Hitler's Olympics (11 page)

One of the Australian swimmers, Pat Norton, felt ‘very conscious of taking part in a politically motivated Olympiad. Though only seventeen I was very politically minded, which was cultivated by the turbulent Jack Lang days, when I would join the crowd while the budding politician was pleading his case.
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The wit and heckling was great! My trip to Berlin was to develop my international politics.’
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The sea stayed calm to Hobart which they reached on Friday the 15th. There, the rowers rowed and ‘the athletes gave exhibitions during the interval at a football match. The Lord Mayor tendered the Team a farewell and visits were made to the Cascade Brewery, Elswick races, and Mount Wellington. We were presented with two cases of apples, and to ensure that we would have ample fruit on the voyage 12 cases were purchased and put in the ship’s freezer for use on the voyage.’
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On the way from Hobart to Melbourne, which the Australian team reached on the following Monday, the boxers, wrestlers and rowers ‘worked together’. That night at a farewell dinner the Prime Minister proposed the health and success of the team. Next morning the Lord Mayor of Melbourne gave a further farewell speech and the
Mongolia
slipped her moorings at 1 p.m. As the ship moved away and headed towards Adelaide arrangements were made with the ship’s officers for ‘training facilities. A complete rowing machine to accommodate eight men was set up on the emergency bridge deck aft and a portion of the deck was set aside for the wrestlers, athletes, cyclists, etc. Rubber mats were purchased in Melbourne so that the athletes could train on deck without jarring their legs; a wrestling mat was available, as also high jump standards. The ship’s hospital was made available as a massage room.’

The sea didn’t stay calm.

The
Mongolia
docked at Freemantle on Monday, 25 May where the team were greeted with more ceremony and farewells. Six members of the New Zealand team, also on the
Mongolia
, were included in the ceremonies and someone gave the Australians a small kangaroo as a mascot. ‘The Team was then motored back to the steamer, which sailed at 6.00 p.m. and again we received an enthusiastic send-off. As we left Australia we felt we carried with us the hearty good wishes of the Government, the public and the sporting bodies, which had been made manifest to us on our trip round the Australian coast.’
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While the
Mongolia
churned forward, in Berlin the multi-language publication
Judenkenner
(Observer of Jews), which tried to spread anti-Semitism throughout the world, was suspended, although with the expectation it would resume publication after the Games.

As we have seen, propane gas proved the answer to the great problem of keeping the Olympic flame burning at the stadium for the two weeks, despite needing 55lb of it a day. On 28 May it was successfully tested there.

Special attention was paid to the colour and volume of the flame in the fire-bowl as well as to the development of smoke. The attempts were completely satisfactory and it was discovered that smoke and soot from the 10-foot flame could not be detected for more than a distance of 50 feet.

In providing a fire-bowl, a deviation was made from the system used in Holland [Amsterdam, 1928] and America [Los Angeles, 1932]. A 7.15 feet high tripod constructed according to a Greek pattern was placed in the centre of the deep opening at the end of the Stadium. This supported a round fire-bowl which was fashioned of 0.16 inch steel plate. The bowl was filled with broken fire-clay in order to ensure a good distribution of the flame. A weatherproof room was constructed in the immediate vicinity … and the regulation of the gas supply as well as the supervision and adjustment of the flame was carried out from here.
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Another flame would burn at the Lustgarten, an old pleasure garden situated at the far end of Unter den Linden from the Brandenburg Gate, although the Nazis had ‘expressed their perverse understanding of the word “pleasure” by ripping up the trees and bushes and transforming the compact space into a parade-ground’.
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Malta became the fifty-third and last country to enter.

The sea grew calm as the
Mongolia
churned up to Colombo and the Australian team trained, although one of the boxers, hit in the eye by the elbow of a sparring partner, needed stitches. Fancy dress parties helped to pass the time. The ship docked at Colombo on 3 June.

The Indian Hockey Federation announced that they had enough money to send a team to Berlin. ‘To compete in the Olympic Games, defend the very proud title of world champions, and see Europe – could anything look brighter to us in the world?’
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Eleven of the team met in Delhi on 16 June – others would join later – and, after an afternoon of rain, played a Delhi Select XI at 6 p.m. losing 4–1. Taken in context, this was a genuine sensation and news of it spread far and wide very quickly. The Indians knew that their great rivals, the Germans and Dutch, would have noted it – it ‘seemed that the Indians were not invincible after all’. After the defeat they embaked on an extensive country-wide series of preparatory matches.

