Authors: Christopher Hilton
49
.
British Olympic Association,
The Official Report of the XIth Olympiad, Berlin 1936
.
50
.
Daniels and Tedder,
‘A Proper Spectacle
’, p. 106.
51
.
Velma Dunn; interview with author.
52
.
Carlson and Fogarty,
Tales of Gold
, p. 140.
53
.
Hanson,
The Fulton Flash
.
The famous thoroughfare was afire with flags and banners, some flying from four lines of poles running the whole length of the route, others waving from windows or from the top of houses. The red of the Nazi banner predominated.
Canada at the XI Olympiad 1936 Germany
A
t 11.45 a.m. that Friday the last Czechoslovak runner approached the frontier, just south of a hamlet called Bahratal in deepest rural wooded Saxony. The excitement was now palpable and it brought an estimated 50,000, many travelling long distances, to witness the handover. The frontier lay in the countryside midway between Bahratal and Petrovice on the Czech side.
At the frontier a middle-aged customs official in white, armless singlet – only his surname, Goldhammer, is recorded – shook hands with the last Czechoslovak runner through a dense press of people, some in traditional costume. Goldhammer accepted the transfer of the flame and padded off along the open road, lined with trees, which dipped in a long undulation towards Bahratal. He could see, to his right, meadowland falling away and beyond that hillsides dark with taller trees.
The route reflected the Games themselves because they belonged just as much to the rural folk here – isolated farming communities lost in the woodland, small clusters of solid old houses, roads little more than tracks – as they did to the inhabitants of Berlin. From Olympia in Greece to this German frontier, the route had come to prove and would now prove within Germany itself, that the Games belonged to everybody. Moreover, between here and Berlin, as it wended its way north, the torch would pass through only one big city, Dresden, and one town everybody had heard of – Meissen of the exquisite china. The rest was heartland Germany and the places were places nobody had heard of.
When Goldhammer came into sight the crowd in the little square at Bahratal roared ‘Heil Hitler!’ and collectively froze into the Nazi salute. In the square the flame lit up a temporary altar, the band played, the choir sang and the governor predictably gave a speech proclaiming that the Olympic Games should serve as a unifying force in the world.
A great flock of carrier pigeons fluttered into the sky and headed north towards Berlin. Their arrival there meant
the flame is now in Germany
.
When word reached the market square in Pirna, a town on the Elbe and the next staging post, groups of Hitler Youth sounded fanfares and as they melted away church bells pealed out.
Berlin, ready, waited impatiently. Trevor Wignall wrote in the London
Daily Express
:
Almost every street is deliriously decorated and be-flagged but gem of them all, if not indeed of the world, is the famous boulevard that leads to the Brandenburg Gate. Gone are the trees that for so many long years were its principal glory. They have been uprooted and their places taken by red clothed poles that seem to reach nearly to the skies. From each pole flies a banner. They bear two emblems only – the intertwined five rings of the Olympic Games and the Swastica of the Nazis. The organising ability of the German nation has never been so palpably in evidence. Years of preliminary work have resulted in the vast machine operating in the manner of a newly oiled clock.
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The
New York Times
reflected that mood, writing about the decorations from the Brandenburg Gate to the stadium: loudspeakers at regular intervals to relay not just Olympic news but official announcements and music such as Viennese waltzes and quick-steps. The squares and
platz
along the avenue out to the stadium sported big Olympic banners and tall flagpoles. A million people were expected to line it to watch Hitler and the flame go by to open the Games.
The luxurious, meticulously run Adlon Hotel beside the Brandenburg Gate provided sanctuary for the ‘royalty and nobility’ who ‘thronged to Berlin’. They included the King of Bulgaria, the Crown Prince and Princess of Italy, the heir to the Swedish throne, the Crown Prince of Greece, Mussolini’s sons, the Duke of Hamilton, and Lord and Lady Londonderry. The hotel owner, Hedda Adlon, remembered that ‘it was at this time that I again met Prince Philip of Hesse and his wife, Princess Mafalda, the second daughter of the King of Italy. I have often thought of the Princess’s large, dark, ardent eyes and of the appalling fate that awaited her eight years later.’
