Berlin Games: How the Nazis Stole the Olympic Games [Paperback]

This book is an interesting, and long overdue, chronicle of not just the 1936 Olympic Games themselves (held in Hitler's Germany) but also of the many machinations that went on behind the scenes to ensure that the Games would be held despite the Nazis' treatment of the Jews and others considered to be undesirable.

Thus, despite the fact that the Nazis had passed the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 (forbidding, e.g., marriage or sexual relations between Jews and Germans), the International Olympic Committee worked with the Nazis to ensure that the games went on and colloborated in pretending that there was no actual discrimination.

In this regard, placed in a particularly bad light are American sports officials who more often than not were guilty of racism, prejudice, and anti-Semitism against their own citizens. (E.g., much to do was made in the American press about the (apparently false) story that Hitler snubbed Jesse Owens by refusing to shake his hand, yet Jesse Owens came home to a country whose citizens as a whole treated him worse than the Germans he dealt with during the Olympics.)

In the end, however, despite all the much-deserved hoopla about Jesse Owens, the real winners of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games were the Nazis as they impressed the world with their efficiency (a record number of countries, over 4 dozen, participated in the Games) and the Games were a propaganda bonanza for them. For example, the Nazis instituted the practice of carrying the Olympic torch from Olympia to the site of the games, an event which they heavily publicised. In addition, their organization of the Games was impeccable (including premier housing for the athletes), their Olympic Stadium (holding over 100,000 spectators) was a monumental showpiece, and the Games even turned a profit. In this respect, perhaps the most telling moment of the Games was the opening ceremonies when the speaker's podium was decorated not just with the familiar Olympic symbol of five interlocking Olympic rings but a giant German eagle clutching the Olympic rings in its talons.

Interspersed within the story of the politics surrounding these Olympics is a treasure trove of information about the background of many of the athletes (including their personal prejudices) and the events at these Games.

Overall, the book is a very well written and interesting account of the 1936 Olympic Games that exposes much of the hyprocrisy that allowed them to go on after the Nazis came to power and also reveals much about many of the athletes who participated in the Games.

The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin was a watershed moment for sports and politics, with its ramifications rippling through history some 70 years later.

Author Guy Walters does impeccible research of documents and individuals to bring a complete picture of how the Nazi Party virtually took over the International Olympic movement as it set the stage for war. Though the Games were awarded to Germany before the Nazi Party took full control of the government and Hitler was initially not in favor of holding the event, the benefits from a propoganda machine operating from every home to each Olympic venue became too great to pass up.

Though athletic officials and politicians knew about the growing oppression in Germany, Walters uses documents and quotes culled from meetings to show the utter appeasement that occurred. For example, American sports official Avery Brundage had written that Hitler was "a god," and then did everything in his power to successfully discredit and destroy the movement in the U.S. to boycott the competition.

Brundage did not see anything wrong with the Nazi ideal, but he did deal harshly with a top female swimmer on the U.S. team. She was kicked off the squad due to her partying on the ocean liner that was taking the team to Europe.

There were athletes who wanted to use the world stage to destroy the myths surrounding the Nazi movement. A German wrestler - who was a member of the Communist Party - hoped to parlay a winning performance by refusing to give the Nazi salute on the medal stand and use a live-radio interview as a means to tell the world about the real Germany.

There were other athletes who used the Olympics for different goals. A South African boxer was so taken with the Nazi Party that he was later recruited as a spy and became part of a plot to assassinate the president of his nation.

Add in the dress-rehearsal for the summer competition, the 1936 Winter Games in Bavaria, the reoccupation of the Rhineland and legendary athletes like Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe, the Berlin Games was a backdrop to the excellence of competition and the viciousness of totalitarianism.

And in the end, Walters rips apart the screen that so many toadies of the Nazi Party had hid behind for too many years.

Very relevant as the world looks to Beijing in 2008. In 1936, the Nazis hosted both the Winter and Summer Olympic Games in Germany. The Nazis used the politics of the Olympic Games to glorify the new Germany. Walters depicts how the Nazis hid the discrimination of the Jews, the political oppression of its opponents, the economic misery, and the military domination to give the world a false picture of the new Germany. Many informed people were not fooled, and told the world that this picture was false. A boycott movement was formed, but the majority of governments chose to look the other way and participate in the games. The games did indeed glorify the German government. Three years later, the World was at War, and the Holocaust began.

Walters summarizes the complete details of these Olympics with all the world politics thrown in. The Nazis lying and barbarous methods are detailed in the selection of German athletes and the politics of holding the Games. It is a wonder so many people were fooled by the methods of this regime. A good read and very relevant today.