The
Mongolia
steamed on making the usual calls at Bombay, Aden, Port Said and Malta, with a little sightseeing at each, before she reached Marseilles on 19 June. ‘We arrived … in the middle of the French strike, and as we had quite a large amount of baggage we could not get through the customs in time to catch the boat train at 7.30 pm and had to spend the evening in Marseilles, catching the train at 11.30 pm. We saw the city under martial law but there were no disturbances.’
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That evening Pat Norton remembered popping ‘into a Newsreel’ and watching ‘a short [film] on Herr Hitler – interesting and threatening. It showed a white map of Europe with boundaries in black. Then a section of Europe was blacked out – it looked like Poland – then came Hitler’s photo and another section of Europe was blacked out. And so it went on until the whole of Europe disappeared into black except a section of France. The reality of Hitler and the situation rising in Germany hit home. The irony of this, an Olympic team on its way to Germany, watching their host making threatening overtones to another community.’
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The train trip to Paris, ‘with six in a second-class carriage, was none too comfortable but the Team took it in good part, knowing that sleepers were out of all reason, as the cost in Australian money was about £5 each.’
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The day the
Mongolia
docked at Marseilles, Germany’s Max Schmeling met and felled the hitherto unbeaten Joe Louis at the Yankee Stadium, New York, for the world heavyweight championship. Louis, knocked out in the twelfth round, had a similar background to Owens. The seventh son of an Alabama sharecropping family, he took up boxing when he moved to Chicago. Schmeling was white, of course, a heavy puncher and could – against his will – be presented as an example of Aryan mastery. Louis was black, of course, and could – against his will or not – be presented as an example of what a man of his colour and background could achieve. When he went down in round 12 it may be that his whole community went down with him and, when they rose, they swivelled their gaze of hope towards Owens.
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The year before, in 45 minutes during a meeting in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Owens equalled the world 100-yard record and broke three world records: long jump, 220 yards and 220-yard low hurdles. It made him as famous as Louis, so famous that now, as the trials for the Olympic team drew near, he recorded how things were happening too fast and how he felt a reverse kind of shock looking at a photograph of himself on the front page of a newspaper.
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He suddenly realised that being on a front page had become normal.

Owens recorded a dialogue between himself and his wife Ruth.

Owens said he would like them to go to church before he got on the boat.

Ruth said she was glad because he hadn’t said that for a long time.

Owens thought out loud, ‘Can’t this morning – Got to meet Coach Snyder at ten. Maybe next Sunday morning, but I’ve got that press conference and got to get in my practice sometime ….’

Each busy moment melted into the next.
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The coach, Larry Snyder, advised Owens and was well placed to do so. A pilot instructor in the First World War he ‘did some stunt flying in the early 1920s before enrolling at Ohio State University’. He served as head track coach from 1932 until 1965. During this time ‘his athletes set 14 world records, won 52 All-American certificates and eight Olympic gold medals’.
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He hammered home to Owens that success brought obligations and responsibilities, that he must be careful what he did and that he must promote good interracial relations.
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Owens was not, of course, the only sprinter anticipating Berlin. A whole clutch of other Americans were, too, and at the two-day Canadian trials Howie McPhee, dubbed the ‘quiet spoken, beautifully muscled Vancouver boy’, set three Canadian records. During a pre-Olympic meeting in Vancouver he equalled the Olympic record. What might he do to Owens – inflict another defeat, à la Schmeling?
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Spain withdrew from the Games – the country faced civil war – and Brazil caused problems of another kind altogether by sending two teams. The Official German Report said dryly that an ‘especially difficult situation arose’ because Brazil ‘possessed two National Federations for athletics, rowing and swimming, one of which was affiliated with the International Federations, the other with the National Olympic Committee’. Which represented Brazil? Nobody knew.

