Hitler's Olympics (35 page)

Even so, Berlin could not escape that curious sense of emptiness and dispersal when the centrepiece – the athletics in the stadium – had gone, and the more minor sports existed in relative anonymity at so many different sites. The sense of emptiness heightened at 5.30 p.m. that evening when the Austria–Peru football re-match ought to have begun at the Post Stadium, barricaded and heavily guarded so no spectators could get in. The Austrian team arrived but the Peruvians didn’t. The referee waited the statutory 15 minutes, blew his whistle and awarded the match to Austria.

In Vienna, the
Neue Freie Presse
, reflecting a more gentle and measured era, treated this extraordinary news item almost cursorily halfway down its page of Olympic coverage under the headline
AUSTRIAN
FOOTBALLERS
IN
SEMI-FINAL
.

It simply was quite impossible to ignore the unbelievable incidents regarding the football struggle between Peru and Austria. The Austrian protest had to be heard and this is one of the very rare occasions when such a protest has been upheld during an Olympic Games. By this fact alone one can see that the Austrians were justified in making it. When the Peruvians heard they had to replay the match they flatly refused. Our team was already on the pitch when they learnt that the Peruvians would not be coming at all. Thus Austria won without playing and go into the semi-finals.

The Peruvian protest reached its climax when the football team withdrew and, under government pressure from Lima, the rest of their Olympic team did, too. They actively campaigned for the other South American teams to follow. That evening Goebbels held a meeting with the Peruvian ambassador and Olympic officials to try and reach a compromise, perhaps replaying the match on the Tuesday. The Peruvians said no.

They departed by train for Paris and at the station every Peruvian in Berlin turned up to cheer them off.

President Benavides meanwhile went down a well-trodden path, blaming communists for stoning the German Embassy.

The Chileans, in Berlin and at home, were in some confusion over whether to stay solid and leave with Peru. The Chilean press in Santiago urged all South American teams to withdraw, claiming that the Europeans looked down on them as unworthy competition.

In the first of the football semi-finals Italy beat Norway 2–1 after extra time. Austria would meet Poland the following day.

At the Dresden meeting autograph hunters swarmed. They saw Stephens beat Walsh and Krauss, equalling the time she’d done at the Games. Woodruff took the 800 metres with a late charge and Cunningham waltzed the 1,500. The winners received Dresden china for prizes.

Owens reached Cologne for the meeting there. He had shed 10lb in Berlin and now, starting at 6.30 in the evening, a crowd of 35,000 watched him win the long jump (albeit with 24 feet 4 inches/7 metres 43) and help win the 4 × 100 relay with LuValle, Bob Packard and Metcalfe, but he lost to Metcalfe in the 100 metres – Metcalfe did 10.3 seconds, equalling the world record. Owens was tired. He confessed to Snyder that at the start he looked across at Metcalfe, realised what was going to happen and ‘just didn’t care’. The event finished at around 8.30 p.m. and the banquet afterwards lasted until midnight.

And that was the tenth day.

The fine weather in Berlin reached its climax on the Tuesday, the sky virtually free of cloud and, with only moderate south-easterly winds, the day became genuinely hot.

At 8 a.m. the heats for the women’s 100 metres backstroke began. Holm watched: she held the Olympic and world records. In the first heat Nida Senff (Holland) beat Holm’s Olympic record and Mastenbroek finished only second in her heat. Holm, asked if she thought she’d have been able to beat Senff, said yes.

Owens caught a plane to join the other group, which had travelled the relatively short distance from Dresden to Prague, to compete against a Czechoslovak team that evening. Owens had virtually no dollars and no German marks at all, and a fellow passenger bought him a sandwich and a glass of milk, the only sustenance he would have.
³
He landed in Prague at 4.30 that afternoon after a long stopover and was taken straight to the stadium because the meeting started at 6 p.m. Checking in to the hotel would have to wait. The American athletes won every one of the nine events. Owens took the 100 metres but could go no faster than 10.7 seconds, and the long jump but with a mediocre distance.

