Berlin Games (30 page)

In June 1936 Lindbergh received a letter from Major Truman Smith, the military attaché at the American embassy in Berlin.

Lindbergh readily accepted the offer, telling Major Smith in his letter of acceptance that he would be ‘extremely interested in seeing some of the German developments' in aviation. ‘I hope that General Goering does not feel it necessary to provide any special entertainment as far as I am concerned,' he added. The appeal was made in vain. There was no way that the Nazis would allow such a distinguished figure to visit Germany incognito. The moment a gleeful Goering heard of Lindbergh's acceptance, he said, ‘He will be my guest at the opening of the Games.' Lindbergh was to become yet another whom the Nazis used to help legitimise their regime.

When the Lindberghs landed in Berlin on the afternoon of Wednesday, 22 July, they were met by a welcoming committee that was anything but inconspicuous. Not only were all the American naval and military attachés present, but there were also officials from the Air Ministry, Lufthansa, the Air Clubs of Germany, as well as Colonel Gustav Kastner, who greeted Lindbergh with a Nazi salute, before announcing that he would be the aviator's guide during his stay. Lindbergh spent the next few days enduring a hectic schedule of lunches, dinners and tours of aviation facilities. At one lunch, General Erhard Milch, the state secretary of the Reich Aviation Ministry, told Lindbergh that the Germans were planning to build an air force ‘second to none in the world'. Such preparations were of course directly contrary to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, but by now, after the occupation of the Rhineland, Germany was becoming far less coy about its rearmament. According to
The Economist
, Germany had spent some 10–12 billion Reichsmarks (today worth some $330 billion or £190 billion) directly or indirectly on rearming from 1933 to 1935. From what Lindbergh could see, Milch was telling the truth, as factories, squadrons and airfields
all put on their best show for their guest. ‘Obviously Germany was preparing for war on a major scale with the most modern equipment,' Lindbergh later wrote. ‘In Nazi Germany, for the first time, war became real to me. The officers I met were not preparing for a game.'

According to one observer, Lindbergh was enjoying his time in the limelight. The German press was highly sycophantic, unlike the stone-throwing British and intrusive Americans. ‘The Colonel seemed completely spellbound by the honours showered upon him since his arrival in Germany,' wrote the anti-Nazi journalist Bella Fromm, a columnist on Berlin's
Vossiche Zeitung
. ‘It was obvious he enjoyed the limelight. His words lead to the conclusion that he not only thinks highly of German aviation, but also sympathises with the new Germany […] One officer with an especially sharp tongue said: “If they had a National Socialist party over there and an SA and an SS, Lindbergh would certainly run around as
Gruppenfuehrer
”.'

One of the highlights of the tour was a formal lunch held by Goering on 28 July at his official residence on the Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin. Lindbergh recalled how he and his wife sat with several German and American officers and their wives in a sumptuous room, decorated with elegant mirrors and madonnas.

As well as showing off his airfields, Goering was also said to have shown Lindbergh his latest lion cub. Goering was inordinately fond of cubs, although when they reached maturity they had to be returned to the zoo. Goering led Lindbergh by the arm down to the basement, where the American patted the cub without flinching, a display of fearlessness that impressed Goering enough to invite Lindbergh hunting. According to another account, Goering then cuddled the cub, whereupon it decided to relieve itself all over the
Reichsmarschall's bemedalled tunic. Goering's behaviour did not dissuade Lindbergh from meeting the head of the Luftwaffe once more. The venue for their next encounter would be in Goering's box at the Olympic Stadium for the opening ceremony of the XIth Olympiad.

A
UGUST IN BERLIN
is normally dry and warm, but in 1936 the weather was anything but. Theodor Lewald and Carl Diem must have been cursing when they looked out of their bedroom windows in the early hours of Saturday, 1st August. An intermittent drizzle was falling, and with a heavily grey sky it looked as though the precipitation might get heavier. This was certainly not ‘Hitler weather', the tongue-in-cheek epithet secretly used by Germans to describe sunny days. Five years of hard work, five years of detailed organisation, extensive travelling, diplomatic manoeuvring and political wrangling, would now be rewarded with a wash-out of an opening ceremony. It would hardly be the most auspicious of starts.

Nevertheless, rain or shine, the show had to go on. The hours leading up to the ceremony in the stadium at four o'clock were packed with rite and ritual. Church services were attended. Special guards were mounted. Battalions of honour were inspected. Wreaths were laid at war memorials. Military bands oompahed through the streets. Nearly thirty thousand members of the Hitler Youth and the German Girls paraded in the Lustgarten. Uniforms were in abundance, with one observer estimating that he had passed through some 700,000 of them on his way to the stadium–SA men in brown, SS men in black, soldiers in grey-green. Any visitor to Berlin could be in no doubt that exactly twenty-two years after the outbreak of the Great War, Germany was once again a mighty military power. It was as if the country were mobilising, not putting on a sporting pageant.

