Hitler's Olympics (12 page)

Norton and Campbell struck up a friendship. They decided to try and get into the stadium to have a look although that was forbidden until the opening day of the Games. Only tourists were allowed. They mingled with a group of tourists and did get in but a storm trooper chased them. They managed to get up a flight of steps and have a look – and there it was, not just the vast bowl but the cinder running track which would cause so many problems for the Australian athletes, accustomed as they were to grass. Their feet and legs would take a terrible pounding.

On 27 June the Indian hockey team ‘with our mackintoshes on our arms and our luggage in the custody of the agents of Thomas Cook & Co.’ left the hotel for a free day before they gathered at the Ballard Pier, originally a small pier but which became a centre of industry as well, for embarkation. Reportedly the ‘simple boys like Ronak Singh and Akram Rasool’, who had not been to the city before, found themselves literally a little lost.

The team reflected all India: ‘a great variety of ages, colours and appearances. We had among us ages ranging from twenty to forty, skins in all shades of white and brown, heights varying from 5 feet to 6 feet, beardless and bearded, from no moustaches to moustaches of every description, from leanness carried to extremities to muscles bulging out of blazers, Aryan, Dravidian and Mongolian features, bare-headed, hats and turbans. What a variety in appearance! And still greater by far in thoughts, habits, temperament and general outlook on life.’
²³

Bergmann’s exploitation would be finessed this same day because she was allowed into the final trial at Adolf Hitler Stadium in Stuttgart. She remembered ‘all the Nazi flags and all the officials saluting and I jumped like a fiend. I always did my best when I was angry. I never jumped better; I didn’t miss a jump.’

She did 1.60 metres, equalling the German record. Now she prepared to go for the record, with all that that involved: not least making a case against her Olympic selection arguably impossible even in Nazi Germany.

‘I thought this would be a slap in the face to the Aryans. What would they do to me? Would they break my legs? Would they kill me? What would they do to my family?’ Under this pressure ‘I just fell apart. I couldn’t really lift myself again.’
²⁴

The Indian hockey team left Bombay on the P & O line steamer
Ranpura
– they ought to have left a day earlier but the ship was late. This was the monsoon season and as the ship moved into the Arabian Sea the weather battered it. Two players suffered such acute seasickness that they ‘made frantic appeals to the managers to send them back’ to Bombay immediately. Hardly anyone could eat.
²⁵

South and Central American teams came in almost daily, Bolivia and Peru on 1 July.

A twenty-year-old teacher from Kansas, Esther Myers, sailed to Europe as part of a student group spending a summer abroad. They went to Berlin for the Games. She met team-member Harold Manning, who invited her to have a look at the Village. ‘He said “You can bring some of your pals with you.”’ Women ‘could come into the courtyard and see the buildings but not enter the lounges, dining area, exercise rooms or dormitories. It was a privilege for me to be invited into the gated courtyard for a visit. That was a highlight of the Games for me.’ Manning met them at the ‘reception entrance. He was as glad to see fellow Kansans as we were to see him. After a picture taking session, Manning told us we were fortunate to be there as the three Bolivian athletes arrived. We watched a welcoming ceremony in front of the complex. The official representatives of that country gave a speech, a German band played as they ran up the colors of Bolivia. It was an impressive ceremony.’
²⁶

The
Ranpura
fought on through heavy seas, and reached Aden in the early hours of 2 July. The Indian hockey players were delighted to get their feet on terra firma although Aden itself, encircled by barren mountains and lacking any sort of greenery, did not interest them. They did not like the steaming hot wind off the desert, either. They had breakfast and disembarked hoping to find somewhere to practise. ‘An open-air cafe in the marketplace, noisy and dimly lit, faces pale and haggard over cups of coffee or iced-water,’ was a sight they’d never forget. Aden was part of the British Empire and a regiment from the Punjab, stationed there, offered their regimental field for the practice and provided Indian food. Then, 5
¹
/
₂
hours after arriving, the
Ranpura
sailed on towards Marseilles, with stops at Port Said and Malta en route. The sea was now so calm that the players, who’d spent the trip so far in their cabins, frolicked on the deck.
²⁷

In Berlin, Mexico arrived on 4 July, Uruguay the day after.

