Berlin 1936 Read online

  Finck, however, cannot curb his tongue, taking risks with allusions and wordplay. In the final instalment of his column, he writes: “The visitors from all over the world are leaving. Never have they been so spectacularly welcomed. The question is: how have Leni’s cameras recorded it all?” Finck imagines Leni Riefenstahl inspecting the negatives of footage of Jesse Owens’s spectacular triumphs. “Suddenly she sees in reverse how positively the Negro ran. In the negatives, we get our revenge. The white man is at the head of the pack. Meters in front of the others, while the black fellows bring up the rear!”

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  “Endless awards ceremonies,” Goebbels writes in his diary. Up in the stands, the propaganda minister is slowly but surely losing patience. The equestrian events, in which he’s never been able to take an interest, go on for hours, and the awarding of the medals takes far too long for his taste. “All that needs to be more concise and effective,” Goebbels huffs. He probably isn’t the only one with itchy feet. Most of the other spectators too are probably eagerly awaiting the closing ceremony.

  The sun is slowly setting behind the Marathon Gate, when Paul Winter’s “Olympic Fanfare” heralds the start of the Olympics’ final act. All eyes are on the tunnel underneath the gate, where the Olympic countries march in, carrying their national flags. Leading the way is Greece, the Olympic homeland, and the parade is concluded with the German team bearing the swastika. As the athletes strut along, the Olympic Symphony Orchestra plays Julius Möllendorf’s “Parade March 1.” As its last notes fade, after a few seconds’ silence Henri de Baillet-Latour steps up to the microphone, thanks Hitler and the German people for their hospitality and declares the end of the Games. The count’s concluding words are shown on a giant display: “May the Olympic flame shine through all generations for the benefit of an ever higher striving, courageous and pure humanity.”

  After some more music, Beethoven’s “Opferlied,” the Olympic flag is taken down to a volley of salutatory gunfire. Then the orchestra plays “Fahnenabschied” (Departure of Flags) by Paul Höffer, one of the winners of the Olympic music competition, as the national teams exit the stadium. The Olympic flame is extinguished, and the Olympic flag is handed over to the city of Berlin for safekeeping until the next Games, scheduled for 1940 in Tokyo. Finally a further Paul Höffer composition, “Olympia-Ausklang” (Olympic Finale), is played. Massive spotlights mounted all around the stadium beam columns of light into the evening sky, slowly moving toward one another and eventually crossing paths 325 feet above the arena. The result is a gigantic cathedral of light—an effect the National Socialists use for their party rallies in Nuremberg. “Never have I seen a show so minutely planned into the very last detail,” William Dodd writes in his diary. The final item on the program is the song “Die Spiele sind aus” (The Games are Over), with the spectators singing along. With that the ceremony is over. Adolf Hitler hasn’t said a word the entire time. But in the end the pretense of international Olympic harmony collapses as tens of thousands of people leave their seats to bellow “Heil Hitler!” and sing “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles.”

  In Zurich, Thomas Mann sits by his radio listening to the Olympics’ concluding ceremony, which is being broadcast live throughout Europe. In his diary he writes: “Great theater, fanfares, choruses and ceremonial flag-waving. A voice from above summoned the youth of the world to Tokyo. Everyone pronounced the name of the city correctly except the mayor of Berlin, who said Tock-EE-o. He also talked about peace on earth.”

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  On the evening of 16 August, Reich Sports Leader Hans von Tschammer und Osten prepares a party for the Olympic participants in the Deutschlandhalle arena. But many of the athletes went home after their events were over, and others departed Berlin earlier today, so that only about 1,000 people are left in the Olympic Village. “We’re all deeply moved and somewhat melancholy,” Goebbels writes. “Went with the Führer through the cheering crowds. At the Reich Chancellery.” Thousands and perhaps tens of thousands have assembled on neighboring Wilhelmplatz, chanting, “Dear Führer, be a good fellow and make an appearance at your window.” Hitler is happy to oblige.

