Hitler's Olympics

by Christopher Hilton

  They assumed their places, Owens in the second lane from the inside, Haenni next to him. As Owens bent into the crouch he rocked his body gently as if moulding it to the moment. He raised his head so that, eyes wide open, he could see the whole of the track spread before him – and, perhaps, his life, too. He took a breath so deep it was almost a gulp, opened his mouth, tongue scouring it for moisture. His calf muscles seemed to be so taut they vibrated.

  The starter bellowed ‘Auf die Plätze!’ – on your marks.

  The stadium of 100,000 fell absolutely silent.

  ‘Fertig!’ – ready.

  He exploded as he rose, those taut calf muscles freed. His thigh muscles gave him a tremendous locomotion so that his legs were visibly pumping faster than any of the other five’s. In a great, sustained surge of power he accelerated away from them and for one astonishing moment a camera panning across to capture the finish had only Owens in shot.

  He distilled it into a single word: flying.

  The crowd made the stadium a tremendous, reverberating bowl of sound.

  10.2 seconds.

  He had dismissed the Olympic record from his presence.

  Haenni finished in 10.6 seconds but he might as well have been in another race and, in a sense, he had been.

  Metcalfe won the third heat in 10.5 seconds.

  The crowd concentrated on Borchmeyer as the runners dug their holes and took their tracksuits off for the fourth heat. Much to the disgust of the starter somebody went off too early just after the starter’s deep, commanding voice called ‘Fertig’. He swivelled his head in mock admonishment: What can you do with these boys? They settled again, were launched. Borchmeyer wasn’t away fast but his strength carried him past the others, British runner Arthur Sweeney going with him and finishing a stride behind. McPhee and the Japanese sprinter Suzuki were so close that the automatic camera photograph was needed to separate them.

  In the background, Tilly Fleischer beat another German, Luise Krüger, to win the javelin, 45.18 metres against 43.29, setting a new Olympic record. Fleischer, nervous, began badly in the early stage but her second throw – 44.69 – set a new record which the 45.18 surpassed in the final. ‘There was a tremendous outburst of enthusiasm when this finely-built young woman was conducted to the winner’s stand, where for some minutes she stood stiffly at attention giving the Nazi salute. During this period Deutschland über Alles was sung fervently.’9 Hitler had not been present but he was there for the shot-put.

  In the foreground John Woodruff, an American who stood 6 feet 3 inches (‘I was tall for a runner’) and had a 9-foot stride, finished third in an 800 metres heat. He was a lean freshman from the University of Pittsburgh, weighing ‘around 180lb [12st 8oz]’ with an awkward running style. One of twelve children, his grandparents had been slaves. Hard times. His mother did laundry. She would remind him that he had ‘chores to do around our home and I was getting home from football practice too late to get them done. I had to cut wood and bring in coal. So, football would have to go, period. My chores came first.’10 No one in his family had ever been to college before and he arrived at university with 25 cents. His athletics coach lent him $5 so he could feed himself for the first week.

  He was, it seemed, in no hurry in his heat. He soon would be.

  At 5.30 p.m. three events went on simultaneously: the semi-finals of the shot-put, the final of the high jump and the 10,000 metres – a stand-alone event, no eliminations or qualifying rounds, just this single chance for twenty-nine men.

  The Americans were not to be held in the high jump: Cornelius Cooper Johnson (‘the kangaroo-legged Negro from California’),11 Albritton and Delos Thurber took the first three places and all three broke the Olympic record. Both Johnson and Albritton were black, a fact which Hitler hardly neglected to notice.

  The shot-put developed into an intense struggle. Hans Wöllke and Gerhard Stöck represented Germany against Torrance and the Finn Sulo Bärlund. In the semi-finals Torrance, a man so muscular that he looked almost square, held the shot in his enormous hand and made it look puny. He took two staccato steps and pitched it – but only 15.38 metres, an indication of his form. Bärlund, the only man to reach beyond 16 metres, broke the Olympic record but in the final Wöllke faced his great moment. He had a chiselled face full of character and the white singlet he wore emphasised his strength. He tucked the shot under his chin, feeling it into a comfortable position. He launched it.