Although the timetable was exhaustive, and much of it had been rehearsed, there was still plenty of room for error. The most unreliable participants were the athletes themselves, who lacked the discipline of
the highly regimented youth groups. At precisely 1.15, 170 buses turned up at the Olympic village to transport the athletes to the stadium, depositing them on the huge May Field to the west of the complex. They now had some three hours to wait before they would march into the stadium, and with the drizzle and the coolness, for some the time passed slowly. ‘It was very boring,' recalled Dorothy Odam. ‘We were all lined up outside in alphabetical order. However, we were all very smart, well dressed, and well disciplined.' The athletes were not provided with any food, but Odam remembered some drinks being brought round. While she found the wait boring, there were others who revelled in the anticipation. ‘The air of excitement and noise among the teams drove our tiredness away,' said Pat Norton, a female Australian backstroker. ‘Everyone was very excited and talked to each other,' recalled Elfriede Kaun.

Above the stadium drifted the mighty
Hindenburg
airship, its tail fins emblazoned with swastikas, the Olympic flag fluttering below it. The
Hindenburg
was yet another symbol of the re-emerging might of the new Germany. Along with her sister ship, the
Graf Zeppelin II
, the airship was the largest aircraft ever built. At 245 metres long it was three times the length of a jumbo jet. In July, it had completed a record double crossing of the Atlantic in 5 days, 19 hours and 51 minutes, its most recent return trip bringing with it another symbol of German might, the boxer Max Schmeling. Schmeling had sensationally defeated Joe Louis in New York City, a victory embraced by the Nazis as further evidence of Aryan superiority. Louis's defeat had been emphatic–the German had knocked him down in the fourth round, and knocked him out in the twelfth. When the
Hindenburg
landed at Frankfurt Airport on 26 July, the ground was thickly covered with well-wishers. Not one of them, however, was more effusive than Hitler himself, who received Schmeling and his wife at the Chancellery later that day. ‘Hitler wanted to be told of the fight in full detail,' Schmeling wrote. ‘It was clear that he had already been well informed by the press accounts. For example, he asked me if I had known even before the fourth round whether I would “beat the Negro”. ' Schmeling then produced a film of the event, which Hitler ordered to be broadcast as a feature throughout Germany, nationalistically entitled
Max Schmeling's Victory–a German Victory
.

At exactly 3.18 on the afternoon of the 1st, Hitler left the Chancellery for the Olympic Stadium. Hundreds of thousands lined the streets as their Fuehrer passed, all of them craning their heads to catch a glimpse of him over the helmets and caps of the 40,000 troops who guarded the way. Wearing a military uniform, Hitler stood in the front footwell of his large black Mercedes-Benz, acknowledging the cheers of his people with a right arm set in an almost permanent salute. For those who were in the motorcade, the effect of the cheering masses was something to witness. The British journalist George Ward Price had ridden in the back of Hitler's car earlier in the year in Breslau, and the experience was similar to what was now happening along the Unter den Linden.

The experience of being part of the adulatory crowd was no less intense. The American novelist Thomas Wolfe was in Berlin during the Games, and he saw how a collective mania infected the crowds as they waited for their Fuehrer.

Wolfe, like every other visitor, also remarked on the abundance of uniforms. Later that month he sent a postcard of the guard at the Brandenburg Gate to his editor. On the back he wrote, ‘We can never learn to march like these boys.–And it looks as if they're about ready to go again.' Not every German, however, was caught up in the intense
feelings of national pride. That month, Helmuth von Moltke, a young lawyer who had a passionate hatred of Nazism, wrote to his wife Freya, telling her that ‘Berlin is frightful! A solid mass is pushing its way down the Unter den Linden to look at the decorations. And what people! I never knew the likes of them existed. Probably these are the people who are National Socialists because I don't know them either!' Moltke would later become a founding member of the Kreisau Circle resistance group, and he would be hanged in Berlin in January 1945.

At 3.50, Hitler arrived at the Platz am Glockenturm in the shadow of the monolithic bell-tower that lay on the western edge of the May Field. The dictator stepped briskly out of the car, and inspected an Honour Battalion that was assembled before the tower. So far, an ignorant observer would have assumed that Hitler was on his way to a party rally, not a sporting event. He then walked on to the May Field, past a row of cannon, until finally the ceremony began to reveal a hint that this was not a military or political occasion. The Olympic fanfare started up, and Hitler was greeted by Baillet-Latour and Lewald, both of whom were dressed as though they were nineteenth-century statesmen, wearing tailcoats and top hats. Around their necks hung the heavy gold chains of Olympic office. At an earlier event, Goebbels had described them as resembling ‘flea-circus directors'. Other members of the IOC and the GOC flanked them, as did numerous army, SS and SA officers. The procession of around one hundred men, led by the Fuehrer, formed roughly into four columns and walked past the waiting athletes to the Marathon Gate, which was–and is–the western entrance to the stadium. As they passed the athletes, the entire May Field fell eerily silent as thousands of pairs of eyes looked at Hitler. ‘He was clad in brown,' wrote Dhyan Chand, ‘an athletic figure, and trod the ground with a firm step. Occasionally he looked sideways and his face was serious, but not stern.' Other athletes, such as Pat Norton, were less impressed. ‘It was my first direct look at the man who was the talk of the world,' she said, ‘and a more uninspiring person would be hard to find.' Percy Oliver, an Australian swimmer, recalled how Hitler paid the Australian contingent special attention. ‘Hitler came through the centre of the teams and then he came to us. He then walked up and down our ranks specifically. I have no idea why. Perhaps it was
because of our record during the war.' The silence continued until the procession reached the stadium, where a group of white-shirted Hitler Youth near the entrance started shouting, ‘
Heil Hitler!
' At this moment, the whole May Field erupted into cheers, a sound that rushed into the massive bowl of the stadium, causing the 100,000 spectators to rise to their feet as one, raise their right arms in salute and cry out ‘
Heil Hitler!
' ‘As he went into the stadium you would have thought God had come down from heaven,' said British hurdler Violet Webb. It was no wonder that Dorothy Odam regarded the moment as being one of ‘mass hysteria'.

