Olympic Salutes, Oaths, & Torches of 1936 Berlin & Munich Nazi Olympics
JESSE OWENS & the Pledge of Allegiance in History
It was not part of the ancient Olympics and it was not a Greek salute

Olympic Oath, salute, torch, flame The Pledge of Allegiance (& the military salute) was the origin of Adolf Hitler's "Nazi" salute under the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazis). http://rexcurry.net/pledge2.html

Francis Bellamy & Edward Bellamy touted the police state in the USA decades before their dogma was exported to Germany. They influenced the NSDAP, its dogma, symbols and rituals. http://rexcurry.net/45th-infantry-division-swastika-sooner-soldiers.html
The swastika, although an ancient symbol, was also used to represent "S" letters joined for "socialism" under the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazis), similar to the alphabetical symbolism for the SS Division, the SA, the NSV, and the VW logo (the letters "V" and "W" joined for "Volkswagen"). http://rexcurry.net/bookchapter4a1a2a1.html

Jesse Owens Olympic salute oath, torch, flame, Jessie Owens Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936 Socialist
Jesse Owens Olympic salute photographs http://rexcurry.net/olympic-salute1936.jpg
Olympics and salutes photograph http://rexcurry.net/pledge-of-allegiance-olympia-zeitung1936.jpg
Jesse Owens olympic salute 1936 Berlin Munich
Olympics and salutes image http://rexcurry.net/pledge-of-allegiance-olympia-zeitung1936.jpg





The 1936 Olympics are well-known because of Leni Riefenstahl's "Olympiad" as well as other film and still photographs of Jesse Owens, one of the USA's athletes.

Olympiad and other photography of Jesse Owens shows Mr. Owens using a military salute during the raising of the USA's flag and the playing of the national anthem, while nearby Germans give the straight-arm salute.  While comment has been made elsewhere of the photographic illustration of the salute, none of those comments point out that Mr. Owens is performing only the introductory salute of the pledge of allegiance as it was in 1936, and that Mr. Owens apparently did not perform the rest of the pledge's salute, the straight-arm salute, presumably because he did not wish it misinterpreted as a salute to the leader of the National Socialist German Workers' Party. http://rexcurry.net/olympic-salute1936.jpg

Other photographs from the Olympic Games show other athletes performing a version of the early American stiff-arm salute.
http://rexcurry.net/pledge-of-allegiance-olympia-zeitung1936.jpg

In 1936, the military salute alone was not the customary civilian salute to the USA's flag.  The 1936 Olympics and the war that followed all added to the 1942 interference by Congress regarding the civilian flag practice, and Congress not only dropped the military salute, but also the primary straight-arm salute, and legislated in favor of the hand-over-the-heart.

See the video documentary http://rexcurry.net/youtube.com/watch?v=BssWWZ3XEe4

And see this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xipJGXUWjTU

At the 1936 Olympic games in Germany the so called "Greco-Roman" salute caused controversy and reinforced the "Roman salute" myth. The salute was not an ancient Roman salute, nor Greek salute.

The Olympic controversy involved athletes who refused to perform the Olympic salute upon entering the stadium because it would be misunderstood as a salute to Hitler, who was present.  Probably every article ever written about the Olympic salute was reviewed in research for this article.  In every article there was no author who knew that the straight-arm salute was the prevailing salute for the pledge of allegiance in the USA and had been since 1892, and there was no author who knew of the historic discovery (by the journalist Rex Curry) that the pledge of allegiance was the origin of the Olympic salute and of the salute of the National Socialist German Workers' Party. 

News accounts indicate that the USA's athletes did not use the Olympic salute in 1936. Nevertheless, when Jesse Owens competed in the 1936 Olympics in Germany, his neighbors attended segregated government schools where they saluted the flag with the Nazi salute.  The U.S. practice of official racism and segregation in government schools even outlasted the horrid Nazi Party, into the 1960's and beyond. 

Among others, the French athletes gave the salute. A few years later the National Socialist German Workers' Party invaded France and occupied Paris.

