hopefully, the admittedly terse summary above gives a
sense of Rohrer's judicious rigor.
Too erudite to count?!
For the sake of argument, someone might try to defend Rozman,
aka GothamChess, by claiming that Rohrer’s work is voluminous and erudite, and as
such has yet to be properly investigated for its accuracy.
In response to such a conjectural argument, I would say it
is harder to build a case than to dispute one.
Similar to scientific experimentation, where a single empirical test can
refute a hypothesis, all it would take to create skepticism for Rohrer’s claims
is a well-researched counter to a single point. Since 2021, when the article
was published, no one has presented a disputation, none that I could find.
Moreover and critically, as discussed above, Rohrer’s work
has been accepted as a worthy source by a number of well-regarded online
authors, who publish on reputable sites like Chess News.
Wikipedia Fail
Perhaps Rozman used Wikipedia as the main source for his
“deep dive.”
The Wikipedia entry on Alexander Alekhine does not include
Rohrer’s discussion of Nazism or the authorship of the antisemitic
articles. Strangely, however, it includes
Rohrer’s assertion that Alekhine lied about having a PhD--a point that Rozman
includes in his video.
Hans Frank, the war criminal hung at the Nuremberg Trials,
is not even mentioned in the Wikipedia entry-- except in one place: the title of Rohrer’s article, buried in the
footnotes. This amounts to a fail on
Wikipedia’s part. That said, dedicated
scholars consider Wikipedia a starting point, a mediocre reference at best.
If Rozman relied on Wikipedia, I would say this to him: using a site designed as a starting point as
your end point is poor scholarship, a negligence of significant proportion.
Whatever his methodology, Rozman missed the Rohrer material,
easily available--it is, in fact, the source of one of Rozman's own claims--and so became a de facto apologist for enormously malign behavior.
Concluding Section
I was able to find a translation of one of the antisemitic
articles that circulated widely with Alekhine’s blessing. Whether Alekhine wrote the bulk of the racist
articles or not, or whether instead it was
the job of the Nazi official he worked with, Alfred Linder, is unknown [11]. That said, and as Rohrer argues, it makes no difference in terms
of culpability. Alekhine was willing and
he boasted about it.
The visual of the antisemitic article is here:
https://museum.fide.com/exhibits/jewish-and-aryan-chess-article-and-alekhines-open-letter-regaring-his-alledged-authorship
The link includes two images. The first is Alekhine’s protestation, written
in 1946, claiming he was coerced by the Nazis.
As discussed above, this has been debunked. The second article, written in 1941, is titled,
“Jewish and Aryan Chess.” Here is a
sample:
Reti was applauded by the plurality of Anglo-Jewish
intellectuals for his work, “Modern Ideas in Chess” .. and these people were
particularly impressed by the absurd cry Reti invented, namely “We, the young
Masters (he was 34 then) are not interested in rules but in exceptions.” … This
cheap bluff, this shameless half-attempt at self-boosting was swallowed without
a struggle by a chess world already doped by Jewish journalists, the exulting
cries of Jews and their friends.
It pains me to
include even this terse snippet. You can
feel the swell of hate, the gargantuan animosity that permeated the Nazi
movement.
Note well: according
to the Holocaust Museum Encyclopedia, Hitler, Himmler and other top Nazi
officials decided to “physically annihilate the Jews of Europe” in 1941, around
the time this article was circulating.
A dreadful, ultimate legacy, relevant today
This is Alekhine’s dreadful and ultimate legacy. The world of chess was right to ban him from
participation after World War 2.
Levy Rozman either didn’t do his research, or he chose to
omit major evidence for Alekhine’s guilt.
The latter is worse, but both are perilously negligent. Both fascism and antisemitism are grave and exigent subjects. Indeed, here in 2026, we are
looking at the rise of a White Nationalist Movement in
America. Masked police have begun to
round up people. Concentration camps
have begun to be built. It is a deeply
dangerous time.
We can’t allow ourselves to dismally forget the past. We should trumpet the similarities and learn
its lessons. One obvious
resemblance is our own versions of saber-rattling, egotistic, bigoted, macho leaders, the
sort of authoritarians--parasitic dictators--who drove humanity to World War 2
and its infernalities.
If we don’t wake up and change course, World War 3 will be
far worse, with a significant chance of the end of civilization itself, forged in
detonations of nuclear fire.
Mention means responsibility
Rozman wove the Nazis into his glib narrative, and thus he took
up a responsibility: the moral
requirement to warn his audience about fascism and antisemitism. Instead, buoyed by a happy-peppy cadence, Rozman
implied that he was oblivious or didn’t really care.
Perhaps Rozman would argue that he was ‘just doing his job,’
which he might consider, in large part, to be maximizing audience for his own personal
gain. He could espouse the philosophy
that one doesn’t have to be ethical while at work, only obey the
law.
Only obey the law.
Just follow the rules. This is
similar to “I was just obeying orders.”
We all have a responsibility to keep culture and country from
degrading into Darkness. Powerful influencers have outsized responsibility.
In his “historical deep dive,” Rozman shirked easily obtainable
evidence. From the vital view of human
rights--the baseline that protects each and every one of us from depravity--the
“Internet’s Chess teacher” failed the chess community. Indeed, by posturing gleeful and jolly over
the history of the Holocaust, he failed the world.
===========
Footnotes
(1) https://owlwholaughs.blogspot.com/2024/02/ethics-review-game-of-chess.html
(2) I’ve theorized and elaborated on ethics as technology in
numerous essays on this blog. A good
place to start is the Lightcraft essay (5/20/25).
(3) David Livingstone Smith, Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate
Others.
(4) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9zG1AhmgK4
(5) https://en.chessbase.com/post/alekhine-and-the-nazis-a-historical-investigation-by-dr-christian-rohrer. Wikipedia also attributes Rohrer as the source of this information.
(6) There are, of course, comments that anonymous people
make under various articles on Alekhine and the Nazis. From the perspective of legitimate and
effective research, the value of such comments is negligible.
(7) https://www.thearticle.com/the-wrong-side-of-history-racism-gender-alekhine-and-the-nazis
(8) https://jenshahade.substack.com/p/deepreads-the-capablanca-alekhine
(9) https://en.chessbase.com/post/alekhine-and-the-nazis-a-historical-investigation-by-dr-christian-rohrer.
(10) https://elib.uni-stuttgart.de/server/api/core/bitstreams/d83480dc-6de4-4b35-ad70-1aea8a861156/content
(11) https://elib.uni-stuttgart.de/server/api/core/bitstreams/d83480dc-6de4-4b35-ad70-1aea8a861156/content
(p.34 et. al)
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