wikipedia.org
Adolf Hitler
In ancient Greece, the home of the Olympic Games, the period between the two festivals of the most prepared athletes was called the Olympics. It lasted four years. When the games took place, the wars were interrupted. Peace reigned. The modern games were renewed in Athens in 1896. They were not at the end of the Olympics only when peace was broken in modern civilization.
Olympism suffered because of the First and Second World Wars. Today, in peacetime, the war of humanity with the corona virus has taken its toll.
For the first time in history, the competitors will not be reflected in the leap year, but in the so-called idle. Tokyo was supposed to host the XXXII Olympic Games 2020, but necessity postponed the celebration of a healthy body and a healthy spirit for this summer (July 23 – August 8).
Berlin was determined to host 1916, but those Games were not held due to the First World War. Although after him Germany changed the state system (the emperor abdicated, the Weimar Republic was established), the defeated force had to pay tribute on the sports field as well. She was expelled from the international Olympic movement. She was banned from participating in Antwerp in 1920 and Paris in 1924. Since the French Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the most vigorous opponent of the renewal of the Olympic Games in 1896, advocated a strict separation of sport from politics, Germany relented and returned in 1928 to Amsterdam. Three years later, at the IOC session in Barcelona, it was chosen who would be the host in 1936. Berlin beat Barcelona, and there is every chance that the aggravated internal political situation in Spain was crucial for such a decision.
New Rome
However, two years later, in 1933, the National Socialist Party, led by Adolf Hitler, came to power in Germany. The leader of the Third Reich did not see the point in the Olympic Games on German soil, since he considered them an invention of Jews and Freemasons. He advocated that Aryan athletes, as a higher variety, should not compete with inferior peoples. Hitler ultimately considered giving up the Games and leaving them to others. This was strongly opposed by Josef Goebbels, the “alpha and omega” of the Führer’s unscrupulous propaganda. He gained it by assuring that the Games could be a powerful means of highlighting German excellence in the eyes of the entire world. In Goebbels’ opinion, the Olympic Games in Berlin were supposed to show a new Germany, a country with a strong people and a leader who strives for peace. The positive image was supposed to be a way out of isolation and a bait for establishing economic contacts for the inflow of necessary capital.
To make the sports festival in Berlin the best in history, Hitler increased the budget from three million Reichsmarks to 20. Instead of rebuilding the stadium prepared for an undeserved competition two decades earlier, a monumental facility with 86,000 seats and more was built. Guber was small. The stadium alone needed 77 million marks, because, in the excitement that Berlin looks like a new Rome, natural stone and marble were brought. The symbol of the Games was a 10-ton four-meter bell with the message: “I invite the youth of the whole world.”
Forgotten Crystal Night
The organization is entrusted to publicist and sports theorist Karl Dim. Although according to some he was not reliable because of the Jewish wire on the woman’s side, he became a key figure in the ideological component of the Games, working most closely with Goebbels. The idea was to connect ancient Greece, the birthplace of the Games, with its ancient ideals with the greatness of the Third Reich.
Lenny Riefenstahl, a world-renowned German filmmaker, formerly involved in film propaganda, received a lot of money to make a film called “Olympia”. This endeavor was pioneered in many sports shooting techniques.
These were also the first televised Games. The German Post, using Telefunken equipment, broadcast more than 70 hours of programs for the Berlin and Potsdam area in the Brandenburg region. In order to wash away the mark of the anti-Semitic Nazi dictatorship during the Olympics, Germany reduced its anti-Semitic rhetoric. When IOC President Henri de Bayeux-Latour arrived in Germany, he pointed out to Hitler that anti-Jewish slogans and posters stung his eyes (Crystal Night, the pogrom of Jews across the country, was less than a year earlier).
– When you come to visit, you don’t teach homeowners how to take care of it, do they? Hitler addressed him.
– I apologize, Chancellor, but when the flag with five Olympic circles appears at the stadium, it is no longer Germany but Olympia, and we are the bosses in it – the Belgian did not give up.
Anti-Jewish graffiti was removed from the streets of Berlin. The media was banned from publishing inappropriate content about that people, and the German population was suggested to refrain from criticism.
The tragic fate of Helena Mayer
German Helena Meyer was proclaimed the best swordswoman of all time. In Amsterdam in 1928 she took the gold. Although she was a multiple state champion, as a Jew she was forced to go to the United States in 1933, after the Nazis came to power. Since the false image of Hitler’s Olympics was made with the acceptance of Jews, she returned to the German team for the Berlin Games in 1936. She did not keep the brightest medal (silver), and at the medal ceremony she sent a Nazi salute from the podium with an outstretched hand.
To those who considered her an opportunist, she justified herself by saying that she had to do it in order to protect those closest to her. Others saw it as a tragic figure abused not only by Hitler’s Reich but also by the IOC and the U.S. Olympic Committee to hold the Games as if Germany were the most appropriate country.
After Berlin, she returned to the United States. She received American citizenship in 1941.
Hero Jesse Owens
The hero of the Games was the dark-skinned American athlete Jesse Owens (1913-1980), who broke Hitler’s myth of Aryan superiority by winning gold medals at 100, 200, in the 4 × 100 relay and in the long jump (only Carl Lewis repeated it in 1984). Especially because in the final, he surpassed the home hope of Luz Long, the runner-up with a nine-centimeter shorter jump.
Hitler, who shook hands with all the winners, did not lend a hand to Owens after the triumph in the 100 m, which is the queen of the “queen of sports”. In the continuation of the competition, he stopped this act of showing his honor. Owens said that, on the contrary, he was not angry with the German leader. He was resentful of his president, as Franklin Roosevelt did not even send him a telegram.
Comments are closed.