Would Olympics ban have stopped Hitler?

Press, 10 April 1980, Page 20

Would Olympics ban have stopped Hitler?

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SIR HUGH GREENE

"Daily Telegraph,*’ London

in I lie

In all the discussions as to whether there should be a boycott of the Moscow Olympic Games there has' been the occasional mention of the Games held in Berlin under Hitler’s auspices in August 1936, but so far as I have seen, little comparison between the choices which faced governments and sporting organisations then and now. Perhaps that is because the events of 44 years ago are already 7 fading a little in the mists of history. In the summer of 1936 I was the assistant “Daily Telegraph” correspondent in Berlin, and the Olympic Games gave me my only experience as a sports reporter.

The main events at the Games were naturally covered by a team of specialists from London. They

did not, however, find it worth while to stay for the minor events on the last, day or two, so I was left to cover such things as the equestrian competition. I still remember the marvellous performance of a Rumanian cavalry officer in a very picturesque uniform riding a horse several hands smaller than most of the others.

That the 1936 Olympic Games were a great propaganda success for Hitler and the Nazi regime there is no doubt whatever, and everybody in Germany and in the outside world must have known long in advance that that is what they were bound to be. I cannot however, remember that a boycott of the Games was ever seriously raised.

It is true that in 1936 Hitler had not yet embarked on his career of foreign conquest. There was nearly another two years to go before his invasion of Austria. He had, however, done quite a lot which might have made governments, and even sportsmen, wonder whether it was really appropriate to hold the Games in Berlin.

Only a few months earlier he had marched three or four battalions of' troops at dawn on March 7 across the Rhine bridges into the demilitarised zone and denounced the Treaty of Locarno. It was a supreme bluff. Any move by the French would have meant the withdrawal of the German troops and probably the overthrow of Hitler. A year before that, in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler had proclaimed the re-introduction of conscription, the building up of a peace-time army of 36 divisions and the creation of an air force.

In the previous autumn the “Nuremberg Laws” had been passed, depriving Germans of Jewish blood of their citizenship, forbidding marriage or sexual relations between Germans and Jews and to all intents and pur-

poses outlawing tire entire Jewish community.

The Germany in which the Olympic Games were held in August, 1936, thus managed to combine, to a remarkable extent, the most objectionable features of the Soviet Union and South Africa today. Hardly, one would have thought, a fine advertisement for the Olympic spirit. The Nazi regime was, of course, well aware as the Soviet Government seems to be today, that it was advisable to spare the delicate susceptibilities of its foreign visitors. Signs outside shops, hotels and restaurants saying “Jews Not Welcome” were removed in the watches of the night. The persecution of the Christian Churches was halted.

In the smaller towns, however, to which few foreigners were expected to penetrate, things went on as usual, and it was hard for a Jew to obtain the simplest necessities of life such as food, milk, medicines, a night’s lodging. Foreign correspondents . who wrote about the cleaning-up process in Berlin made themselves very unpopular with the authorities. Should there have been a boycott in 1936? Looking back 44 years later I am inclined to say “Yes.” The German opponents of the Nazi regime, even more terrorised and less organised than the Russian dissidents of today, were horrified and discouraged by the aura of world approval which the Berlin Games seemed to give to Hitler. The dissidents inside Russia today seem to be divided as to whether a boycott of the Games would or would not be to their advantage. I doubted whether there was any such division among anti-Nazis in Germany. After all Germany then was a much more open society than the Soviet Union today. Germans, with few exceptions, could travel

abroad if they had the foreign exchange. Foreign tourists were welcome in Germany: the Nazi authorities were confident that dust could be thrown in their eyes and that they would have no chance to contaminate the local population. Would a boycott have made any difference to the course of history? I am sure it would not. The only effective opposition to Hitler could come from the German armed forces and they had sold their souls to the devil by accepting Hitler as the successor of Hindenburg after the Night of the Long Knives on June 30, 1934.

In 1936 a meteoric career lay before German officers: captains were becoming colonels, colonels were becoming generals pretty well overnight; all sorts of rewards were open to military talent. Serious opposition would only come with the spectre of disastrous defeat, though many brave individuals sacrificed their lives and faced horrible tortures for the sake of conscience.

No. A boycott would have sent Hitler into a towering rage, Goebbels would have stepped up his propaganda

about the • wicked world which so much misunderstood poor, encircled Germany, perhaps a few foreign correspondents would have been expelled. One has no reason to think that the supine British and French Governments of that time, even if they had been able to bring about a boycott, would have opposed Hitler’s march of conquest any sooner or more effectively than they did. So is there any lesson for today to be drawn from the events, or the omissions, of August, 1936? That seems to me to be very doubtful. If the Soviet Union is set on a course of world conquest (about which I am personally sceptical though I was never sceptical about Nazi Germany) it will move in its own good time, boycott or no boycott. Perhaps if a boycott of the Moscow Games was universal outside the Communist world it would be just worth while as a gesture as a similar boycott would have been just worth while in August, 1936. In both cases, or so it seems to me, a partial boycott would be a sign of weakness and division, and worse than no boycott at all. Somebody may object that

in 1936 there was no television and that that gives Russian propaganda possibilities around the world which were beyond the dreams of Hitler and Goebbels. I would not accept that for a moment. The power of the media of the day always tends to be exaggerated by politicians, whether we think of newspapers, illustrated magazines, films, radio or television. Hitler would have gained no more than he did in the way of propaganda effect if he had been able to call on a Leni Riefenstahl of television.

I can close my eyes and hear the roar of thousands round the gigantic Olympic stadium in Berlin in that long-ago. August. The Nazi leaders w h o sat triumphantly in their box are dead by suicide.or hanging, most of their followers are dead on the battlefield or in the bombed cities of Germany, my Rumanian officer is probably dead on the Russian steppes. What difference would it have made if Jesse Owens had not been there to annoy Hitler with his black skin or if the reporters and the cameramen had not been there to record the occasion for contemporaries and for posterity?