Berlin Games (38 page)

There was nothing the Nazis could do during the Olympics to silence the Confessing Church. Instead, the regime attempted to prove its supposed devotion to Christianity by getting the Reich Church to erect an enormous tent near the stadium, in which religious services were held. The Nazis vainly hoped that pastors such as Niemoeller and Bonhoeffer might even preach in the tent, but the two men refused. Instead, Bonhoeffer accepted an invitation to speak in a series of anti-Nazi talks in Pauluskirche on 5 August, although he disapproved of the way the talks were being promoted. ‘I would rather call the whole thing off,' he wrote. ‘I was particularly annoyed when we were asked to send a photograph because they [the organisers] wanted to bring out a propaganda booklet with our pictures in it. This I find both ludicrous and degrading, and in any case, I shall send nothing.'

The booklet did appear–without Bonhoeffer's picture–but it was immediately confiscated by the Nazis. The talks, however, went ahead, attracting what even the pro-Nazi
Christliche Welt
described as ‘a huge reverently attentive congregation'. Bonhoeffer was pleased with the way his talk had gone. In it he had demonstrated how the spirit of the Reformation was present only in the Confessing Church, and not in the Reich Church. ‘Not a bad evening yesterday,' he wrote. ‘The church packed, people were sitting on the altar steps and standing everywhere […] A group of Berlin friends, pastors, etc., met at Rabenau's where I had to continue my talk. I didn't get home until
2 am.' The
Christliche Welt
was less impressed, describing it as ‘deeply sad when confronted by such a “view of history” '. For Bonhoeffer, the Games provided the last chance for him to speak to such a large gathering. After associating with the resistance movement against Hitler, the pastor was arrested in 1943 for helping Jews escape to Switzerland. He was hanged in Flossenburg concentration camp on 9 April 1945, just three weeks before its liberation. Niemoeller survived the war, although he suffered greatly in Sachsenhausen and Dachau camps. He became president of the World Council of Churches in 1961 and died in 1984.

Another religious group that was attacked by the Nazis was the Oxford Group. Founded in the 1920s by Frank Buchman, an American evangelist, and a group of Oxford University students, the Oxford Group soon developed into a worldwide network of those who preached a peace-loving message of ‘moral rearmament' rather than military rearmament. (The group would later be renamed Moral Rearmament, and is now called Initiatives of Change.) The presence of members of the Oxford Group in Germany was viewed with suspicion by the Nazis, which saw the organisation as one of the ‘sinister international forces which wage constant underground war against Germany'. The group was likened to another of those Nazi
bêtes noires
, the Freemasons, and on 21 July 1936 the Bavarian Political Police ordered all their police authorities to report on the activities of members of the group within a fortnight.

Urged by his followers to stand up to the Nazis, Buchman visited Berlin during the Olympic Games. Staying at the Hotel Esplanade, the evangelist managed to arrange a meeting with the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler. ‘The conversation became a complete fiasco,' one observer recalled. Although Buchman somewhat naively wanted to lecture the Nazi on the evils of the ‘terrible demoniac force' that were gripping Germany, he instead found himself unable to get a word in. Himmler marched into the Esplanade with a group of SS men, lectured Buchman on the benefits of Nazism, and marched out before the American could respond. ‘Here are devilish forces at work,' said Buchman after Himmler had left. ‘We can't do anything here.'

Nevertheless, despite his best intentions, Buchman was to attract controversy when he returned to the United States later that month.
Upon his arrival, he gave an interview to a journalist from the
New York World-Telegram
, in which he was reported to have said, ‘I thank heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler, who built a front line of defence against the anti-Christ of communism […] My barber in London told me Hitler saved Europe from communism. That's how he felt. Of course, I don't condone everything the Nazis do. Anti-Semitism? Bad, naturally. I suppose Hitler sees a Karl Marx in every Jew. But think what it would mean to the world if Hitler surrendered to the control of God.' Buchman and his aides were later to claim that his words had been heavily edited, giving the impression that he was a supporter of Hitler. Buchman's stance, they maintained, was that Hitler could at least be thanked for being a bulwark against communism, but he had by no means endorsed the Fuehrer or his policies. Nevertheless, the message the public heard was ‘Thank God for Hitler', a misrepresentation that still did nothing to help the plight of the group in Germany after the Games.

In November 1936 the Gestapo warned its network that the Oxford Group was a ‘new and dangerous opponent of National Socialism', and ordered its operatives to spy on members. Himmler believed that the group was nothing more than a nest of spies, and demanded that its members have nothing more to do with Buchman, an order that they only publicly obeyed. The attacks continued, and in 1939 the Germany army forbade any officers from having anything to do with the group. During the war, the group largely acquiesced with the Nazis, although a minority of its members became active in the resistance.

 

Such goings-on did not concern the members of the IOC, who were being bounteously entertained by the Nazis. The Olympic fortnight was an endurance test not only for the athletes, but also for those who were invited to the numerous functions hosted by the bigwigs in the Nazi regime. The first of the significant banquets, however, was hosted by the IOC itself on 31 July in the resplendent White Hall of Berlin Castle. Guests were treated to a sensational dinner created by the Kaiserhof Hotel in Berlin, which started with a simple
consommé Julienne
accompanied by an amontillado from A. R. Valdespino. The second course consisted of Black Forest trout and
salade Américaine
,
which was washed down by a 1933 Auslese. Then followed
Vol au Vent Toulouse
–puff pastry filled with chicken, mushrooms and truffles–which was served with a 1920 Auslese. The guests now needed to find room for saddle of venison, served with petits pois and a
salade romaine
. The choice of wine was immaculate–a 1918 Mouton Rothschild, a fine vintage which ironically came from the estate of Philippe de Rothschild, who had boycotted the Winter Games. A 1929 Henkell sparkling wine, produced by von Ribbentrop's in-laws, went with the pudding, which was
bombe Florentine
. In case any guests were still peckish, the menu also featured
batons au fromage
.