From the point of view of the three men at the front of the procession–Hitler, Baillet-Latour and Lewald–the moment must have been extraordinary. The Olympic Stadium is larger on the inside than it is appears from the outside as it sinks some 12 metres into the ground. The effect is like entering an almighty and partially subterranean cave, which in 1936 was full of people looking directly at one man, who walked purposefully past the as yet unlit brazier, down the steps to the ground level, accompanied by an oceanic roar of ‘
Heil Hitler!
' which drowned out Wagner's ‘March of Allegiance'. Before Hitler reached his seat on the south side of the stadium, his progress was interrupted by a five-year-old girl dressed in a simple white dress with flowers in her blonde hair. This was none other than Gudrun Diem, the daughter of Carl Diem. An avuncular grin stretched across Hitler's face as he stooped to receive the bouquet he was being offered by this small example of Aryan femininity.

By the time Hitler reached his seat at 4.05, there was no doubt that he was already the star of the Olympics. These were his Games now, not Baillet-Latour's, and most certainly not Coubertin's. As if to reinforce the Nazification of the Games, the orchestra struck up with ‘Deutschland über Alles' and the Horst Wessel Song, both of which had heralded the start of the Winter Games back in February. Despite the inappropriateness of both songs, the spectators heartily sang along, and, according to Dhyan Chand, ‘not an eye was left dry'. After the last words of the Horst Wessel song had died down–‘Comrades shot by Red Front and reaction / Still march with us, their spirits on our ranks!'–the order was given for the flags of the competing nations to be raised. With a cry of ‘
Heisst Flagge!
', two sailors at each flagpole
slowly drew them up, an act that was accompanied by the vast chimes of the bell sounding from the other side of the May Field.

At 4.15, the athletes were finally allowed to enter the stadium. Led by the Greeks, as is the Olympic tradition, the march took some forty minutes. The differences in the manner in which the teams presented themselves were just as great as the differences in the way the crowd reacted. Despite the ambiguity of the gesture, the Greeks made the Olympic salute, to which Hitler responded in kind, his arm stretched out to the right. Hitler often saluted in this way, however, so it was not clear whether his salute was Olympic or Nazi. Perhaps in his mind such a distinction was an irrelevance. As the Greek team passed, an elderly figure broke ranks and climbed the stands towards Hitler. It was none other than Spiridon Louis, the winner of the Olympic marathon from 1896. Now sixty-three and looking weathered by the Greek climate, Louis made his way with difficulty, but he eventually reached Hitler and presented him with an olive branch from Olympia. Hitler clearly did not keep the branch, for he would successfully invade Louis's homeland just over four and a half years later. Louis was not to witness his country's occupation, as he died on 26 March 1940.

When the French team passed Hitler's box, they made an Olympic salute, at which the crowd went wild, believing their neighbours and former enemy had made the fascist salute. ‘Never was the war threat on the Rhine less than during these moments,' noted one French journalist. ‘Never were the French more popular in Germany than on this occasion.' The cheers for France exceeded those made for the Austrians and the goose-stepping Bulgarians. Hitler, however, was clearly not happy with his people's reaction, and looked on sourly at the French in their black berets. ‘In the prolonged applause Hitler sensed a popular mood,' wrote Albert Speer, ‘a longing for peace and reconciliation with Germany's western neighbour. If I am correctly interpreting Hitler's expression at the time, he was more disturbed than pleased by the Berliners' cheers.'

Following the French were the British, who had elected not to salute at all, and merely made an eyes-right at Hitler. There had been much discussion among the team about whether to use the Olympic salute, but the experience at Garmisch, in which the Britons' salute was mistaken for a fascist one, was informative. The crowd went quiet,
regarding the lack of any form of salute as a sign of disrespect to them and their leader. There was some small applause, but it was insignificant compared to the reception that had been given to the French. Many of the other British dominions, such as India and Australia, refused to salute–‘We just didn't think it the right thing to do,' recalled Percy Oliver–although the seven-strong Bermudan team doffed their white solar topees and made the fascist salute with their right arms.