Location Buenos Aires, Argentina | ||
Period August 1939 – September 1939 Other Instances Women's World Chess Championship 2018 | ||
The 7th Women's World Chess Championship took place during the 1939 Olympiad in Buenos Aires. The final results were as follows:
Sonja Graf travelled to Buenos Aires to play for the German team in the 8th Chess Olympiad. As a result of her outspoken defiance of Hitler's government, she was taken off the list of German participants and played in the women's tournament under the flag of the fictitious country "Libre" ("free" in Spanish).
Graf and Paulette Schwartzmann, along with a large number of the male players, chose to stay in South America, as World War II broke out during the tournament.
Due to the outbreak of war, there was no Women's World Chess Championship for the next ten years. Meanwhile, Menchik died in England in 1944 in a German air raid, so the next championship in 1949-50 had to determine a new champion.