The first competitors, five Japanese swimmers, arrived in Berlin after twelve days on the Trans-Siberian railway. They seem to have been both swimmers and an advance party for the full team of 191. ‘For all those who watched the gradual development of the Olympic Village, it was an unforgettable moment when these five Japanese entered to the tones of the Japanese national anthem and the flag of Japan, followed by that of Germany, was unfurled for the first time.’
¹⁷
The Japanese took to going out onto the grass beside their cottage in the early morning for callisthenics. They approached these exercises very intently and the Germans watching said openly that none of their competitors would have been able to stand the strain. The swimmers were secretive and their coach did not want them observed when they began training. If he saw anyone at the pool timing any of his team, he would order his swimmer out of the water immediately.

The majority of the Japanese team, one of the strongest the country sent abroad and including seventeen women, trained and acclimatised at Helsinki for several weeks. They, too, guarded their privacy. No doubt they had an extra incentive to impress the world, because Tokyo had been awarded the 1940 Summer Games and Sapporo the Winter. The Japanese contenders would not be coming to Berlin yet.

The Australian team spent a night in Paris and reached Cologne the following day. They were given a conducted tour of the city before boarding the Berlin train at 10.20 that night.

The Indian hockey team’s tour went on. They played a tense match against All-Madras in front of a big crowd, winning 5–3, and left Madras at 9.30 that night on the Bangalore mail train. They arrived at 6.45 next morning, Tuesday, 23 June, and that evening beat Bangalore 4–1 before boarding the Bangalore passenger train for Bombay and departure for Europe.
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The Australians arrived in Berlin at 7.55 a.m., six weeks after leaving Sydney. ‘The bands struck up our national anthem, “God Save the King.” We were given a great ovation.’ They were met by, among others, Lewald and ‘we were driven through enthusiastic crowds to the town hall, where the Lord Mayor welcomed the Team as the first to arrive in Berlin.’
¹⁹
A gold key, presented to the team leader, symbolised ‘that the City of Berlin was thrown open to the Olympic athletes’. They were driven to the Olympic Village and the Australian flag raised to another rendition of ‘God Save the King’. They made their way to their cottage, named after the German city of Worms. Pat Norton recalled how she had felt a sense of relief at arriving because in Australia ‘we were very worried we would not get to the Olympics as there was much talk of war. We were the first team to arrive in Berlin, great reception, but surprised at all the military uniforms.’
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The man in charge of the Olympic Village, Staff Captain Wolfgang Fürstner, no longer wore his. Widely praised for his work there, he took pride in every detail even down to having dentists available. The timing is lost now but he was found to be a
Mischling
– a half-Jew – something he might not even have known. That led to his dismissal from the job and the army. It broke his heart. He served under his replacement Lieutenant Werner von und zu Gilsa throughout the Games, but as a man he was little more than a shadow. Fürstner joined Lewald, Mayer and Bergmann in being tolerated and exploited.

The Indian hockey team reached Bombay at 9 a.m. on Thursday 25 June and stayed at the Taj Mahal Hotel, built in 1903, opulent and described as an ‘architectural marvel’ because it combined Moorish, Oriental and Florentine styles. The Bombay Hockey Association and the Bombay Olympic Association gave them a luncheon and during it a cry went up for the captain, the legendary Dhyan Chand, to make a speech. He didn’t. That evening a dance for the team at the hotel proved so popular that there was hardly room to take the floor. Then the Mayor of Bombay wished the team good luck.
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On Friday 26 June the forty-nine-strong Argentinian contingent entered the Village, including swimmer Jeanette Campbell.

My future husband, Roberto, belonged to the same swimming club as me and we both … broke South American records. Roberto had gone to Los Angeles in 1932. We always trained together. We both worked in those days so only swam a while in the evening. He was named in 1936 to go to Berlin but the cash didn’t stretch, so I had to go alone. The trip there was not so much fun as I had to sit at a table with the directors and trainers. They always had problems and were always squabbling, but when you crossed the Equator there was always a fancy dress dinner. We dressed up, but changed sexes. I was in shorts (not worn in those days), a dinner jacket, coat and hat, and my bride was our fencer in my sister’s evening dress. Not having been at the dinner very long, the Captain of the ship stood up and came over, carrying a lovely little baby doll which he placed in the fencer’s lap.
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