Hitler's Olympics (24 page)

The Danes wore rose and white.

The Egyptians wore red fezzes.

The Estonians did give the Nazi salute.

The French team came in. Patricia Down, a member of the Australian team, remembered the French did give the Nazi salute to a tremendous reception but later claimed it had in fact been the Olympic salute. Nobody, Down added, had heard of that before.

The
New York Times
described how the French
intended
to give the Olympic salute and did ‘as they understood it’, but the Germans simply didn’t know the difference and later, delighted, said that ‘even the French heiled Hitler’.

The
Daily Express
described how ‘the loudest ovation went to France and Austria, both of whom out-Nazied the Nazis in the way they flung out their right arms. The officials of the many competing countries are still arguing about what they should have done, but the pity is that an arrangement was not come to long before the processions were started.’

The Canadian Official Report admitted that ‘while Canada was given a great reception, France perhaps stole the cheers of the day. The French in blue berets, nearly two hundred and fifty strong, did something that none had expected from them. The flag bearer dipped the Tricolor to Hitler, and the entire French section raised their outstretched arms in the Nazi salute. For one moment there was silence as the French marched past the reviewing stand – the next moment the two-tiered stand rocked with an ovation that continued in rippling volume all around the track as they proceeded to their place on the field. How the German folk love that gesture of admiration.’
²²

The Great Britain team was criticised by the
Daily Express
because it ‘contented itself with a turn of the head, or eyes right as soldiers would describe it, but it is to be stated that these men and women were received with little more than a whisper. It would not have done the British any harm if they had made a gesture to the country housing the Games by following the unexpected example of France.’

Even the British Official Report said: ‘It was a little unfortunate that no uniformity of saluting was agreed upon by the International Olympic Committee. The French team giving the Olympic salute, so similar to the Nazi form of salutation, received a tumultuous welcome. The British contingent with their “eyes right” met with almost complete silence.’

The single athlete from Haiti had to carry his flag and was given as big a cheer as the Costa Rican although he, too, could not give any salute.

The Icelanders, bare-headed, did give the Nazi salute.

The Indian team wore flowing turbans and reportedly one of them ignored the instruction for ‘eyes right’ as they went past the boxes but waved a ‘How are you, Hitler?’ salute of his own.
²³

The Italians did give the Nazi salute, and the
New York Times
noted cryptically that they ought to have done: they invented it. They wore black shirts over white trousers.

The Japanese did not give the salute but the man at the end of their front rank held an orthodox military salute as they went by, the rest all looking to the right.

Canada – ‘Kanada’ to the Germans – were delighted when the London
Times
reported that they ‘made a brilliant spectacle in bright red blazers’. The Canadians also wore ‘red and white ties for the men, our team were dressed all in white, with white shoes, and they certainly looked spick and span. They were drilled … in marching and in giving the Olympic salute, and they did both well in unison. The majority of the 800 Press men voted Canada the place of honor as the smartest and most colorful unit in the parade. We had an imposing array of 160 in line.’
²⁴

Ab Conway, a runner from the University of Toronto, remembered the dilemma. To give the Nazi or Olympic salute? ‘But the Nazis had taken it over. We decided that we were not going to let them do it, that the Olympic salute was the Olympic salute and we were going to give the Olympic salute.’ The crowd went wild because they imagined the Canadians were giving the Nazi salute. The flag bearer, hurdler Jim Worrall, has said: ‘We took a lot of backlash criticism for that. The kindest thing you might say is it was done in naivety.’
²⁵

The
Daily Express
reporter thought the Canadians gave the Nazi salute …

The Latvians, in white jumpers, white shirts and dark ties, marched solemnly by.

Liechtenstein, wearing jackets, marched solemnly by followed by Luxembourg, Malta – all in white, including caps – and Mexico in tops with single dark hoops on them.

The little Monaco contingent did give an indistinct salute.

The Netherlands marched solemnly by led by their women in pretty skirts.

The New Zealanders evidently mistook an erect German official for Hitler and doffed their hats to him, putting them on again when they reached Hitler himself. Jack Lovelock, their leading runner, carried their flag. The
Daily Express
noted that during the wait at the May Field ‘Lovelock was forced to stand about for more than two hours and I observed that when he was not hopping from one foot to the other he was leaning very heavily on his flagpole.’ He carried the flag high.

