Customer Reviews

Nazi Games: The Olympics of 1936

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Berlin's Olympics of 1936: The mother of all monuments to the unholy mix of sports and politics. For three weeks in the summer of that year (and earlier at the Winter Games, also held in Germany), the Nazis camouflaged (or nearly so) the ugly reality in favor of a happy face of Teutonic pride and prowess.

In a tour-de-force of probing research and supple exposition, history professor David Clay Large (himself an accomplished distance runner) first sets the Olympics of 1936 in the context of Baron de Coubertin's revival of their Greek forerunner, and then delves into the unsavory brew of athletics and nationalism, which Berlin has come to epitomize.

The picture isn't edifying, for many foresaw the implications. Though today the duplicity of Leni Riefenstahl's film "Olympia" is widely recognized (whatever its merits as innovative documentary), few know of the efforts of the American Jewish Congress, the NAACP, as well as labor, socialist, and communist organizations to thwart the Berlin games, or at least instigate a boycott by athletes. Large also sheds new light on the tale of "Hitler snubbing Jesse Owens." Not only are most accounts fundamentally mythic, Owens directed harsh words for withheld congratulations to FDR, not Hitler.

Emblematic of Nazi propaganda aims was the campaign leading up to the Winter Games to rid the Garmisch-Partenkirchen area of anti-Semitic signs. The world, of course, soon learned all-too-well of the Nazis' commitment to Jewish extermination. (This was no drive to reform the population, such as seen in the recent move by the Chinese to curtail public spitting in advance of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.)

The role of Olympic Goliath, American Avery Brundage, receives a thorough bruising. Brundage's papers collected at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, prove a revealing trove. Not only did the leader of the U.S. Olympic Committee vehemently oppose the boycott proposals, he gave open support for racial explanations of African-American victories trumped up by the German hosts. (Not to mention Brundage's subsequent reward in the form of the construction contract for the German Embassy in Washington, D.C.!)

Finally, in a well-considered epilogue Large explores the fallout from Berlin's 1936 Games. The U.S.'s "ill-advised" participation helped leverage Jimmy Carter's boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics (in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan), leading to the USSR's refusal to attend the Los Angeles Games four years later. In 1972, Avery Brudage, by then head of the International Olympic Committee, still suffering from the myopia exhibited in Berlin, ordered the Games in Munich to proceed a mere day after the killing of eleven Israeli athletes by armed Palestinians. Are there parallels between the Third Reich's propaganda triumphs of 1936 and the possibilities for China to mask its human rights abuses in the up-coming Beijing Olympics? "Nazi Games" frames the question nicely.

Historian David Clay Large has provided a brilliant overview of the carefully orchestrated machinations that went into producing the 1936 Berlin Olympics, a propaganda event meant to affirm the dominance of the so-called "master-race." Tracing out the development and planning of the 1936 games as well as the Olympic movement itself, Large leaves few stones unturned as he probes the way the Nazis twisted the symbolism of international sport to recast themselves as the modern embodiment of the ideals of the ancients. Large writes vividly, and although he is a serious scholar who knows this material as well as anyone alive, he never gets bogged down in minutiae. Reading 'Nazi Games' you feel as if you are right there in Berlin seeing the games as they really unfolded. Particularly chilling, for me, was Large's discussion of the surprisingly favorable way the 1936 Olympics were seen by many Americans, from Anne Morrow Lindbergh to Thomas Wolfe to respected writers for The New Yorker magazine. If you are interested in the history of the Nazi movement, the history of world sport, or just modern European history in general, this book is a must read.

A very well written book filled with about as much information about the 36 Olympics and the events leading up to it as anyone could have a right to expect. There's lots of various facts about the games, did you know that Jesse Owens was one of 19 Black American atheltes to participate in the games? Or that Owens felt more resentment against Roosevelt for failing to welcome him home after the games than against Hitler for refusing to shake his hand? However, if there is a villain in this piece, it's not Adolf Hitler, it's Avery Brundage, the head of the US Olympic committee and later the International Olympic Committee, who held steadfast against various efforts to boycott the 36 Games, and even removed 2 Jewish athletes from a US relay team just before the final event.

David Clay large has written a terrific book about the 1936 Berlin Olympics. He traces the history of the modern Olympics before and after Berlin, skillfully describes the failed effort to boycott the games, and presents a lively retelling of the games themselves. But it is the story of the political intrigues surrounding the competition that makes the book worth reading. With the 2008 Beijing Olympics fast approaching, this book will show how totalitarian states will pull out all the stops to host successful Olympics and score public relations victories.

This fine book is a comprehensive look at the 1936 Olympic Games. The book includes not only a well-done, and even myth-exploding, recounting of the standard stories of these Games, i.e., the summer Olympics in Berlin, but also contains an interesting review of the history of the modern Olympics leading up to the '36 Games, as well as an examination of the back-door politics over threatened boycotts of these Games, a look at the 1936 Winter Olympics (also held in Germany), and a dissection of Leni Riefenstahl's influential film, "Olympiad."

In addition, intertwined within all these facets of the 1936 Games is an absorbing account of the politics involved on all sides. In this regard, many people (German, American, and British) come out looking badly. Aside from the usual suspects (i.e., the Nazi cast of characters including Hitler and Goebbels, who come across as obviously flawed but also prescient in the use of media to their advantage), it is Avery Brundage, the head of the American Olympic Committee (who subsequently became the head of the International Olympic Committee) who comes across as perhaps the worst. Mr. Brundage, thanks to scrupulously maintained archives of his acts, is exposed as a bull-headed, anti-Semite.

In one respect, however, it is the Germans who come across the best, not by the character of their actions, but by the quality of their manipulations, turning a worldwide sporting event into an advertisement for the new Germany; an advertisement that left the world with a positive perception of Nazi Germany.

