History => Early Years ..

Early years ..


Between 1899 and 1901, prior to the formation of a national side, there were five unofficial international matches between different German and English selection teams, which all ended as large defeats for the German teams. Eight years after the establishment of the German Football Association (DFB), the first official match of the Germany national football team was played on 5 April 1908, against Switzerland at Basel, with the Swiss winning 5–3. Coincidentally, the first match after World War I in 1920, the first match after World War II in 1950 when Germany was still banned from most international competitions, and the first match in 1990 with former East German players were all against Switzerland as well. Germany's first championship title was even won in Switzerland.

At that time, the players were selected by the DFB as there was no dedicated coach. The first manager of the Germany national team was Otto Nerz, a school teacher from Mannheim, who served in the role from 1923 to 1936. The German FA could not afford travel to Uruguay for the first World Cup staged in 1930 during the Great Depression, but finished third in the 1934 World Cup in their first appearance in the competition. After a poor showing at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Sepp Herberger became coach. In 1937 he put together a squad which was soon nicknamed the Breslau Elf (the Breslau Eleven) in recognition of their 8–0 win over Denmark in the then German city of Breslau, Lower Silesia (now Wroclaw, Poland).[3]

After Austria became part of Germany in the Anschluss of March 1938, that country's national team – one of Europe's better sides at the time due to professionalism – was disbanded despite having already qualified for the 1938 World Cup. As required by Nazi politicians, five or six ex-Austrian players, from the clubs Rapid Wien, Austria Wien, Vienna Wien, were ordered to join the all-German team on short notice in a staged show of unity orchestrated for political reasons. In the 1938 World Cup that began on 4 June, this "united" German team managed only a 1–1 draw against Switzerland, and then lost the replay 2–4 in front of a hostile crowd in Paris, France. That early exit stands as Germany's worst ever World Cup result.

During World War II, the team played over 30 international games between September 1939 and November 1942, when national team games was suspended as most players had to join the armed forces. Many of the national team players were gathered together under coach Herberger as Luftwaffen-SV Hamburg through the efforts of a sympathetic air force officer trying to protect the footballers from the most dangerous wartime service.