  16.20 metres.

  When that was announced as a new Olympic record the crowd made so much noise they drowned out the loudspeakers. Hitler, grinning broadly, beat the programme he held in his right hand on his left hand while Wöllke, so far away down there, turned and gave the Nazi salute before hauling his tracksuit top back on. Bärlund had one last put. A strong, swarthy-looking man with a shock of hair he pivoted his body and flung the shot.

  16.12 metres.

  The swastikas flew over the results’ tower for Wöllke and Stöck, third, with the Finnish flag for Bärlund’s second place. Hitler invited Wöllke up to his box to congratulate him personally, and did the same with Fleischer for her javelin victory. ‘There was another demonstration [of enthusiasm] when she was led by a guard of officers to the box where Herr Hitler and General Goering were seated.’12 Goering, in a light coat and homburg hat, stood beside Hitler beaming. It all seemed so natural, so ordinary and so understandable.

  The 10,000 metres began hesitantly, two Britons – William Eaton and John Potts – treading with trepidation into the lead while the fearsome Finns Ilmari Salminen, Arvo Askola and Volmari Iso-Hollo bided their time. They had plenty of that. A neat, urgent little Japanese runner, Kohei Murakoso, struck early and took the lead. Salminen moved up behind him, tracking and covering, the other two Finns poised. They cast long shadows across the track as they pumped their way round.

  When the Finns were ready they struck and went through in a phalanx, Murakoso clinging on, settling in fourth, counter-attacking and taking third, but the Finns – lean, long-striding – increased the pace and with 200 metres to go they shed Murakoso. They surged past lapped runners and now Salminen and Askola duelled, Iso-Hollo falling away. Round the final bend Salminen, taller and with the longer stride, ‘kicked’ but Askola clung like a terrier. Salminen half-glanced over his shoulder to try and gauge where Askola was, ran on, half-glanced again as Askola tried to mount a final attack. Salminen had it by a stride, 30 minutes 15.4 seconds against 30 minutes 15.6 seconds, Iso-Hollo third, Murakoso a brave fourth.

  Hitler invited them up so he could greet them, too. That, too, seemed entirely normal, although the New York Times reporter pointed out Hitler had been a spectator, along with Nazi leaders like Streicher, during the afternoon. To greet the medal winners in each event he held a little ceremony of his own, giving them a warm handshake and patting them on the back in the most amicable way to enormous cheering. The reporter noted, however, that some five minutes before the three men’s high jump winners went to the podium to receive their medals Hitler vanished from his box. The reporter pointed out that none of the winners up until then had been black – but Johnson and Albritton were. The reporter did not read anything definitively sinister into this but suggested that before the Games had ended there would be enough black winners to know if his suspicions were unfounded or not.13

  At some point late that afternoon or evening Baillet-Latour conveyed to Hitler the rule that ‘only IOC-designated people performed such duties in an Olympic stadium’.14 No doubt this was couched as a point of information rather than a rebuke but Hitler, consummate exploiter of the moment, must have seen it as an escape route from the prying eyes of the New York Times and the rest of the world. Publicly from this moment he would not greet any of the winners. Those who delight in irony will find a rich seam of it in the thought that Adolf Hitler, slayer of millions and reshaper of worlds, found refuge behind a 60-year-old Belgian count who devoted his life to promoting non-violence through sport.

  Woodruff gives a
slightly different reading of these events when he says that ‘our coaches, the American coaches, protested against Hitler and said if he couldn’t invite everybody to his box then he shouldn’t invite anybody. So they stopped that. I guess if he had invited me at that time I would have gone and shook his hand.’ On the strength of these words, it may well be that the American coaches approached Baillet-Latour and prompted him into action.

  Wöllke, an ordinary policeman, so impressed Goering that he promoted him to lieutenant, just like that.

  And that was the first day of competition.

  The weather on the Monday would be changeable, cloudy, a sprinkling of rain heralding a heavy shower at midday, then the temperature rose despite sporadic showers. None of it was going to dampen Jesse Owens.

  9 a.m.

  hammer eliminators

  3 p.m.

  400 metres hurdles eliminators

  hammer semi-finals then final

  3.30 p.m.

