Berlin 1936 Read online

  If Jesse Owens is the king of track and field, then Hendrika Wilhelmina “Rie” Mastenbroek is the queen of the swimming events. The 17-year-old Dutch girl has been a tour de force in recent days, winning gold in the 100-meter freestyle and silver in the 100-meter backstroke. She’s also performed well in the preliminaries of the 400-meter freestyle and the relay. All in all she’s swum nine races by 4:45 p.m., when the gun fires to start the final of the women’s relay. Mastenbroek is the Dutch team’s anchor and has a lead over the German swimmer Gisela Arendt. Then, a few yards before the finish, she accidentally inhales some water. Usually a swimmer would abandon the race, but Mastenbroek manages to finish and touches the side of the pool before Arendt, winning her another gold medal. “That’s the physical condition a top-class athlete needs,” the commentators say. “That’s the toughness we admire.”

  Mastenbroek’s teammates haul her out of the pool, and while she’s painfully coughing the water out of her lungs, a tall woman in an ostentatious polka dot dress bends down beside her. It’s Mastenbroek’s coach Maria Johanna Braun, whose fondness for extravagant hats, necklaces and brooches has made her something of a celebrity poolside. “Mother Braun,” as the German press has nicknamed the 45-year-old, demands a lot from her athletes. Along with training hard, her swimmers are expected to live ascetic lives with no time for the usual youthful diversions. When asked what sort of nutrition is best for young female swimmers, she gives a surprising answer: white beans with bacon.

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  Throughout the Third Reich there are around 700 so-called Stürmer boxes, public display cases in which people can read the virulently anti-Semitic newspaper. They are located in small villages and big cities, in the countryside and in the capital, on the walls of houses, in marketplaces and in underground stations. In Berlin, for example, there is one in front of the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, the stage where, only eight years ago, in August 1928, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill premiered the Threepenny Opera. The theater’s glory days are long gone: Brecht, Weill and the former house director Ernst Josef Aufricht fled Germany in 1933, and the plays performed nowadays at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm are insipid comedies. Anyone approaching the theater from Friedrichstrasse has to make his way around the Stürmer box.

  The newspaper is the brainchild of the editor-in-chief, Julius Streicher. The 51-year-old has been a Nazi ever since the inception of the party. In the autumn of 1922 he formed the Nuremberg chapter of the NSDAP; in April 1923 he established Der Stürmer; in November 1923 he took part in Hitler’s attempted putsch in Munich; and since 1925 he’s been the regional leader, or Gauleiter, of Franconia. “Anyone who wants National Socialism gets Streicher with it,” Adolf Hitler once declared. The Führer has nicknamed the former schoolteacher his “Franconian bull,” and indeed there’s something very bullish about the hulking man with the shaved head who delights in verbally goring and trampling his adversaries. Hitler likes cold-blooded, unscrupulous fanatics of Streicher’s ilk. He’s one of the few people allowed to address the Führer with the familiar du. Hitler considers Streicher the personification of National Socialism. Many others consider him a dangerous psychopath.

  Streicher’s view of the world can be summed up in a single sentence: “The Jews are our misfortune.” The German historian Heinrich von Treitschke’s words are quoted on the front page of every edition of Der Stürmer and run through the newspaper like a basso continuo. Every article or piece that has ever appeared in the thirteen-year history of the paper has been a variation of this one theme. Streicher’s anti-Semitism is shot through with sexual obsession: he is constantly printing pornographic stories of young “Aryan” girls being violated by old Jewish men. “Starving German maidens in the claws of horny Jewish goats,” reads one of the more lurid headlines. Der Stürmer also runs frequent stories about alleged ritual murders. “Who is the child butcher of Breslau?” screams one headline. Another reads: “The bloodhound. Terrible deeds committed by Jewish murder organizations. The carved-up Polish girl.”

  Even hard-core Nazis often shake their heads at this sort of excess. Goebbels considers Der Stürmer nothing more than a pornographic scandal sheet. In August 1935, after Streicher held a Stürmer-style speech in Berlin’s Sportpalast arena, Goebbels noted in his diary: “Well intentioned, but primitive. Parts of his speech made me laugh.” Streicher may be as ridiculous as he is repulsive, but his newspaper sells and has made him a millionaire. By the mid-1930s, it has a circulation of 486,000.

