Salzburg 1942

In June 1942 six of the strongest players still active in wartime Europe gathered in the halls of Salzburg's Mirabell Palace for a six-player double round-robin billed as a meeting of grandmasters. World Champion Alexander Alekhine took clear first with 7½/10, a length ahead of his frequent rival Paul Keres, in what contemporaries reckoned the year's second-strongest event.

◇A wartime grandmasters' tournament

The event was organised by Ehrhardt Post, chief executive of the Nazi-era Grossdeutscher Schachbund, who set out to assemble Europe's leading masters: Alekhine, former World Champion Max Euwe, challenger Paul Keres, former challenger Efim Bogoljubow, the Munich 1941 winner Gösta Stoltz, and German champion Paul Felix Schmidt.

Euwe withdrew, officially owing to illness and, by some accounts, unwilling to sit across the board from Alekhine after the bitterness of their world-title matches. His place went to the eighteen-year-old German sub-champion Klaus Junge, one of the outstanding young talents of the war years.

◇Alekhine holds off Keres

Alekhine finished on 7½/10, winning both of his games against Keres, though the champion was far from untouchable — he lost a game each to Junge and Bogoljubow and drew only one of his ten games. Keres was clear second on 6.

Schmidt and Junge shared third on 5 apiece, with Bogoljubow (3½) and Stoltz (3) filling out the table. Salzburg was rated the world's second-strongest tournament of 1942, behind only the Munich event of that autumn.