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A lot of fascinating research concerns the Olympics. Much of the work examines the Olympic Games in history and today. Most of the work is puff, with very little
critical analysis of the games. The Olympics are government boondoggles that have damaged sports and liberty.
http://rexcurry.net/bookchapter1a1c.html

A little known secret about the Olympics is that the games have an official salute. It is a straight-arm salute like that of the former National Socialist German Workers' Party. The historian Dr. Rex Curry (author of "Pledge of Allegiance Secrets") showed that both salutes originated in the United States from an Amercian National Socialist, Francis Bellamy. http://rexcurry.net/olympics.html

See the video documentary http://rexcurry.net/youtube.com/watch?v=BssWWZ3XEe4

And see this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xipJGXUWjTU

The straight-arm salute was the early gesture of the Pledge of Allegiance (1892), written by Francis Bellamy, a self-proclaimed National Socialist who espoused "military socialism."  The pledge spread the straight-arm salute and Bellamy's socialist dogma in the USA. Participation in the Olympics by the USA influenced the games to adopt the same straight-armed socialist salute used for the pledge. The Olympics spread the straight-arm salute and the socialist dogma worldwide.

Francis Bellamy was the cousin and cohort to Edward Bellamy, author of the book "Looking Backward."  It was called the "Bible of National Socialism" and became an international bestseller and translated into every major language including Russian, Chinese and German.

The leader of the German Workers' Party was so impressed with National Socialist dogma that he renamed his party the National Socialist German Workers' Party. He also turned the swastika 45 degrees to the horizontal and pointed it clockwise to highlight the "S" shape to symbolize the party's "socialism," as discovered by Professor Curry, author of "Swastika Secrets."

The National Socialist German Workers’ Party began in 1920, had electoral breakthroughs in 1930, and imposed dictatorship in 1933. In 1939 the National Socialist German Workers' Party and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics joined as allies to invade Poland in a pact to divide up Europe.

The deadly dogma led to the socialist Wholecaust (of which the Holocaust was a part): ~60 million slaughtered under the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR); ~50 million under the Peoples' Republic of China (PRC); ~20 million under the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSGWP). After WWII, China and the Soviet Union went on to kill even more people. http://rexcurry.net/wholecaust-museum.html

It is the same dogma that continues to dupe Americans to vote for new taxes for government-owned stadiums (socialized stadiums) for sports entertainment.

Considering the history of the Olympics, it is appropriate that China, a perpetrator of the socialist Wholecaust, hosted the government games in 2008.

Shocking PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE PHOTOGRAPHS page 1 http://rexcurry.net/pledge2.html
Pledge of Allegiance pics page 2 http://rexcurry.net/pledge-of-allegiance-images.html
Pledge of Allegiance pics page 3 http://rexcurry.net/pledging-allegiance-photographs.html
Pledge of Allegiance pics page 4 http://rexcurry.net/saying-the-pledge-of-allegiance-pictures.html
Pledge of Allegiance pics page 5 http://rexcurry.net/pledge_military.html
Pledge of Allegiance pics page 6 http://rexcurry.net/ussr-socialist-swastika-cccp-sssr.html
Pledge of Allegiance pics page 7 http://rexcurry.net/bellamy-edward-emiliano-zapata-mexico-socialism.html
Pledge of Allegiance pics page 8 http://rexcurry.net/swastika-brazilian-integralist-action-aib-greek-sigma.html
Pledge of Allegiance pics page 9 http://rexcurry.net/pledgesalute.html

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The International Olympic Committee IOC displays deafening silence on the Olympic salute. It is fascinating historical amnesia because it is the same behavior displayed by government and media in the USA concerning the Pledge of Allegiance as the origin of the Olympic salute and of the salute of the National Socialist German Workers' Party. Footage of opening ceremonies provided on the IOC website clearly record the widespread use of the greeting at the 1928 Amsterdam and the 1932 Los Angeles Games. The 1912 Stockholm Games might have employed the gesture as unclear film footage showed some delegation leaders with outstretched arms. See the Official Website of the Olympic Movement (English Version) at http://www.olympic.org Opening ceremonies from various years can viewed by choosing the year/City in the box at the bottom of the page.

