Hitler's Olympics (17 page)

The Nazi machine orchestrated a unified Olympics, the same front of unified approval cloaking the Führer and everything else.

There were a couple of chinks in this presentation of unity in the form of cartoons. The publication details are not clear because both were potentially very dangerous to anyone associated with them. One shows the Brandenburg Gate with Nazi flags and figurines giving the salute. A slogan is scrawled across the Gate: ‘
Jews Warmly Welcome
’. A sign nearby reads: ‘
Jews Out!
’, but the ‘
Out
’ has a line through it and ‘
In!
’ is written above. The second shows a pygmy Goebbels, his club foot evident, holding a Nazi flag in his left hand and strings to the five Olympic rings, each through the nose of a runner as if he is pulling them all along, in his right. The caption, in Berlin slang, says ‘
The Point of the Whole Thing
’.

There is a further insight into the Berliners’ true feelings provided by Werner Schwieger, speaking in 2005. ‘You know, things were not like they are today, at least as far as I can see it. The population was not so much interested. Of course, the stadium was crowded, they came from all over Germany, from all over Europe. Even from America.’ By this he means the population may have liked – even thrilled at – the idea of hosting the Games without necessarily wanting to follow them event by event.

Clearly the vast majority of Germans did favour the Games because by mid-July ticket sales exceeded 6 million Reichsmarks. What is not recorded are the views of those who did not dream of buying a ticket, not least because these Olympics had to be viewed as the Nazi regime incorporating the Games into its own forms of pageantry, co-opting them for the purpose of endorsing the vision of a united Germany; nor were those mentioned who thronged the Olympic venues and oggled artefacts simply because it was something happening, offering extraordinary sights in otherwise ordinary lives.

Schwieger’s comment is illuminating – he ‘did not really notice’ the atmosphere in Berlin because, ‘you know, those who had a job went to work and the unemployed had no money to go there’. Mind you, even though he had a job he’d go ….

And we might listen to Fritz Wandt, living so close to the Olympic Village. He collected autographs, as we shall see. The family talked about his collection as it grew. ‘But my parents were not so much interested. They had other things to care about: their business. They worked on the farm from dawn til dusk – well, starting at 5.30 a.m. finishing at 7.30 in the evening. We youngsters tried to go to the Village as often as possible. For us it was a big thing. My parents, they took notice of it but weren’t much interested.’

The stone-clad city dressed for the occasion with tall masts along Unter den Linden, through the Brandenburg Gate and all down the rod-like avenue to the stadium. Nazi banners fluttered everywhere. As the Opening Ceremony drew near, the number of foreign visitors rose.

The flickering flame and the padding feet moved across the rugged, difficult Greek terrain from the western side of the Peloponnese to the east. At some points the route threaded through narrow mountain passes cut into cliffs and rose, unprotected, to 1,500 metres.

Three hours were needed to cover the first 37 kilometres and a further six the 50 to Vytina, a historic mountain town with a small population – 2,988 runners to go. The flame kept coming across the Greek mainland and at midnight there were twelve days to the Opening Ceremony.

By mid-morning the flame turned north for Corinth. At 7.20 in the evening it reached Athens and was run into the big stadium where King George of Greece waited. The Greek Olympic Committee had organised popular festivals at points along the route but this place, with the King taking part, became laden with symbolism. It was here, in 1896, that the modern Olympic Games had been born, growing ever stronger, through Paris, St Louis, London, Stockholm, Antwerp, Paris, Amsterdam and Los Angeles. Now, for an enchanted moment or two, what had become a sturdy adult returned to the cradle of its birth, as if completing a great historic loop of time and, in the completion, opening another, towards Berlin.

The German radio transmitting car got a connection but when the runner appeared and the speaker started to make his report the crowd stood so deep the cable was broken underfoot: a pity, because the commentator had a lot to describe – the white marble stadium, the crowd, the runner bringing the torch to the King who used it to light a flame on an altar, maidens in period dress and fifty-two guards holding the flags of the nations going to Berlin.

