Andrew Nagorski - Hitlerland

As the German friend in his novella had predicted, the publication of I Have a Thing to Tell You led to the banning of Wolfe’s books in Germany, and he never returned to that country. In an interview in the Asheville Daily News, his North Carolina hometown paper, Wolfe talked about his last trip to Germany. “I came away with the profoundest respect and admiration for the German people, but I feel that they are betrayed by false leadership,” he declared. Reflecting more broadly on his European experiences, he added: “I saw a certain perfection and finish in European life that we do not have here. However, there is a poisonous atmosphere of hatred. I finally wanted to come back home.”

Despite the title of his posthumous novel, Wolfe did make it home.

During the summer of 1936 when Thomas Wolfe visited Berlin for the last time, it was “the season of the great Olympic games,” as he wrote in his novel You Can’t Go Home Again. George Webber, his alter ego and main character, observed how “the organizing genius of the German people… was now more thrillingly displayed than he had ever seen it before. The sheer pageantry of the occasion was overwhelming, so much so that he began to feel oppressed by it.” Webber—in reality, Wolfe—felt oppressed because he was acutely conscious of the ominous nature of this pageantry. “It so evidently went beyond what the games themselves demanded… It was as if the games had been chosen as a symbol of the new collective might, a means of showing to the world in concrete terms what this new power had come to be.”

The irony was that Hitler and the Nazis had a long history of virulent opposition to the whole idea of holding the Olympics or other international sporting events in Germany. In 1923, the Nazis had protested against the German Gymnastics Festival that was held in Munich because it was open to “Jews, Frenchmen and Americans,” as a petition that Hitler signed put it. In 1932, right before taking power, the Nazi leader called the Olympics a “plot of Freemasons and Jews”—even though the decision to bring the games to Berlin had already been taken a year earlier. And once the Nazis were in command, they still chafed at the notion of an international competition that would include Jews and blacks. The Völkischer Beobachter fumed that it was “a disgrace and a degradation of the Olympic idea” that blacks could compete with whites. “Blacks must be excluded,” it concluded. “We demand it.”

But Hitler and the Nazis also insisted that the young should be physically fit, engaging in a broad array of sports training on a regular basis. The idea was to strengthen the bodies and aggressive character of their young followers, as well as their allegiance to the movement. “For us National Socialists, politics begins in sport—first, because politics guides everything, and second, because politics is already inherent in sports,” declared Bruno Malitz, who was in charge of sports for the Berlin storm troopers.

Right after the Nazi takeover, Theodor Lewald, the president of the German Olympic Committee and a fervent promoter of hosting the games in Berlin, set up a meeting with Hitler, Goebbels and Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick to convince the new rulers to support his cause. He argued that the games would more than pay for themselves because of the revenue they would generate—and, more important, there would be an “enormous propaganda effect.” Conjuring up the image of about 1,000 journalists converging on Berlin for the games, he pointed out that nothing could “even remotely match” their propaganda value. This proved to be a winning argument.

For precisely the same reason, many Jewish groups in the United States, along with an array of other activists, particularly from the left, pushed hard for a boycott of the Berlin Olympics. They pointed out that the Nazis’ record of discrimination against Jews was in direct contradiction of the Olympic ideal that all competitors were welcome. Avery Brundage, the president of the American Olympic Committee (AOC), initially sounded sympathetic to that argument. “My personal, but unofficial opinion is that the Games will not be held in any country where there will be interference with the fundamental Olympic theory of equality of all races,” he declared.

Prodded by Lewald, the Nazis responded that Germany would welcome “competitors of all races,” but also stipulated that the composition of the German team was its own affair. In September 1934, Brundage traveled to Germany, supposedly to investigate whether German Jews were getting fair treatment. German sports officials gave him a quick tour of their sports facilities, also acting as translators when he talked to Jews. Arno Breitmeyer, a top Nazi sports official, even came dressed in his SS uniform for a meeting with Jewish sports leaders. Brundage didn’t stop to consider the intimidating effect of those arrangements on the Jews he met; he appeared satisfied that he was getting their candid assessments. He also reported that the Germans had assured him that there would be “no discrimination in Berlin against Jews.” Pleased by those declarations, he added: “You can’t ask for more than that and I think the guarantee will be fulfilled.” In one of his more expansive moments, Brundage suggested a common bond with his hosts, pointing out that his men’s club in Chicago didn’t admit Jews.

Charles Sherrill, another member of the AOC, traveled to Germany in 1935 to try to convince the Nazis to name at least one Jew to the German team, unabashedly arguing that they needed the equivalent of “the token Negro.” But in a personal meeting with Hitler, he called himself “a friend of Germany and of National Socialism” and didn’t seem at all bothered by Hitler’s adamant opposition to including any Jews in Germany’s Olympic squad. According to the Nazi leader, this would contaminate the Aryan contingent. Sherrill described his meeting with Hitler as “wonderful,” and used similarly effusive terms in describing his subsequent four days as Hitler’s personal guest at the annual Nuremberg Nazi Party rally in mid-September. “It was beautiful!” he wrote. “You could almost hear the [Nazi] units click, as each fitted into place, exactly on time.”

As the battle lines were drawn back home between the pro- and antiboycott factions, including within the AOC and other athletic organizations, several top American diplomats in Germany were offering a far more accurate picture than “fact finders” like Brundage and Sherrill. Ambassador Dodd met with Jewish sports officials privately, avoiding the kind of staged sessions that had been arranged for the visitors. He reported to Washington that his interlocutors described “flagrant discrimination” against Jewish athletes and widespread intimidation of the few who were admitted to Olympic training camps.

As early as 1933, Consul General Messersmith, who had made a habit of not allowing himself to be fooled by the Nazis, had predicted that the new regime might make a show of allowing a few Jews to compete in the Olympic trials. But he warned that “this will be merely a screen for the real discrimination that is taking place.” He and Raymond Geist, another top embassy official, kept reporting on the discrimination, trying to counter the “whitewash” of Sherrill and others. After his transfer to Vienna in 1934, Messersmith continued to urge Secretary of State Cordell Hull to oppose American participation in the Olympics. The Berlin event, he argued in a cable in December 1935, “has become the symbol of the conquest of the world by National Socialist doctrine.” If the Olympics were stopped, “it would be one of the most serious blows which National Socialist prestige could suffer within an awakening Germany.” He added that many “wise and informed observers” believed the fate of the games would have a major role “in determining political developments in Europe”—and that he fully concurred with this view.