To some of us, it seems we have been writing about China and the Olympics our whole lives, or our whole careers. I have a piece on the homepage today: “ ‘Genocide Games,’ Again.” The PRC tried to get the Summer Games for 2000. They lost out to Sydney. The International Olympic Committee made that decision in September 1993. Then the PRC campaigned for the 2008 Summer Games — and got them. And starting today, of course, they are presiding over the Winter Games.
Back in 2000, I had a piece on Beijing’s bid for the 2000 Games, and its new bid for the 2008 ones. Then, in 2008, I had a piece called “The Road to Beijing.” I expanded that into a five-part series (at the following links: I, II, III, IV, and V). Frankly, not a great deal has changed.
On second thought, that is not entirely true. In former times, the PRC talked of liberalization and democratization — the opportunity to host the Olympics would help them along that path, they claimed. Now there is no pretense whatsoever. They demand the Olympic Games as their due. Even the token prisoner releases don’t take place anymore, as far as I can see.
In all the pieces I have written about China and the Olympics, I have commented on 1936. It’s natural. And I would like to concentrate on 1936 in this blogpost.
Germany was awarded the Games for 1936 — both the Winter Games and the Summer Games — in 1931. This was two years before the Nazis rose to power, as you know. But the 1936 Olympics soon became a thoroughly Nazi project.
Very early — in 1933 — the U.S. Olympic committees voted to boycott the ’36 Games if the Nazis refused to allow Jewish athletes to compete on German teams. The regime found two token Jews, living in exile, and installed them. This prevented a boycott.
In 1935, the American consul in Berlin, George S. Messersmith, wrote to the secretary of state, Cordell Hull. He said,
To the Party and to the youth of Germany, the holding of the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936 has become the symbol of the conquest of the world by National Socialist doctrine. Should the Games not be held in Berlin, it would be one of the most serious blows which National Socialist prestige could suffer.
I don’t know about you, but I grew up with a myth: Jesse Owens went to Berlin and won four gold medals. Therefore, the Olympics backfired on Hitler. Some master race, huh? In reality, the Olympics were hugely successful for Hitler, and important to him.
Over the years, I have quoted William Shirer, the journalist: “Hitler, we who covered the Games had to concede, turned the Olympics into a dazzling propaganda success for his barbarian regime.” I have also quoted Duff Hart-Davis, the author of Hitler’s Games: “That the success of the eleventh Olympiad gave Hitler an enormous boost, both moral and political, nobody could deny.”
Dictatorships like to create Potemkin villages, in order to give false impressions to foreign visitors. Beijing does it. So did Berlin. The German capital was nicely turned out for the ’36 Summer Games, writes Hart-Davis. The Nazis put across the illusion of “a perfectly normal place, in which life went on as pleasantly as in any other European country.”
I wish to quote George S. Messersmith once more. He was a distinguished, and very good, diplomat. The nature of the man can be sensed in the title of a book about him: George S. Messersmith: Diplomat of Democracy. Among his posts were our ambassadorships to Austria, Cuba, Mexico, and Argentina. He was born in 1883 and died in 1960.
In 1933, it was the belief of many Americans, and others, that the Nazis were a flash in the pan, to fade from the scene in short order. But, in that same year, Messersmith sent a dispatch to the State Department, giving an on-the-ground view:
I wish it were really possible to make our people at home understand how definitely this martial spirit is being developed in Germany. If this government remains in power for another year, and it carries on in this direction, it will go far toward making Germany a danger to world peace for years to come. With few exceptions, the men who are running the government are of a mentality that you and I cannot understand. Some of them are psychopathic cases and would ordinarily be receiving treatment somewhere.
Let me end this blogpost by pasting the final paragraph of my piece today (again, here):
In 2003, I moderated a session on sports at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. This was a dinner, with remarks and discussion. Many prominent figures from the sports world were in attendance. In the course of the evening, I asked, “Does anyone think the Olympic Games should not be held in police states?” Probably a fair number did, but only one person raised her hand — the wife of one of the main participants. If I remember correctly, and I believe I do, she was the daughter of Holocaust survivors.