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Government in the USA subjected many people of many cultures to military socialism and taught them to perform the early American stiff-arm salute (adopted later by the National Socialist German Workers Party).  Some societies are still performing the early American straight-arm salute, as shown in more photographs.
http://rexcurry.net/pledgesalute.html

The stiff-arm salute in the United States was also adopted as the official Olympic salute and spread internationally. See http://rexcurry.net/bookchapter1a1c.html

Americans of Japanese descent were exposed to the early American stiff-armed salute in government schools (socialist schools) and at internment camps. The following photograph shows an internment camp in the U.S. with Americans of Japanese descent. http://rexcurry.net/pledgeofallegiance-japanese.jpg

Japan still uses the American salute as shown in a video on Youtube.com with the ignorant title "Nazi..er, Roman Salute @ Sports Day"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0vaR7j_Cyw  Ah Japan, posted by gaijingunma on April 01, 2009

Japanese military use the American Salute? http://rexcurry.net/socialism-nationalism-japan-salute.jpg

Olympic Torch Olympic Salute Pledge of Allegiance

Hilter salute made in the USA http://rexcurry.net/pledge_of_allegiance_1930_los_angeles.jpg Hilter salute in Los Angeles, California
Hitler Salute Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Ducommon Yards, Hitler salute & Nazi salute in USA, Hilter salute
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power at Ducommon Yards

THERE ARE NO "COINCIDENCES"

The American "Hitler salute" is shown in the following photograph of employees at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power at Ducommon Yards.
http://rexcurry.net/pledge_of_allegiance_1930_los_angeles.jpg

The stiff-armed salute to the flag is not something they do a lot of in the USA anymore. Back in the day, the straight-arm gesture was huge in America, but not so much now. The Pledge of Allegiance (1892) was the origin of the stiff-armed salute adopted later by the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSGWP), as shown in the discoveries of the symbologist Dr. Rex Curry (author of "Pledge of Allegiance Secrets"). Francis Bellamy, author of the pledge, and his cousin Edward Bellamy, were socialists in the nationalism movement in the United States and they influenced the NSGWP, its dogma, symbols and rituals. The pledge was written to debut for the Columbian Exposition 1893 Chicago World's Fair.

A fan suggested that the photo date is October, 1930, however cars in the photograph might indicate that the date is later (possibly as late as 1939) according to another fan. The flag was raised over the agency. It is another example of how the American salute was spreading outside of laws that forced children to chant it in government schools (socialist schools). http://rexcurry.net/saying-the-pledge-of-allegiance-pictures.html

The German-American Bund, a group that supported German Socialism and of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, was popular in southern California at that time. In 1930, no one knew how the War would go in regard to the USA. http://rexcurry.net/pledgebund.html

Note that Los Angeles was the location for the Olympics in 1932 where America's straight-arm salute continued to spread worldwide. The Pledge of Allegiance was the origin of the official Olympic stiff-arm salute which confuses people to this day in later scenes of the Olympic salute at the Nazi Oympics in 1936 in Berlin and Munich, where the Olympic salute is shown along with its twin, the Hitler salute. http://rexcurry.net/bookchapter1a1c.html

Here is a photograph of the Olympic Oath by George C. Calnan in Los Angeles in 1932. http://rexcurry.net/olympic_oath_los_angeles_1932_george_calnan.jpg

Here is a photograph of the olympic oath by Geo Andr`Prète in Paris in 1924. http://rexcurry.net/olympic_oath_paris_1924.jpg

Today, adults do not want loudspeakers interrupting them every morning to command their mechanical chanting ala the dystopian book "1984"! Nevertheless, adults allow their children to be so abused in government schools where parents surrender their children. Adults also submit on occasion to the mechanical chanting due to bullying and peer pressure. 

Here is a description of the Olympic Oath in Los Angeles in 1932. Consider how familiar the act was to Americans who had been performing the stiff-armed salute in the Pledge of Allegiance for four decades, since 1892.

"The voice of the announcer sounds again. It is introducing Lieutenant George C. Calnan, of the United States Olympic Team, who will take the Olympic Oath. A tall figure, erect and military, ascends the rostrum on the field as a hushspreads over the audience. He grasps the American flag with his left hand andraises his right to the sky. All over the field the athletes raise their right hands.Then, in a loud clear voice, come Lieutenant Calnanís words : 'We swear that we will take part in the Olympic Games in loyal competition, respecting the regulations which govern them and desirous of participating in them in the true spirit of sportsmanship for the honor of our country and for the glory of sport.' "

In 1892 (the year the Pledge of Allegiance was created in the USA for the Columbian Exposition 1893 Chicago World's Fair), Baron de Coubertin gave his long speech at a conference celebrating the 5th Anniversary of the establishment of the Union of French Societies of Athletic Sports (USFSA), which favored his idea to revive the Olympics. The first revived games were the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece.

Written by Baron de Coubertin, the oath is taken by an athlete from the host nation while holding a corner of the Olympic flag. As far as is known, the oath as written by Coubertin did not involve any stiff-armed salute.

