The 1936 Berlin Olympics and Other Politicized Games

The ideals of Pierre de Coubertin, the famous inventor of the modern Olympics, are well known: pacifism, sport as a means of education, the ethics of “what is important is not winning but participating”. His dream was to create games that would become the spearhead of world sport, games characterized by what from then on will be called the “Olympic spirit” based on loyalty, sportsmanship, and fairness. A dream that – as the recent games but also editions that have gone down in history, such as the 1936 Berlin Olympics demonstrate – have only partially come true, first dragged and then overtaken by the times and events of the history of the last century.

In particular, one of the objectives that immediately seemed almost impossible to pursue was to keep the games disconnected from politics and therefore on a strictly sporting level.

In fact, since the 1920s, when they began to have important importance on the public scene, the Olympic Games have become a means of moving the economy of a country and, often, of promoting the efficiency and strength of a political system.

Suffice it to look at what happened in recent years in Sochi for the Winter Olympics: Putin suddenly found himself lenient towards internal dissent (but not towards different sexual orientations), and Russia tried to transform itself into a cutting-edge country but obtained results not always convincing.

Beyond Sochi, however, the history of the Games presents some moments in which these political tensions came to the fore in a more predominant way than others: so let’s retrace together the history of five editions of the Olympics with a political flavor.

1. Berlin 1936

By the time Hitler took power in January 1933, the 1936 Olympics had long since been assigned to Germany.

In May 1931 the International Olympic Committee, on the eve of the first Games that would take place a year later in Los Angeles, decided to accept the candidacy of the then Weimar Republic which was so overburdened by war debts and weakened by devaluation. , but he was looking for some form of international recognition, also to restore luster and pride to the Germans themselves. Hitler had many projects in mind, but certainly, the sport was not in the first place, and in fact, it seems that at first he also considered the opportunity to give up organizing the sporting event.

 
It was Goebbels, the famous and indeed notorious minister of propaganda, who made him change his mind, portraying him the propaganda opportunity that presented itself to him.

Usually, nowadays we tend to say that those Olympics were a flop for Hitler because in the most prestigious athletics competitions his “Aryan” athletes were defeated not only by a foreigner but even by a black foreigner, the American Jesse. Owens.

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The Nazi propaganda and the German triumph

In reality, things turned out differently. Although Owens actually won some of the most important races, as we have already told, he himself said that he was treated better by the Nazis and even by Hitler than he did at home with President Roosevelt himself – a sign that racism at the time it was much more widespread than we like to remember today. But, above all, Germany triumphed in a very clear way in the medal table, taking home 33 gold medals against the 24 of the second-ranked nation (the United States) and 89 overall medals.

 
Furthermore, the idea of ​​grandeur and efficiency that the Hitler regime wanted to deliver to the world and to posterity arrived perfectly at its destination, giving the democratic countries the idea that Germany was no longer the resigned country in a crisis of a few years earlier and the belief that he was preparing to threaten the freedoms and rights of all of Europe.

The results of the XI Olympiad

Most important athletes of that edition

Jesse Owens (USA): won four gold medals in athletics (long jump, 100 flat meters, 200 flat meters, 4 × 100 relays).
Rie Mastenbroek (Netherlands): won three gold and one silver medal in swimming (100m freestyle, 400m freestyle, 4 × 100 freestyle relay for gold, and 100m backstrokes for silver).
Marjorie Gestring (USA): She won the gold medal in diving (three-meter springboard) at the age of 14, becoming the youngest Olympic gold medalist at the time.
Inge Sørensen (Denmark): She won the bronze medal in swimming (200 meters breaststroke) at just 12 years and 24 days of age, becoming the youngest athlete ever on the podium..

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2. London 1948

After the Berlin edition of 1936, the Olympics skipped two appointments due to the Second World War: that of Tokyo scheduled for 1940 (and then, at the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war, moved to Helsinki for 1941 but equally not held ) and the London one scheduled for 1944.

It could have been the end of the Games: after all, De Coubertin had died shortly before the outbreak of the war, and his successor Henri de Baillet-Latour had followed him in 1942. A few weeks after the end of the war, however, the IOC decided to give “a shock” to the organizational impasse and assigned the 1948 Olympics to London, despite the fact that Great Britain was not only one of the most economically exhausted winning countries, but also one of the most battered in infrastructure and architecture.

 
Germany and Japan were not invited to the games, because they were considered responsible for the war (on the other hand, they still had foreign troops on their territory and forms of government very little autonomous from the Allies), while Italy was admitted after extensive discussions thanks only to the Badogliano armistice.

Furthermore, the Soviet Union and some other socialist states did not participate, as had already been the case since the October Revolution.

