Berlin Games (27 page)

German wrestling champion Werner Seelenbinder (right) in his match against Axel Cadier of Sweden. Seelenbinder, a Communist, was determined to win a place on the podium in order not to perform the Nazi salute.

 

Robie Leibbrandt, the South African boxer who would later work as a Nazi agent in a mission to assassinate his country's leader.

 

Owens' name would appear three times on the tablets at the stadium's Marathon Gate. He won the 100 metres, the 200 metres and the long jump. His fourth gold medal was won as part of the United States' victorious 4 x 100 relay team.

The team would need it. Tired, still a little seasick, suffering from colds, overweight, dogged by scandal and missing home, its members had only a week to recuperate from what had been quite a trip.

 

For the British, going to Berlin was a far less eventful affair. Lacking a certain amount of Brundagian discipline, the team members assembled in dribs and drabs at Liverpool Street Station in London on the evening of Wednesday, 29 July in order to catch the 8.30 train to Harwich, from where a boat would be caught to the Hook of Holland. The station was crowded, not only with well-wishers, but also with tourists setting off for holidays in Austria and Germany. Rushing around were stout, elderly British Olympic officials, instantly recognisable by their newly designed British Olympic tie, which was regarded as ‘the most complicated tie in the history of haberdashery'. It featured a blue background, on top of which were red and white stripes. Between each group of red and white, however, came a group of stripes in the Olympic colours of pale blue, yellow, black, green and red. The London correspondent of the
Manchester Guardian
was withering. ‘A member of your London staff who is entitled to wear the tie received it yesterday, extracted it eagerly from its envelope, looked at it in a dazed way while his wife said what she had to say; and then shut it up in a wardrobe. It may be all right in Berlin, but it will not do for London.'

Eventually, after much chivvying by the officials, the athletes got on the train. Outside the station, a chocolate seller had been monitoring their arrival, and was worried that there was no sign of Jack Lovelock, the New Zealand miler. A Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, where he read medicine, Lovelock had competed in the 1932 Olympics and had come seventh. The following year, however, he set a new world record in the mile of 4:07.6, and in 1934 he won gold at the British Empire Games. An intensely private man, Lovelock approached running as a science, and kept a diary in which he recorded medical and dietary observations. On 15 June 1935 Lovelock ran in the ‘Mile of the Century' at Princeton, although he was suffering from an inflamed knee. Before the race he injected himself with a vaccine prepared by none other than Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin. Wearing his distinctive black shirt with a large silver fern, Lovelock
won the race, cheered on by a crowd consisting of what he somewhat unkindly described as ‘kind, but thoughtless enthusiasts'. By the time the train had left, the chocolate seller had still not spotted Lovelock, but then the New Zealander was a small, frail-looking man, and may well have slipped on to the train unnoticed, obscured by the tourists with their bulky luggage.

Lovelock was fortunate not to suffer the fate of Edgar Howitt, who had been selected as stroke for the British coxless four. His teammate from the London Rowing Club, Martin Bristow, recalled how the four men had all applied for extra leave from their employers or tutors, and all had been granted it except for Howitt, who worked at Cable & Wireless. ‘His boss said no. “You've had your leave, that's it.” ' A fellow member of their club then came up with a solution that looked infallible. ‘This chap was called Bradshaw,' Bristow remembered, ‘and he knew Stanley Baldwin, the prime minister. So Bradshaw had a word with Baldwin, and Baldwin had a word with the chap at Cable & Wireless, and still he said
no
!' Despite this failure, the captain of their club, Peter Jackson, thought he might succeed where the prime minister had failed. ‘He went to see the Cable & Wireless man and told him that Howitt had to have more leave. Jackson's trump card was to say that all this would look very bad in the press if it came out. Quick as a flash, the boss said that if it gets into the papers, Mr Howitt will be dismissed. As a result, Howitt couldn't come. He couldn't leave his job as he had no means of his own.' Howitt was replaced by a stroke from Oxford, whose different rowing style would have a huge impact on the four's chances of success.

The train arrived at Harwich just before ten o'clock, and the team boarded the boat for the Hook of Holland. The lateness of the hour, the fact that the female team members were coming over separately and the shortness of the voyage meant there was no time for the high jinks that had been so prevalent on the
Manhattan
. However, the team members were permitted to drink alcohol, although there is no record that there was a raucous party on board. Even without alcohol, it would have been a bleary-eyed team arriving at the Hook of Holland at six o'clock the following morning, there to catch the North German Express to Berlin at 7.21 a.m.