  Hitler and Goebbels have every reason to be satisfied with the past sixteen days. The XI Olympic Games will go down in the history books for a variety of reasons. Almost 4,000 athletes from 49 countries took part in 129 competitions—more than ever before. Forty-one new Olympic records were set, as well as 15 world records. With 89 medals (33 gold, 26 silver, 30 bronze), Germany is far and away the most successful country, followed by the United States (24 gold, 20 silver, 12 bronze) and Hungary (10 gold, 1 silver, 5 bronze). Bringing up the rear in the medals table are Portugal, the Philippines and Australia, which only took one bronze medal each. All in all, the competitions were conducted fairly, there was no hostility toward any particular nations, and no instances of cheating emerged. Jesse Owens was the most successful athlete, with four gold medals, while Konrad Frey was the best German one, taking gold three times.

  At least 380,000 tourists registered in Berlin in July and August 1936, of which 115,000 came from abroad. The largest groups, with around 15,000 apiece, were the Czechs and the Americans. The authorities will count 1.3 million nights spent by tourists in the German capital. Hitler later claims that the Olympic Games brought half a billion reichsmarks (1.25 billion dollars) to Berlin. It’s hard to say whether this figure is correct. But we can safely assume that hosting the Games has been worthwhile.

  Any potential earnings are only a pleasant by-product in the eyes of the National Socialists. The value of the 1936 Olympic Games cannot be measured in marks and pfennigs. Most of the foreign visitors enjoyed their trips and came away overwhelmed by what Nazi Berlin had to offer. Hitler and his regime were able to present themselves as peace-loving, reliable members of the family of nations. These sixteen days of August give many people new hope that things will change and Hitler can be trusted to keep his promises of peace. The sporting spectacle has helped pull the wool over their eyes. Few of the Olympic tourists were able, as Thomas Wolfe ultimately was, to see through the masquerade.

  The Olympic Games mark the end of the era in which the Nazis consolidated power. But André François-Poncet will later take issue with the idea that the 1936 Games were only a propaganda triumph. “In the history of the Nazi regime,” the French ambassador will write, “the ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Berlin in August 1936 were a high point, a summit and maybe an apotheosis for Hitler and the Third Reich.”

  Late in the evening of 16 August, Hitler and Goebbels take leave of one another. A few hours later, the Führer departs for his retreat in Berchtesgaden, while Goebbels withdraws for a short holiday in his villa on the Havel River island of Schwanenwerder. In three weeks, on 8 September, the next mass spectacle will get underway—the Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg. Goebbels has urged Hitler to cancel that rally this year so that he can recover from the stress of the Olympics, but the Führer has refused. The “Rally of Honor,” as it’s known, must go ahead. The restoration of Germany’s “honor” and sovereignty must be celebrated. What Hitler means is the remilitarization of the Rhineland in violation of international treaties.

  Victor Klemperer views the upcoming Nazi self-congratulation with alarm. He fears that many Nazis will be feeling pent-up aggression after having to conceal their true nature from the foreign visitors for the past weeks. “The Olympics will be over next Sunday,” Klemperer writes while the Games are still in full swing. “The NSDAP Party Rally is approaching, an explosion is imminent, and of course people will take out their frustrations first on the Jews.”

  In the summer of 1964 Jesse Owens returns to the scene of his triumphs. Time has left its marks on both the athlete and Berlin’s Olympic Stadium. Credit 17

  What became of…?

  In November 1936, Leni Riefenstahl begins editing more than 1.3 million feet of film—an endeavor that takes eighteen months. The end result is a two-part docum
entary using 20,000 feet of film that premieres on 20 April 1938, Hitler’s 49th birthday. Olympia is a huge hit in Nazi Germany, earning more than 4 million reichsmarks (10 million dollars) within the space of a few weeks. Riefenstahl also makes English, French and Italian versions of her work and tours Europe showing it. The director is Nazi Germany’s most famous artist. By the end of the Second World War, Riefenstahl is only 43 years old. She’ll live for another 58 years, but she never makes another film. Instead, she reinvents herself and starts a second career as a photographer.