Post-war poverty

But the effects of the war were not limited to just this: the athletes were casually housed in boarding schools and barracks and were even asked to literally bring their own food (the United States organized an airlift, other countries sent local specialties then bartered with those of other nations).

Finally, even for the playgrounds, we had to adapt to the least bad, so much so that the swimming competitions were even held in the Thames.

Nonetheless, the games were a success, they exalted a new desire to start over and start again and marked the advent of a new world since they were the first to be broadcast on television (even if there were still few devices to receive the signal).

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The results of the XIV Olympiad

Most important athletes of that edition

Fanny Blankers-Koen (Netherlands): won four gold medals in athletics (100 flat meters, 80 meters hurdles, 200 flat meters, and 4 × 100 relays).
Emil Zátopek (Czechoslovakia): won gold in the 10,000 flat meters and silver in the 5,000. Four years later, in Helsinki, he would have done even better by winning three gold medals.
Bob Mathias (USA): won gold in the decathlon at just 17 years of age; the most curious fact, however, is that he had started practicing that sport just 4 months before the Olympics.
Marie Provazníková(Czechoslovakia): she was not an athlete, but the president of the International Gymnastics Federation. At the end of the Olympics, she refused to return to her homeland – where the Communist coup had taken place – and she asked for asylum from Great Britain, causing a sensation.

3. Melbourne 1956

If the first two Olympics mentioned in our five were important not so much for what they showed but for what they presaged or made to remember, the Melbourne Games of 1956 became epochal because it was epochal in itself the ’56.

Being hosted for the first time in the southern hemisphere, the Olympics took place between November and December, when all the most significant political events of that turning point had already taken place. In October the Red Army had entered Budapest suffocating the Hungarian revolution and more or less in the same period the Suez crisis broke out, officially between Israel and Egypt but in reality, due to the system of alliances, also between the USA and USSR.

 
Melbourne thus became an opportunity to bring the knots to a head: for example, six nations boycotted the games, some to protest against the Soviet Union for the events in Hungary (Spain, Switzerland, and Holland), some to protest against Israel and its allies Great Britain and France (Egypt, Lebanon, and Iraq).

The bloodbath

But the clash also took place on the pitch, when the Soviet Union and Hungary met in the final round of the water polo tournament, in a match that went down in history as “the bloodbath”.

Hungary was an outgoing Olympic champion, but its athletes had been moved to Czechoslovakia when the first revolutionary fires broke out and therefore had very inaccurate information on the events that took place at home. They thought, however, of provoking the Russians first with a few forbidden blows, then with a few too many words in the language they had been forced to study at school. The Russians reacted, notably with a punch delivered by Valentin Prokopov to the eyebrow of Ervin Zador, who came out of the water bleeding.

 
At that point the Hungarian public, whose discontent with the Russians was evident, no longer saw us and came down from the stands, threatening and insulting the opposing athletes. The police had to intervene. In the end, Hungary won 4-0 and went on to win the gold, while the Soviet Union then took the bronze.

The results of the XVI Olympiad

Most important athletes of that edition

Betty Cuthbert (Australia): won three gold medals in athletics (100 flat meters, 200 floors, and 4 × 100 relays). She would then have achieved another gold even 8 years later in Tokyo, but in the 400 meters flat.
Murray Rose (Australia): Won three gold medals in swimming (400m freestyle, 1,500m freestyle, and 4 × 200 freestyle relay).
Larisa Latynina (Soviet Union): she won four gold medals in artistic gymnastics (team, individual, vaulting, and free-body), one silver (at parallels), and one bronze (at portable accessories). She would then enrich her Palmares with 3 golds, 2 silvers, and 1 bronze in Rome in 1960 and 2 golds, 2 silvers, and 2 bronzes in Tokyo in 1964.
The Australian swimming team: Australia won 5 out of 7 gold medals in men’s swimming and 3 out of 6 in women’s swimming. In addition, in both men’s and women’s 100m freestyle he managed to place three Australian athletes on all three steps of the podium.

4. Munich 1972

We have already reported the cold chronicle of what happened in Munich in 1972 quite recently in another article on our site, so it is useless to repeat the same sequence of events.

Here we would like to underline a contradiction that is basically at the origin of the relationship between the Olympics (and more generally sport) and politics: at the end of the 1960s the two main competitions of the world, namely the Olympic Games and the Soccer World Cup, which would have taken place in 1974. A choice is due on the one hand to the very strong economic growth of which the federal state with capital Bonn had been the protagonist, on the other to a sort of compensation mechanism that unfortunately often does more damage than anything else.