On the train the athletes may have had a chance to peruse one of the leaflets that had been distributed to those visiting Berlin. One of them succinctly summed up the state of Germany.

You will be shown

• 1) The Reichstag, partly ‘burnt out' in 1933.
  
• 2) Happy workers cheering the National Leaders at popular demonstrations.
  
• 3) Jews, sitting in their cafés unmolested (for the period of the Olympic Games), enjoying their glass of beer as well as any Aryan.
  
• 4) Contented women nursing their children in houses especially painted up for the Olympic Games.
  
• 5) Busy factories, and signs of plenty of work and attention for the conditions of workers.
  
• 6) Eggs and butter in the shops, hoarded up by instructions for the last few weeks.
  
• 7) Many new and magnificent buildings like the new Air Ministry.
  
• 8) The peaceful unity of the nation.
  
• 9) Impressive libraries from which all literature of writers such as Heinrich Mann, Einstein, Ernst Toller, have been removed.
  
• 10) The magnificent buildings of the Olympic village and district which will be used as a military centre after the Olympic Games
  

But ask to see

• 1) The oath, under penalty of treason, which every guide was asked to take; the secret rules laid down to Chambermaids, Waiters, Porters etc whom you will meet in Berlin.
  
• 2) Columbia House, and other prisons with their torture chambers.
  
• 3) The leaders and other members of the old Trade Union Movement who have not yet ‘been shot while attempting to escape'.
  
• 4) Jewish surgeons, after years of training to save life, are denied not only hospital appointments, but also general practice because they are Jews; Jewish teachers and scientists who have lost their positions because they are Jews.
  
• 5) The women and baby hostages still languishing in concentration camps and prisons–their only offence being the fact that their menfolk were Pacifists, Socialists or Communists.
  
• 6) Koepenick, near the Olympic Regatta Course, where in the summer of 1934, 12 Social Democratic civil servants and one MP (Stalling) were murdered; and Lichterfelde where in the SS Barracks hundreds of Nazi boys were shot on June 30, July 1st, 2nd and 3rd 1934; the Bernerstrasse where there is a women's political prison.
  
• 7) The daily sittings of the political tribunal at Bellevuestrasse 14, only to see whether heavy sentences are being passed there hourly on a continuous stream of men and women who do not think like Hitler.
  
• 8) Ossietsky, a great German writer: dead; Ernst Thaelman the leader of the German Communist Party and Edgar Andre [a communist trade unionist] who lies in Hamburg under sentence of death.
  
• 9) Great religious leaders of the Catholic and Protestant Church whose sermons have been seized by secret police.
  
• 10) The budget of working class houses, especially those where there is no unemployment pay and no relief and their conditions in 1932 before the Nazi regime.
  

Despite the error concerning Ossietzky–he was in fact alive–the leaflet was largely accurate. For the duration of the Games, the regime was desperate to show a public face that did not match its rotten heart. The list of cosmetic changes the Nazis put in place was typically thorough. Local officials had to ensure that all the main streets in all villages were free of rubbish; houses on main roads or whose backs looked on to railway lines had to be whitewashed or painted; front gardens had to be kept in order; empty buildings were to be let cheaply; convict labourers had to be employed away from main roads; concentration camp inmates were not to work on the land; visiting Jews were to be ‘treated just as politely as Aryan guests'; anti-Jewish signs were to be removed; display cases showing the rabidly anti-Semitic
Der Stuermer
were closed; taxi drivers had to wear uniforms; all flats and houses on main thoroughfares in Berlin had to display Olympic and Nazi flags–and so on. The orders were rigorously implemented. In Berlin, the streets were patrolled every morning to ensure that the flags and decorations had not been damaged by the weather or vandalism. On the Bismarckstrasse in Berlin, one Jewish
woman refused to hang up any flags because her son had been forbidden from swimming in the local baths. The Nazis ignored her, and brought their own flags and illuminations which they hung up despite her protestations. For those good citizens who did want to display the flags, expert advice on how to hang them was available from the district Nazi Propaganda Office. As if to emphasise that the changes were merely temporary window dressing, the orders concerning the treatment of foreign Jews stated, ‘The fundamental attitude of the German people towards Judaism remains unchanged.' The
New Statesman
noted how ‘the flags in the Berlin streets and the appliances in the Hamburg prison are all part and parcel of the same system', referring to the location of Darré's incarceration. ‘Terrorism for the few and megaphone propaganda for the many provide the essentials in this new technique of government.'

