Hitler's Olympics (33 page)

The marathon followed a similar route to the 50-kilometre walk, meandering through the Grünewald forest beside the River Havel, turning inland to the gun-barrel straight motor racing circuit called the Avus, to turn at the end of that and return. As someone pointed out, although the course was proper road, the route subjected the runners to a particular kind of torture: as they got hotter and hotter under the sun they’d be going past bathers cooling themselves in the Havel or drinkers refreshing themselves in vast open-air beer gardens.
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The race started in the stadium and an estimated million spectators lined the route, which was where most of the 160,000 who’d come by train were headed.

The Japanese team featured Sohn Kee-chung, a fiercely nationalistic Korean who had set a new world record the year before. He trained by filling the pockets of his shorts with sand and carrying a rucksack full of stones on his back. Japan had annexed Korea in 1910 and if he wanted to run in Berlin it would have to be in the Japanese team. He and another Korean, Nam Seung-yong, were ‘forced to endure the further insult of adopting Japanese names (his participation is recorded under the Japanese name Son Kitei). Sohn, a fervent nationalist, always signed his Korean name in Berlin and whenever he was asked where he was from, he made it a point to explain that Korea was a separate nation.’
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The runners waited in a great group for the start. Here was defending champion Juan-Carlos Zabala who had not run a marathon since Los Angeles but had beaten the world 20-kilometre record and trained hard for six months. Here were the inevitable Finns, Erkki Tamila, Vaino Muinonen and Mauno Tarkianen who ran as a team taking turns to lead – and to demoralise their opponents. Here was 34-year-old Ernest Harper (Great Britain) and Johannes Coleman (South Africa). Here, too, were the troubled French trio of Khaled Nouba, Emile Duval and Fernand Leheurteur – Duval, who had a reputation for liking a drink, suffering from a boil, Leheurteur into the eighth day of an abscess (the tooth wasn’t taken out in case of complications). The trainer gave all three runners cloth bracelets on which he’d written the times he wanted from them and posted people at the control points to monitor how accurately they were meeting them – a mistake. The times proved too conservative. Here was the Portuguese Manuel Dias who had made the fundamental error of wearing new running shoes.
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They moved en masse at the gun and strung out like beads on a necklace round the stadium, each seeking his own pace. Zabala in a white hat – like a silken balaclava – led out of the stadium and fully intended to break his own Olympic record, aiming at 2 hours 30 minutes. The order: Zabala, Dias, Harper and Sohn as they moved down a narrow lane between the trees, spectators standing deep on either side, the trees spreading shadows. At 4 kilometres Zabala led Dias by half a minute. He was going for broke.

The women’s high jump moved into the elimination stages. Gretel Bergmann ought to have been in the German team and excluding her on anti-Semitic grounds subsequently became an even more grotesque travesty when the truth emerged about Dora Ratjen. Born in Bremen nine days after the First World War ended, he had joined the little club Comet in that city as a sprinter and shot-putter as well as high-jumper. In 1933 he competed in the German high jump championships, finishing sixth. Many years later he claimed the Nazis had threatened to harm his family if he did not compete as a woman in Berlin. Presumably they reasoned that, as a man, he would have to win (and who would care about Bergmann then?). The irony, if one can use such a word, is that Ratjen finished fourth. After a jump-off, Ibolya Csák (Hungary) won from Odam and Elfriede Kaun of Germany. Most people, Odam judged,

have nerves and get in a state in competition. The women’s high jump wasn’t until the last day. I was getting fed up not getting out there. I wanted to get out and perform. I didn’t fail at all until the final jump which we all failed, but I got over the one before on my first jump, which today would have given me the gold medal. In those days, they lowered the bar a quarter of an inch and you all tried. We all jumped it. They raised it, we all jumped, then lower, then higher, and the Hungarian girl cleared it. The German girl dropped out before then. During the actual competition, which lasted for three hours, there was an awful lot of cheering for the German girl and she was allowed a drink during the competition, which we weren’t. The only people cheering for me were a crowd of British scouts! In the end, I won silver, though I jumped the same height as the winner. Lord Aberdare presented the medal in a box in the stadium.
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Ratjen reportedly concealed his private parts by binding them, tight, but even so Odam felt ‘sure he was a man’.

