Hitler's Olympics (4 page)

‘German sport has only one task,’ Goebbels said; ‘to strengthen the character of the German people, imbuing it with the fighting spirit and steadfast camaraderie necessary in the struggle for its existence.’ His statement remains a grotesque perversion and misuse of sport as well as the crudest violation of the Olympic spirit – if Josef Goebbels, club-footed serial adulterer, fanatic and distorter of all reality had ever heard of such a thing.

Von Tschammer und Osten was also appointed President of the German Olympic Committee. Lewald had earned international respect and his effective downgrading would provoke widespread misgivings about Germany so he remained as a consultant with the official title of President of the Organising Committee, by its nature a temporary post ceasing with the end of the Games and quite distinct from the presidency of the German Olympic Committee which von Tschammer und Osten held on to so tightly.

The Nazi government knew Lewald had his uses as a figurehead and that, having devoted so much of his life to these Games, he would do nothing to endanger them. They were compromising their rabid anti-Semitism by retaining him at all, a testimony to the forces now in play. What happened next demonstrated that. The Nazi government did not compromise over ordering all athletic organisations to be Aryan-only. That cast the leading Jewish athletes into the wilderness because the organisations had to expel them.

April was a cruel month. Thousands of Jewish bank accounts were seized, all non-Aryan officials dismissed and all Jewish teachers in Prussia deprived of their posts.

May was another cruel month. Trade unions were banned, their headquarters occupied and their leaders roughly handled. Some went to concentration camps. The Nazis began dabbling in eugenics, banning Jewish–Aryan marriages. Communist property was seized. Any books considered un-German were heaped onto a pyre outside the Humboldt University at the far end of Unter den Linden and burnt. A Race Council was established to search out mixed marriages and try to make sure Aryans married Aryans.

The shock waves reached Lausanne very quickly.

In June the IOC met in Vienna and Baillet-Latour gave a history of the negotiations that had taken place since Hitler came to power. He explained what the German delegates to the IOC had been saying, in order to be ‘quite sure that the guarantees given by the Government in power in 1931 … could be considered as reliable, and that the application of the Olympic Rules dealing with the Committee of Organisation and the qualifications of participants would be scrupulously observed even though certain of our International Rules should seem to be inconsistent with recent orders laid down in Germany’.

Of necessity the IOC had to remain as far from politics as it could in a political world and it had a power of its own:
If you do not like our rules, you don’t get the Games. You must understand that we make the rules, not you
. The movement would not have survived if it had adopted any other approach. When a Games is declared open the Olympic sites come under the control of the IOC for the duration and their rules apply. Hitler would discover this twice – once at the Winter, once at the Summer Games – and he would have to compromise. It may well be, at a personal level, these were the only times between his seizure of power in 1933 and his death in a bunker in 1945 that he actually did anything somebody else told him to.

The question of Jews in Germany was much more delicate and complicated. The IOC did not concern itself with a country’s domestic laws unless they impacted on the Games. The banishment of the Prussian school teachers would be greeted by silence in Lausanne. The banning of Jewish athletes from their own clubs which, de facto, rendered them unable to train properly for the Games was quite different.

The Americans watched with mounting misgivings. The Jewish community in America had voice and influence. Would America send a team to a country which legally discriminated against Jews in the crudest, bluntest and most violent way? The weight of the Los Angeles statistics lay heavy: the Americans had accounted for 41 gold, 32 silver and 30 bronze medals – too sizeable a percentage to ignore.

Baillet-Latour, and the great and good around him, had no idea what was coming and if the German delegates kept offering assurances, what else could they do but accept them?

[Baillet-Latour] paid tribute to the Olympic spirit and to the loyalty of the German delegates who … had succeeded in putting matters sufficiently in order in time to allow the following statement to be published today:

The President of the International Olympic Committee asked the German delegates if they would guarantee the observance of the articles in the Charter dealing with the Organising Committee and the Rules of Qualification.