Still the
Manhattan
kept on coming from the New World to the Old – nearing the shore of Ireland on a chill day – and the flickering flame and the padding feet kept on coming, too, from the ancient world.

On board the
Manhattan
Owens captured the boredom in simple words in his diary: ‘The day as a whole was very dreary & nothing exciting happened.’ Stephens noted in hers how pretty yet bare Ireland looked and, later, with the
Manhattan
sailing mostly within sight of land, how ‘picturesque’ Plymouth looked.
²

That was eleven days before the Opening Ceremony; towards midnight, the flame left Eleusis; 2,728 runners to go.

On the Wednesday the torch left Thebes at 3.45 a.m. and by midday reached Delphi, to the ancient Greeks the centre of the universe. There, in an ancient stadium with stone tiers cut into the parched countryside, runners, some in traditional costume, some in athletes’ singlets, ran with it in a ceremony lasting 70 minutes. From Delphi the narrow old road wound slowly down to the town of Lamia by the coast and another ceremony, this one lasting an hour.

The German broadcasters encountered problems at Delphi. Because of a ‘misunderstanding only one cable had been laid, and under difficult conditions in tropical heat a second cable had to be laid in order to provide the necessary means of communication … after an hour this difficulty too was removed. The broadcast went off without further incident.’
³

In Berlin, German journalists – already ordered ‘to use Olympic Games and preparations for them for extensive propaganda in Germany’ – received another directive from the Ministry of Propaganda, warning that if they published anything ‘prior to the official press report’ they did so ‘at their own risk’. Nobody could mistake what that might mean. ‘Reports about the
Rassenschande
[sex between Aryans and Jews] will be reduced to a minimum. The racial point of view should not be used in any way in reporting sports results. It is the duty of the press to remember that during the Olympic Games no attacks against foreign customs and habits should be reported. The Chinese in Berlin have already complained twice.’

At Le Havre the
Manhattan
prepared for her final leg to Hamburg. Customs officials came on board and did all their paperwork so that the Hamburg disembarkation could proceed with minimal inconvenience. Later the ship moved past Dover and out into the North Sea.

Holm followed the impetus of her own saga. The details are understandably scant and sometimes contradictory, but clearly between Cobh and Hamburg something happened. One source quotes her as saying she was ‘free, white and 22’ and intended to behave as she wanted, adding that during the French port stopover she was ‘seen staggering with a young man along the deck and was later overheard shouting obscenities through her porthole’. Some sources suggest she told Brundage she trained on champagne and caviar, others that she said this loudly but before the trip. It seems likely that at a farewell party she got very drunk and, trying to get back to her cabin, met the chaperone of the women’s team who, worried about the state she was in, called for medical assistance. She let loose a tirade against the team’s officials and their rules, and passed out. When the doctors arrived they couldn’t wake her.
⁴

The Icelandic team arrived at the Olympic Village.

That night the flame reached Lamia, a sprawling hilltop town with a fort, some 200 kilometres north of Athens: leaving Lamia, 2,497 runners to go and, from midnight, ten days to the Opening Ceremony.

The flame moved through Larisa and cut inland to the mountain town of Kozano, founded by Christians in Ottoman times, cut back towards the coast and Thessalonika. The roads were deep in the countryside, isolated, and wound through the thinly populated Thessalonian plain. That meant the runners had to be conveyed long distances to arrive at their posts. No trees grew along this stretch to protect them from the burning Greek sun which at times took temperatures as high as 122 degrees Fahrenheit.

The
Manhattan
moved along the Dutch coast, sometimes travelling at only a few knots, and Stephens found the glimpses of Holland picturesque, too, including of course the windmills. Evidently she went to bed early but couldn’t sleep, took a stroll on deck and heard distinctive sounds coming from under the canvas of a lifeboat. Soon enough Owens emerged. Minutes later a girl emerged, too, and, passing Stephens, wished her good morning.
⁵

Stephens subsequently recalled that the morning after the Holm incident all the female competitors were ‘paraded’ through Holm’s cabin, presumably as a warning against the demons of drink because Holm had a very visible hangover.
⁶

The
Manhattan
kept on coming, now towards Cuxhaven at the mouth of the River Elbe and Germany. At Cuxhaven a boat bearing the Olympic and Nazi flags came alongside to take off the horde of newsmen and photographers who had boarded at Le Havre. As the
Manhattan
moved down the Elbe, passing river traffic greeted her with waves. Then she rode at anchor for several hours waiting for the high tide. The team practised their march past for the Opening Ceremony.

