The Olympic torch is being welcomed this weekend in the UK as a symbol of great sporting spirit…something that unites people around the world in peaceful competition.
However…
The concept of lighting the torch at the ancient Olympian site in Greece and having it run through different countries has a much darker origin.
It was invented in its modern-day form by the organizers of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. It was planned with great care by the Nazi leadership to project the image of the Third Reich as a modern, economically dynamic state that had growing international influence.
The organizer of the 1936 Olympics was Carl Diem. He wanted an event that would link the modern Olympics to the ancient Olympics. The idea meshed perfectly with the Nazi belief that Ancient Greece was an Aryan forerunner of the modern German Reich. The event also blended perfectly Germany’s perversion of history with publicity for contemporary German power.
The first modern torch was lit in Greece with the help of mirrors made by the German company Zeiss. Steel-clad magnesium torches were specially produced by the Ruhr-based industrial giant Krupp.
Media coverage was masterminded by Nazi chief Josef Goebbels. They utilized the most modern techniques and technology of the day. Dramatic radio coverage of the torch’s progress encouraged the excitement, and it was even filmed to create powerful images.
The route the torch takes has always been carefully and politically planned as well. This year’s route has been highly controversial thus far.
Beijing wanted to take the torch through Taiwan’s capital, Taipei. This had to be changed by Olympic authorities, however, due to political tensions between the Chinese and Taiwanese leaders. There is now great tension over plans to run the torch through Tibet because of recent disturbances there.
In 1936 the torch made its way from Greece to Berlin through countries in south-eastern and central Europe. The Nazis were especially keen to enhance their influence in these areas.
Seeing what happened a few years later, this route seems especially poignant now. “Sporting chivalrous contest,” Hitler declared just before the torch was lit, “helps knit the bonds of peace between nations. Therefore may the Olympic flame never expire.” The flame’s arrival in Vienna prompted major pro-Nazi demonstrations. This helped pave the way for the Anschluss (the annexation of Austria) in 1938.
In Hungary, gypsy musicians who serenaded the flame were faced with deportation to Nazi death camps only a few years later. Other countries on the relay route like Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia would later be invaded by Germans.
Carl Diem, the relay’s inventor, ended the war as a fanatical military commander at the Olympic stadium in Berlin. He refused to accept that the Third Reich was over. Reinhard Appel was a teenage member of the Hitler Youth based at the stadium. He described a speech made by Diem in 1945 as the Red Army closed in:
“He kept referring to Sparta - the history of how the Spartans had not feared dying for their country. He demanded that we be heroes.”
Hundreds of these children were killed in a futile attempt to defend the stadium. Diem survived, however, and reinvented himself after the war as an academic specializing in the philosophy of sport. Germans are yet debating his reputation today.
In 1936 there was no doubt that the show of his torch relay was judged a great international success. As a German athlete carried the torch into the stadium in Berlin the BBC radio commentator was very impressed. “He’s a fair young man in white shorts, he’s beautifully made, a very fine sight as an athlete.”
Another relay runner was Siegfried Eifrig. He carried the torch as it arrived in the center of Berlin. He was flanked by huge swastika flags and he then lit a fire on an altar - typical of the pseudo-religious symbolism that Nazism relished. Eifrig is still alive. He is 98 and still has his Krupp torch engraved with the route of the 1936 relay. He has recently stated that he was saddened by the controversy this year’s relay has attracted and thinks it ought to be kept a “purely sporting” affair. He is also critical of the way the politicians seek to exploit it. The plan to take the torch across the summit of Mount Everest appears a “pointless gesture” that makes a mockery of the relay as an athletic challenge.
Eifrig survived the war as a soldier and he was then a British prisoner of war. He now sees the 1936 relay in a more sober light than back when he was one of the stars. No matter how great the emphasis on the torch as a shining sporting symbol, he knows better than most that amid the political wrangling and media hype there are much less welcome historical ghosts running alongside today’s athletes.
admin on Apr 30 2008 |
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