  In the early 1980s, Riefenstahl writes her memoirs, 900 pages’ worth, often playing fast and loose with the truth. She dies in September 2003 without ever critically examining her role in the Third Reich. On the contrary, she spends considerable time and energy legally pursuing people who claim that she had an affair with Adolf Hitler. In fact there’s nothing to the rumors to that effect. As early as 1943/4, the German writer Carl Zuckmayer told the American secret service: “[She’s] supposed to have slept with Hitler, which the author doubts. (We can assume mutual impotence.)”

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  Henri de Baillet-Latour remains the president of the International Olympic Committee until his death in January 1942. After the Berlin Games, Theodor Lewald is forced to resign from all his offices. He dies in April 1947. In 1938, Walter von Reichenau, a military officer, is named as Lewald’s replacement. Two years later, toward the end of May 1940, Baillet-Latour will get to experience Reichenau in a wholly different capacity: as the Wehrmacht colonel general who accepts the capitulation of Baillet-Latour’s home country, Belgium.

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  After departing from Berlin, Eleanor Holm Jarrett lives up to her glamour-girl reputation. In 1938, she acts alongside her former Olympic teammate and gold-medal-winning decathlete Glenn Morris in the film Tarzan’s Revenge. That year, she divorces Art Jarrett to marry the enormously wealthy impresario William “Billy” Rose. Rose is Jewish. As a wedding present, Holm gives him Hermann Göring’s swastika, which she has had embellished with a Star of David made of diamonds. Holm dies in January 2004.

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  Leon Henri Dajou may not have succeeded in selling the Quartier Latin to the highest bidder, but in the months following the Olympics he is able to siphon off large sums of money from the business. After his misfortune, he enjoys some luck. The Nazis still have him under investigation, but they don’t notice his embezzlement. By February 1937, the Quartier Latin is deep in debt, and Dajou absconds to Paris, taking along his girlfriend Charlotte Schmidtke. At the end of March, Dajou opens the Cotton Club on rue Pigalle. The concept—high prices, elegant atmosphere and beautiful women—is the same as in the Quartier Latin, but Dajou fails to re-create his success in Paris and goes bankrupt by the end of the year. He whiles away his time in the cafés of Montmartre, as the Parisian immigration police note, and his relationship to Schmidtke falls apart. In the chaos of the Second World War, he temporarily disappears from view. Schmidtke moves to Portofino in Italy, where she gets a letter from a Berlin lawyer who asks, probably at the behest of the Gestapo, whether she knew Dajou was Jewish. “At the time I never suspected that Dajou could be from a Jewish background,” she replies. “The people who frequented his establishment were always very respectable, and without doubt, they would have had to avoid him and would have done so.” It’s a sly dig at the many high-ranking Nazis who patronized the Quartier Latin. The Gestapo doesn’t ask any more questions.

  Suddenly, in the early 1940s, Dajou turns up in England. In September 1942, he marries his new girlfriend, Rosalie, and four years later he adopts both British citizenship and another new identity. Leon Henri becomes Rico Dajou, passing himself off as two years younger than he is. Rico is a fixture of London nightlife in the 1950s and ’60s. He opens the Don Juan club in Mayfair and, a few doors down, the Casanova Club. Both establishments cater to high society. The Queen’s rambunctious younger sister, Princess Margaret, is a regular. Dajou tells a regional American newspaper that he’s going to write his memoirs, but he never gets around to it. In 1984, Leib Moritz Kohn alias Leon Henri Dajou alias Rico Dajou dies in his adopted homeland of England. The building where the Quartier Latin was located in Berlin doesn’t survive the bombardment of the city during the war. Today the site is occupied by a bank.

