Rippon - Hitlers Olympics: the story of the 1936 Nazi Games

Chapter One

T HE M OST E VIL P LACE

On the damp and breezy Saturday of 23 May 1931, Jesse Owens, a 17-year-old African-American student from East Technical High School in Cleveland, arrived at Ohio State Universitys athletic field in Columbus to compete in his first state scholastic track and field meeting. That afternoon, Owens, the second youngest of eleven children of an Alabama sharecropper, set a new scholastic long jump record, finished second in the 200 yds, and fourth in the 100 yds; it was a modest start but eventually they would name the stadium after him. Ten days earlier, the International Olympic Committee had confirmed that the 1936 Summer Games would be staged in Berlin. Later in 1931, Adolf Hitler would challenge Paul von Hindenburg for the presidency of Germany. The ingredients for a sporting event of legendary proportions were shifting into place.

When, on 13 May 1931, the IOCs recommendation was confirmed by forty-three votes to sixteen nineteen nations voted at the meeting, forty by postal ballot, with eight abstentions to choose Berlin ahead of Barcelona, the Weimar Republic, born out of the chaos of Germanys defeat in the First World War, was still the countrys democratic government; albeit a fragile one beset by seemingly insurmountable problems of hyperinflation, business failures, crippling reparations and the growth of extreme parties. Two years after the IOC had welcomed Germany back from international isolation from the end of the war until 1928 they had been banned from even participating in the Olympics one of those extreme parties engineered a major political change there. On 30 January 1933, in an attempt to stave off a political crisis, President von Hindenburg appointed Hitler, leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party, as the countrys new Chancellor. The Germany that won the Olympic Games was not going to be the same Germany that would eventually stage them.

Adolf Hitler in a suitably dynamic pose for the man who saw himself as Germanys saviour. Millions of Germans agreed with him. ( Illustrated London News )

The conditions that were absolutely perfect for the rise of a man such as Adolf Hitler have been documented perhaps a million times. The Treaty of Versailles, drawn up by the victorious Allies in June 1919, had dismantled the vanquished German empire of Kaiser Wilhelm II. The geography of Europe was redrawn as Germany was made to suffer large territorial losses. In all it lost one million square miles of land 28,000 of them in Europe and six million subjects. The Treaty blamed Germany for the war and dictated that reparations, eventually set at 6,600 million, would be paid in monthly instalments. In addition the Germans had to rebuild their economy but the loss of their colonies, and land ceded to other countries, deprived them of rich sources of raw materials. The political impact in Germany itself was enormous. The government of the day refused to sign the Treaty and resigned. The incoming administration had no choice but to agree. And as the economy collapsed and many old soldiers wondered how Germany could have lost the war when they had still held French territory taken at the very outset in 1914 the argument that it was the politicians, not the military, who had been responsible for national humiliation gained huge support. Soon, millions distrusted the Weimar Republic in all its manifestations. Even after it had been awarded the Olympic Games, Germany was still the outcast in wider world affairs. Germans were desperate for a strong leader; Hitlers time was drawing near.