Berlin Games (22 page)

As soon as Coubertin accepted the money, Lewald's tone changed from oiliness to one of outright bossiness and censure. Now that the Frenchman had taken the Nazi shilling, and indeed was unable to reveal that he had done so, he was effectively blackmailed into doing whatever Lewald asked of him. At the end of June, Lewald curtly informed Coubertin that his idea of giving a short address to the athletes at the Games ‘could not be realised'. He then reprimanded Coubertin for even suggesting it.

Lewald was also angry with Coubertin over another matter. ‘I cannot hide from you my extreme surprise that in your message that you have drafted for the relay of the Olympic torch, you have not given a single mention of the fact that the idea for the torch relay is a purely German idea; it is our friend Diem who briefly mentioned it to me during our voyage trip to Athens in May 1934.'

The idea for the torch relay was indeed Diem's, but Lewald's nationalism was boundless. For the next page and a half, he repeatedly stressed how the organisation of the relay had been German, and how the costs had been borne by the Germans. ‘You have probably not given enough thought to how much has gone into realising this idea,' Lewald admonished the old baron, before once again telling Coubertin that it was Germany who had done all the hard work.

Now that Coubertin was in their pocket, the Nazi takeover of the Olympic Games was complete. Not only were the Games being organised by the regime, but they were also being run according to Nazi rules and not those of the IOC. Four thousand athletes would shortly be attending a celebration not only of sport, but of fascism. There was nothing the IOC could do, even if it had wanted to, which
it most certainly did not. Coubertin may well have registered some sort of protest, but the bitter old man was greedy for his Nobel Peace Prize and compromised by a huge pile of Reichsmarks. The only place where the true flame of Olympic idealism would burn would be in Barcelona, but events in Spain were beginning to move faster than any athlete.

T
HE TABLE-TENNIS-PLAYING
George Elvin and his band of worker athletes arrived in Barcelona at 6.30 on the evening of Saturday, 18 July. They were met at the station and driven to the Montjuich stadium before being taken to their hotel just off the city's bustling Las Ramblas thoroughfare. After supper, some members of the team went for a stroll, and found that the atmosphere was somewhat disconcerting. Policemen were stopping cars and questioning the drivers. Several Catalonians approached them and warned them in simple English, ‘Plenty revolution soon,' accompanied by hand signals imitating the firing of guns. The warnings were made for good reason. Over the past week, the relationship between the left-wing Republican government and the right-wing rebel Nationalists had disintegrated into violence. By the evening of 17 July, the cities of Pamplona, Saragossa, Oviedo, Salamanca, Avila, Segovia and Cadiz had been captured by the rebels, who controlled large parts of the army. That Saturday saw more fighting, and by the time the athletes were taking their post-prandial constitutional, the rebels controlled one third of Spain. It looked certain that Barcelona would be attacked shortly. Naturally, the worker athletes' sympathies lay with the government, but for the time being there was nothing they could do except go to bed.

At two o'clock that morning, the government broadcast over the radio that all ‘good citizens and communists' should be prepared to help the government fight against the rebellious army. As it grew light at about half past four, the team was woken by the sound of gunfire coming from Las Ramblas and the streets around it. Aircraft could also be heard. One of the team members was A. R. Northcott, the president of the Acton Labour Party Sports Section, who was due to play chess at the Games. As the firing sounded distant, Northcott was
not unduly alarmed, and went back to sleep until 7.30. ‘This time the firing was close at hand,' he recalled, ‘one rifle at least apparently being fired on the roof of our hotel.' As well as rifle fire, machine-gun fire and ‘big gun fire' could be heard, which suggested that the rebel-controlled army forces were near by. This time, Northcott stayed awake, and he and the rest of the team spent the day incarcerated in the hotel, rushing from window to window to watch the action unfold on the streets below. The team saw one fighter being killed; although what made the situation even more alarming was that some Nationalists were holed up in the church–the Eglise Elpi–next to the hotel. Many priests despised the communist-led Republicans and let their churches be used by the rebels as strongholds and sniper points. As it grew dark, the hotel management informed the team that it had run out of food. Two of the athletes, Ted Harding and E. G. Follett, bravely volunteered to get some from a nearby hotel. As they ran through the streets, they were often stopped by trigger-itchy Republicans on the hunt for Nationalists. The two men made it safely back to the hotel, although not without having to explain themselves several times.

On Monday morning, the team was once more woken by gunfire. More shooting was coming from the tower of the church, and Northcott and a few others went up to the hotel roof to investigate. ‘We were ordered down in view of the danger,' he said. ‘We were there long enough to confirm that the firing was coming from the church tower and to hear the sing of his bullets.' Throughout the day, the party watched as cars sped past, many of them daubed with ‘CNT' (Confederation of Workers) and ‘FAI' (Federation of Anarchists), out of the windows of which young fighters brandished rifles. In the afternoon, the team saw Republican forces approaching the church. ‘Parties of two or three men were inspecting its surroundings, evidently trying to find an advantageous point to retaliate,' said Northcott. Soon, the sound of a door being broken could be heard, and then, much to the worry of all, flames and smoke started issuing from the windows. A short while later, the team heard cheering coming from the front of the church, and failing to hear any more firing they assumed the sniper had either been burned to death or had been shot. The fire soon spread out of control, however, and given the absence of the fire brigade, the team realised they would have to fight the blaze themselves.

The team members formed a human chain and passed buckets of water along it. While they did so, the female members packed, getting ready for a quick getaway. Eventually, the fire brigade arrived and quickly got the blaze under control, although as one athlete described it, only ‘after the preliminary work was done by us'. During the commotion, the team made a grisly discovery–the burned body of the priest, who had supposedly been one of the snipers. ‘His body had fallen to the floor, and so badly was it burned, that it was completely beyond recognition,' said R. G. W. Hopkins, who had come to Barcelona to compete in the triple jump. ‘Only a limb or two and some ribs could be distinguished.' Despite the drama of the situation, the team members went back inside, and either played the piano or some cards or wrote letters back home. ‘To look at us then you would have thought that nothing had happened,' said Hopkins.