The ritual of touching the flag was adopted by Adolf Hitler after 1923 regarding the Blutfahne (blood flag) a swastika flag (Hakenkreuz flag) covered with the blood of a German National Socialist during the attempted Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, Germany. At annual party rallies at Nuremberg, the flag was touched to other Socialist banners, thus 'sanctifying' the new flags with the old. The flag is visible in the movie Triumph of the Will. http://rexcurry.net/filmrev-triumph-of-the-will.html

The athletes' oath was first taken by Belgian fencer Victor Boin at the 1920 Antwerp Games in Belgium. A photograph shows that America's stiff-armed salute was used by Boin in 1920 at the Antwerp Games (compare the coincidence in time to that of Italian "Consul" Gabriele D 'Annunzio, who borrowed the salute as a propaganda tool for his political ambitions upon his occupation of Fiume in Italy in 1919).

Coubertin might have been involved in starting scouting organizations in France.

Olympic Oath los angeles 1932 george calnan
photograph of the Olympic Oath by George C. Calnan in Los Angeles in 1932. http://rexcurry.net/olympic_oath_los_angeles_1932_george_calnan.jpg


olympic oath olympic salute paris 1924
photograph of the olympic oath by Geo Andr`Prète in Paris in 1924. http://rexcurry.net/olympic_oath_paris_1924.jpg


Olympic Torch

A quintessential Olympic symbol was the product of socialism. The New York Times reported that the use of the torch as an Olympic symbol originated within the propaganda machine of the National Socialist German Workers' Party and was first employed in the 1936 games in Berlin. According to the article, “The torch relay, memorialized in Leni Riefenstahl’s film, Olympia, was part of Hitler’s elaborate attempt to add myth, mystique and glamour to an Olympics intended to intimidate pre-World War II Europe. In Hitler’s eyes, the torch symbolized the perfection and victory of the German nation.” While the Ancient Greeks did employ a continuously burning flame during their Olympiad, they “opened their Olympics by word of mouth, not fire" and into the streets they sent heralds harking, not torchbearers bearing. http://rexcurry.net/bookchapter1a1c.html

Says Mary Beard, a columnist for The Times of London: "I don’t quite understand how we have forgotten that the “Olympic Torch” ceremony was invented by Hitler and his chums." And "If ever there was an 'invented tradition' well worth stamping out, it is this ridiculous, [socialist]-inspired waste of money."

Ditto for the USA's Pledge of Allegiance, the origin of the Olympic salute and the Nazi salute, as shown in the work of Dr. Rex Curry (author of "Pledge of Allegiance Secrets"). http://rexcurry.net/olympic-salute1936b.JPG

Also see the sculpture by Gra Rueb in Amsterdam, the Netherlands http://rexcurry.net/olympic-salute1928gra-rueb-amsterdam.jpg

Olympic Salute Gra Rueb Amsterdan Netherlands

Even after the glory that was Greece vanished, the Olympics lived on, but in a debased form under the Romans, who replaced the traditional games with their own
gladiatorial contests, in which slaves replaced free-born Greeks as the competitors.

Today, the Roman form lives on whenever Americans vote for government to impose taxes on others for government-owned stadiums (socialized stadiums) in order to have government provide state-sponsored sports entertainment.

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The straight-arm salute was not an ancient Olympic salute and it was not a Greek salute.  The modern Olympic salute has the same origin as the salute of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazis): They both originated in the USA's pledge of allegiance and the military salute.  The salute was created by a national socialist in the USA and was not from ancient Rome, as discovered by the journalist Rex Curry.  The "Roman salute" myth was reinforced by the "Olympic salute" http://rexcurry.net/pledgesalute.html

The first evidence of the "Olympic salute" myth is in an Olympic poster from 1924 when the games were in Paris. http://rexcurry.net/olympic-salute1924.jpg

The 1924 poster shows semi-clothed athletes, a reminder of antiquity, making the Olympic salute. In the background, the flag of the French Republic. In the foreground, palm leaves, symbols of victory.

The next evidence is an Olympic poster for 1936 in Berlin. http://rexcurry.net/olympic-salute1936.jpg

The 1936 poster features the Quadriga from the Brandenburg Gate, a landmark of the city of Berlin. In the background is the figure of a wreathed victor, his arm raised in the salute.

