Berlin 1936: Hitler's Olympics 10/12/19
Berlin was awarded the Olympics in 1931- that is 2 years before Hitler came to power.
Henri de Bailet -Latour a Belgium was the head of the IOC and thus was supposed to be the ceremonial head but Hitler over rode the protocol and used it for propaganda. Richard Strauss wrote the Olympic Anthem. He also wrote a new opera The Silent Women but had to get permission to put it on as the libretti was by Stephen Zweig. The German Travel Club Union went to Spain" to be involved in the war there" later called the Legion Condor. Hitler sent German aircraft to Morocco to save the Spanish nationalist rebellion by flying them to Spain.
29000 Hitler Youth were at the Olympic opening.
The first Olympic were in Greece 1894 this was the 11th. The bringing of the flame was invented for here. Thomas Clayton Woolf a US author wrote Look Homeward Angel 1932 and Of time and the River 1935 both translated into German. He told Martha Dodd that different things are not allowed to be talked about in different countries. In the US you are not allowed to criticize the Jews. She then explained to him what the Nuremburg Laws meant and about the concentration camps he was not aware of this. That also homosexuals, communists , social democrats had been put in jail. Now that he knew what to look out for he wrote a short book called Things I have to Tell, he died in 1938 the day Chamberlin met Hitler. William Edward Dodd is appointed US ambassador to Berlin by Roosevelt. He is a professor, historian not so keen on the job and his daughter Marsha is the socialite. She later wrote a book "My years in Germany.
Wagner was Hitler favourite composer.
The Austrian representivive was aware that a lot of pro Hitler Austrians were spectators. The Polish ambassador Josef Lipski whispered the Nazi's could mobilize the whole nation this way for war. Lally Horstmann the daughter of a wealthy banking family and her husband Alfred an art collector.
Thomas Mann got the Nobel Prize in 1927 and fled Germany in 1933. Mascha Kaleko became the leading poet in Germany till they realized she was Jewish and she fled to the US in 1938. The Sheribini bar a leading place where artist met in Berlin run by Yvonne who was Jewish.
Jesse Owen's German competitor was told off for embracing a Negro. Hitler would not shake hand with Owens, who won 4 gold medal. He returned home and battled to make a living and said that the US president snubbed him as he never received congratulations from him.
Axel Springer was there as a young reporter, after the war set up the Axel Springer Press which included Die Bilt.
Helene Mayer is the pride of German as a world renown fencer and presented a prize by President von Hindenburg but after Jan 1933 her town of Offenbach strikes her name from the role as she is a half Jew.
Leni Reifenstal is making a movie of the Olympics to be used as Nazi propaganda with money allocated directly from Hitler.
Ribbentrop charms Robert Vansittart that Germany is not warmongering, but remarks on one occasion that if England doesn't give Germany a chance to live there will be a war of annialation between them.
1933 Oct Germany leaves the League of Nations and Geneva Convention
1935 March Universal Conscription in Germany
1936 March German troops enter the Rhineland
Summer, prisoners are building Sachsenhausen 60km from Berlin
July from Prague a The German Workers Illustrated newpaper is being smuggled into Germany and describes all the concentration camps.
Arvid and Mildred Harnacks are Soviet spies. He works as an economist for the German government he warned Russia of Germany's invasion.. She was an American and a translator and in the anti Nazi resistance. They were both caught and executed at the end of 1942.
2 weeks before the ollympics Gypeys were dumped out in a field in Marzahn 25 km from the Olympics.
Basketball was played as an Olympic game for the first time.
1936 Bernard Berghause build the Berlin-Luceck Machine factory that played a big part in German armaments production.
Ciro Bar was a leading jazz and entertainment place encouraged to entertains foreign tourist just till the Olympics ended.
Wilhelm Furtwangler was the leading conductor critisised the anti Semitism, but did not leave Germany during the war.
Peter Frohlich later wrote in his book that you can become Jewish 1 by birth, 2 by conversion 3 if the German government decides you are Jewish. He and his parent left Germany in 1939 and got to Cuba and from there to the NY where under his the name Peter Gay was a leading historian on Germany.
Hans Fallada wrote Wolf Amongst Wolves at the time when he was not in rehab as an alcoholic.
Charlettenburg was called Charlettengrad as it had so many Russian who had fled the revolution.
Teddy Stauffer of the original band The Teddies recorded 50 records including "Jeeper Creeper". They were closed down in 1939 and he could not get into the US so set up in Acapulco, Mexico and that became a bit holiday attraction across the border.
Eleanor Holm Jarret was not allowed to swim in the US team as she had been in an alcohol coma. She and team mate Glen Morris who took part in the Olympics acted in 1938 in Tarzan's Revenge .Holm married Billy Rose after he divorced Fanny Brice.
Leib Moritz Kohn alias Leon Henri Dajou a Romanian Jew with a Uruguay passport owned the Quartier Latin patronized by many of the Gestapo later opened the Casanova club in London.
Otto Klemperer survived both the 3rd Reich and Dresden bombing.
Die Sturmer by Julius Streicher was a weekly tabloid that made Streicher rich but it embarrassed the Nazi party and was not allowed to be used in Hitler Youth education it was so bad. It was not published during the Olympics. Streicher was hanged at Nurenburg.
2 different US official of the IOC were sent to Germany to see if Jews were allowed to take part in the Olympic, They indicated that there was not a problem even in his Chicago sport club Jews can't be members, Had the US boycotted the 1936 games other countries would have followed. Hitler's respectability thus challenged could have changed history.
From what we see here even by 1960 German pop and jazz music was so destroyed after this that in 1960 groups like the Beatles were in high demand come from England.
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