Berlin Games (49 page)

When Belgium was invaded in 1940, Baillet-Latour found that it was not just his country which was being taken over, but also the Olympics. Carl Diem was dispatched to see the president, to tell him that he would be able to continue in his role, but that the Germans
meant to ‘rejuvenate' the Games, with a new IOC stuffed with German members. Baillet-Latour had little choice. If he hadn't been able to stop the Nazis stealing all his racehorses, then there was no way he could stop them stealing the Olympics. He died in January 1942, a broken man after the death of his son the previous month. Although he requested a simple family funeral, the Nazis put on a large service at the St Jacques Cathedral in Brussels. Typically, they turned the event into a propaganda opportunity, with an Olympic flag draping the coffin, over which was placed a swastika-festooned wreath. A German honour guard stood next to it, and Hitler and Goebbels sent flowers. With Baillet-Latour out of the way, Diem was now able to travel to Lausanne to take the IOC's and Coubertin's papers to Berlin. His efforts were stymied, however, by a Madame Lydia Zanchi, who hid the most important documents in a cellar. She then alerted Sigfrid Edstrøm in Sweden, who travelled to Switzerland later in 1942, and hid the papers in a bank vault. It is thanks to the efforts of Madame Zanchi and Edstrøm that books such as this can be written.

For Diem, the war provided an excellent testing ground for the value of sport and of Olympism. In June 1940 he had declared that the military victory over France was due, in part, to the German soldiers', officers' and leaders' love of sports. ‘Thus it came to the storming of Poland, Holland, Belgium and France,' Diem crowed, ‘to the triumphant race to a better Europe!' Five years later, in March 1945, the troilism between Nazism, Olympism and war was celebrated at the Olympic Stadium itself. Gathered there were thousands of Hitler Youth, who were about to do battle with the Russians as they assaulted Berlin. Speaking to them was none other than Diem, who called upon them to show ‘the Olympic spirit' by refusing to capitulate. In case this was not enough to strengthen the boys' backbones, execution stakes were set up around the stadium, ready to be used if there were any displays of cowardice. Two thousand of the children Diem addressed that day were killed. There is no doubt that some of their blood spilled on to Diem's hands. Nevertheless, he was one of the few Nazis who managed to be completely rehabilitated after the war. He was even seen as an anti-Nazi, an impression brought about by his reputation as an intellectual. He died in 1962. Theodor Lewald also survived the war, and died in 1947.

Karl Ritter von Halt had a good war as well. He assumed the position of acting Reich Sports Minister when Tschammer und Osten died in March 1943, and like Diem took part in the defence of Berlin. As a leading Nazi, however, he was incarcerated after the war, locked up in Buchenwald of all places, and finally released in 1950. For both him and Diem, life was tough in post-war Germany, but matters were significantly helped by Avery Brundage, who sent them food parcels from the United States. Brundage, who was now vice-president of the IOC under Sigfrid Edstrøm, did not seem to mind that both Germans had not only been convinced Nazis but had also attempted to steal the Games from the IOC. No matter. Brundage would do anything to support his old friends, even lie for them. In October 1950, the American testified that von Halt was a ‘gentleman of the highest calibre'. ‘He has never been in politics, he was never a Nazi, and he is worthy of the highest confidence.' These were lies, and Brundage must have known them to be so. Not only was acting as the Reich Sports Minister a political role, but von Halt had also been a brigade leader in the SA, having joined the Nazi Party in 1932. He was a complete Nazi. By 1957, von Halt had regained his seat on the executive committee of the IOC, which he held until 1963, the year before his death.

Brundage became head of the IOC in 1952. He continued bitterly to oppose any form of professionalism within the Olympic movement, and disqualified the legendary Austrian skier Karl Schranz during the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo on the grounds that he was a professional. Despite Schranz collecting a petition with several thousand signatures that testified that he was in fact an amateur, Brundage was not to be moved. Brundage is best remembered, however, for being the head of the IOC during the 1972 Munich Olympics, when Palestinian terrorists took eleven Israeli athletes hostage. Controversially, Brundage insisted that the Games ‘must go on', a decision that earned him worldwide opprobrium. Many of the hostages were later killed during an appallingly botched rescue attempt at the airport. In 1973, Brundage married a German princess many years his junior in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the German town that had hosted the 1936 Winter Olympics. He died there two years later. Although Brundage had made the Olympic movement
immensely strong, he had severely stained it with fascism. It is a stain that today's IOC is still trying to bleach out.

