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For Europe and their allies, the real fighting, the irreversible descent into global conflict, began at 4:40 a.m. on September 1, 1939. Schmeling was not among the Luftwaffe airmen who hit predetermined targets in Krakow, Lodi, and Warsaw that dawn. But he, and the rest of Germany, knew that a terrible beast had been let loose. Five minutes after the planes took off, the German Navy was bombing the free port of Danzig. By 8 a.m., the Wehrmacht had moved on the village of Mokra, only to be repulsed, a rare Polish victory in what was to become a nightmare occupation for the next six years.

While Max's ring cachet had been seriously diminished, he nevertheless was retained as a faded German hero from the last fragile days of peacetime. Not even that peripheral clout, however, could save him from the inconvenience of being drafted and serving as a parachutist in the invasion of Crete in 1941. Later, it is said, he gave shelter to Jewish refugees. By then, he had been parked in the relative safety of a military hospital in Ulm. His war was a decent enough one.