The Red Hunters were a short lived German military football club, existing during World War II. Unlike other military teams, such as Luftwaffen-SV Hamburg, the club did not play in any German leagues, nor did they participate in the German Football Championship. They were strictly an exhibition team, holding matches in Germany, Hungary, France and Poland. The team was assembled by a fighter ace, commander of German fighter pilots and national hero, Hermann Graf, after he received a challenge from an elite Romanian army team. Graf had trained with the German national team before the war, and so he got in touch with his former coach Sepp Herberger to see if could be hooked up with some players. To the surprise of the Romanians, Herberger provided several members of the German national team to take part in the match, which Rote Jager won 3-2 in front of 40,000 in Bucharest. 

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In 1943, Graf realised that it would be possible for him to save as many national team players as he could from dangerous front line military service, and he took action to achieve this. Thus, Grafs unit, the Luftlandebrigade 26 (26th Airborne Brigade) became a safe haven from service on the Eastern front for German national team players. German soldiers/footballers Hermann Eppenhoff (Schalke 04), Franz Heinreiter (Admira Vienna), Fritz Walter ( a paratrooper and player for 1 FC Kaiserslauten), Walter Bammes (FC Nurnberg), Walter Zwickhofer (Schalke 04), Fritz Hack (1860 Munich), Josef Stroh (Austria Vienna) and others were attached to the unit as so called “technical experts”. Sepp Herberger was brought on as the teams manager. The original Rote Jager were not in existence for long, just 15 months, but in that time they achieved 30 victories and one draw in 34 games, as well as scoring 147 goals. The Nazis were initially sceptical about the team, but eventually had their seal of approval after they realised that football would be effective in distracting the troops and keeping their morale high.

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 German military football clubs were disbanded in 1944 as allied troops began to close in on the country, but the Rote Jager managed to play two more games in Cracow in November 1944, the last of these in front of thousands of Nazi soldiers. The match resulted in a 14-0 Rote Jager whitewash.  When the war approached its end, Graf was ordered to give himself up to the British to avoid being captured by the Soviets. He denied their orders by surrendering to the US Army 90th Infantry Division instead. By this time, he had participated in 880 combat missions and shot down 212 enemy planes. The Americans handed him over to the Soviets anyway, who threw him into a labor camp in Vologda Oblast where he toiled away for years, spending extended periods in solitary confinement. He was finally released in 1950 and ended back in his home town of Engen, now in the French occupation zone.

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Fritz Walter almost had a similar fate. His squadron were all captured and imprisoned by the Americans. He was also delivered to the Soviets along with thousands of other German captives. When he was being shipped to a Siberian gulag, the convoy carrying him made a final stop in the Ukraine. Nearby, some guards were preparing to play a football game. After a missed shot, the ball happened to roll to Walter’s feet, who casually flicked it up, juggled a few times and volleyed it back to the soldiers. As a result, he was invited to play in the game. At half time, one of the guards approached him and said, “I know you. Hungary vs Germany in Budapest, 1942. You won 5-3.” The next day, Walters name disappeared from the list of prisoners to be transported to the gulag. Football saved his life. He went on to earn 61 national team caps and wrote a book, 11 Rote Jager, about his experiences on the team.

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Following the war, a successor side was established in 1965 with the support of the original players. The club played in armed forces competitions and drew its recruits from players doing military service. Several recognizable players wore the jersey of Rote Jager during their service at this time, such as Felix Margath and Andreas Brehme. Rote Jager were eventually disbanded in 1991.

Achievements: One of the best known and most successful German military sides.

Star player: Fritz Walter DOB 31 October, 1920, Kaiserslautern, Germany, nickname: Der Alte Fritz

Walter got his exposure to football nice and early through his parents, who worked at the 1 FC Kaiserslauten restaurant. He joined the clubs youth academy at 8 and made the first team at 17. He repeatedly fielded and turned down hefty offers from top international clubs to remain in his home town, with his wife’s support. He scored a hat-trick in his German national team debut against Romania. Walter was drafted into the German military in 1942, and he found himself as a prisoner of war in Maramures, where he played football with Hungarian and Yugoslavian guards. When the Soviets turned up, they took all of the prisoners to a gulag where ones life expectancy was 5 years. Luckily for Walter, the Hungarian guards knew who he was, and convinced the Soviets that Walter was not German but from the Saar Territory. Suffering from malaria, he returned to Kaiserslautern in 1945, and led them to two German championships in 1951 and 1953. He was captain of the West German team that won the World Cup in 1954. When the 1956 Hungarian Uprising and subsequent Soviet crackdown occurred, the Hungarian football team found themselves unable to return home. Walter repaid the Hungarians for saving his life by managing their games and providing financial backing. He was known for playing better the worse the weather conditions were, so the term “Fritz Walter’s weather” came into effect to describe cold, windy, rainy conditions. He suffered a career ending injury against Sweden in the 1958 World Cup. FC Kaiserslautern’s home stadium was renamed Fritz-Walter-Stadion in his honor. His dream was to see his hometown host a World Cup match. This was denied with his death in 2002, but in 2006, the United States played Italy in a World Cup match in Kaiserslautern, and a minutes silence was held in his memory.