Read Online Hitler's Olympics by Christopher Hilton - Free Book Online

them of supporting a boycott as a protest against Nazi Germany. The Swiss Olympic Committee was in favour of going, the Swiss Workers’ Federation of Gymnastics and Sport (Satus) against. They said:

    Its members would like to open the eyes of public opinion to the dangerous totalitarian and racist politics of the Third Reich. From international sporting meetings, they have met German workers’ sporting associations and learnt of their situation since Hitler came to power: interdictions, imprisonment etc. For the Satus activists, to take part in the Games is to work within the Nazi propaganda game.
    From the 1930s sport has been used by the Fascist regimes as a cult for the national image. Hitler wants to use the Berlin Games to prove to the world the superiority of the Aryan race. For its part, the International Olympic Committee supports the streams of Nazi propaganda to assert its supremacy in the world of sport.

    In Zurich, the IOC met the Swiss Olympic Committee and reiterated the assurances given by the German Olympic Committee. 10
    In Berlin 156,000 copies of the official poster were printed in four languages and circulated for free while in July, with the Games just thirteen months away, advance ticket sales began. In nineteen days they reached 1 million Reichsmarks. The Olympic housekeeping went on, every mosquito at the Olympic Village exterminated by the end of the month.
    In athletic terms, Germany had sixteen districts each with their own championships. Württemberg was one and Bergmann competed in June, winning by jumping 1.56 metres. The following month the best German Jewish athletes, men and women, were told to attend a ‘one-week training course in Ettlingen, and this must have been when I competed against Elfried Kaun – one of three times I was allowed to compete agaist Aryans’. Bergmann felt the move was ‘strictly grandstanding on the world stage’ because, while she could perform at the highest level and might nurse realistic hopes of an Olympic gold medal, the others were nowhere near that standard ‘and the Nazis knew it’. 11 However, the week proved productive in different ways. Because they were all Jews they had a great deal in common and friendships were forged. Briefly, because they were together, they could ‘forget the troubles of the outside world’. Bergmann came across a medical student who had ambitions as a sprinter. It seemed just another friendship but it wasn’t. She would marry him and still be married to him half a century later. By then she’d have forgotten most of her German and have a New York accent.
    In August the New York Times reported that foreign correspondents in Berlin were being officially obstructed in reporting because the government feared losing the Games and even felt some of the correspondents wanted that to happen. In fact, as the newspaper pointed out, correspondents helped the Organising Committee with translation work. A day later the paper reported that Bergmann had been excluded from the high jump in the German Championships, an important step to Olympic selection. Von Tschammer und Osten offered the classic Catch 22 defence. Because she was Jewish she couldn’t belong to the German Athletic Association and because they ran the championships she could not take part. In the strictest terms the German Olympic Committee remained true to their promise: her exclusion was for non-membership.
    A short while later the New York Times highlighted how the Germans were getting away with this.

    NAZI OLYMPIC VOW KEPT TECHNICALLY
    In Theory Even Jews May Try For Team,
    But All Except Hitlerites Are Handicapped 12

    Speaking in Vienna, Baillot-Latour adopted his fixed position. He explained that

    removal of the Games is possible in case agreements are not kept. Hitherto such a case has never occurred in the history of the Olympics. I cannot imagine the German sports authorities not fulfilling their obligations. If it happened however that von Tschammer