The Maharaja of Mysore travelled on the
Ranpura
with a large retinue – he was going to Britain for medical treatment. Despite His Highness’s exalted status he mixed easily with the team and a great affection for him grew, was literally fed because he had his own supplies of food and daily plied the team with ‘curds and Indian vegetarian dishes’. At Malta journalists came aboard to interview the Maharaja.

The final seat numbers were being painted, the last gates set in place and the cinder track ‘tilled’! At the stadium, testing and rehearsing began of the transport facilities, the police traffic controls and the thousands of light-blue uniformed ushers who would be showing visitors to their seats. A ‘crowd’ was assembled to find out if they could hear announcements over the stadium’s loudspeakers clearly. The best positioning for music and choruses was selected to eliminate echoes. The Olympic bell was rung so that the ‘penetrating quality’ of its tones could be judged.

Another task which required time and patience was the training of the stadium personnel. The arena had to be changed rapidly for different competitions, the running track measured off, lanes marked and the apparatus set up rapidly and removed without loss of time. A special staff was engaged for the 30 feet high scoring tower. This work covered both day and night, since during the night hurdles and barriers were set up and the fields for shot-putting and discus-throwing constructed and removed. We even provided rest rooms in the stadium for these workers in the event that they succeeded in obtaining a few hours’ rest.
²⁸

The numerous cleaners needed to be ‘organised and instructed … which was performed during the noon hour and at night. Scarcely had the last spectator left the stadium than the uniformly dressed columns of cleaners … descended upon the stadium and swept diligently under the illumination of the gigantic searchlights so that all was spotlessly clean when the visitors arrived on the following morning.’ A special group tended and repaired the field where the polo matches and dressage would be held. Advance ticket sales reached 5 million Reichsmarks.

Not everyone was going to Berlin. Canadian welterweight champion Sammy Luftspring looked a likely medal winner but as a Jew felt he could not attend, and he persuaded Norman ‘Baby’ Yack, a fellow Jew, to withdraw from the Olympic trials as well.

Luftspring wrote an open letter of explanation:

We desire to advise you that we have decided not to take part in the boxing trials to be held in Montréal to select the Canadian Olympic team. It is a matter of keen disappointment to us to turn down the opportunity of trying for the great honor and privilege of making a place on the Canadian team. However, we have gone into the community, and find that we cannot act differently from what we have decided. We know that we, as Canadian boys, would be personally safe, and perhaps well received in Germany. But can we forget the way the German government is treating the Jewish boys in Germany? The German government is treating our brothers and sisters worse than dogs. Can Canadian sportsmen blame us for refusing to take part in a meet sponsored by people who would humiliate and degrade and persecute us too, if we did not happen to have the great fortune of being Canadians? We are making a personal sacrifice in refusing the chance and we are sure that all true Canadian sportsmen will appreciate that we would have been very low to hurt the feelings of our fellow Jews by going to a land that would exterminate them if it could. We wish the Canadian team every success.
²⁹

Two other Canadians, speed skater Frank Stack and walker Henry Cieman, had refused to go.

On the evening of 7 July a train pulled out of the central station at Los Angeles for New York with sprinter Wykoff on it bound for the Olympic trials at Randall’s Island. The local newspaper had been instrumental in raising money to send him and the sports editor, Frederick Graham, wrote that they had only managed to collect enough just two days before. People from all walks of life made donations, some for what they could spare: $1.

The
Ranpura
reached Malta in the early hours – so early that the Indian hockey team were asleep and unaware she spent two hours unloading cargo before sailing on.

The American trials began on 11 July. The tension tormented Marty Glickman, only eighteen and younger than his fellow competitors, in the week before. That and hellishly hot weather meant he had not had much sleep. Randall’s Island sits between Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx. Before a capacity crowd of 21,000 and in the truly appalling heat some astonishing things happened, not least that world record holders failed to make the team in the 800 metres, 1,500 metres, pole vault and high jump.
³⁰
This did not prevent the
New York Times
from judging the team the strongest the country had ever sent to any competition,
³¹
a judgement based squarely on the fact that two other high-jumpers, Cornelius Johnson and Dave Albritton, both broke the world record; Owens broke the world 200 metres record; three pole vaulters broke the Olympic record and various other records went in the steeplechase, the 400 metres hurdles and the 110 metres hurdles.