  100 metres semi-finals

  4 p.m.

  100 metres eliminators (women)

  5 p.m.

  100 metres final

  5.15 p.m.

  800 metres second round

  5.30 p.m.

  100 metres semi-finals (women)

  6 p.m.

  3,000 metres steeplechase eliminators

  An astonishing 30,000 spectators came to watch the hammer eliminators though the prospect of subsequent medals for Germany’s Karl Hein and Erwin Blask might have had something to do with it, and so may the fact that only Americans and an Irishman had ever won it before. Blask went well in the morning but Hein beat him to the gold by 1.45 metres, a new Olympic record.

  Owens learnt that his 10.2 metres had been wind assisted and could not be ratified as a new record. He ran in the first semi-final, at 3.30 p.m., the sky slightly cloudy, a diagonal following wind pushing gently at the sprinters. He jogged, loosening his legs, then walked deep in concentration. He faced Wykoff and Strandberg of the very fast men. The starter – an imposing, portly presence by now familiar to all – positioned himself on the rim of the curving athletics track behind the runners, the gun with its trailing wire for the timing in his right hand. He was able to see them all clearly.

  ‘Auf die Plätze!’

  The six sprinters moved to the crouch position, Strandberg in Lane 2, Wykoff next to him, Owens three lanes away on the outside. When they had settled, the afternoon sun cast symmetrical shadows from them and lay these shadows, in all their distortions, up the lanes ahead.

  ‘Fertig!’

  The starter held the gun theatrically high and fired. The wind plucked a plume of smoke from it, but even before that the runners were in motion. For the first three or four strides Owens was just one of the six, Wykoff – at least – clearly ahead. After 25 metres Wykoff drew the men inside – Strandberg and van Beveren – with him so that they ran shoulder to shoulder, all three clearly ahead of Owens. It did not matter. Owens went deep into his compulsive, clockwork lope, the legs pumping so fast that within three strides he drew level with Strandberg and van Beyeren. Six more strides and he caught Wykoff. An instant later he was quite alone and moving faster….

  10.4 seconds.

  In one of the world’s great understatements, the German official record of the Games noted that ‘Owens did not exert himself’.

  Wykoff and Strandberg did 10.5 seconds.

  The crowd were on their feet and Owens smiled broadly. He had the toothy, slightly self-conscious grin of a schoolboy and it conveyed delight quite naturally. He came off with Wykoff, shorter, also smiling, and as they went Owens tapped him on the back: Well done.

  Moments later, Stephens and Walsh ran in different heats of the women’s 100 metres eliminators. The waiting during the day tormented Stephens and she finally left for the stadium an hour before the event with a couple of other girls. It was not of course a long walk from the Friesenhaus.15 The sudden death here: six heats of five athletes, fastest two in each progressing to the semi-finals. The first great confrontation of the Games was at hand.

  When Stephens got there the sky was overcast, the conditions damp. Emmi Albus, from the Berlin sports club in Charlottenburg, the same district as the stadium, won the first in 12.4 seconds with Stephens’s room-mate Harriet Bland fourth.

  Stephens beat the Canadian Mildred Dolson decisively in 11.4 seconds, 0.2 seconds faster than the new world record set by Walsh in Warsaw but, as for Owens, the wind was too strong for ratification. Stephens remembered the reason being given as crosswind and, as she said, a crosswind never hurt anybody. The officials were, she ruminated, not yet ready for that sort of time.16 Dolson did 12.3 seconds.

  Walsh, running tactically, did 12.5 seconds to take her heat.

  Audrey Brown (Great Britain) went in the fifth.

  I was always nervous at the start of a race because of my considerable deafness and fear of not hearing starters orders. My hearing difficulty was not a severe one – just an inconvenience – but I found I could not relax sufficiently to be assured of a good start. In those days very little was available in the way of help for the deaf and one did not speak about it but just adapted as best one could. People are more positive about disabilities now, I am thankful to say.