  But in the Olympic summer, Der Stürmer is a liability. With Stürmer boxes all over Berlin, it’s inevitable that many international visitors would happen upon one and read what it contained. For example, if they walked from Friedrichstrasse to the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, they might see an illustration of a buxom, naked women being seduced by a tongue-flicking “Poisonous Snake Juda,” topped by the headline “The Blood Sin.” Tourists might also learn that the Hessian spa town Bad Orb has been declared “Jew-free.” If Jesse Owens got hold of a copy of the paper, he might ask his friend Herb Flemming to translate for him and hear the words: “This is how racially conscious men in America act: they lynch any Negro who even attempts to defile girls of the white race.”

  Foreigners need to be kept innocent of Streicher’s unappetizing scribbles. During the Olympics, issues of Der Stürmer continue to be published, but it’s forbidden to sell the paper on the streets of Berlin. Stürmer boxes are hastily taken down or filled with harmless sports news. For a couple of weeks in the summer of 1936, Berlin is Streicher-free.

  The American tourist Carla de Vries gets noticeably close to Hitler and makes history with her “kiss attack” on the Führer. Credit 15

  Saturday, 15 August 1936

  REICH WEATHER SERVICE FORECAST FOR BERLIN: Cloudy and cool in the morning, with occasional showers. In the afternoon sunny and warmer. Highs of 23°C.

  “The weather is clearing,” Goebbels writes in his diary. “The sun is shining. [The party on] Pfaueninsel has been rescued. This sort of garden party is a test for your nerves.”

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  The penultimate day of the Olympic Games and the final day of the aquatics competition. Four gold medals are up for grabs in the afternoon: in the men’s 200-meter breaststroke, the women’s 400-meter freestyle, the men’s 1,500-meter freestyle and the men’s water polo. Among the approximately 18,000 spectators following the day’s action are 43-year-old Carla de Vries and her husband, George. The couple comes from Norwalk, California, where George had made a considerable fortune as one of the state’s largest milk producers, and they’re using the Olympics as a welcome excuse to finally fulfill their dream of traveling to Europe. In addition, George will be celebrating his 43rd birthday in exactly two weeks, on 29 August, on the Continent. But today Carla isn’t thinking about the future, about the visits they’ve planned to Rome, Paris, London and other European cities, or her husband’s upcoming birthday. Carla is completely focused on one goal. She simply must get a closer look at Adolf Hitler.

  She’s in luck. The first two events have been concluded when the Führer suddenly appears in the swimming arena. As always, his arrival at one of the sites of competition is stylized into a compelling performance. Terse announcements via the loudspeakers ensure that the spectators—willingly or not—are all aware that Hitler is coming. Carla has learned a few bits of German, so she understands when the stadium announcer says: “The Führer and Reich chancellor is entering the arena.”

  Hitler is surrounded by the customary crowd of SS men, who accompany him to his seat, where Hans von Tschammer und Osten and Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick are already waiting. Sitting directly next to Hitler is August von Mackensen, the 86-year-old general field marshal who, since the death of Paul von Hindenburg almost two years ago, has been the highest-ranking officer of the venerable Imperial German Army. If Hindenburg was a kind of ersatz Kaiser, then Mackensen is an ersatz Hindenburg. Like Hindenburg, Mackensen serves the Führ
er as a figurehead of “Old Prussia” and is one of the many archconservative military leaders who eagerly allow themselves to be hitched to the Nazi wagon. The ever-sarcastic residents of Berlin refer to officers like Mackensen as “silver centerpieces,” since their function is to lend major state functions in the Third Reich some Prussian elegance and patina.

  Carla de Vries, however, isn’t interested in Mackensen. She only has eyes for Hitler, sighing over and over “I’m so excited” like a teenager. George couldn’t care less and simply shrugs his shoulders at his wife’s schoolgirl excitement. Suddenly, Carla leaves her seat and heads in the Führer’s direction. No one stops her, even as she gets closer and closer. When there are only a few yards between her and the German leader, she opens her handbag, removes a miniature camera and takes an image of Hitler giving a young man an autograph. No one gets in her way. Carla approaches Hitler and asks him to sign her admission ticket. She’s so excited she hops from one foot to the other.