The 100 metres proved particularly tense, America’s clutch of top sprinters pitted directly against each other. By tradition the first three finishers qualified for the Berlin 100 metres and the next four made up the 4 × 100 relay with the fall-back position that, in emergency, they could be deployed as substitutes. At Randall’s Island the three best finishers from two heats went into the final but, because the 100 metres and relay needed seven sprinters, the seventh place would be decided by a run-off.

Glickman had Owens and Sam Stoller, a Jew from the University of Michigan, in his heat and came third to them. Ralph Metcalfe, 25-year-old Foy Draper from the University of Southern California and Mack Robinson, a quiet black from Pasadena – a junior college sprinter and barely noticed by anybody before the Games
³²
– qualified in the second heat while Wykoff won the run-off. He demonstrated the depth of his ability. Another sprinter from the University of Southern California, he had won gold in the 4 × 100 relays at the 1928 and 1932 Games and, in 1930, became the first man officially timed at 9.4 seconds for the 100 yards. And he was now seventh.

Glickman tried to compose himself before the final by standing in the locker room where the fierce heat couldn’t get at him. Ordinarily the immediate build-up to a race made him feel light-headed but now he made his way to the start in something like a trance, nerves so taut he thought he might be sick. The lanes were allocated by draw. From Lane 1

Robinson

Draper

Wykoff

Owens

Glickman

Metcalfe

Stoller

Before the introduction of starting blocks, runners dug holes with trowels to give their feet grip for the start. Glickman did that – Randall’s Island a cinder track – but nerves made his leg shake so violently he could hardly get his foot into the hole. The other six assumed their positions and for a long, terrifying moment he thought the leg wouldn’t stop shaking. He’d never felt anything like this in his life before.

He knew the starter, who noticed the leg and aborted the start, called Glickman over and told him to limber up for a few moments to calm himself. When they went to their marks a second time he felt better.

The judges stood on steps at the finish to see who finished where: no photo finishes, of course.

Glickman held Owens and Metcalfe towards half distance before they pulled away. He thought he’d got past Wykoff for third but couldn’t be certain. He loosened his shoelaces and walked near the finish as the judges milled about, consulting and deliberating. They decided: Owens, Metcalfe, Glickman.

Glickman was doing a radio interview when Dean Cromwell, a coach from the University of Southern California, moved in and started promoting the cases of Wykoff and Draper, both from the University. The judges revised their positioning, pushing Wykoff up to third and Draper fourth. Glickman felt strongly conflicting emotions but at least he was going to Berlin.
³³

That evening the
Ranpura
docked at Marseilles but passengers had to struggle with their own luggage because the dock workers were still on strike. This took so long that the Indian hockey team missed their Paris train and retreated to a cheap hotel. They were astonished to discover that the French drove on the right and needed some time to convince themselves it could be as safe as driving on the left.

They were woken by bells at 5 a.m. and, sleep in their eyes, had a tea or coffee and boarded a bus for the railway station. It bustled with activity although the French stopped and gazed at the wondrous and no doubt exotic host before them. The team took their seats in third class. The Marseilles– Lyons–Paris express pulled out at 6.40, heading north. The restaurant car tempted them but they did not have enough money for anything but a ‘meagre breakfast’.
³⁴

In Paris a representative of the travel company Thomas Cook was waiting for them at the station. He organised overnight accommodation and the next day they took the tourist tour – the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe and the Follies Bergères. That delivered a culture shock. ‘Young girls, some twenty in number, a piece of silken cloth around their loins, were dancing in pairs. They were almost naked, as the silken cloth which might have been put on to avoid an infringement of some law, concealed nothing to the hungry eyes of the passionate.’ The hockey players stayed for about 30 minutes drinking lemonade and keeping their gazes firmly averted downwards. That amused the girls, who did not hesitate to taunt them as they left. Then they caught the night train to Berlin via Cologne but it was so busy they only just managed to get third-class seats. They slept in those. It was very cold.