At 10 kilometres in the marathon Ellison Brown (United States) moved up among the leaders. When they reached half distance Zabala led from Harper and Sohn, who had a compact, rolling motion as he ran. He and Harper were abreast and at one point Harper angled his head and said something to him. Sohn nodded back.

On the Avus, at the point where they turned, Zabala led in 1 hour 11 minutes 29 seconds but Sohn and Harper lay within 50 seconds, Sohn relaxed and comfortable. Behind, the Finns tried their tactic on Nam but he didn’t crack, he kept on coming. Sohn felt a little tired at 25 kilometres but ran easily through that. At 31 kilometres Zabala took his hat off and was in trouble. At the refreshment stations runners dipped their heads into bowls of cool water. At one Zabala collapsed, instinctively rose, limped forward for another 100 metres only to collapse again. Sohn moved into the lead.

In the foreground, as the American 4 × 100 team prepared for the final Glickman sat alone. He had no idea where Stoller was, or even if he was there. Hitler, in uniform, sat about 30 yards away. As Glickman watched the four down there warming up he had only one thought:
that ought to have been me
. Now his gaze locked on to Metcalfe, who would run the second leg –
his
leg. He thought Metcalfe looked in good form.

Then Marty Glickman felt very, very angry.

Before the start Owens blew Italian relay runner Fernanda Bullano a kiss.

He moved into the mechanical lope and it was so beautiful to watch that Glickman forgot his bitterness and gloried in being a witness to it. The lope was so fluid and so light, Glickman thought, Owens’s spikes hardly seemed to bite the track surface. Owens led by 4 metres when he handed – slightly hesitantly – the baton to Metcalfe; and Metcalfe stormed away, 7 metres up when he handed over to Draper. Metcalfe almost went out of the change-over zone and in that instant Glickman might have been vindicated:
the only people who can beat us are ourselves
.

Draper, alone, maintained the lead and that gave Wykoff a solitary run for home. The Americans did 39.8 seconds, the Olympic and world records beaten. Italy came second (41.1) and Germany third (41.2).

Owens had his fourth gold medal.

Australian swimmer Evelyn de Lacy reflected what Glickman and so many others felt when, half a century later, she said that her Berlin memory was ‘of watching Jesse Owens. I never missed any of his races, he ran with such beauty and grace, he was so beautiful to watch.’
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Hitler did not leave the stadium.

In the changing rooms immediately after the race, however, Secretary-Treasurer of the AAU Daniel Ferris reminded Owens he was expected to run in a meeting at Cologne on the Tuesday. Money could be made from the organisers of such meetings (the Cologne people said the AAU could have 15 per cent of the gate if Owens competed, only 10 per cent if he did not),
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although by definition as amateurs Owens and the other athletes would not see a penny of it. Coach Draper reacted strongly. Owens had given everything over the week and you couldn’t ask a man to run the day after this relay, but because Cologne lay two days away Draper’s case fell.

As it would seem, no thought had been given to whether Owens would want to go to Cologne, never mind the further meetings being arranged. He felt deeply tired, homesick and, preying on his mind, an orchestra in California had just telegrammed offering $25,000 – a fortune – for a two-week appearance with them. He didn’t know it was a hoax and understandably wanted to take it up.

In the women’s 4 × 100 the Germans were favourites because they had broken the world record on the way to the final. Bullano in the Italian team remembered how cold the weather was and how, while she lay in the tunnel at the stadium waiting, Owens ‘covered my legs with a blanket’.
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The race turned on the final change-over and by then the Germans had a substantial lead. Ilse Dörffeldt stood poised to run the anchor leg against Helen Stephens.

‘It was,’ Werner Schwieger says, ‘the most fantastic event. I was sitting at the beginning of the section where the last baton pass would be – our women were about 8 metres ahead …’.

Marie Dollinger sprinted up to Dörffeldt but seemed to be coming too fast – and Dörffeldt did not seem to set off fast enough. Suddenly they were side by side, not one behind the other, and in the fumble the baton went down. Dörffeldt raised her arms in a gesture of complete despair then clutched her head.

Hitler, on his feet, sat down and thumped his gloves on his knee twice. Goebbels, next to him, said something. Hitler turned and said something to someone behind him.

Stephens strode home and America had a new Olympic record.