  By this time, Hitler’s entourage has taken note of the breathless American woman, but no one perceives her as a threat, perhaps because Carla is very well dressed. She’s wearing a white skirt and blouse with a shawl and a fashionable red hat. Then, the unthinkable happens. Carla leans over the balustrade behind which Hitler is seated, grabs his head and pulls it toward her, and gives him a kiss. Actually she’s trying to kiss him on the lips but Hitler turns away slightly so she only hits his cheek. Only now do the SS men intervene and lead the woman away. The entire stadium is laughing and applauds Carla as she makes her way back to her seat. Hitler, too, seems to take this “kiss attack” in good humor, laughing and joining in the applause.

  George de Vries is less amused. What if the SS men had mistaken his wife for an assassin? Carla’s foolishness could have been very dangerous. But none of Hitler’s bodyguards seems to have considered it possible that Carla might be attacking the Führer with a knife instead of her lips.

  The German media, which otherwise cover the Führer’s every movement, don’t report on this little amorous intermezzo—probably because it represents a lapse in security. A 14-second film sequence that documents the “kiss attack” is confiscated and kept under lock and key. But several articles about Carla de Vries’ coup de main appear in the United States. She even makes headlines as far away as Sydney, Australia, where the Morning Herald, reporting from Norwalk, writes: “Admitting surprise at comment caused by her stolen kiss from Chancellor Hitler during the Olympic games in Berlin, Mrs. Carla de Vries returned to her home here today. ‘Why I simply embraced him because he appeared so friendly and gracious…I don’t know why I did it, I hadn’t planned such a thing. It’s just that I’m a woman of impulses, I guess.’ ”

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  “Gruesome Discovery in Express Train,” says the headline in the 16 August edition of the B.Z. am Mittag newspaper in Berlin. The article reads: “Shortly after Pressburg, when a passenger opened the door to the toilet, a decapitated, bloody corpse fell out. The passenger passed out in shock. The authorities determined that the deceased had his head completely severed with a cut-throat razor.” The train was en route from Berlin to Budapest. The B.Z. contains no information on the identity of the deceased, reporting only that he was from Peru. Perhaps it was someone who had been at the Olympics?

  DAILY REPORT OF THE STATE POLICE OFFICE, BERLIN: “As previously reported, a man has been causing a commotion in restaurants by launching inflammatory tirades in front of foreigners. Whenever the foreigners reply and voice their enthusiasm about their experiences in Berlin, he tells them to have a look in the north and the east, and they will get a different impression. He himself knows that things are different since he has done time in a concentration camp. Investigations into the perpetrator’s identity were initially difficult since his alleged name turned out to be false, and his physical description was not completely accurate. But Criminal Secretary Kümmel, who was charged with the case, has now positively identified him as a certain Herr Selle, and he has confessed to the crime. The man has never been interned in a concentration camp. But he is recorded as having made statements hostile to the state in 1934. The Reichsführer SS has ordered that he be confined to a concentration camp for five years.”

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  In Germany, even children are overcome by the mania for titles and offices that is an extension of the so-called Führer principle. In the Hitler Youth, for example, there are squad leaders, superior squad leaders, cadre leaders, superior cadre leaders, group leaders, superior group leaders and primary group leaders. These cumbersome designations are the result of the omnipresence of hierarchies in everyday German life. It’s not enough just to have leaders. Wherever there’s a leader, there has to be a superior or a primary leader as well—although for some reason, there’s no such thing as a superior primary leader.