In sum, this is a well-rounded look at the 1936 Olympics that explores not just the triumphs and tragedies of the events themselves but also the bigger picture of the politics and propaganda surrounding the Games.

Within a short time four books have been published on the 1936 Olympics Games. No wonder, because these were the most fascinating Games of the 20th Century. Historian David Clay Large's account of the Games gives no real new insight in what happened in the years 1933-1936 with all the problems and political events regarding the Games in Berlin, but the book is so well written! David Clay Large is at his best when dealing with the complex history before the Games took place. In my opinion he could have done more with the Games themselves. Apart from the track and field the writing here is rather short and dutiful. But the chapters on the movie 'Olympia' and the Epilogue 'The Games must go on' are again superb.
There are some little mistakes that could easily have been avoided. On page 58 Large writes: 'R.M.N. Tisdall, one of Britain's first black Olympians, won the four-hundred meter race' (in 1932). Three mistakes in one sentence. Tisdall was not a black but a white athlete, he was not from Great-Britain but from Ireland and hij did not won the 400 meters but the 400 metres hurdles. Mr Large states on page 265 that gymnastics for women were for the first time included in the 1936 Olympic program. This is not correct. The first time was in 1928 in Amsterdam. The half-jewish German fencer Helene Mayer did not die in 1961 but in 1953 (page 267). Eulace Peacock did not win the silver medal in the 100 m in 1932, he did not even took part. There are some more, but it is not that important. "Nazi Games" is a very good book. I enjoyed reading it.

While the author's prose is often too colloquial for my taste, his well organized, expertly researched account of the 1936 Berlin games is both interesting reading and valuable historical reference. He also provides a very good history of the modern Olympics leading up to the titled games and consequently gives the reader a valuable perspective from which to examine those that followed...including/especially the upcoming Beijing Olympics.

I suppose that I should issue a pre-review caveat: I am hardly an expert on the history of World War II in general, and am even less of an expert when it comes to the history of sports (Olympic or otherwise). Consequently, some of the notes mentioned in the other reviews--and, especially, some of the errors pointed out--flew right by me.

That said, I greatly enjoyed "Nazi Games" for what it did provide: a fantastically written account of one of the strangest sporting events of the twentieth century. Large eschews the standard, overly dry historical tone in favor of something befitting the energetic subject matter at hand, while simultaneously taking into account the looming dread and foreboding captured by the epoch in question. By detailing the historical events (both directly related to the Olympics and otherwise) that led up to the 1936, Large is able to contextualize the 1936 games with an preestablished cast of characters, and thus move his reader with considerable ease through a tale that involves a fair bit of action, but also a good amount of bureaucratic wrangling, diplomatic maneuvering, and domestic/international upheaval.

As someone entering a new period of enthusiasm for WWII-era history, I found Large's subject matter and execution to be very refreshing. While my lack of expertise in the subject at hand makes me wary of recommending the work based on factual accuracy alone, I can heartily recommend it as a well-written and well-researched look into the Olympic "calm"--although it was, of course, nothing of the sort--before the storm of WWII.

The Beijing Olympics are following the 1936 Germany approach to world peace and both are controversial and ill-timed. Germany's took place before the world knew of the concentration camps and killing of the Jewish race from different countries. This year's bad timing has to do after China took over Tibet and killed some of the monks. The nuns were traveling America to let us know what was going on. Therefore, no matter how Berlin came out smelling like a mum, we now have media and protesters to keep us aware of China's human rights molestation. Also, their manufacturing with poisons on products shipped to America. It is appalling. Will these Olympics take place as scheduled or will they turn out like the Moscow 1980 games?

During the time of The Olympics in 1936 Germany, the Nazis were experimenting with the concentration camp prisoners with lethal drugs, stealing their gold teeth before/after being gassed into extinction. Searching for a truth drug to use on military prisoners, their guiena pigs were dosed with powerful narcotics to see what makes a stressful person talk about private things. It was the beginning of brain washing captured Allies too end the War. The 1936 men's basketball first recognized as an Olympic sport had 23 teams from four continents. The American team won gold in a bizarre situation playing in six-inch standing water on a rain-soaked tennis court. Like the "Leathernecks" football team of 1890, their uniforms became muddied. But no Alvin York play was needed.

Perhaps after the first twenty years of Olympic basketball, miracles were needed, especially in 1972 and 1988. It protrayed a false public image, like the KTA and KAT. America's entrant in decathlon, Glenn Morris, won the gold --also had a fling with the producer of a documentary of the Berlin games, Leni Riefenstahl, also know as Hitler's woman. He was a 24-yr. old from Denver, and chosen the best all-around athlete in the world. Like othrs before him, he tried acting in movies in America but floundered and failed in that sport.

The Getapo selected women to de-rail the Olympic athletes from ohter countries to engage in decedent sexual favors. In the "Love" Garden in the Village woods, each female chose her sportive partner but held onto his Olympic badge to prove her progeny had a good origin. This was part of Hitler's plan for a new Aaryan race.

Let's hope nothing like that will occur 72 years later in Beijing, China, after the parade was delayed by the opposition in France while the flame was being transported. After the attempt to kill our pets with poison in foods produced in China, and babies by lead paint on popular toys manufactured there, the Olympics should be cancelled as those in 1980 Russia. In France, the banners of protest depicted the Olympic rings as handcuffs hung on the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame cathedral. These banners were also put up on the Golden Gate bridge in America. A day earlier, London saw opposition of this travesty, calling it a form of sabotage by Tibetan separatists. "The buildup to these '08 games are to separate openness in China and to faciliate improvements in its record on human rights." The Olympics should supersede politics but, as we know from past places and crime running rampant, there is no way this could be possible.