Ian Kershaw - Hitler. 1936-1945 - Nemesis

If Hitler was to encounter increased difficulties in attaining his desired alliance with Great Britain, his Rhineland triumph opened up new opportunities elsewhere. Italy, taken up since the previous autumn with the repercussions of the invasion of Abyssinia, now heading to a belatedly victorious conclusion for Mussolini, was more than content to see the attention of the western powers diverted by the remilitarization of the Rhineland. More than that: the diplomatic fall-out from the invasion of Abyssinia had forged better relations between Italy and Germany. As Mussolini had signalled earlier in the year, Italy’s interest in protecting Austria from German inroads had sharply diminished in return for Germany’s support in the Abyssinian conflict. The way was opening for the eventual emergence of the Berlin-Rome ‘axis’ towards the end of the year. Meanwhile, the inevitable consequence of the removal of any protection from Italy was that Austria was forced to acknowledge — as would be the case in a one-sided agreement in July — that the country had now fallen within Germany’s orbit.

Within a fortnight of the Austrian agreement, the diplomatic fault-lines in Europe would widen still further with Hitler’s decision to commit Germany to intervention in what would rapidly emerge as the Spanish Civil War — a baleful prelude to the catastrophe soon to engulf the whole of Europe. To shrewd observers, it was becoming clear: Hitler’s Rhineland coup had been the catalyst to a major power-shift in Europe; Germany’s ascendancy was an unpredictable and highly destabilizing element in the international order; the odds against a new European war in the foreseeable future had markedly shortened.

To the German public, Hitler once more professed himself a man of peace, cleverly insinuating who was to blame for the gathering storm-clouds of war. Speaking to a vast audience in the Berlin Lustgarten (a huge square in the city centre) on 1 May — once an international day of celebration of labouring people, now redubbed ‘National Labour Day’ — he posed the rhetorical question: ‘I ask myself,’ he declared, ‘who are then these elements who wish to have no rest, no peace, and no understanding, who must continually agitate and sow mistrust? Who are they actually?’ Immediately picking up the implication, the crowd bayed: ‘The Jews.’ Hitler began again: ‘I know…,’ and was interrupted by cheering that lasted for several minutes. When at last he was able to continue, he picked up his sentence, though — the desired effect achieved — now in quite different vein: ‘I know it is not the millions who would have to take up weapons if the intentions of these agitators were to succeed. Those are not the ones… ‘ 7

The summer of 1936 was, however, as Hitler knew only too well, no time to stir up a new antisemitic campaign. In August, the Olympic Games were due to be staged in Berlin. Sport would be turned into a vehicle of nationalist politics and propaganda as never before. Nazi aesthetics of power would never have a wider audience. With the eyes of the world on Berlin, it was an opportunity not to be missed to present the new Germany’s best face to its hundreds of thousands of visitors from across the globe. No expense or effort had been spared in this cause. The positive image could not be endangered by putting the ‘dark’ side of the regime on view. Open anti-Jewish violence, such as had punctuated the previous summer, could not be permitted. With some difficulties, antisemitism was kept under wraps. Manifestations thought distasteful for foreign visitors, such as anti-Jewish notices — ‘Jews not wanted here’, and other vicious formulations — at the roadside at the entry to towns and villages, had already been removed on Hitler’s orders at the insistence of Count Henri Baillet-Latour, the Belgian President of the International Olympic Committee, before the commencement the previous February of the Winter Olympics in the Bavarian alpine resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen. 8The antisemitic zealots in the Party had temporarily to be reined in. Other objectives were for the time being more important. Hitler could afford to bide his time in dealing with the Jews.

Frenetic building work, painting, renovation, and refurbishment aimed at offering the most attractive appearance possible to Berlin, the city of the Games. 9The centre-point was the new Olympic Stadium. Hitler had angrily denounced the original plans of the architect Werner March as a ‘modern glass box’, and, in one of his usual childlike temper tantrums, had threatened to call off the Olympics altogether. It was probably a device to make sure he got his own way. And like pandering to a spoilt child, those around him made sure he was not disappointed. Speer’s rapidly sketched more classically imposing design immediately won his favour. 10Hitler was more than assuaged. Now fired with enthusiasm, he demanded at once that it should be the biggest stadium in the world — though even when under construction, and outstripping the size of the previous largest stadium at Los Angeles, built for the 1932 Games, he complained that everything was too small. 11

The whole of Berlin was wreathed in swastika banners on 1 August as the arrival of the Olympic torch signalled, amid spectacular ceremonial, the commencement of the XIth modern Olympiad — Hitler’s Olympics. Overhead, the massive airship Hindenburg trailed the Olympic flag. In the stadium, a crowd of 110,000 people had assembled in great expectation. Over a million others, it was estimated, unable to get tickets, lined the Berlin streets for a glimpse of their Leader as a cavalcade of black limousines conveyed Hitler with other dignitaries and honoured guests to the newly designed high temple of sport. As he entered the great arena that afternoon, a fanfare of thirty trumpets sounded. The world-famous composer Richard Strauss, clad in white, conducted a choir of 3,000 in the singing of the national anthem, ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über alles’, and the Nazi Party’s own anthem, the ‘Horst-Wessel-Lied’, before conducting the new ‘Olympic Hymn’ which he had composed specially for the occasion. As the music faded, the giant Olympic bell began to toll, announcing the parade of the competing athletes that then followed. Many national delegations offered the Nazi salute as they passed Hitler’s dais; the British and Americans demonstrably refrained from doing so. 12All around the stadium, cameras whirred. The camera teams of Leni Riefenstahl, the talented director who, after her success in filming the 1934 Party Rally, had been commissioned to produce a film on the Olympics, had been installed in numerous strategic positions, accumulating their material for a celluloid record of the stirring events. 13

At last, the opening ceremonials out of the way, the Games were under way. During the following two weeks, a glittering display of sporting prowess unfolded. Amid the notable achievements in the intense competition, none compared with the towering performance of the black American athlete Jesse Owens, winner of four gold medals. Hitler, famously, did not shake Owens’s hand in congratulation. It had not, in fact, been intended that he should congratulate Owens or any other winners. He had indeed, though this had apparently not been foreseen by the organizers, shaken the hands of the medal winners on the first day — Finnish and German. Once the last German competitors in the high jump had been eliminated that evening, he had left the stadium in the gathering dusk before completion of the event, which had been delayed and was running late. Whether a deliberate snub or not, this prevented him having to decide whether to shake the hands of Cornelius Johnson and David Albritton, two black Americans who came first and second in the high jump. But Jesse Owens did not compete in a final that day. And before he won any of his medals, Count Baillet-Latour had politely informed Hitler that as a guest of honour of the Committee, if the most important one, it was not in line with protocol for him to congratulate the winners. Thereafter, he congratulated none. 14He was, therefore, in no position to offer a direct affront to Owens when the American sprinter won the first of his gold medals next day for the 100 metres dash. That he would nevertheless have been prepared to snub Owens can be inferred from what he apparently said to Baldur von Schirach, the Hitler Youth leader: that the Americans should be ashamed at letting their medals be won by negroes, and that he would never have shaken hands with one of them. At Schirach’s suggestion that he be photographed alongside Jesse Owens, Hitler was said to have exploded in rage at what he saw as a gross insult. 15