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  Leon Henri Dajou’s friend Hubert von Meyerinck completes around twenty films by the end of the Third Reich. But “Hupsi” despises the system of which he is a part. “He never bragged about it,” the film director Billy Wilder will tell the German news magazine Der Spiegel many years later, “but during the Kristallnacht pogrom he walked down Kurfürstendamm and called out, ‘Anyone who’s Jewish, follow me.’ He hid people in his apartment. Yes, they did exist, upstanding people whose word you could trust, because it was very difficult to practice resistance in a time like that. People like Meyerinck were tremendous, wonderful.” The postwar years are the high point of the actor’s career. In countless films and TV shows, he jokes and puns his way through the Federal Republic of Germany’s cinemas and living rooms. In 1967, more than thirty years after the Berlin Games, he writes in his autobiography: “How I’d like to go to Dajou’s place again!” Hubert von Meyerinck dies in Hamburg in May 1971.

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  At some point, Mascha Kaléko admits the truth to her husband, Saul, telling him that little Evjatar Alexander Michael, who sees the light of day on 28 December 1936 in Berlin, is not his son. To mark the birth of her only child she writes the following poem:

  You whom I loved before he lived

  Born of unreason and of love

  The light of pale hours and heaven’s reward

  My little son.

  You, my child, fully owned my heart

  When you were still nothing, a far-off glimmer

  From your father’s dark eyes

  In that year.

  Mascha and Saul divorce in early 1938 and never lay eyes on one another again. In the autumn of 1938, with Chemjo Vinaver, whom she marries while still in Berlin, and her son, Kaléko emigrates to the United States. After the fall of National Socialism, Kaléko visits Berlin and Germany a number of times. She dies in Zurich in 1975.

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  After the Berlin Games, Tilly Fleischer ends her track-and-field career. She leads a quiet life, marrying a dentist and opening two leather goods shops in the Black Forest in southern Germany. Then, in 1966, a book is published in France with the trashy title Adolf Hitler mon père. The author is Philippe Mervyn, whose real name is Philipp Krischer. He comes from Vienna and is engaged to Fleischer’s daughter Gisela. The book alleges that Tilly Fleischer and Hitler had an affair a short time after the 1936 Olympic Games, and that Gisela is the offspring of the Führer and not the daughter of a dentist. Gisela Hitler? The book’s introduction reads: “The daughter of the bloodiest dictator of all time addresses coming generations and dedicates to them this unsettling human document, which is more genuine than any other historical memoirs by any other authors.” Krischer alias Mervyn claims to have heard the story from Gisela herself, but she denies telling him anything of the sort. The case goes to the courts, and Gisela’s true parents win. The judge orders all copies of the “memoirs” to be confiscated. Tilly Fleischer dies in July 2005 in the Black Forest.

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  Peter Joachim Fröhlich, the little boy from the Olympic Stadium, flees Germany with his parents in April 1939, initially landing in Cuba. Two years later, the family emigrates to the United States. In 1946, Peter becomes an American citizen and changes his name. Peter Fröhlich becomes Peter Gay, one of the most respected historians, authors and experts on Germany. Peter Gay dies in May 2015 in New York.

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  Teddy Stauffer and his Original Teddies play regular gigs in Berlin and Hamburg for the next three years. By late March 1939, the band has record
ed more than fifty records for the Telefunken label, including their smash hit “Jeepers Creepers.” They are booked to play a residency in Berlin’s Femina Bar, but the Second World War intervenes. Stauffer stays in Switzerland, while the German band members are forced to leave the Alpine country, and the group breaks up. Stauffer tries to go to Hollywood to work as a film composer, but he lacks a residence permit and ends up in Mexico. He makes his way to Acapulco, where he starts a nightclub and works as a hotel manager. Within a few years, “Mister Acapulco,” as Stauffer soon becomes known, helps turn a fishing village into a hot spot for the international jet set. Clark Gable, Josephine Baker, Errol Flynn and the Kennedys are all friends and regular customers. Stauffer marries and divorces five times. He dies in Acapulco in 1991.

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  Helene Mayer returns to the United States, where she wins eight national fencing championships. She earns a living teaching German and sport. But she feels homesick, and in 1952 she moves back to Germany. She marries the aeronautical engineer Erwin Falkner von Sonnenburg, nine years her senior, and moves to Heidelberg. There she intends to start a new life, but she is diagnosed with breast cancer. Helene Falkner von Sonnenburg dies in October 1953 at the age of only 43.