The Norwegians marched solemnly by.

Austria – Österreich – received almost as much applause as the French, but a curious thing happened reflecting, no doubt, the political divisions of that troubled land. Some made an ostentatious show of holding their arms sideways so everyone could see they were giving the Olympic salute, while the majority, and the whole women’s team, gave the Nazi salute.

The Peruvians, wearing buttoned-up blazers, did give a salute, some stiff arm, some slightly crooked.

The team from the Philippines, like the Chinese, placed their white sunhats over their hearts.

The Poles marched solemnly by and so did the Portuguese, Romanians, the Swedes and the South Africans.

A merry Swiss carried their flag, whirling the pole round his head, casting it into the air and catching it. Was it perhaps the self-same Swiss who had done something similar when the team reached the Village?

Turkey did give a salute throughout but waving their hats.

The Americans were pleased, too. Their 400-strong team – fifteen athletes were excused the parade because they were competing the next day, including Owens – felt they

made a splendid showing…. The men were outfitted in a double-breasted blue serge coat with emblem on left breast and six Olympic buttons, white trousers, white shirt with red, white and blue striped necktie, straw hat with blue band and emblem, white sleeveless V-necked sweater trimmed in red and blue with shield in center, white sport shoes and white sox. Blue leather belts bearing the team insignia were worn. The women wore a blue serge jacket with emblem on left breast and two Olympic buttons, white skirt, white blouse, white shoes and stockings and white sport hat.

The men’s uniforms were tailored by Smith-Gray Corporation of New York who furnished well-fitting and neat looking clothes. This concern sent two tailors at their expense on the SS
Manhattan
to make the necessary alterations in the uniforms. The women’s suits were made by Long Mark of New York and were well fitted and most satisfactory.
²⁶

Glickman remembered marching into the stadium although, as he subsequently confessed, marching was not perhaps quite the right word. They shambled forward amid fears they’d disgrace themselves. They were extremely curious to see exactly what Hitler looked like. As they passed they turned their gaze to where he stood and, Glickman sensed, they all had the same thought:
Yep, he really does look like Charlie Chaplin
.
²⁷

‘When the march into the stadium was arranged we were a total disgrace,’ fencer Joanna de Tuscan said. ‘First about thirty or forty non-members of the team, fat, with cigarette ashes on their clothes, marched at the head of the team. Then came the chaperones. I had to produce my passport. I was 29 years of age and too old to march with the athletes. They made me march with the chaperones.’
²⁸

Velma Dunn ‘saw Hitler go by’ as he came across the May Field. ‘The march past? We weren’t used to military styles and all the rest of the countries were pretty well in order. It may be the American character that doesn’t like being told what to do!’
²⁹

The American team was the only one that did not lower its flag when they passed Hitler and later an official explained that ‘army regulations’ – whatever that meant – prevented them from doing so.

They were given a cordial reception, no more and no less.
³⁰

The Yugoslavs marched solemnly by.

The 400-strong German team, all in white, went last as hosts and they appeared while the Americans went round the track. Their appearance created such a surge of emotion among the spectators that the band abandoned what they were playing and moved into
Deutschland über Alles
and the
Horst Wessel Lied
. The Americans found themselves marching to the music of those.
³¹

For the first time an Olympic Games could be listened to on the radio and the German Broadcasting Company set up facilities so the world could hear. Conditions proved perfect for transoceanic transmission and listeners in America heard the speeches with great clarity. Shortly before midday Eastern Standard Time two networks with over a hundred stations coast-to-coast prepared to broadcast the arrival of the flame and the inevitable speeches when the athletes were in place across the infield. In Japan listeners to the NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) who wanted to hear events as they unfolded had to be up at dawn because of the time difference. This broadcast, and the subsequent radio coverage of the Games, provoked a ‘previously unheard-of national sport frenzy’ in Japan, fuelled by the fact that Tokyo had just been given the 1940 Games and the Japanese competitive successes. Huge numbers of people prepared to follow the Games in ‘real time’ – the dawn watch or late at night – and NHK claimed ‘storms of excitement for about half of August’.
³²