In the 1936 poster, the salute is not clear because only part of the arm is shown. There are disputes about whether the Olympic salute differed from the salute of the National Socialist German Workers' Party and the 1936 poster seems designed to obscure the issue, and it added to the debate.

No official poster was made for the first games, the 1896 Olympic Games, in Athens.  However, the cover page of the official report is often used to refer to the Games of the I Olympiad and has the inscription "776-1896."

The second modern Olympics were in Paris.

One claim holds that the Olympic salute was used at the 1912 Stockholm games, but no further evidence has been found yet.  A 1914 poster vaguely implies the salute, though it is more of a gesture. If that is true then it would be more clear that the Olympic salute predated the Nazi salute and probably helped (with the pledge of allegiance and early films with innacurrate Roman scenes) to influence that adoption of the salute by the Nazi-Sozi.

Olympic games 1914

The first Olympic Games were in ancient Greece.  They were revived by a French nobleman, Pierre Frèdy, Baron de Coubertin in 1896 and held every fourth year, with the exception of the years during the World Wars.

The Games gradually lost in importance as the Romans gained power in Greece. When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the Olympic Games were seen as a "pagan" festival threatening Christian hegemony, and in 393 the emperor Theodosius outlawed the Olympics, ending a thousand year period of Olympic Games.

The interest in reviving the Olympics grew when the ruins of ancient Olympia were uncovered by German archaeologists in the mid-19th century. An ominous parallel is that interest in the swastika / hakenkreuz grew also when the ruins of ancient Troy were uncovered by German archaeologists in the mid-19th century. http://rexcurry.net/swastikanews.html

The modern Olympics used a straight-arm salute similar to the salute of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, and both were derived from the USA's pledge of allegiance and military salute as written by a national socialist in the USA, a discovery made at http://rexcurry.net/pledgesalute.html

At the same time, Pierre, Baron de Coubertin searched for a reason for the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871). He decided that France had lost the war due to physical and spiritual flabbiness caused primarily by poor educational methods.

A boxer, fencer, and rower as a young man, Coubertin determined to devote his life to education and, especially, to physical education. His ideas fit in exactly with
England's "muscular Christianity" movement, which espoused moral and intellectual development based on physical fitness.  It also coincided with the dogma of "military socialism" and "Christian Socialism" touted by Francis Bellamy and Edward Bellamy in the U.S. Coubertin visited England several times to see first-hand how sport was used in schools, and he also traveled to the United States with the same goal.

The irony in all of the above only grew in the years to come, and during the Olympic games in Berlin in 1936, and in WWII.

In a congress at the Sorbonne university in Paris held from June 16 to June 23, 1894 he presented his ideas to an international audience.

At the 1936 Olympic games in Germany the so called "Greco-Roman" salute caused controversy and reinforced the "Roman salute" myth. The controversy involved athletes who refused to perform the Olympic salute upon entering the stadium because it would be misunderstood as a salute to Hitler, who was present.  Probably every article ever written about the Olympic salute was reviewed in research for this article.  In every article there was no author who knew that the straight-arm salute was the prevailing salute for the pledge of allegiance in the USA and had been since 1892, and there was no author who knew of the historic discovery (by the journalist Rex Curry) that the pledge of allegiance was the origin of the Olympic salute and of the salute of the National Socialist German Workers' Party.  News accounts indicate that the USA's athletes did not use the Olympic salute in 1936. Nevertheless, when Jesse Owens competed in the 1936 Olympics in Germany, his neighbors attended segregated government schools where they saluted the flag with the Nazi salute.  The U.S. practice of official racism and segregation in government schools even outlasted the horrid Nazi Party, into the 1960's and beyond. 

Among others, the French athletes gave the salute. A few years later the National Socialist German Workers' Party invaded France and occupied Paris.

The 1936 Olympics are well-known also because of Leni Riefenstahl's "Olmypiad" as well as other film and still photographs of Jesse Owens, one of the USA's athletes.

Olympiad and other photography of Jesse Owens shows Mr. Owens using a military salute during the raising of the USA's flag and the playing of the national anthem, while nearby Germans give the straight-arm salute.  While comment has been made elsewhere of the photographic illustration of the salute, none of those comments point out that Mr. Owens is performing only the introductory salute of the pledge of allegiance as it was in 1936, and that Mr. Owens apparently did not perform the rest of the pledge's salute, the straight-arm salute, presumably because he did not wish it misinterpreted as a salute to the leader of the National Socialist German Workers' Party.