China, Latvia and Yugoslavia arrived at the Olympic Village.

A single Chinese competitor had gone to Los Angeles in 1932 and this ‘aroused worldwide attention as it had not been expected by the Chinese government’. It sparked even more worldwide interest that the most populous nation on the planet was being represented by a single individual. Since 1935 the Chinese had prepared very seriously, setting up special training camps for sixty-nine competitors – athletes, swimmers, basketball players, footballers, weight-lifters, boxers and cyclists – as well as preparing thirty-nine observers and nine demonstrators of the traditional Chinese martial art of
wushu
. A party of 150 journalists and visitors accompanied the team and paid their own way.
⁷

The
Manhattan
sailed into Hamburg that night, her Olympic flags illuminated by searchlights and whipping in the wind. The competitors were excited and so were the people on shore and in other boats nearby, those on board shouting enthusiastically up at the competitors, who responded with what sounded like Indian war whoops.
⁸
When the
Manhattan
docked the searchlights went off and the competitors were ushered to bed to get whatever sleep they could in the excitement. After breakfast at 6 a.m. they would have a long, long day in prospect.

The
Manhattan
ought to have docked that Thursday but because of

the reception of the City of Hamburg we arranged with the United States Lines officials … to have the arrival delayed so that the team could disembark on the morning of July 24. This … made it possible for the athletes to be received by the City of Hamburg in the morning and by the City of Berlin in the afternoon and reach the Olympic Village, be roomed and settled in their new quarters before nightfall. No extra charge was made by the United States Lines for the extra night on board ship or for the additional meal served.
⁹

The flame continued to move across Greece; there were now nine days to the Opening Ceremony, 2,250 runners to go.

Near Thessalonika, towards midday, a storm – rain and hail – pounded the relay run and a cloudburst transformed the route into a muddy morass. Still the flame came and it did reach Thessalonika, Greece’s second city, modern and decorated by Byzantine churches. The rain beat down but the radio car reported everything ready. It broadcast that several thousand people lined the streets and the houses were decked with green and Olympic flags. At a ceremony in the St Dimitri Church Square the mayor received the torch and, in a speech, set out the virtues of bringing different people together. He handed his torch to a local runner and the flame headed north again, towards the Bulgarian border. The radio team packed their equipment and set off after it.

The American Olympic Committee met over Eleanor Holm and decided to dismiss her from the team. Brundage made the announcement that she ‘has been dropped for violation of training rules and her entry in the Olympic Games cancelled’. After the ‘cocktail party’ episode she had received an official warning and now became the only competitor to be disciplined. She would be asked to return her uniform and housed apart from the team. The following day she would return to the United States on another ship, the
Bremen
.

This was front-page news, and big front-page news. Holm was famous, extremely good looking, expected to win a gold medal, married to a celebrity and the antithesis of a humble Olympic competitor ready to tug their forelock to anybody: a potent cocktail. Many things amused Holm – including men, parties and champagne, but Mr Avery Brundage did not amuse her and being dropped didn’t, either. Through a mixture of tears, pleas for sympathy, begging forgiveness, kicking, screaming and threats she intended to let the world know exactly how she felt: another potent cocktail.

At Hamburg the Americans came down the gangway from the
Manhattan
in a great column, each man wearing boater, blue uniform bearing the Olympic emblem and white trousers. The way they carried themselves, so open and easy and confident, made a great impression on the people watching, as did their sheer numbers, emphasising that a boycott would have delivered a terrible blow to the whole Games – but they were here and, at this instant, they were on German soil.