  My effort in the 100 metres was ruined by the fact that at the last moment I was moved out of my lane where I had already ‘dug’ my starting holes to fit my small feet and into the next inner one, which was empty, where I found enormous ‘pits’ dug by the very large and mannish ******, and was given insufficient time to fill in and re-dig my own! Our feelings that women athletes, particularly non-German ones, were a lesser breed were well borne out!17

  Brown finished third – Krauss won.

  The semi-finals were not until 30 minutes after Owens’s 100 metres final. Stephens, a blanket round her, sat and watched. Under a sky still cloudy the big stadium clock ticked towards 5 p.m. and Owens got lucky. He’d drawn the outside lane, the one also used by runners in the distance events and, naturally, they had churned the surface up. The track, however, spanned seven lanes and officials decided to move everyone across one lane, the outside becoming 6, not 7, and smoother. The six finalists – Owens, Strandberg, Borchmeyer, Osendarp, Wykoff and Metcalfe – wielded their trowels and scooped out their footholds.

  Borchmeyer tugged off his dark tracksuit top and so did Wykoff, kicking his legs as he did so to keep the muscles supple. Owens patrolled again staying loose and at the command ‘Auf die Plätze!’ he acknowledged a great roar from the crowd by raising his hands and clasping them.

  Some in the crowd kept getting up and sitting down again as if to dissipate a great restless energy of their own.

  Owens breathed deeply. A camera fastened on to him in close-up and you could see his Adam’s apple bob, his eyes and face like those of a panther poised for a kill. He’d remember thinking purely like an athlete, concentrating on the finishing line, not Hitler, and – in a brief vista – how long the journey from childhood to here had been, how many people had helped.18 He saw, too, the great truth: eight years’ work would be vindicated or destroyed in the next 10 seconds.

  ‘Fertig!’

  He rose, poised, his eyes still locked on to the track.

  The starting gun fired, the smoke billowed. Owens moved instantly into the lope and by ten strides he forced himself two strides ahead of Strandberg, three ahead of Borchmeyer. By twenty strides Strandberg and Borchmeyer had gone from him, broken and discarded, but on the far side Metcalfe came up and as Owens lunged at the line Metcalfe almost caught him.

  Owens 10.3 seconds.

  Metcalfe 10.4 seconds.

  And there was the toothy grin again. This time it could last forever. He had a gold medal, which confers immortality in any Olympic event but a higher degree of it in a basic, bedrock event like the 100 metres. And he had only just begun. By the end of the week the clockwork lope and some leaping would make him the greatest athlete who ever lived.

  Stephens went over to
Owens in the area where the athletes congregated and congratulated him. They sat on the ground, talked and Owens wished her the best of luck for her semi-final, now only a few minutes away. Stephens wondered about Riefenstahl, the woman directing the filming of the men’s final, and Owens said she was Hitler’s favourite film-maker. Stephens said she hoped she could meet her and Owens said she would – if she won.19

  The Daily Express noted, somewhat enigmatically, that ‘Owens and Metcalfe were boisterously honoured and were conducted towards Hitler’s box so that they could salute him from a distance. It was noticed that when Owens and Metcalfe walked to the victor’s stand they acknowledged the hoisting of their own flag and the playing of the American national anthem with a correct military salute, although they were not wearing hats.’ On the podium, Owens shed tears at the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner and judged this the happiest moment in his whole career. (The Express added: ‘Hitler was again present, but his welcome was no warmer than that accorded Max Schmeling, the German fighter, who will shortly journey to New York to meet Jimmy Braddock for the world’s heavy-weight title.’ The Louis re-match would have to wait.)

  The moments after the finish of the 100 metres have become arguably the most celebrated myth and misunderstanding in the history of sport. The terrain is so delicate that even fleeting gestures made during those moments still carry an enormous potency. What is certain is that Hitler did not invite Owens up to congratulate him: he turned and left the stadium.

  Esther Myers, sitting within clear sight of it all, remembered ‘when Hitler and his entourage walked out it was so tense you could hardly breathe. Would it get violent? With him you never could tell. He certainly let us know he didn’t approve of that black man having a gold medal.’ The journalists, it seems, did not know of Baillet-Latour’s stricture to Hitler of the day before and, without knowing it, drew the obvious conclusion: Hitler was delighted to bask in the success of white people but not of blacks.