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Bermuda and Luxembourg arrived at the Village, making fifty-one countries and, at their maximum, 4,202 competitors. Village life offered fertile ground for the German love of statistics: by the end of the Games each competitor had ‘spent an average of 19 days and 17 hours in the Olympic Village’.
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By contrast, the Canadian swimming team were very angry about an astonishing failure to allocate them proper training time at a pool and scoured Berlin trying to find out at which they ought to be, eventually getting an hour at 6 a.m. in the main pool.
Jesse Owens moved easily around the American quarters with a big smile and a polite refusal to discuss any possibilities of gold. In the Village the American men’s team staged a march past rehearsal for the Opening Ceremony but reports called it unimpressive and said that however many medals the Americans – and Owens – might win, one for marching would not be among them. It begged a much bigger question, the twin themes of politics and sport drawn tight together. As the athletes paraded past Hitler country by country – the tradition at every Opening Ceremony – should they give the Nazi salute? If they did, would they be publicly regarded as recognising the Nazi creed and, by extension, endorsing it? Worse, the Olympic salute resembled the Nazi salute and might be mistaken for it.
The Americans had to make a decision on this delicate matter, not least because some of the athletes felt so strongly that they refused to take part in the parade if they were ordered to give the salute. Some insisted they would not give it in any circumstances, others expressed indifference. Originally the men were to remove their straw hats and hold them out with the brims at arm’s length but that had been moderated to holding them against their bodies below the left shoulder and keeping their eyes to the right. During the afternoon two American officials went to the women’s quarters to tell them what they should do but neither the officials nor the athletes spoke publicly about it.
The IOC met in secret session and awarded the 1940 Summer Games to Tokyo rather than Helsinki – Britain had withdrawn her bid the night before.
From Hellendorf a chain of twenty runners bore the flame up towards Pirna, the entire route ‘lined by phalanxes of the members of National Socialist Party organisations, school children and sportsmen’.
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Dresden, itself a stone-clad city but of cathedrals, churches, opera houses and museums of almost fragile beauty, lay a further 20 kilometres up the Elbe. The flame arrived there in the evening. A truly immense crowd, including members of the Reich Association for Physical Training and different Party organisations, watched as Hitler Youth trumpeters sounded a fanfare announcing that the twentieth runner was near.
Inevitably pomp and spectacle attached themselves once more to the flame during a ceremony on the Königsufer, the big open space on the north bank of the Elbe commanding a view of the city’s spires: a programme of music, a speech from the Regional Leader of Physical Training, a gymnastics display and more music before it left on the 28-kilometre leg to Meissen – 227 runners to go. There, more pomp and circumstance surrounded the third ceremony since the run entered Germany: fanfares sounded from towers, an altar was lit in front of the town hall, the district leader of the National Socialist Party and the mayor made speeches, then the mayor lit a torch and padded off into the first of the 19 kilometres north to Grossenhain – 200 to run.
At Grossenhain, floodlights and thousands of candles turned the main square into an enchanted place filled with a crowd of more than 20,000. Floodlights played too on the town’s 1,000-year landmark, a tower, now decorated by the Olympic rings. At 10 p.m. three canon, fired from the tower, signalled the start of festivities although the flame was still a couple of hours away. The flags of the seven nations through which the torch passed fluttered from flagpoles
At midnight, 1 August – the Opening Ceremony only sixteen hours away – Grossenhain’s church bells rang out to announce the flame’s approach. The crowds cheered and the Regional Governor gave a short address of welcome before the next runner padded off for Herzberg – 123 to go. The flame wended its way north through a string of anonymous little communities and reached Herzberg at around 2 a.m.; between Herzberg and Jütebog it passed from Saxony to the
Land
(the province) of Brandenburg, where the stone-clad city sat.