Indeed, it was not only rubbish which was cleaned up, but people too. Two weeks before the Games, the Sinti and Roma were arrested and sent to a special ‘Gypsy Camp' that had recently been established in the Berlin suburb of Marzahn. The arrests began at 4 a.m. on 16 July, and nearly six hundred men, women and children were rounded up. The men were allowed to work during the day, but at night they were locked up with their families in the camp, which was situated next to a sewage works and a cemetery, leaving the Gypsies in no doubt as to how the Nazis regarded them. They were even subjected to ‘race-hygiene examinations'. Marzahn would grow into a de facto concentration camp, and it was from here that Gypsy families were deported to the death camps in the east. The other people the Nazis cleared up were the prostitutes, who were banned from the centre of Berlin. Over two thousand prostitutes, bar hostesses and dancing girls were forcibly examined for venereal disease, and some 350 were found to be in need of treatment. Beggars were also hidden away, with 1,433 arrested in June alone, incarcerated in the ‘Municipal Work and Detention House'. The one group that was tolerated, however, was homosexuals. On 20 July, Himmler issued an order to the Gestapo that forbade them ‘from taking any action, even questioning or summons, against any foreigner on the grounds of §175 without my personal authorisation during the next few weeks'.

The fate of Gypsies, beggars and prostitutes was far from the minds of the athletes as they drew into Friedrichstrasse Station in Berlin at 4.30 p.m. There was no sign of any repression on the platform, merely the portly figure of Lewald, who welcomed the British as ‘the finest team that Great Britain has ever had'. Lord Burghley replied by expressing his hope that ‘these games will do much to cement greater friendship not only between our two great nations but among all the nations gathered together here for the glory of sport'. The team was then ushered outside into the waiting buses, no doubt grateful that the lateness of the hour meant that they did not have to endure the normally obligatory glass of welcoming sherry at Berlin City Hall. Instead, they were taken straight to the Olympic village.

 

The Americans had enjoyed no such luck since they had arrived in Germany. As soon as they had disembarked they were subjected to countless speeches and welcoming committees. At the docks in Hamburg, thousands had gathered in a slight drizzle to welcome them, and as they were driven to the City Hall, thousands more cheered them along the flag-lined streets. There was one member of the team, however, who was singled out for particular attention, and that was Jesse Owens. The crowds shouted, ‘Yessay Oh-vens! Yessay Oh-vens!', and it took a while for Owens to realise that they were chanting for him. Owens could have been forgiven for expecting his reception to be anything but warm. In the German newspapers, the rise of ‘
der Negerfest
' had been written about for weeks, and pictures of Owens were reproduced next to that of an ape, indicating that Owens' phenomenal speed was because of his ‘animal qualities'. Despite the Nazis' best efforts to knock him down the evolutionary ladder, the German public adored ‘Yessay'. At the City Hall, which Charles Leonard described as a ‘grand place harboring leather walls, inlaid floors, heavy paintings and marble statuary', the athletes were serenaded by oompah bands and orange juice and sherry. ‘The o.j. is of unknown quality,' wrote Leonard, ‘the sherry the best I've ever tasted.'

Velma Dunn found Hamburg a ‘beautiful' city. ‘Canals, lakes and rivers line almost every block,' she wrote to her mother. ‘On all the buildings there are window boxes, mostly filled with red geraniums. It is certainly a colourful sight.' The authorities had clearly done well to
ensure that Hamburg looked its best, as had the railways, which had festooned the deluxe train that was to take them to Berlin with countless swastikas and Olympic rings. The train journey to Berlin took three hours, and the young Velma Dunn soon noticed some small differences between Germany and the United States. At lunch, they were served ‘very peculiarly'. ‘One waiter brings a fork to everyone,' she wrote. ‘He is then followed by a waiter with knives. Another with spoons etc. They serve the food that way, too. One waiter serves the meat, another a vegetable, etc. Quite a novel way of serving, but I prefer the usual method. The straws in the milk were made of a form of cellophane.'