In April–May 1914, another major St. Petersburg 1914 chess tournament was held in the capital of the Russian Empire, in which Alekhine took third place behind Emanuel Lasker and José Raúl Capablanca.

By some accounts, Tsar Nicholas II conferred the title of "Grandmaster of Chess" on each of the five finalists (Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Siegbert Tarrasch, and Frank Marshall).

[21] After the declaration of war against Russia, eleven "Russian" players (Alekhine, Efim Bogoljubov, Fedor Bogatyrchuk, Alexander Flamberg, N. Koppelman, Boris Maliutin, Ilya Rabinovich, Peter Romanovsky, Pyotr Saburov, Alexey Selezniev, and Samuil Weinstein) were interned in Rastatt, Germany.

[24] When Alekhine returned to Russia, he helped raise money by giving simultaneous exhibitions to aid the Russian chess players who remained interned in Germany.

In April 1916, he won a mini-match against Alexander Evensohn with two wins and one loss at Kiev, and in summer he served in the Union of Cities (Red Cross) on the Austrian front.

His least successful efforts were a tie for third place at Vienna 1922 behind Akiba Rubinstein and Richard Réti, and third place at the New York 1924 chess tournament, behind ex-champion Emanuel Lasker and world champion José Raúl Capablanca (but ahead of Frank Marshall, Richard Réti, Géza Maróczy, Efim Bogoljubov, Savielly Tartakower, Frederick Yates, Edward Lasker, and Dawid Janowski).

[28][unreliable source] In 1924, he applied for the first time for a residence privilege in France and for French citizenship while pursuing his studies in the Sorbonne Faculty of Law to obtain a PhD.

[41] Although he never agreed terms for a rematch against Capablanca, Alekhine played two world title matches with Efim Bogoljubov, in 1929 and 1934, winning handily both times.

[28][unreliable source] In the early 1930s, Alekhine travelled the world giving simultaneous exhibitions, including Hawaii, Tokyo, Manila, Singapore,[56] Shanghai, Hong Kong, and the Dutch East Indies.

Then Euwe gives his assessment in Dutch, explaining that his feelings alternated from optimism to pessimism, but in the previous ten years, their score had been evenly matched at 7–7.

[1] In the eighteen months after losing the title, Alekhine played in ten tournaments, with uneven results: tied for first with Paul Keres at Bad Nauheim in May 1936; first place at Dresden in June 1936; second to Flohr at Poděbrady in July 1936; sixth, behind Capablanca, Mikhail Botvinnik, Reuben Fine, Samuel Reshevsky, and Euwe at Nottingham in August 1936; third, behind Euwe and Fine, at Amsterdam in October 1936; tied for first with Salo Landau at Amsterdam (Quadrangular), also in October 1936; in 1936/37 he won at the Hastings New Year tournament, ahead of Fine and Erich Eliskases; first place at Nice (Quadrangular) in March 1937; third, behind Keres and Fine, at Margate in April 1937; tied for fourth with Keres, behind Flohr, Reshevsky and Vladimirs Petrovs, at Kemeri in June–July 1937; tied for second with Bogoljubow, behind Euwe, at Bad Nauheim (Quadrangular) in July 1937.

[11] 1938 began well for Alekhine, who won the Montevideo 1938 chess tournament at Carrasco (in March) and at Margate (in April), and tied for first with Sir George Alan Thomas at Plymouth (in September).

In November, however, he only tied for 4th–6th with Euwe and Samuel Reshevsky, behind Paul Keres, Reuben Fine, and Mikhail Botvinnik, ahead of Capablanca and Flohr, at the AVRO tournament in the Netherlands.

This tournament was played in each of several Dutch cities for a few days at a time; it was therefore perhaps not surprising that rising stars took the first three places, as the older players found the travel very tiring, though Fine was dismissive of this explanation because the distances were short.

The assembly of all team captains, with leading roles played by Alekhine (France), Savielly Tartakower (Poland), and Albert Becker (Germany), plus the president of the Argentine Chess Federation, Augusto de Muro, decided to go on with the Olympiad.

Whereas the former spoke of a rematch as a virtual certainty, even stating that the Cuban was remaining in Buenos Aires until it came about, the latter referred at length to the financial burden in the aftermath of the Olympiad.

Of ongoing speculation among historians specialising in mid-20th century European chess is whether or not Alekhine was the author of numerous antisemitic pieces of propaganda published in relevant partisan materials at the time.

It is usually attributed to a heart attack, but a letter in Chess Life magazine from a witness to the autopsy stated that choking on meat was the actual cause of death.

"[89] An explanation offered by Réti was, "he beats his opponents by analysing simple and apparently harmless sequences of moves in order to see whether at some time or another at the end of it an original possibility, and therefore one difficult to see, might be hidden.

"[94] Reuben Fine, a serious contender for the world championship in the late 1930s, wrote in the 1950s that Alekhine's collection of best games was one of the three most beautiful that he knew,[11] and Golombek was equally impressed.

[105][unreliable source] Unlike Wilhelm Steinitz, Emanuel Lasker, Capablanca and Euwe, he wrote no books that explained his ideas about the game or showed beginners how to improve their play.

[92] His books appeal to expert players rather than beginners:[11] they contain many long analyses of variations in critical positions, and "singularities and exceptions were his forte, not rules and simplifications".

[106] In their book The Soviet School of Chess Kotov and Yudovich devoted a chapter to Alekhine, called him "Russia's greatest player" and praised his capacity for seizing the initiative by concrete tactical play in the opening.

[115] During World War II, Alekhine played in several tournaments held in Germany or German-occupied territory, as did many strong players in occupied and neutral countries.

[76][116] In March 1941, a series of articles appeared under Alekhine's name in the Pariser Zeitung, a German-language newspaper published in Paris by the occupying German forces.

In one of these, he said that Aryan chess was aggressive but "the Semitic concept admitted the idea of pure defence", thus the "Jewish" style was supposed to focus merely on exploiting the opponents' mistakes.

[119] Almost immediately after the liberation of Paris (and before World War II ended), Alekhine publicly stated that "he had to write two chess articles for the Pariser Zeitung before the Germans granted him his exit visa ...

[120] Winter concludes: "Although, as things stand, it is difficult to construct much of a defence for Alekhine, only the discovery of the articles in his own handwriting will settle the matter beyond all doubt."

Yakov Vilner, a Jewish master, saved him by sending a telegram to the chairman of the Ukrainian Council of People's Commissars, who knew of Alekhine and ordered his release.

The American Jewish grandmaster Arnold Denker wrote that he found Alekhine very friendly in chess settings, taking part in consultation games and productive analysis sessions.