Berlin Games by Guy Walters

Martin Bristow. It is easy to assume that political apathy among those in their early twenties is a modern malaise, yet apathy appears to have been just as widespread–if not more so–among the young of the 1930s. One was either apathetic or a radical, and there were very few radicals. The athletes above did not come from backgrounds in which people took an interest in world affairs. Except for the radicals, political engagement, if it comes at all, arrives a little later in life. For many of these young athletes, the priority was not worrying about the fate of a few Jews in a foreign land, but to get on the Olympic team. A twenty-year-old in 1935 worrying about the rights of minorities in Nazi Germany would have been a rare thing. He would have been accused of being sanctimonious, or he may well have been Jewish.
    Nevertheless, the pressure to boycott continued, not just from the AAU, but from non-sporting institutions such as colleges and labour unions. Many would have agreed with the words expressed by sports writer John Kieran in the New York Times :
    […] What goes on in there [Germany] may be the affair of Herr Hitler and his fellow residents.
    But we have been invited to a party in the house. In this corner, it seems that the invitation makes a big difference in the matter of minding our own affairs. If we go in there, what goes on in the house is a matter of much concern to us. Standing on the outside and hearing the crash of crockery, the smashing of furniture, and the screams of the wounded, it seems to more than a few in this country that going to a party in such a house may not be a pleasant or profitable experience.
    In October, Baillet-Latour decided to regain the initiative and visited Germany, where he had a meeting with Hitler. The German leader soothed the ruffled Olympic chief, by assuring him that Jews were being given a fair chance. In order to prove quite how highly the Nazis regarded the Olympics, however, Hitler agreed to Baillet-Latour’s request that anti-Semitic signs should be removed during the Games. This was quite a concession for Hitler, as he had been adamant that they should stay. Back in April, Fritz Wiedemann, one of Hitler’s adjutants, reported to Martin Bormann: ‘I’ve told the Fuehrer about the reservations over these signs on account of the Olympics. Nothing has changed in the Fuehrer’s decision that there is no objection to these signs.’ Baillet-Latour regarded this climb-down as a significant triumph, and was cockahoop when he told Brundage of it. ‘It is a success,’ he reported on 17 November, ‘because this has nothing to do with sport itself and the IOC had no right to require it.’ Baillet-Latour was seemingly aware of his own double standards. On the one hand, the Olympics were not supposed to be a political matter, and yet he had made a request that was overtly political. When the request was agreed to, Baillet-Latour was happy to take the credit, albeit with a kind of faux sheepishness.
    In the same letter, Baillet-Latour told Brundage that the boycott campaign was ‘weakening’. The count felt himself to be a world leader, on a par with Hitler and Roosevelt. He had just pulled off a great coup, and had shown the world that the Olympics were truly a force for good. He could point to the fact that Jews were on the German Olympic team, and that the Germans had reversed some of their anti-Semitic measures–all at the bidding of the mighty IOC. Never mind that this was tokenism, and that the signs would be hidden only for the duration of the Games. Never mind that the half-handfulof Jewish athletes who were notionally on the Olympic team were there for appearance’s sake. As far as Baillet-Latour was concerned, what he saw was indeed good, despite the passing of the Nuremberg Laws, despite the numerous pieces of evidence that showed that Jews were being denied participation not just in sports, but in society at