  Another title invented by the Nazis is that of “Reich culture administrator.” The German word for this position, Reichskulturwalter, was created on 15 November 1935 by official edict, the German language having had no need for it throughout all the preceding centuries. The position, which is largely symbolic, is occupied by Hans Hinkel, a powerful party official whose main job is as one of three directors of the Reich Culture Chamber. The chamber itself was only established by Goebbels in the autumn of 1933 and is charged with monitoring and Nazifying German culture. Anyone who wants to work culturally in the Third Reich must be a member of one of the chamber’s seven subdivisions. At the inception of this new organization, all “creators of culture,” including Jews, were automatically accepted as members. Then came Hinkel. Born in 1901, he’s a card-carrying National Socialist from the party’s earliest days, having joined the NSDAP (membership number 287) as a university student in 1921. Two years later, he took part in Hitler’s dilettantish, failed putsch in Munich. Now, in the summer of 1936, Hinkel is Goebbels’s “special representative for the monitoring of intellectually and culturally active Jews and non-Aryans.” The wordiness of this designation conceals the true nature of Hinkel’s remit. In reality, he’s in charge of “cleansing” the chamber of Jews.

  Hinkel is proud of his work. “In terms of creating culture, non-Aryans are no longer involved at all in German intellectual life,” he boasts today in an article in the 12-Uhr-Blatt newspaper. “In the area of artistic reproduction, with the exception of perhaps 1 percent, Jewry has been eliminated.” Hinkel adds: “The minute we push a Jewish citizen off his desk chair, we have to address the question: ‘What should become of this man?’ ” Chapters of the so-called Jewish Cultural Association all across the Third Reich are supposed to accommodate unemployed Jewish artists by allowing them to produce Jewish culture for a Jewish audience. Yet even high-ranking Nazi officials often attend association events, in particular musical ones, where they can enjoy the works of banned composers like Felix Mendelssohn and Gustav Mahler. “We saw how they applauded,” a Jewish culture association veteran recalled. “They couldn’t attend events like ours anywhere else. They were particularly taken with our operas.”

  But it would be a massive distortion to conclude that the association truly promoted Jewish culture and Jewish artists. What may have looked like the positive assertion of a Jewish cultural identity entailed the acceptance of Nazi restrictions on and discrimination against those they defined as Jews—they were two sides of the same coin. And the former served to mask the latter. “You can’t say that things are only done against the Jews in Germany,” Hinkel cynically says in his newspaper article, claiming to have received letters of gratitude from Jewish representatives for his efforts. “The Zionistic leaders of the Jewish Cultural Association freely admit that Jewry forgot and denied itself when it tried to take over a cultural sphere that was not appropriate to its nature.”

  What might the Olympic visitors think, sitting in a café or restaurant on the penultimate day of the Games, if they happen to flip through the 12-Uhr-Blatt and read Hinkel’s article?

  GESTAPO T
O CUSTOMS INVESTIGATIONS: “Very urgent! We have learned from a confidential source that the Jew Dajou, known until 1929 under the name Leib Kohn, intends to sell his establishment for 60,000–80,000 reichsmarks in cash to a buyer from Zoppot on 16 August 1936 (or at the latest 17 August 1936) and leave the territory of the Reich.”

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  For Carl Diem, the penultimate day of the Olympics is chock-full of appointments. At 8 a.m. he’s already at the riding events at the military parade grounds in Döberitz just outside the city limits, although he has to leave before the end so that he can make it to the high-diving competition in the swimming arena. The secretary general of the German Olympic Committee also has a number of meetings in his office. At 8:30 p.m. the gold-medal bouts in boxing are taking place, but Diem can’t attend because at the same time, the Olympic Concert is being played at the Dietrich Eckart Open-Air Stage, today known as the Berlin Waldbühne.

  Adopting an idea by the IOC about how to connect art and athletics, the organizers of the 1936 Olympics are staging a cultural competition. Gold, silver and bronze medals are being awarded in five disciplines: architecture, painting and graphic arts, sculpture, poetry and music. Each genre is divided into sub-disciplines. Poetry, for instance, is broken down into lyric, dramatic and epic works, while music includes orchestral, chamber and vocal categories. Artists from all the Olympic countries are eligible to participate—the only condition is that their works have to deal in artistic form with the Olympics. Individual countries have made preliminary selections, and an international jury will determine the prize winners from the entries submitted. As promising as this idea might sound, the reality is disappointing. The quality of some of the works submitted is so poor that in some disciplines no medals at all are awarded.