The food was no less magnificent the following lunchtime, when Hitler hosted a banquet in the Chancellery before the opening ceremony of the Games. Seated around a vast horseshoe-shaped table were 150 guests, who included Hess, Goering, Himmler, Heydrich and Goebbels, who was annoyed by the seating plan. It is easy to see why–the minister of propaganda found himself stuck on one of the ‘corners' of the horseshoe, sitting next to Greek IOC member Angelo Bolanachi and French member Albert Glandaz, both of whom the quick-witted Goebbels would have found stultifying. The two men would also have found the German less than ideal company, as his mind was probably more focused on his bust-up with his wife Magda that morning. Goebbels suspected that his wife had been having an affair, although she denied it. Such accusations had the whiff of hypocrisy, as Goebbels himself was notoriously unfaithful. Also present were Lords Burghley and Aberdare from Britain, and from the United States William May Garland and Avery Brundage, no doubt preening himself in such august company. Brundage found himself sitting next to the crass and corpulent Otto Meissner, who was the absurdly titled State Minister of the Rank of a Reich Minister and Chief of the Presidential Chancellery of the Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor. To Brundage's left sat General Leonhard Kaupisch, who had been made Commander of Air District II in Berlin the previous March. Diagonally opposite the American, to his left, was the chief of staff of the SA, Obergruppenfuehrer Viktor Lutze, who was an active participant in the Night of the Long Knives in which Ernst Roehm, the head of the SA, had been murdered. It was Lutze who had supplied Hitler with evidence of Roehm's anti-regime activities.

Seated next to Hitler were Lewald and Baillet-Latour, who before lunch had addressed the Chancellor with the usual ceremonial flannel reserved for such occasions.

Hitler's reply was no less ironic.

It is unclear how Germany had furthered some of the Olympic ideals. She had not allowed many of her own citizens to compete, and she had made the Games into a Germanic, rather than a cosmopolitan, festival. Her athletes were not primed merely to take part, as Coubertin would have wished, but were programmed to win for the glory of a cruel regime. In many ways, however, the Nazis were putting on an event that sat well with Olympism. It was a festival that celebrated the body, a hybrid pagan festival that married the rituals of the Olympics with those of Nazism.

As well as the banquets, the Nazis also held somewhat smaller, more intimate occasions. On Monday, 3 August, Sigfrid Edstrøm and his wife attended a lunch at the Goerings' which was more epicurean than anything the Kaiserhof Hotel could muster. After starting with a simple
salat rivoli
–chicken, shrimps, celery hearts and melon–the
Edstrøms' eyes would have bulged when a bowl of kangaroo-tail soup was placed in front of them. A more conventional lobster thermidor followed, then poussin (this accompanied by a forty-three-year-old Château Cos d'Estournel), then Parmesan crêpes, and finally a raspberry parfait. Mrs Edstrøm was rather struck by the very fine porcelain, and she enquired as to its provenance. A handwritten wrote was delivered, which informed her that they were eating from a one-off set called ‘Stadtschloss Breslau' made especially for Frederick the Great in 1764. The conversation during lunch may also have touched upon the fact that Goering had that morning banned hunting with horse and hounds. In his capacity as Reich Master of the Hunt–a post that reeked of
Gleichschaltung
–Goering had deemed that such hunting was ‘unfair to animals'.

The Reichsmarschall also presided over the state banquet that was held at the Opera House on the evening of Thursday, 6 August. The event was truly magnificent, with some two thousand guests in attendance, sitting at round tables on the specially refitted floor of the building, while the Nazis ate in the boxes, surveying those who they hoped to charm with their extravagance. During the dinner, ballet dancers flitted from table to table, their costumes outshone by the vast quantities of jewellery worn by the women, and the medals and orders worn by the men. Typically, Goering looked the most splendid of all, dressed in white, his vast bulk festooned with decorations. Among the guests were Henry ‘Chips' Channon and his wife Honor, who was dressed in ‘full regalia, with her rubies, but minus tiara'. So far, the Channons had had an indifferent day. After getting up at 12.30 in the afternoon–dinner with the Bismarcks had gone on until 4 a.m.–the couple were taken to the stadium where they watched ‘hurdling and running, which bored us'. As the running would have included Jack Lovelock's stunning 1,500 metres, there was presumably no chance of Channon finding any of the events interesting. What he found more engaging was the banquet, at which the food was good and the wine copious. ‘Berlin has not known anything like this since the war,' he wrote in his diary, ‘and one was conscious of the effort the Germans were making to show the world the grandeur, the permanency and respectability of the new regime.' Channon was right–the Germans were trying to show
the world all those things. Goebbels described the party as ‘great propaganda' in his diary, full of ‘happy people'. With typical boastfulness, Goebbels described himself as being on ‘top form', his every word ‘apposite'.

After the dinner, Goering addressed the guests, telling them that he hoped they would leave Berlin with the impression that Germany under the Nazis wanted nothing more than to be a friend to every other nation on earth. Goering then stepped down and circulated among the tables, presenting the ladies with a small porcelain model of the Olympic bell. ‘He was flirtatious, gay and insinuating,' Channon wrote. The MP felt, however, that perhaps the Nazis were trying too hard to woo.