March 25 1946
St. Louis Globe-Democrat, St. Louis, Missouri, Monday, March 25, 1946
Alexander Alekhine Chess Marvel Dies
Lisbon, Mar. 24 (AP). Dr. Alexander A. Alekhine, 53, world chess champion, was found dead today in his hotel room at Estoril, near here. Physicians said his death was due to heart disease.
A native of Russia, Alekhine had participated in international chess matches since he was 16. Lately he bad been working on his book of memoirs and training with the Portuguese chess champion, Francisco Lupi, prior to meeting the Russian champion, Michael Botvinnik, in England.
He was born in Moscow, studied law at Petrograd, now Leningrad, and entered the Foreign Office of Czarist Russia in 1914. During World War I he served as a Red Cross worker at the front. After the war he emigrated to France.
Alekhine participated in about 30 international chess tournaments. He established world records for blindfold chess in New York in 1924, Paris in 1925 and Chicago in 1933.
He won his first world championship from Jose R. Capablanca of Cuba in 1927. He defended his title successfully in 1928 and 1934, lost it to-Dr. Max Euwe of Holland in 1935, but rewon it from him in 1937. In 1930 Alekhine established a world-record score in the San Remo tournament.
March 26 1946
Chess King Dies 26 Mar 1946, Tue The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Washington) Newspapers.comCHESS KING DIES: Dr. Alexander A. Alekhine, world chess champion, was found dead in his room at a Lisbon hotel on Sunday. Doctors who were called said he was the victim of heart trouble. (S-R AP).
April 06 1946
Clarion-Ledger, Jackson, Mississippi, Saturday, April 06, 1946
Boycotted Champion Takes the Final Count
Death came to a world's champion just as he faced the possibility of holding the title for the rest of his natural life, simply because no rival would meet him. This was Alexander Alekhine, chess champion since 1937. An exiled Russian, living in France and lately in Spain, he wrote laudatory articles about the Nazis. Consequently the leading chessplayers of Europe would have nothing to do with him. When he was invited to a London tournament in January, so much objection was raised that the invitation was withdrawn.
Alekhine's explanation was that his pro-Nazi articles were written under coercion, which might well have been true. But the players of his caliber in other countries were not satisfied and had he not died suddenly, he might have remained to the end of his days a champion without challengers.