Even as the Games moved into this second week the
Völkischer Beobachter
ran an article entitled ‘The Olympic Guest Asks, “Racial Laws: Why?”’ In the article

the author observed how people of various physical statures and skin colors could be seen in Berlin. In step with Nazi racial hygienists, he argued that people fundamentally differed from each other because of race – not climate or culture. The next day the
Völkischer Beobachter
reiterated the point by featuring a photograph of American diver Dorothy Poynton Hill next to a Chinese diver with the caption, ‘Blond and black.’ …

Interestingly, when Germany lost, the press still employed versions of the races argument.
Der Angriff
and an internal party report, for instance, declared that fair competition with blacks was impossible because they were an entirely different race. Reporters used a modified form of the argument again when considering the Japanese. When [Martha] Genenger was placed second to Maehata of Japan in the breaststroke, the press complimented the Japanese swimmer and her team-mates for their sacrificial approach to competing for their country. More generally, members of the German media praised the healthy lifestyle and industrious training of the Japanese.
⁴

That was the 200 metres breaststroke and Hideko Maehata became the first Japanese swimmer ever to win a gold in a race which captivated Japan, listening so intently to the radio. The commentator at the pool cried out ‘
Ganbare! [Come on! Come on!]
’ more than twenty times over the final 50 metres.
⁵

Behind Genenger came a twelve-year-old Dane, Inge Soerensen. Genenger was a schoolgirl, too.

In the second football semi-final Austria beat Poland 3–1.

And that was the eleventh day.

On the Wednesday the midday temperature remained lower than it had been for several days and towards evening the weather gradually became dull.

Owens came back to Berlin but only en route to the Ruhr town of Bochum and another meeting. The Berlin stopover proved long and the journey consumed the whole day.

In Grunau the rowers began their competitions.

In the swimming pool the Dutch team, including Mastenbroek and van Ouden, went very fast in the 4 × 100 metres relay heats, the Germans more than 2 seconds slower and the winners of the other heat, the Americans, 9 seconds slower still.

That evening Senff and Mastenbroek won their semi-finals in the 100 metres backstroke, Senff again decisively quicker.

Pat Norton finished sixth in the semi-final that Senff won.

My effort … was abysmal. It was a great disappoinment to me. Losing a week’s training with a swollen gland, then to be confronted with my period on the day of the race did nothing for my morale. Menstruation was not a subject for general discussion among us girls ourselves, let alone with a male swimming coach! I was lethargic and slightly depressed and my limbs felt as if they had turned to lead. I managed to make the semi-final, but if I had repeated my Australian record I would have come third. Well, these things happen, and you only have one chance and that’s that.
⁶

The athletes reached Bochum at 4 p.m. During the flight turbulence shook the plane so badly that once on the ground some of them couldn’t face their lunches. The meeting began at 6 p.m. and 8,000 spectators watched Owens win the 100 metres in 10.3 seconds, equalling his world record and leaving Borchmeyer in his wake – but he lost the long jump to an unknown German, Wilhelm Leichum.

In Berlin baseball became a demonstration sport, played by two American teams drawn from various sources. Under floodlights it attracted an audience of 100,000 and both teams gave the Nazi salute before the game began. A tri-lingual commentary outlined to spectators what they watched but inadequate floodlighting made the ball hard to see during the seven innings.
⁷

When the Bochum meeting ended the Americans flew to Croydon, south of London and the city’s first international airport. They didn’t get there until almost midnight and, with everything closed, ate stale sandwiches and slept in a hangar.
⁸
They’d be competing at a meeting at the White City Stadium on the Saturday.

In Spain, the International Brigades, comprising volunteers from far and wide, joined the Republican side. They included a considerable number of Frenchmen as well as political refugees from Germany and Italy. In time they became a Republican army bolstered by the Soviet Union, and with Hitler and Mussolini backing the rebel Franco a murderous struggle of ideologies was played out. Hitler saw in Spain an ideal proving ground for new military technology and one tactic in particular, the indiscriminate bombing of towns. This the same man who travelled out to the stadium or the other venues virtually every day infused, supposedly, with the Olympic spirit. The same man who had comforted the German women’s relay team would bomb the town of Guernica without a thought for all its women and children.