Audrey Brown, running the third leg for Great Britain, found the German team ‘superbly drilled’ and their dropping of the baton ‘unbelievable’. She had often wonder if they would have won because Stephens ‘was such an unknown quantity, running faster and faster each time she went out. Fortunately we managed to keep our heads and came in a creditable second.’ Canada finished third.

The German women, crying, moved into a communal huddle.

Hitler summoned them and comforted them, saying that they shouldn’t be so upset because they had proved they were the best in the world.
Der Angriff
supposed Hitler’s comfort ‘must have eased their sorrow and pain’.
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Brown said ‘standing on the rostrum with the Canadians and Americans and looking round the vast stadium … was the most important moment in the Games for me, despite wearing rather ridiculous oakleaf laurels’ (given to silver medallists).
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[Meanwhile] the press sought to demonstrate Germany’s dominance by tallying up medals and points from the Games. Medal accumulation charts and graphs, which showed Germany’s athletic supremacy over other nations, appeared in numerous publications. The press employed a confusing point system to add up top placements in the various Olympic events, as well. Foreign journalists questioned the fairness of this method, charging the Germans with manipulating statistics. Discrepancies certainly did appear. A post-Olympic book, for instance, calculated that Germany’s women earned forty points in track and field while
Deutsche Sport Illustrierte
came up with fifty-eight. Instead of assigning points to the top three finishers, the magazine awarded Germany’s 4 × 100-metre team the maximum points, on the basis of their world record time in the preliminaries, not their performance in the finals, in which they were disqualified.
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There remained the men’s 4 × 400, Great Britain against America. On the first leg Britain’s Frederick Wolff was slow and that loaded the pressure onto Godfrey Rampling.
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Phil Edwards (Canada), a long-striding chunk of muscle, led, Robert Young (America) thrusting up to his shoulder and then on the bend, through the shadows of late afternoon, Rampling swept imperiously past both of them and strode away. He handed the baton to William Roberts, a short man moving urgently, while New Yorker Edward O’Brien – bigger, burlier – tracked him, counter-attacked, tried to go outside. For an instant they were abreast but now Roberts counter-attacked. The British anchor, Arthur Brown, did not squander his inheritance and as he crossed the line raised his arms in triumph.

Clutching the Californian telegram Owens took the bus back to the Village. He would do the exhibition tour, beginning at Cologne. The train left on the morrow, giving plenty of time to pack and say goodbye to people he’d met, particularly Luz. Instead Metcalfe ‘rushed up’ to him and said the train was leaving now: no time to pack except his running gear. Owens managed to leave a note for Albritton asking him to bring everything he’d left.
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The Cologne meeting wasn’t on the Tuesday but tomorrow.

As souvenirs the sprinters had been given special starting trowels, each in a leather case with
XI Olympiade Berlin 1936
inscribed on them. The sprinters liked them a lot and other competitors felt they were entitled to souvenirs, too. As a consequence the officials controlling the return of other equipment ‘had difficulty in preventing the competitors from carrying off javelins, discuses, relay batons, etc.’.
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When the athletics finished in the stadium the gymnasts came on to do their exhibition, filling the time before the marathon runners came back. The gymnasts had been practising for two or three weeks. Werner Schwieger says that ‘we had to go to the August-Bier-Platz [see map on page xiii] several times. Around the Olympic stadium there were lots of little sports grounds and fields, among them the August-Bier-Platz. There we practised all our presentations. They would check on the gymnastic kits. The white gym trousers were not supposed to be too long. We had to practise a lot, not only for the free exercises but also for the apparatus gymnastics on the horizontal and parallel bars, the horses, the trampoline and so on.’

The gymnasts entered through the tunnel for what was called
1,000 German Gymnasts
although it included the Swedes whose participation had provoked so much domestic controversy. ‘We marched in in rows of three. There were little button-like markers in the ground and the one who was in the middle of the row of three had to step on these markers so it looked all a regular pattern. I was the one in the middle. We had practised this on August-Bier-Platz over and over again. And besides the free exercises, there were also presentations of apparatus gymnastics. Horizontal and parallel bars and other apparatus were put up in the middle of the field and we did the exercises.’ When the presentation ended Schwieger and the others watched the climax of the marathon.
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