English accentuation. Racing quickly joined French competitions and won the Alsace championship in 1923, 1924 and 1927. They also took part in the Coupe de France, the only national competition at that time. In 1925, they reached the last sixteen, where they fell to Lille after eliminating the then-dominant Red Star Paris. On 10 June 1933, at the "Restaurant de la Bourse", the club made the jump to the professional ranks and, thus, joined the national championship established just a year before. RCS started competition in Ligue 2 but immediately earned promotion to the top flight at the end of the 1933–34 season, going through a pair of two-legged playoff matches, first against Mulhouse (0–0 and 3–1), and then against AS Saint-Étienne (2–0 and 4–4). In the mid-1930s, Racing managed a second-place finish in 1934–35 and a third-place finish the next season. In 1937, the club reached for the first time the final of the Coupe de France, losing to rivals Sochaux (1–2). This successful RCS team of the 1930s included two French internationals – Fritz Keller and Oscar Heisserer – as well as German striker Oskar Rohr who still holds the club's goalscoring record. With the outbreak of World War II, professional sport was suspended and Alsatians were evacuated to south-west France, especially in the Dordogne. During the Phoney War, a group of youngsters kept the club existing in Périgueux, where they won the Dordogne championship in 1940. After the French defeat, Alsace was de facto annexed by the Third Reich and, in August 1940, the team took up play as in the Gauliga Elsaß, a top-flight amateur division in German football. RCS captured their group in 1941 and participated in the regional finals, where they were put out by FC Mülhausen. The team earned second-place results in each of the following two seasons and made an appearance in the opening round of the DFB-Pokal in 1942. Starting in 1942, Alsatians were forcibly conscripted in the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS and several club players – including Oscar Heisserer – fled or had their teammates deliberately wound them to avoid incorporation. Oskar Rohr also had been imprisoned since 1940 after serving in the French Foreign Legion at the outbreak of the war. During a game against SS side "SG SS Straßburg", Rasensportclub players wore a uniform consisting of a blue jersey, white shorts and red socks as a clear display