In the Olympic Village preparations for breakfast began, as they did each day, at 5 a.m. Vans from the Spandau Dairy Company arrived bringing fresh milk; biscuits, rolls and bread soon followed. Service was from 7 a.m., with menus in English, French, Spanish and German for the various dining rooms. The choice:
Apples, bananas
Porridge with milk
Cornflakes, puffed wheat
Grapenuts
Orange marmalade, raspberry jelly
Eggs prepared as desired
Scrambled eggs with ham
Coffee, tea, ‘Sanka’ coffee
Malt coffee, cocoa, milk
Breakfast biscuits, toast
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At 7 a.m., too, controllers and policemen moved to their positions at the stadium’s entrances while others patrolled the area. At 7.30 a roll call ensured they were all present.
The flame reached Jütebog towards dawn and then at 8 a.m. a tiny place called Trebbin, the last staging post before Berlin – 40 to go.
Berlin seethed under an overcast sky and suddenly, at 8 a.m., two military bands struck up along Unter den Linden. The Canadian team noted that ‘the opening ceremonies began with the thudding of drums and the blare of brass bands. Berlin troops poured through the Brandenburg Gate to the Armory [down ] the Unter den Linden for a great parade, performing the ceremony of “The Great Awakening” by marching round the central streets of the city – with colors flying and stirring music.’
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Would the weather ruin the day? A south-easterly wind dragged cloud over and brought showers which might develop into more persistent rain or a downpour.
At 9 a.m. entry to the Reich Sports Field was forbidden.
Between 9.15 and 10.30 a hundred vans brought 20,000 carrier pigeons in cages to the stadium.
At 9.30 – the flame still out in the country, the runner jogging steadily towards Berlin’s outskirts – a column of cars drew up outside the Adlon Hotel to take the IOC members to church: Catholics to St Hedwig’s for mass, Protestants to the Evangelical Cathedral for a sermon.
Werner Schwieger, the gymnast, had received his Olympic pass a few days earlier.
I can’t remember where it was issued but I do remember I had to deliver a passport photograph. It was a picture of me wearing my sports club’s badge at my jacket’s lapel. At first sight it looked like a party badge with a Nazi symbol or a swastika on it and a woman there said ‘You know, we are not allowed to use pictures with swastikas as passport photographs’, but it was not because I wasn’t a member of the Party. First of all I got the participants’ pass and then came the torch run, the dates given to us for the performances, the badge and so on.
For the torch run we were taken into the country outside Berlin by lorry and dropped off one at a time. You stood there until the torch was handed over to you, and you ran to the next man – great to be given a chance to take part. It was a country road lined with trees and there weren’t many people watching. I took the torch – it wasn’t heavy – and handed it over. Then the lorry brought us home. Was I allowed to keep the torch? Of course not.
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All approaches to Unter den Linden and the
Via Triumphalis
were closed to traffic. Spectators, some of whom had camped out all night to secure their vantage point, stood ten deep in places.
The famous thoroughfare was afire with flags and banners, some flying from four lines of poles running the whole length of the route, others waving from windows or from the top of houses. The red of the Nazi banner predominated. The huge crowd – there must have been half a million in Unter den Linden alone – were good humoured and comparatively quiet, but there were cheers for various prominent personalities. When the members of the International Physical Education Students’ Camp marched down the Linden from the Lehrter station, the biggest cheer went to the Indians in their pink and grey turbans.
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At 9.45 a.m. three overland trains and three underground ones brought 28,000 members of the Hitler Youth to six stations. They marched in columns four abreast for their rendezvous at the Lustgarten beside the Armoury.
At 10.45 a.m. a guard of honour – infantry, navy and air force detachments – marched from the Brandenburg Gate to the Lustgarten.
Few police were present to control the crowd. The authorities had, apparently, forgotten that they were not dealing solely with the highly disciplined people of Berlin, but with hundreds of thousands of less disciplined foreigners. Gen. Goering’s appearance, for instance, caused the crowd to sweep away the containing police and practically block Unter den Linden…. The General, dressed in an air force uniform, waved gaily to the crowd as he drove by. The cheers he received were by far the loudest accorded to any of the Nazi leaders. Then came Dr. Goebbels in brown storm trooper’s uniform, with his arm held rigidly in the ‘Old Party Members’ version of the Nazi salute – bent back at the elbow. Herr Rudolf Hess, Herr Hitler’s deputy, and Herr Baldur von Schirach were also loudly cheered.
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