The Other Nazi Olympics and the Dawn of US Boycott Talk

[ad_1]

A few months before the Bavarian resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, hosted the 1936 Winter Olympics, signs posted in area parks proclaimed “Jews Not Admitted.”

The postings, detailed in US newspapers, were far from the first signs of trouble in the country that was set to stage the 1936 Winter and Summer Olympics. By 1934, Adolf Hitler. had become Germany’s absolute ruler. Yet despite evidence of troubling discrimination in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and elsewhere in Germany, preparation for the Olympics pushed ahead.

The much larger Berlin 1936 Summer Olympics receive far more attention in historical memory, punctuated by American sprinter Jesse Owens’ victories as Hitler watched. But the Nazi-hosted Winter Games six months earlier were a crucial test run.

The 1936 Winter Games also presented the first battleground in the question of whether nations, especially the United States, should participate in a global sporting event hosted by a government that had shown repeated signs of violating human rights. While the US decided to compete in 1936, it later boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics over the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. The Soviet Union in turn boycotted the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

Now, the history of proposed and actual Olympic boycotts give context to the ongoing controversy about the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing. The US and other prominent countries, including the UK, Australia and Canada, are staging a “diplomatic boycott” of the Games, in which high-ranking government officials will remain at home but athletes will compete.

The diplomatic boycott comes after the US, Canada and allies in Europe leveled sanctions against Chinese officials over the alleged repression of mainly Muslim Uyghurs, including reports of mass-detention programs, imprisonment, torture and forced sterilization. China has forcefully denied the claims, saying the programs are vocational centers that improve lives and combat religious extremism.

Adolf Hitler waves to a crowd from an open car as he leaves the ice skating stadium following pairs competition at the Winter Olympic Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, Feb. 24, 1936. Photo: Associated Press

More recently, sports stars and the Women’s Tennis Association have demanded an investigation into the November accusation on the social-media site of Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai that a retired former high-ranking politician had forced her to have sex.

IOC president Thomas Bach held a video call with Peng weeks later, a step the IOC defended as “quiet diplomacy.” Months later, tennis officials still haven’t spoken directly to Peng.

The IOC says human rights requirements have been strengthened in its questionnaire for prospective future Olympic Games hosts, along with the Olympic host contract.

When asked last year about China’s alleged abuses against Uyghurs, which the US and other countries have called genocide, Bach replied that the IOC isn’t a “super world government” capable of solving or even addressing complex issues for which “not a United Nations Security Council, no G7, no G20 has a solution.”

In 1931, when the IOC awarded Germany the 1936 Games, a shaky democracy still ruled the country. But when the Nazi party took power in 1933, alarmed sports leaders around the world and especially in the US marshaled the first major opposition to an Olympics host since the modern Games debuted in 1896.

While controversy raged over whether the US should send athletes to the 1936 Games, this sign at Garmisch-Partenkirchen read: “Admission of Jews Forbidden.” Photo: Associated Press

In the year leading up to the 1936 Winter and Summer Games—at the time both Olympics were awarded to the same country—the Nazis stepped up their anti-Jewish campaign. In spring 1935, storm troopers sprayed acid and graffiti on Jewish shops in Munich, which would soon host several of the larger social functions connected to the Olympic Games.

Months later, Nazis attacked Jews strolling on a fashionable street in Berlin—including striking women in the face, according to “Nazi Games,” a book on both 1936 Olympics by David Clay Large.

Increasingly alarmed by the reports from Germany, Jeremiah T. Mahoney began supporting the notion of boycotting the Olympics. Mahoney’s opinion carried weight: He was head of the Amateur Athletic Union, which at the time oversaw US Olympic athletes.

Mahoney joined others, including American Olympic Committee member Charles L. Ornstein, in urging US interests to decline Germany’s invitation to participate.

Avery Brundage, who had traveled to Germany to investigate the site of the Winter Games, returned with a favorable report. Brundage was head of the American Olympic Committee, a precursor of the US Olympic & Paralympic Committee.

The battle lines were drawn. On Dec. 9, 1935, the AAU emerged from meetings in New York with a narrow vote to go ahead to the Games. Mahoney resigned, saying the AOC was afraid to “face the facts” about conditions in Nazi Germany.

Brundage hailed the vote outcome as a “victory for the amateur athletes of America.” The US reasoning for accepting Germany’s Olympic invitation was carefully crafted.

“The acceptance came only after the committee had voted to divorce entirely the sports situation from the political situation in Germany, and to consider in its discussions only the status of Jewish athletes, rather than the status of all Jewish residents in the reich,” read a 1934 United Press report. “Once this decision was agreed upon, progress toward acceptance was easier.”

The German bobsleigh team at the 1936 Winter Games, moments before a crash. Photo: Associated Press

Indeed, the 1936 German Winter Olympic team included one Jewish athlete, hockey player Rudi Ball–albeit largely because a star teammate, Gustave Jaenecke, refused to play if his friend was excluded, according to the Olympic-history site Olympedia.

The IOC knew the disturbing political context of the Games in Nazi Germany. During a November 1935 visit to Garmisch, IOC President Henri de Baillet-Latour demanded to Hitler that the area’s anti-Jewish signs be taken down. Hitler eventually complied, although locals resisted the initiative for weeks, underscoring the depth of feeling in an area that was, even by German standards at the time, an anti-Semitic stronghold.

Baillet-Latour was especially horrified to see speed-limit signs at dangerous turns that had exemptions for Jews, effectively jeering them to hurt or kill themselves, according to “Nazi Games.”

The 1936 Winter Olympics were “a rehearsal for the German organizers,” said Large, the author. “They wanted to perfect issues of security, crowd control, advertising.”

The US finished tied with Austria for fifth place in the Games’ overall medal count with four, including one gold. Norway topped the table with 15 medals. Garmisch-Partenkirchen remains a winter sports hub, hosting the final women’s alpine skiing World Cup event before Beijing.

On March 7, 1936, weeks after the close of the Winter Games, Nazi troops invaded the Rhineland, a demilitarized zone along the Rhine River in western Germany. The invasion violated the post-World War I Treaty of Versailles.

With the Winter Olympics under his belt, Hitler accelerated his propaganda machine for the 1936 Summer Olympics. Especially then, they were a far bigger and more important spectacle than the Winter Games.

Write to Rachel Bachman at [email protected]

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

[ad_2]