 
West Germany was in fact, together with Italy, considered the last capitalist bulwark before the Eastern Bloc and the Berlin affair – which had unraveled precisely during the 1960s, with the construction of the wall and the airlift feet from Kennedy – he had amply demonstrated that.

Furthermore, federal Germany was a country that in the post-war period was believed to have repaid the guilt of Nazism and now deserved an opportunity to show itself back to the world.

The Palestinian question

The Munich Games were therefore organized with the specific intention of making people forget those in Berlin, of showing a Germany (at least the Western one) peaceful and happy. Unfortunately, the goal was not achieved in the least, at least not in Munich, because German optimism had by now been supplanted by Middle Eastern tensions.

On September 5, 1972, in the middle of the games, a commando of Palestinian terrorists broke into the Olympic village, entering the building where the Israeli representative was housed. They immediately killed two coaches and then held 9 other Israeli athletes kidnapped. When the news spread, the German police began negotiations for the release of the hostages. However, the Palestinians demanded the release of more than 200 detainees and to have a plane to take them to the Middle East with the hostages.

 
When they arrived at the airport, however, the German police intervened and tried to stop them. A shooting ensued, a helicopter caught fire, and eventually, all 9 hostages died, plus 5 of the 8 terrorists. The news, of course, aroused indignation around the world, but, after just one day of mourning, the Games continued.

The results of the XVI Olympiad

Most important athletes of that edition

Mark Spitz (USA): won 7 gold medals in swimming (100 meters freestyle, 200 freestyle, 100 butterflies, 200 butterflies, 4 × 100 and 4 × 200 freestyle relay, 4 × 100 mixed relays), setting as many records in the world. His performance would remain the best in gaming history until 2008 when it was surpassed by that of Michael Phelps.
Shane Gould (Australia): Won three gold medals in swimming (200m freestyle, 400 freestyle, and 200 medleys), as well as one silver and one bronze at the age of 16.
Sawao Katō (Japan): won three golds in gymnastics (in individual, team, and parallel competitions).
Novella Calligaris (Italy): she is the first Italian to win medals in swimming (one silver and two bronze).

5. Moscow 1980 and Los Angeles 1984

Surely the conflict that most marked the second half of the twentieth century was the “cold” one and never fought directly between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Almost all the local wars that broke out around the world up to the end of the 1980s were in fact linked to the attempt of one or the other superpower to expand or maintain its sphere of influence and the climate of tension and fear was palpable a little everywhere.

 
From the 1970s onwards, however, relations between the two countries were slowly beginning to change.

The Prague Spring and the increasingly evident industrial divide with Western countries were causing a new political class to grow in the USSR which would find its greatest representative in Mikhail Gorbachev, while in the United States the Carter presidency and then even that of a Republican like Reagan opened the doors to possible disarmament.

Nevertheless, some moments of tension here and there still arose and it is paradoxical that the Olympics were the most striking stage.

The last tension of the cold war

In short, the facts: in the last days of 1979, the troops of the Red Army entered Afghanistan, a state in which governments more or less loyal to the Soviet ally and forms of Islamic guerrilla supported by Pakistan and Western countries have been measured for years, trying to take control of it directly.

In response, the United States and as many as 65 other countries (including West Germany, Canada, Japan, China, and all Arab countries) deserted the Moscow Games, and Italy also participated in a reduced form – while quadrupling its gold. compared to four years earlier, thanks to less competition – keeping athletes who belonged to the army at home. The boycott did not end there, however: four years later the Olympics moved, in a sort of Olympic application of the Cancelli manual, to Los Angeles, and this time it was the Warsaw Pact countries that did not participate in retaliation for what had happened. in Moscow.

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The only exception was made by Romania, which actually managed to place second in the medal table.

The results of the XXII Olympiad

Most important athletes of that edition

Aleksandr Ditjatin (USSR): in gymnastics, he won 3 gold medals (rings, team competition, and individual competition), 4 silver, and 1 bronze, for a total of 8 prizes.
Miruts Yifter (Ethiopia): won the gold medal in both the 5,000 and 10,000 meters level.
The East German women’s swimming team: Aided by the absence of American athletes, the East German girls won 11 of the 13 gold medals available in women’s swimming.

The results of the XXIII Olympiad

Most important athletes of that edition

Carl Lewis (USA): almost fifty years later he won the same gold medals as Jesse Owens, namely 100 meters flat, 200 meters flat, long jump, and 4 × 100 relays.
Li Ning (China): won six medals in gymnastics, 3 gold (free body, horse, and rings), 2 silver, and 1 bronze.
Nawal El Moutawakel (Morocco): she was the first Muslim woman to win an Olympic gold medal (as well as the first Moroccan and the first African). She got it in the 400m hurdles.