Into the Olympic Inner Circle Was Not Simply a Creation of the Germans

Toward a Theory of Olympic Internationalism

Outside of Germany, Diem, a longtime friend of IoC-president Avery Brundage, moved easily within the inner circle of the Olympic movement and among his fellow members of the German Olympic affinity group. The postwar head of the West German National Olympic Committee, Karl Ritter von Halt, had been Hitler's last Reíchssportfiihrer, a member of the SA, and a longtime member of the IOC (1929-64). When the Winter Olympic Games were held in Oslo in 1952, the Norwegians would not even let him into the country.87 Diem's friend Walter von Reichenau had traveled with him to the United States in l9l3 to study American sport. As one of Hitler's most powerful generals, von Reichenau was renowned for his sporting prowess: at the age of fifty-six, he had run a quarter-mile in under a minute, and in 1940 he had sparred with Walter Neusel, the German heavyweight champion. As Field Marshal and commander-in-chief of the German Sixth Army "during the Russian campaign of 1941 he issued a notorious order of the day condon- ing a stupendous massacre of Jews which the SS conducted at Kiev."88 Reichenau had become an IOC member in 1938, and it is possible that his plzzling death in 1942 from "apoplexy'' on the Russian front saved the IOC from the disgrace of seeing one of its members stand trial at Nuremberg. The ideological ambiance that welcomed Nazis and their sympathizers into the Olympic inner circle was not simply a creation of the Germans. Avery Brundage, who as president of the American Olympic Committee had led the campaign for American attendance at the 1936 Berlin Games, lü/as a pronounced germanophile and anti-Semite whose tOC presidency (1952-72\ can only have encouraged participation by those with Nazi affiliations or sympathies.'n The political career of Jean Borotra, the Basque tennis star of the 1920s is another case of how collaboration with a fascist administration preceded a leadership role in international sport circles after the war. Borotra served as Commissar-General for Education and Sport in the Vichy administration of Marshal Pétain, then was arrested and deported by the Gestapo in 1942 when the Germans moved into the unoccupied zone. As late as the 1970s Borotra was playing a prominent role in the Association for the Defence of the Memory of Marshal Pétain.eo ln 1964 he founded the Intema- tional Committee for Fair Play (ICFP), which awards trophies and certificates

8?. For a brief and apologetic suwey of von Halt's political and Olympic career, see Karl Adolf Scherer, Der Mllnnerorden: Die Geschichte des Internationalen Olympßchen Konitees (FrankfurtlM: Limpert, 1974). '14-77. For a more detailed and reliable account of von Halfs conributions to the Nazi sport apperatus see Kräger, Die Olytnpischen Spíele und die lleltmeinung. While Scherer (p. 76) dispels a false rumor that von Halt had belonged to the SS, Krüger (p. I 28) confirms that he had been a member of the SA and the NSDAP. 88. Ge¡ald Reitlinger, The SS: Alibi of a Natíon (New York: Da Capo Press, 1989) 135. Fo¡ the English text of von Reichenau's statement. see Lucy S. D¿widowicz, The War Against the Jews, 1033-1945 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975): 124. For a part of the German text including a refere¡ce to 'Tewish subhumans" [jüdischen Untermensc[enJumJ see Teichler, "Der Weg Carl Diems" 47ftn. A recent apologistic account of von Reichenau's career emphasizes his athleticism and refers only obliquely to his notorious statement of 1941. See W. Görlitz, "Reichenau," in C. Barnet, ed. Hítler's Generals (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1989'¡- 209-219. 89. See, especially, Guttmann. The Games Must Go On; and Hoberman, The Olympic Crßís, 50-57. 90. "Jean Borotra," The Times [London] (July 18, 1994): 19.