Games of Deception by Andrew Maraniss

Author:Andrew Maraniss [Maraniss, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2019-11-05T00:00:00+00:00

Flanked by members of the International Olympic Committee (wearing medallions around their necks), Adolf Hitler enters the Olympic Stadium for the opening ceremonies. (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Rosemarie Stone)

The Greek Olympic team, as was tradition, led the parade of nations into the stadium at 4:14 p.m., passing by Hitler with arms raised in salute. This became a favorite pastime of the crowd, watching to see how each nation acknowledged Hitler as they marched past his box. Countries that offered the Hitler salute, or a similar-looking “Olympic Salute,” were greeted with lusty cheers. The Argentinian athletes turned their eyes toward Hitler; the Swiss flag bearer tossed his flag high into the air over and over; the Bulgarians goose-stepped around the track. Overcast skies only amplified the bright colors of all nations; the red fezzes of the Egyptians, the baby-blue jackets of the Indians, the snow-white outfits of the Icelanders.

Sylvia Weaver, a society and fashion correspondent from the Los Angeles Times dispatched to Berlin to report on the social scene, sat in awe in the press box, surrounded by blue hydrangeas, marveling at the spectacle taking shape before her eyes. “Zeus, in his golden days,” she gushed, “never witnessed a show as grand as this one.” She was impressed by the colors of unbridled power and aristocracy, noting how the “handsome blue, green and black uniforms of the German army, the [Führer’s] private bodyguard and the air force mingle with the brown of the storm troops and the gold of the Olympic chains worn by the International Olympic Committee.” Weaver’s Times colleague Bill Henry recalled that just three years earlier, the Nazis had recoiled at the very idea of the Olympics, dismissing them as a Jewish international enterprise. But now, he said, the “showmen of the Third Reich” had seized upon the propaganda value of the event’s pageantry. “Staging of the Olympics in the past has been in the hands of amateurs,” he wrote. “Here, the work has been done by professionals, and by the most talented, resourceful and successful professionals in history.”

In convincing Hitler that the Olympics would generate enormous international propaganda opportunities, Goebbels had articulated a belief that was at the core of his entire philosophy of public persuasion. “Think of the press,” he said, “as a great keyboard on which the government can play.” The writers from Los Angeles, at least, were willing to be played.

Before the people of LA could read the words of Henry and Weaver in the next day’s paper, however, they gathered around their radios, tuned to KECA and KHJ, and listened live to the ceremonies, hearing a mix of whistles and cheers when American gymnast Al Jochim led the U.S. delegation into the stadium just behind the team from Uruguay. Bill Wheatley, the Refiners basketball player from Gypsum, Kansas, felt his entire body tingling with goose bumps when he emerged from the tunnel into the pulsating arena. Marty Glickman, a Jewish sprinter from New York, looked over at Hitler as he approached his box.

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