 

Finally, there were many who competed in 1936 who became the victims of the regime that they had unwittingly helped to promote. At least twenty-one members of the Polish Olympic team lost their lives in the war, either in battle, in the resistance or, like fifth-placed 5,000 metres runner Jozef Noji, in a camp such as Auschwitz. Twenty-five German medal winners were killed or went missing in action. Silvano Abba, the bronze medal winner in the pentathlon, was killed leading his battalion at Stalingrad. (Gotthardt Handrick survived the war, as did Leonard, who spent the war at Fort Benning. Leonard went on to command the 27th Infantry in Korea in 1953, as well as the 1st Cavalry Division, before retiring with the rank of major-general.) Colonel Komorowski went on to lead the Polish Home Army, and as General Bor-Komorowski directed the Warsaw Rising of 1944 that was so brutally put down by the Germans. The photograph taken of him with Hitler at the Games was used by the Nazis to help track him down. He surrendered on 2 October, and was sent to Colditz. After the war, he settled in London, as the Russians would not allow him back to his homeland. From 1947 to 1949 he was the prime minister of the Polish government-in-exile, and he died in 1966 at the age of seventy-one. The British Labour government refused to send a representative to the funeral for fear of upsetting the Russians. In 1984, Komorowski's son, Adam, was invited to the White House, where he received the Legion of Merit on behalf of his late father. Ten years later, Adam exhumed his parents from Gunnersbury cemetery in North London, and took their remains back to Poland, where they were given a state funeral.

There were many more victims. Endre Kabos, the Hungarian fencer, was imprisoned in a labour camp in Vác in Hungary. One of the Hungarian officers recognised him, however, and discharged him. Kabos joined the resistance, and on 4 November 1944, as he was driving a lorry loaded with explosives across the Margit Bridge, one of the last links between Buda and Pest, an oil pipe under the bridge exploded–most likely caused by a bomb–and Kabos and his lorry were thrown into the freezing Danube, where he was killed.

Despite his failure to win a medal, Werner Seelenbinder still struggled hard against Nazism. In 1938 he formally joined the Uhrig Group, and ran messages between Germany and Denmark until the Nazis stopped him travelling. During the war, Seelenbinder continued both his wrestling and his resistance work. He won the German championship in 1940 and 1941, although this did not stop him being arrested on 4 February 1942. He was tortured for eight days, but he gave nothing away. For two and a half years he endured nine camps and prisons, often being locked up in their punishment blocks for helping Soviet prisoners. And then, in September 1944, he was tried by the People's Court in the last of four trials of the Uhrig Group. He was sentenced to death. On 24 October 1944, in Brandenburg prison, Werner Seelenbinder was beheaded with an axe. Just before his death, he wrote a farewell letter.

Seelenbinder's ashes are buried at the site of his old club, the Berolina 03 Sports Club stadium in Berlin. Unlike so many at the XIth Olympiad of the Modern Era, Seelenbinder was a rare thing. He was a good sport.

The Sprinters

Owens the nigger is sprinting,

The Aryans tasting defeat.

The blond arena is musing,

Der Fuehrer
frowns in his seat.

But more cheerfully they may consider

All the Jewish women and men

Who ran for their lives in the streets–

With them they caught up in the end.

Nordahl Grieg,
translated by Lars Finsen

I
OWE AN
enormous debt to the many sportsmen and sportswomen I have interviewed. As the Berlin Olympics are now seventy years distant, many of the competitors are extremely elderly, and I am very grateful to them for taking the trouble to speak to me. They also showed me much hospitality, and in many cases fed and watered me, which went beyond the call of any interviewee's duty. Although their names are listed in the Bibliography, I would also like to thank their family members, without whom many of the interviews would not have taken place. They include Pippa Ayres, Doug Ayres, Eva Baier, Heidi Leseur, Barbara Bishop Popovsky, Kathleen Kelly and Land Washburn.