In 1936, the military salute alone was not the customary civilian salute to the USA's flag.  The 1936 Olympics and the war that followed all added to the 1942 interference by Congress regarding the civilian flag practice, and Congress not only dropped the military salute, but also the primary straight-arm salute, and legislated in favor of the hand-over-the-heart.

Why did Congress drop the military salute part of the pledge?  RexCurry.net is researching and here are some theories: 1. Military salutes and dress outside of the military (e.g. by civilians or by children in schools doing a flag pledge) is sometimes considered disrespectful or trivializing of the military.  It might even be dangerous in times of war in that it can cause civilians to be mistaken for soldiers.  2.  It is creepy to have children in schools aping the military.  The creepiness is heightened when the salute is combined with a straight-arm salute that has been adopted the National Socialist German Workers' Party.

In many respects, the 1936 winter games were very much of a test scenario for the summer games in Berlin just a short five months away.  

There is a recent example of the Olympic salute. The Olympic salute took place on March 13, 2004 in Washington, D.C., during a Hellenic Heritage Achievement and National Public Service Awards Presentation gala sponsored by the Washington-based American Hellenic Institute (AHI).  The VOA Greek Service produced a 2 hour 30 minute live radio program from the Washington, D.C. event location. Veteran journalist Mr. George Bistis anchored the broadcast, entitled "Honoring the 2004 Athens Games," and Ms. Spyridonakou interviewed several of the attendees.

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I was fascinated to see the pictures of US school kids saluting the flag, as they do seem to have an uncanny resemblence to images from the period of the National Socialist German Workers' Party. In this respect they are similar to images you explained from the 20s and 30s of people giving the 'Olympic' salute which was identical to the National Socialist German Workers' Party. This salute was given not only at the Olympics but at all sorts of other sporting events. I've seen pictures in the local papers for Northamptonshire from the 1930s of English school children giving the salute as they march past!   - Philip C.

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Aryan Rhapsody  By GEOFFREY WHEATCROFT  July 8, 2007 The New York Times
NAZI GAMES  The Olympics of 1936.  By David Clay Large. Illustrated. 401 pp. W. W. Norton & Company. $27.95.

In the autumn of 1945, a British tour by the Moscow Dynamos soccer team prompted George Orwell to remark that so far from furthering the brotherhood of man, “sport is an unfailing cause of ill will.” But then we already knew “from concrete examples (the 1936 Olympic Games, for instance) that international sporting contests lead to orgies of hatred.” This was a fine Orwellian flourish, but it wasn’t the whole story.

Since Baron Pierre de Coubertin began the modern Olympics (revival or invented tradition, according to taste), this quadrennial contest has been a problem, as well as a joy for athletes and fans. Over and again the words “sports must be kept free from politics” have been intoned; over and again, as David Clay Large shows in his informative and stimulating “Nazi Games,” the two have been inextricably mixed, never more so than at the 1936 Olympics held in Berlin.

Even when those very first Athens Olympics were being organized in 1896, Coubertin was warned that if Germans took part, the French would not, while the Turks, who weren’t invited to Athens, denounced the Games as a Greek plot. It was not a happy start, but it set the tone. In 1904, the St. Louis Olympics included excruciating “Anthropology Days,” when Asians, Africans and American Indians competed in “native games.”

Then, after London and Stockholm, the 1916 Olympics should have been held in Berlin (that’s one for Trivial Pursuit), but other events supervened. Holding the 1920 Games in Antwerp, one commentator said, was a conscious political decision “intended as a tribute of honor to the gallant Belgians, who had been the victims of unprovoked aggression five years before.” But in 1923, the German Gymnastics Festival ominously evoked a violent protest from the small but ferocious National Socialist Party, led by Adolf Hitler, against the participation of “Jews, Frenchmen and Americans.”

After the 1924 “Chariots of Fire” Olympics in Paris came Amsterdam in 1928 (when the American team was directed by Maj. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who saw the Games as “war without weapons”) and Los Angeles in 1932, when the Games turned a profit for the first time. The 1936 Olympics had been awarded to Berlin before then, which is to say before Hitler came to power. As soon as he did, Jews began to be expelled from German sports clubs, and the crescendo of persecution in Germany made it absurd to pretend that the coming Games would be a normal event.