And that was the twelfth day.

In the early hours of the Thursday more American athletes arrived, from Hamburg, for the White City meeting.

It was cool in Berlin and a refreshing wind dragged cloud over on a day peppered by small, light showers.

From mid-morning Mastenbroek continued her campaign in the 400 metres freestyle heats. Ragnild Hveger (Denmark) went fast enough immediately to beat the Olympic record and was decisively faster than Mastenbroek’s time in another heat.

At 5.10 that afternoon Senff won the 100 metres backstroke final from Mastenbroek. Eleanor Holm stood on her seat shouting ‘Come on Edith!’ to the American girl Edith Mottridge, fourth. Holm said that if she’d been swimming she’d have beaten Senff by ‘10 feet’. There is an irony here, and it is not that one. Senff made a mess of the turning point at 50 metres and lost the lead but swam with such force she regained it. So Mastenbroek had the silver: if Senff hadn’t been able to regain the lead Mastenbroek would have ascended to the Owens plateau.

Owens at last had a moment to enjoy himself, not least because in London he could talk to people and wasn’t actually competing that day. London was pleasantly hot, too, although he attracted the inevitable autograph hunters. He even spent time in a park and stopped to have his photograph taken while another member of the team hurdled over him.

Meanwhile, the Basque town of San Sebastian, in the Republican part of Spain, was being bombed and was the site of heavy fighting.

Goering threw a party in the garden of his ministry in Berlin, or rather in the extensive garden where he had had an eighteenth-century village recreated at a reduced scale. The wind which had dragged the cloud over now made the weather extremely cold and the guests in their summer clothing shivered and tried to warm themselves at coal braziers.

In the stadium that night 100,000 people watched a tattoo by all three arms of the German military, Hitler taking the salute. It began with bands playing Wagner and then the stadium was cast into darkness. Four searchlights played over the swastika at the east end, the Olympic flame at the Marathon Gate, the Olympic and Führer’s standards at Hitler’s box. The march-past came in a great, molten, controlled ripple from the tunnel beneath the Marathon Gate, soldiers goose-stepping and holding torches. They divided so that half moved round the track one way and half the other. When they met up they had created a circle of fire. Drums beat, trumpets blew from the Marathon Gate and the bands on the infield responded so that the stadium drowned in sound. The soldiers marched past Hitler to ecstatic applause. To use the Olympic Stadium
during
an Olympic Games for a military parade was an act which made all its own statements.

And that was the thirteenth day.

Towards 9 p.m. on the Friday the sun broke through briefly and around noon rain fell. It became a downpour and the Reich Sports Field showed that; and the temperature was very low.

In the morning Mastenbroek and Hveger won their 400-metre freestyle semi-finals, Hveger again the quicker of the two. Mastenbroek went on to win her second gold medal in the 4 × 100 metres freestyle relay. The Dutch team not only beat the Germans and Americans but broke the Olympic record. It was neither easy nor inevitable. Mastenbroek swam the anchor leg against Arendt and, although she was leading, gulped a mouthful of water just before the finish. She almost choked and, hardly able to breathe, her team-mates had to haul her out of the water: the winning margin, eight-tenths of a second.

Already it was time to be seeking perspective. A journalist, Frederick T. Birchall, explored the context of events in a carefully reasoned and reflective article for the
New York Times
. He argued that visitors to the Games would take with them the impression of a friendly, efficient Germany which might, just might, have been touched by what the visitors themselves brought: the Germans saw that ‘all races’ are good. He pointed out that anyone who had not been to Germany before, and who knew little of recent events, would conclude that Germany was a happy, prosperous country led by a great man and that her people were misunderstood. For the duration of the Games all the political and military controversies had been carefully obscured. He added that when the Games had gone and the streets returned to normal he hoped they’d stay obscured.

Broadcaster Shirer, so intimately acquainted with recent events, would have an interesting reflection of his own, and it would be rather different.

And that was the fourteenth day.

The weather became more pleasant on the Saturday although there was rain about, as Goebbels would discover.