Olympic Icons Have a Dark History
Publisher’s Comment
Generally speaking, I’m not big on sitting
in front of a TV to watch sports…I’d rather be fishing. However, I do like to
watch the Olympics and root for the home team. Our athletes were absolutely superb
at this year’s summer games! For those who didn’t catch the final tally, the
U.S. walked away with 103 medals; 35 of which were gold. Our “buddies” Russia
and China ended up second and third in total medals with Russia grabbing 92 (27
gold) and China 63 (32 gold). (Word of caution…if the Chinese Ambassador wants
to sell you one of China’s gold medals, I’d bite it real hard to make sure it’s
not a knock-off.)
During the Olympics someone sent me an
interesting piece from the Jerusalem Post. It’s funny, I didn’t see it in the
Post-Dispatch or hear anyone on NPR (National Public Radio – also know as The
People’s Socialist National Public Radio) mention it. Well, at any rate, I found the Jerusalem Post
piece to be an interesting bit of historical trivia and thought I would pass it
along. Enjoy!
Beloved Olympic Icons Have a Dark Nazi-era History
The
Jerusalem Post, Aug. 14, 2004
The
most beloved emblems of the modern Olympics have a decidedly dark past.
The torch
relay, which culminates in the ceremonial lighting of the flame at the Olympic
stadium, was a creation of Adolf Hitler, who tried
to turn the 1936 Berlin
|
Games into a celebration of the Third Reich. And it was Hitler’s
Nazi propaganda machine that popularized the five interlocking rings
as the symbol of the games.
Today, both are universally recognized icons of the Olympics.
But historians say neither had much, if anything, to do with the games
born centuries ago in Ancient Olympia.
“The torch relay is so ingrained in the modern choreography that
most people today assume it was a revival of a pagan tradition - unaware
that it was actually concocted for Hitler’s Games in Berlin,” author
Tony Perrottet writes in a new book, The
Naked Olympics.
“Ironically, considering its repellent origins, the torch race
has come to symbolize international brotherhood today, and remains a
centerpiece of our own pomp-filled Olympic opening ceremonies.”
A sacred flame did burn 24 hours a day at Olympia and at some
other ancient festivals relay racers passed a torch to light a sacrificial
cauldron. But the ancient Greeks opened their Olympics by word of mouth,
not fire, sending heralds - not torchbearers - running through the streets.
The modern tradition of spiriting the Olympic torch to the main
stadium didn’t become a fixture of the games until 1936, when a 12-day
run opened the games in Berlin. |
 |
The
torch relay, memorialized in Leni Riefenstahl’s film Olympia, was part of the Nazi leader’s
elaborate attempt to add myth, mystique and glamour to an Olympics intended to
intimidate pre-World War II Europe. In Hitler’s eyes, the torch symbolized the
perfection and victory of the German nation.
He
didn’t pull it off: black American runner and long-jumper Jesse Owens made a
mockery of the notion of a blue-eyed, golden-haired master race by winning four
gold medals in Berlin.
In
his book The Modern Olympics: A Struggle for Revival, American historian David C.
Young says the torch relay was invented by Carl Diem, a German who planned the
1916 Berlin Games before World War I forced their cancellation and returned to
organize the 1936 Games.
“Hitler
took considerable personal interest in the ritual, and pumped funds into its
promotion,” Perrottet says. “The Nazi propaganda
machine covered the torch relay slavishly, broadcast radio reports from every
step of the route, and filled the games with the iconography of ancient Greek
athletics.”
Today,
the torch relay is a pre-games spectacle cheered by millions as an emblem of
the friendly spirit of the games. It has been carried around the world every
four years on foot, horseback, camel, steamboat, train and wheelchair by sports
heroes, celebrities, politicians and children.
When
it was lit on March 25 this year by the sun’s rays at Ancient Olympia, the
relay of the flame for the Athens Olympics traveled an unprecedented 75,314
kilometers (46,800 miles) through 26 countries - including a 51.5-kilometers
(32-mile) leg in Berlin that began at the imposing limestone stadium Hitler had
built for the 1936 Games.
The
Olympic rings, another universally recognized symbol of the games since they
made their debut at the 1920 Games in Antwerp, Belgium, have their own Nazi
connection.
Originally,
they were designed in 1913 by French baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of
the International Olympic Committee and father of the modern Olympics movement,
for a 1914 World Olympic Congress in Paris. They were supposed to symbolize the
first five Olympics, but the congress disbanded when Archduke Ferdinand of
Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo, triggering World War I.
Riefenstahl,
the Olympia filmmaker who also
chronicled Hitler’s rise to power, had the rings carved into a stone altar at
the ancient Greek city of Delphi, spawning the myth that they were a symbol
dating back more than two millennia.
With
Hitler’s influence, the rings became part of the Nazi pageantry at Berlin - and
they’ve come to symbolize the Olympics ever since.