On behalf of the 3 Delegates, His Excellency Doctor Lewald replied that, with the consent of his Government,

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The German Olympic Committee has delegated the mandate, which had been entrusted to it, to a special Organising Committee as follows:

Dr. Lewald – President

Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin – Dr. Ritter von Halt

Herr von Tschammer – President of the German Olympic Committee

Herr Sahm – Mayor of Berlin

Herr Diem – Secretary of the German Olympic Committee

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All the laws regulating the Olympic Games shall be observed.

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As a principle, German Jews shall not be excluded from German teams at the Games.

After this declaration Mr. [William May] Garland wished to have it known that the American Olympic Committee who were desirous of having the United States strongly represented at the next Olympic Games in Europe would have had to give up participation altogether if German Jew Athletes had not been assured the same terms as members of the same faith in other countries. General Sherrill added that the satisfactory statement made by the President would give great pleasure in the United States.
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Lewald made a report, fleshed out by Diem, on the preparations. One extremely important decision concerned the actual dates of the Games, which were set at the discretion of the German organisers. ‘Following a careful study of weather charts and investigation of other circumstances, we chose the period between August 1st and 16th…. We were thus prepared to submit a printed memorandum dealing with the general programme, centres of competition and information on the accommodation for the athletes … this meeting with its complete approval.’
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Professor Jigoro Kano, representing Japan, hoped that an Olympic Village would be organised because of its importance for teams ‘sent by distant countries’. Lewald explained that the Village was intended to be in military barracks at a little rural place called Döberitz. The barracks, about 20 kilometres from the stadium, were new and comfortable and intended to be in service after 15 July 1936.

The Bavarian resorts of Garmisch and Partenkirchen were awarded the Winter Games in the February, the exact date to be decided.

The twin themes reached out and touched a vivacious nineteen-year-old in the little town of Laupheim, near the city of Ulm in the south. She was called Margaret Bergmann, nicknamed Gretel, and all her life she adored sport. She started early at Laupheim’s sports club, competed from the age of ten and developed into a high-jumper so promising that by 1931 she needed specialist training. She dreamed of the Games quite normally, as so many others did.

Bergmann came from a prosperous Jewish family, something else quite normal because Jews had been merchants, industrialists and craftsmen in Laupheim for a hundred and fifty years. A completely assimilated community of some three hundred people, they defined themselves as Jews and were seen as Jews, but it never mattered. They were all Germans.

Bergmann did not receive a religious upbringing. She spent three years at a Jewish elementary school then moved to a municipal secondary school. She applied to the German College of Physical Exercise in Berlin, which accepted her. They withdrew their acceptance when they discovered she was Jewish. On 12 April, her nineteenth birthday, the Ulm sports club of which she was a member expelled her. During a business trip to London her father Edwin made enquiries about her studying there. In October she went to the London Polytechnic on a language course; the Polytechnic did not hesitate to recruit one of Europe’s leading high-jumpers to their team.

In July the German Olympic organisers drew up a new constitution and a plan to finance the Games, but Hitler rendered all that irrelevant. In the autumn he decided to have a look at the new stadium, taking with him Reich Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick and von Tschammer und Osten. Hitler inspected models of the new buildings, the remodelled stadium and the entire area. He asked

why the necessary enlargement of the stadium to a capacity of 80,000 spectators was to be achieved through increasing the depth of the stadium rather than expanding it. Dr. Lewald explained that according to the lease contract with the Berlin Racing Association the stadium might not extend over the racecourse or obstruct the view. This led to the second question as to whether the racecourse was essential, to which Dr. Lewald responded that he did not believe this to be the case since Berlin already possessed two … and the Grünewald course had been operated during recent years at a great loss. The German Chancellor then made the significant decision that the racecourse must disappear and if necessary be reconstructed at another location, while the entire Grünewald premises should be given over to the construction of a sporting centre. The Chancellor expressed the wish to have a large open-air amphitheatre included in the construction programme.
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He intended to construct a monument to his Germany which would last a millennium. If he felt the racecourse obstructed this he had no need to consult anyone, even the owners. If he wanted an amphitheatre on the site instead, accommodating 100,000 spectators, that is what he would get. Werner March was commissioned to do sketches for the new project which was to extend over an area of 325 acres. Diem, who was abroad, was summoned back by a telegram to help. They worked fast.