A movement began to call for a boycott of the Berlin Games, but one man who rose to the occasion was the appalling Avery Brundage, well-nigh the chief villain of Large’s book. Brundage had competed in the pentathlon and decathlon at the 1912 Olympics before making a fortune in the notoriously corrupt Chicago construction business, and then becoming president of the American Olympic Committee. He was determined that the Berlin Olympics should go ahead, and protest — which he privately attributed to Jewish agitation — only hardened his resolve.

In fact, some prominent figures in the boycott movement were Irish-American or, in the case of Ernest Jahncke, German-American; Jahncke was a member of the International Olympic Committee, and he campaigned against the Berlin Games bravely but unsuccessfully. Various shabby maneuvers helped the Games go ahead: one American official said he had wanted to get “at least one Jew on the German Olympic team,” and when Helene Mayer was chosen as a fencer, he announced, “I feel that my job is finished.” In what he evidently thought was a good argument, Brundage pointed out that his own men’s club in Chicago did not admit Jews, and it was certainly true that anti-Semitism existed in America. But it was not the most egregious form of racism there: given the treatment of black Americans, not least athletes, with formal segregation and discrimination in the South and informal in the North, there was surely an element of hypocrisy in American indignation.

To Brundage’s delight, the Berlin Games did go ahead, even after Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland in March 1936 and the Spanish Civil War broke out in July. The American team was graced by Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals. Hitler snubbed all the black Americans, Owens included, by not greeting them, but Owens affected not to mind, and on his return home lamentably praised the Führer as a “man of dignity.”

What emerges from Large’s story is that the Berlin Olympics were less Orwell’s orgy of hatred than a propaganda coup. They were brilliantly stage-managed, in a way that showed Joseph Goebbels at his craftiest: as he said, “Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.” Overt Jew-baiting was toned down for the duration, visitors were treated well, and at Goebbels’s insistence the German news media covered the Games in a sporting spirit.

As the scholar and diarist Victor Klemperer saw more clearly than Orwell, what all of this meant was that the Games were “an entirely political enterprise.” Most foreign competitors, spectators and reporters colluded, whether they knew it or not. It should be said that this newspaper does not come off well in Large’s account, with “the Times reporter Frederick T. Birchall often sounding like one of Goebbels’s hacks.”

In The New York Herald Tribune, J. P. Abramson was sharper-eyed, as he described the way the Olympics were being manipulated. That was echoed by The Manchester Guardian: the Games were a “Nazi Party rally disguised as a sporting event.” As if to confirm that, the gifted but odious Leni Riefenstahl directed “Olympia” as a companion piece to “Triumph of the Will,” her Nuremberg movie.

This is an unusually well-informed book, based on a thorough knowledge of the German sources as well as the American background. Large, a historian of modern Germany, has such a gripping and shocking story to tell that he really doesn’t need to adopt a breezy or slangy style, which is inapt for the subject. Some of his themes have remained all too topical. It transpired that a number of female athletes possessed secondary male sexual characteristics — and primary, for that matter. And although the steroids now beloved of cyclists and home-run hitters were yet to arrive, athletes dosed themselves with all manner of stimulants.

Despite everything, the Olympics survived Berlin, just about. Another nice Trivial Pursuit question is, Where would the 1940 Games have taken place? Even after the 1937 Japanese invasion of Manchuria, the wretched Brundage insisted that “the Olympic show must go on” — in Tokyo, the appointed city, although once again that was overtaken by events.

Before the war ended, 25 members of the 1936 Polish team had been killed in battle, or executed, or died in camps; a German wrestler had been hanged as a resister; and over three days in April 1945 the SS used the old site of the Games to shoot more than 200 “traitors,” many of them young boys. Needless to say, numerous German officials who had worked on the 1936 Games, and had enthusiastically assimilated sports to the Third Reich’s ends, got away with it and resumed their careers after the war.

Having earned nothing as an amateur runner, Owens was reduced to making money from degrading spectacles, sometimes alongside the equally great Joe Louis. He had opposed the Berlin boycott and lived to oppose the boycott of the Moscow Olympics in 1980, although this time the United States did withdraw.

And so to next year in Beijing, where large areas of the old town have been razed and cleansed of their inhabitants to make way for the Games. No doubt the Chinese government will suspend executions for a few weeks, and be able to say, “A beautiful day, a great day.” Those were Goebbels’s words after the opening ceremony in 1936. He added, “A victory for the German cause.” And that it sadly was, rather than for the elusive “Olympic spirit.”

- Geoffrey Wheatcroft

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