The British took it in their stride. The broadcast came, as one newspaper put it, from Berlin to the national transmitter and the commentary, by a Mr T. Woodruffe, covered the runner lighting the Olympic flame in the stadium. It culminated in ‘Handel’s Hallelujah by the band of 450 instrumentalists and chorus of 1,000 voices’. Programmes then returned to normal: in the evening the first act of
Orpheus and Eurydice
went out while the Western Brothers and Miss Phyllis Robbins ‘contribute[d] to the variety entertainment’.
³³

Gretel Bergmann was not among the listeners. ‘There was no television at Laupheim and very little radio – and we weren’t allowed to have a shortwave radio. Jews weren’t. There was a little newspaper and whether there was something in it about the Games I do not remember – I do not remember one thing about the Olympics. Maybe psychologically I just shut everything out because I was so traumatised by the whole thing. I would love to tell you “I did this, I did that”, but I have no recollection whatsoever.’

In fact there was television, albeit limited. Two German companies provided the first live television coverage of any sporting event anywhere. Three cameras would transmit 72 hours during the Games and they could be watched at special booths in Berlin and Potsdam.
³⁴
Werner Schwieger says he appeared in close up in film transmitted by one of the companies, Wochenschau. ‘The camera was right in front of me and I could be seen in the middle of the picture. This was the first time that there were television cameras and so the first time I ever saw them. One day, when there was a little less going on in the stadium – around noon – I just strolled around and I saw the cameras. They were huge.’

In the stadium, Lewald spoke from a small rostrum, thanking Hitler for being the protector of these Games, ‘built according to your will and purpose’. Lewald invited Hitler to declare the Games open. Hitler said only: ‘I proclaim open the Olympic Games of Berlin, celebrating the XIth Olympiad of the modern era.’ Olympic flags were raised, trumpets sounded and the four-gun salute exploded into the air. The great flock of pigeons took to the sky and a chorus in virginal white sang the Olympic Hymn.

At this moment – 5.20 p.m. – the runner appeared at the top of the steps on the East Gate. He was tall, slender and he hesitated, brandishing his torch above his head. He was a champion student athlete, Fritz Schilgen, and ‘with his fair hair and blue eyes’ represented the ‘image of an “Aryan youth”’.
³⁵
He ran down the track and ascended the steps at the Marathon Gate.

The stadium fell silent.

He thrust the torch deep into the bowl and the flame leapt up.
³⁶

A few minutes later Louis, the old marathon runner – moved to tears – presented Hitler with a gift from Greece.

It was an olive branch.

Notes

 
1
.
 
Daily Express
, 1 August 1936.

 
2
.
 
Hedda Adlon,
Hotel Adlon
(London, Barrie Books, 1958), p. 211. Princess Mafalda, born in Rome and the second child of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, married a Nazi, but during the war Hitler suspected her of treachery. She died in Buchenwald concentration camp.

 
3
.
 
The XIth Olympic Games, Berlin, 1936 Official Report.

 
4
.
 
Ibid
.

 
5
.
 
Ibid
. The organisers tried to cater for individual nations’ preferences. They sent out a questionnaire and this is what came back (in the MENUS OF THE NATIONS I have used only selected examples):

Argentina: three meat dishes daily with large portions. Australia: English cooking; beef, mutton and veal preferred; three meat dishes daily. Austria: biomalt. Finland: ample quantities of milk. France: hors d’oeuvres instead of soup or broth at lunch. Germany: tomato juice, cream cheese with linseed oil; Ovaltine, Dextropur, Dextroenergen. Greece: cold or warm Ovaltine at all meals. Holland: warm meals only in the evening; ample quantities of vegetables, potato and fresh salads; for breakfast, Dutch cheese; for lunch, cold cuts of various kinds, sausages, eggs, Dutch cheese, bread and butter. India: curry, meats including mutton, veal, lamb and fowl but no beef, pork or beef suet. Poland: cold or warm Ovaltine for breakfast and dinner. Switzerland: Ovaltine at every meal. U.S.A.: Ovaltine, Dextroenergen. Yugoslavia: dishes cooked in oil.