I have received much linguistic assistance from Tory Wilks, who translated countless fiendish German documents, and carried out some telephone interviews with me. She has been a boon, as has Edgar Bettridge, who translated the relevant sections of Goebbels' diaries. My Bulgarian is non-existent, and here I relied on Nadka Gouneva's services. She can be reached at [email protected]. Belinda Venning and Pippa Campbell used their knowledge of Italian and Spanish to contact Olympic associations around the world. In Korea, Andrew Salmon fished out many newspaper articles relating to Son Ki-Jung, for which I am very grateful. In Kiel, Berit Odebrecht helped me interview Elfriede Kaun, a job she undertook with much skill at the last minute.

Tracking down the surviving athletes has been no easy task. Some Olympic organisations are extremely helpful while others are downright useless. The useful ones include the United States Olympic Committee, where the mighty fine Cindy Stinger even went to the trouble of sticking stamps on to my letters. Chris Baillieu, who represents British Olympians, was no less helpful in putting me in touch
with veterans of Berlin. At the British Olympic Association itself, Ellen Shoesmith was very accommodating in allowing me free access to their archives. There are good and bad archives as well, but among the best was that at the University of Illinois, where Deborah Pfeiffer tolerated the beeping and fake shutter sound of my digital camera for days. Archives that allow digital photography make the task of writing books like this so much easier. It enables researchers to view documents in the comfort of their own homes, rather than spending weeks in dim basements. Archives that do not allow digital photography–please take note. At the IOC headquarters in Lausanne, the ebullient Ruth Beck-Perrenoud made research a joy, a task helped along by a liquid lunch overlooking the lake. I would also like to thank the staffs at the London Library, the Churchill College Archives Centre and the London School of Economics. I would
not
like to thank the British Library's Newspaper Archive at Colindale in London, where I found the truculence of the staff an immense hindrance, and the policy of closing at 4.45 utterly absurd. That institution needs to be pulled by its hair into the twenty-first century.

In the course of my travels, I have received much hospitality. I must particularly mention George Pendle and Charlotte Taylor, who allowed me to stay for several nights in their Manhattan apartment. I still maintain that I had nothing to do with jamming their front door lock. In Los Angeles, I was treated to a superb dinner by Simon and Lisa Andreae, and stood several drinks by Susie Tobin. In Illinois, I would like to thank the police officer who caught me speeding at 113 mph on the freeway, and was good enough to call it 95 mph, thereby sparing me a jail sentence. In Berlin, I would certainly not wish to thank the plainclothes policeman who arrested me on the Underground without a ticket, despite my reasonable protestations that the ticket machine at Kurfürstenstrasse Station was invisible.

I have also received much expert advice. In no order, this has come from Dr Christopher Young at Pembroke College, Cambridge, whom I chanced upon in Lausanne. He has been a real help and given me much confidence in my efforts to tackle the subject matter. Dr Michael Emmerich in Japan spent many hours on my behalf attempting to establish whether the writer and critic Masamune Hakucho wrote anything of note after his visit to the Games. Sadly,
his quest proved to be fruitless. Dick Booth was kind enough to take time off from writing his history of sports broadcasting to discuss Harold Abrahams. Charles Palmer-Tomkinson supplied with me some useful information about his father James at the Winter Olympics. James Holland, James Owen, Tobyn Andreae and Adrian Weale have talked much good sense into me, and Olly Figg was shrewd in putting me on to Niemoller and Bonhoeffer. At John Murray, Roland Philipps and Rowan Yapp have been enormously supportive and professional. Claire Wachtel and Sean Griffin at HarperCollins have been equally good to me. Once again, Tif Loehnis and Luke Janklow have represented me with their usual charm and panache, and Claire Dippel, Molly Stirling, Rebecca Folland and Christelle Chamouton at the offices of Janklow & Nesbit have all proved to be great props.

It is traditional to reserve one's greatest thanks for one's family, and I shall prove to be no exception. My parents, Martin and Angela Walters, and my parents-in-law, Richard and Venetia Venning, have all been of inestimable help. My young children William and Alice, and my wife Annabel, have endured their father's and husband's absences with good grace. To invert Cyril Connolly's aphorism, there is no more sombre enemy of good family life than the man in his study, and I am so grateful that the three of them have given me the encouragement and the love that I so often required. They are more precious than any book, but at times it must have been hard for them to believe it. They all deserve gold medals.