Five days after Hitler’s inspection he told a meeting – Goebbels and Secretary of State Hans Pfundtner among those attending – that because ‘practically all the nations of the world’ would be at the Olympics the ‘New Germany must provide evidence of its cultural accomplishments and ability’. In addition, Berlin needed ‘spacious facilities for the assemblies and traditional festivals which are an important feature in Germany’s modern development’. Was there anywhere better than the racecourse?

Lewald said he didn’t think so.

Hitler decreed that the Games required a lot of the land under lease by the racecourse and it would be taken over. The owners were offered compensation.

At that moment, the 1936 Olympic Games found their home.
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March brought Hitler a topographical map and showed him an area big enough to accommodate half a million people for assemblies, festivals and processions. Hitler was pleased, but a curious problem arose: that of symmetry. If they abandoned the old stadium and sited the new one 150 metres away it would be parallel to the rod-like avenue from Unter den Linden out to Charlottenburg and the countryside. Hitler liked symmetry and said
do that
.

The new stadium could be built vast enough to accommodate however many spectators Hitler wanted. No doubt for further reasons of symmetry – and practicality, because every spectator had to be able to see the events – the number 100,000 felt right.

March broached the subject of a gigantic Olympic bell to toll the beginning and end of the Games, and do so from a bell tower so tall it would be visible from many points in the city.

The Reich was now in charge of the whole construction project. The entire direction of the execution of the tremendous project was in the hands of the Minister of the Interior [Pfundtner]. It was necessary, first, for the Minister to create the legal prerequisites necessary for the commencement of construction. Then, as construction chief, he had to ensure that the new structure should blend harmoniously with the architecture of Berlin. He was responsible for the athletic organisation, the building of the approaches, and the technical equipment. He was furthermore entrusted with the task of welding these parts into a pleasing, artistic and organic whole. His most important responsibility was to make sure that this tremendous programme was carried out within the short time before the beginning of the Olympic Games. This would require the utmost efforts on the part of all concerned. State Secretary Pfundtner devoted himself untiringly to the negotiations for the acquisition of the necessary grounds. Within the surprisingly short period of eleven weeks, he had clarified all legal points.
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Pfundtner had a rounded face, all jowels, with a tuft of hair peeking over the back of his head. He couldn’t help looking like a thug.

Hitler provided the broad sweep, kept an eye on the detail and the whole project went on to something resembling a war footing. Its scope, character and extent
were
the same as waging a war.

The main entrance, the Olympic Gate, was to have fifty-two turnstiles for the paying public and the two wings beside them would contain ‘every possible provision for the reception and the care of the spectators’. This would include ‘one large office for replying to enquiries and giving information, one office for the exchange of tickets, one medical station for giving first aid, one police office, a room for the checking of the tickets sold, accommodation for the control officials and the cleaners, and three dwellings for the officials of the stadium administration’. The south entrance would have twenty-eight turnstiles. Cumulatively, the 100,000 could buy tickets and enter within an hour.

The new stadium’s central area, where the competitions took place, would be excavated far below ground level giving it a deceptive appearance from the outside: because of the excavation it was much bigger than the external walls suggested. Shaped like an enormous oblong bowl, it would be divided into two ‘rings’, one dug 13 metres down, the other rising 16 metres. That would allow the comings and goings of the 100,000-strong crowd to be carried out ‘in two distinct halves in half the time required if only the surface arrangement were available. The division of the spectator traffic is helped further by the twenty gangway stairs to the upper ring and the twenty passages to the lower ring arranged round the oval at equal distances from each other. The stream of spectators is still further divided by means of the colonnades within and outside the arena. In order furthermore to restrict the unnecessary crossing of the streams of spectators to a minimum there have been placed in these colonnades, for each block of seats, public conveniences, refreshment rooms, and stands for the sale of programmes.’
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