On Tuesday, the team was finally allowed out of the hotel. It appeared that the Republicans had beaten off the rebel insurgency, although there were many armed men–and women–patrolling the streets. Northcott recalled seeing the evidence of the past two days' violence, including the charred body of a rebel next to a burned-out church on Las Ramblas. The news of gutted churches spread around the world, causing a great amount of controversy. Commentators loyal to the Republicans said that the churches were destroyed as a tactical measure, whereas Nationalist sympathisers said that the government was waging war on good Christians. Northcott also saw a great many bullet holes in walls, and in Cataluña Square he counted seventeen dead horses and mules, which were already starting to stink in the heat. There was broken glass everywhere, and branches had been ripped off trees by bullets. Nearly every side street had a barricade across it, consisting of granite stones ripped up from between the tramlines. All of them were manned by grinning government supporters.

Back at the hotel, the team found that the organisers of the Games had not given up, and a truncated event was planned to run from Friday to Sunday. In order to prepare for this, the British contingent and those from several other countries were asked to march the 2½ miles through the streets to the stadium. Led by a band of bagpipers, they were cheered all the way, and at the stadium the athletes spent a
few hours limbering up and getting some exercise. It looked as if the ancient Olympic ideal of holding the Games during a time of war was going to be lived up to. The organisers had been more than a little optimistic, however, ‘When we tried to leave the stadium we were allowed to use only one exit,' said Northcott, ‘and found that this was because firing had recommenced in the city.' The athletes had to rush through the streets in twos and threes, halting in doorways while gunfire clattered around them. Rebel snipers had started firing on them, and it was only through a mixture of luck and fast running that all the members of the team made it back to the hotel safely, no doubt cursing the organisers of the Games for putting them at risk.

On Wednesday, the fighting died down once again, and some of the athletes tried to send telegrams home, only to join a queue 100 yards long outside the post office. Other athletes went down to the docks, where they were rewarded with the sight of a British cruiser, HMS
London
, commanded by Rear Admiral Max Horton, a submarine hero from the Great War. The ship represented a means of escape, and when the athletes returned to the hotel, they were advised by the British vice-consul that they should get on board. Many members of the team did not wish to leave, however, because they did not want to let down the Games' organisers. Their wishes could not be granted, as later that day everybody under the age of twenty-one was ordered to leave the city as soon as possible. Apparently, the sixteen-year-old Miss J. Crew burst into tears when she heard the news.

Nevertheless, the British team did manage to demonstrate their solidarity for their fellow workers on Thursday. That morning, a large group of Republican fighters assembled to march the hundred miles to Saragossa, where they hoped to deal with the Nationalists as effectively as they had in Barcelona. For a short while, the British team marched with the column–accompanied by the ever-present bagpipers–with George Elvin even taking a ride in an armoured car. ‘The departure of the militia was a wonderful sight,' said Hopkins, ‘although they had no uniforms as they passed down Las Ramblas. We had great admiration for the women who served side by side.' Northcott thought he detected a ‘spirit of elation underlying the surface at the defeat of the rebels', a spirit that was no doubt enhanced by the speeches made by the team leaders, including George Elvin.

By early afternoon it was time for the British to go home. At three o'clock the team boarded the
London
, where they spent the night. At 7.15 the following morning they were transferred to a destroyer, HMS
Gypsy
, which took them and around 150 other British refugees to Marseilles, a voyage that lasted seventeen hours because of thick fog. ‘The British Navy was a godsend,' said one Scottish athlete. Northcott said that the crew of the
Gypsy
‘went out of their way to make all the refugees comfortable and happy'. At Marseilles, the team found themselves in for a shock when they read their first English papers, which reported that Barcelona was ‘in the hands of a riotous mob'. Indeed, many British papers sided with the rebels, and it was only socialist papers such as the
Daily Worker
which spoke up for the Republicans. In fact, the
Daily Telegraph
reported one eyewitness account from an anonymous Englishwoman, whose husband had viewed the athletes with suspicion: ‘[He] kept muttering to himself as each lorry-load arrived, that never had he seen such a tough-looking lot and he did not believe there was one single athlete among them. He thought it must be some sort of publicity stunt…'

Elvin and his team arrived back at Victoria Station at eleven o'clock on the morning of Monday, 27 July. It had been an eventful ten days. ‘Never have I seen such remarkable enthusiasm,' Elvin said, ‘and we are proud to have been there to see comrades in the struggle against the murderers employed by Spanish Fascism and reaction.' For communists like Elvin, the events were nothing less than a new and exciting chapter in the struggle against fascism, and another chance for the workers of the world to rid themselves of their chains. ‘Every worker, every organisation, every lover of freedom and progress should rally to the side of the Spanish workers,' he declaimed. Fascism, in Elvin's words, had been given ‘such a terrific kick in the pants'.

Although there were no Games for the little British team to compete in, the events in Barcelona were a game of sorts for its members. Nobody had been hurt, and their smiling faces back at Victoria Station bore the looks of those who had been on an awfully big and exciting adventure. As Elvin said, ‘the team has had a remarkably interesting experience–one that they would not have missed for anything in the world'. For the Spanish, it was the beginning of three years of civil war that would claim 500,000 to 1,000,000
lives, with atrocities carried out by both Republicans and Nationalists. But on that platform on Victoria Station that Monday morning in July 1936, men like George Elvin could raise their right fist in the workers' salute and feel that they had done their bit for their beloved workers.