by Herbie Sykes
Except that at the cessation millions of ethnic Germans had remained in Poland and Czechoslovakia. The Sudetenland, for example, lay within the Czech border, but over three million German speakers had been resident there at the outbreak. Though the vast majority had never set foot in Germany itself, the Potsdam Conference of 1945 decreed that they be expelled. With no infrastructure and little or no practical governance, however, it would be a monumental task. In the meantime they were subject to horrific reprisals by the indigenous Slavic populations, made scapegoats for the atrocities committed in the name of the Fatherland. Raped and massacred and interned into concentration camps every bit as inhuman as those with which the Nazis had defiled the human condition, they were among the first victims of post-war ethnic cleansing.
In Poland, where German speakers were stripped of citizenship rights, an estimated 250,000 were interned. So barbaric were conditions that up to 60,000 are thought to have perished. The regimes, often run by local militia squads, were arbitrary and invariably gratuitous. No reliable statistics exist, but it’s believed that in six post-war years from 1944, 10–12 million German speakers were displaced across Europe. Upwards of a million of them were simply lost, presumed killed. By 1950 their slaughter, allied to one of the biggest diasporas in twentieth-century history, had all but purged Poland and Czechoslovakia of German ethnicity.
For all that eighteen million of them were now apparently allies in the anti-imperialist war, Germans – all of them – remained an irreconcilable enemy in millions of Polish and Czech hearts and minds. When, therefore, it was announced that the GDR had issued a request to field a team at the 1950 Peace Race, it provoked outrage. Many found the idea abhorrent, but ultimately the ideals of the event (and by extension those of communism) were upheld; for the first time, the GDR sent a team of its own.
The GDR riders were well beaten, but it mattered not. The delicacy of the geopolitical situation meant that victory would in all probability have been counterproductive anyway, and besides the wider implications of having taken part outweighed issues around performance. In itself participation represented de facto acceptance of the country’s legality, something its diplomats were ill-equipped to deliver. This was the Peace Race, and there was far more at stake than stage wins, hearts and flowers.
Neues Deutschland, the SED party newspaper, largely ignored the hostility of the Czech and Polish roadside public. Instead it seized upon the story of Otto Friesse, the team mechanic. The race began in Warsaw, but such was the shortage of resources – and this five years on from the cessation – that the team officials were obliged to share cars. The hosts were detailed, symbolically, to share with the Germans. And so it was that Friesse was given a driving tour of a city still pretty much in ruins, alongside the Polish mechanic.
They watched on as the local population toiled to rebuild its broken town, but the Pole was having none of it. Incandescent that he be obliged to spend ten days with the sworn enemy, he directly cross-referenced the devastation with Friesse himself. On and on he baited him, jabbing his finger and shouting, ‘Nazis — you!’
At the conclusion of the stage a crestfallen Friesse informed the German delegation that he was packing his bags. He was no Nazi, he said, and nor was he in any way responsible for the destruction of Warsaw. He wasn’t prepared to endure further harassment for a doctrine he too abhorred, for the accidents of his birth. Eventually, however, he was persuaded to stay (quite how was never made clear), and he saw out the race in the company of the Pole.
After the final stage Friesse is purported to have gone AWOL in Prague. Klaus Huhn, a twenty-two-year-old sports journalist working for Neues Deutschland, was dispatched to find him. Huhn searched long and hard, and eventually snared his man in the small hours. He was found, stociously drunk and having a high old time of it, in a bar with the Polish mechanic. As metaphors go it was just about perfect, and Huhn saw to it that the story was riveted hard into the East German psyche and cultural lexicon. The Peace Race had been as good as its word, and the Otto Friesse story became part of its warp and weft. Within two years Klaus Huhn would become sports editor of Neues Deutschland, and ultimately one of its chief ideologues.
Warsaw–Prague had delivered in ten days what the party functionaries and their Soviet paymasters had singularly been failing to achieve for years. Recognition of its status as a bona-fide sovereign nation would be pivotal in creating a new East German identity, and in engendering patriotism among a population bewildered by two decades of ideological brutality. That the beginnings of it had been conferred by a humble bike race (as distinct from some faceless diplomat) was lost on nobody, least of all the party itself. The notion that GDR athletes might become sporting ambassadors began to germinate in East Berlin. The idea, later branded ‘diplomats in tracksuits’, would inform the next manoeuvre in this rapidly escalating sporting cold war.
In 1951 a move of unprecedented brinkmanship saw the formation of a GDR National Olympic Committee (NOC). The objective, notionally at least, was to prepare a GDR team for the Helsinki games the following year, but there was much more to it than that. Two years earlier the IOC had welcomed the construction of an all-German NOC, one which didn’t distinguish between athletes from Dresden and Düsseldorf. With post-war sanctions now lifted, Germany had been accepted back into the fold, another small step on the road to Central European equanimity. In moving to overthrow it, however, the GDR drew Adenauer’s government further into ideological and diplomatic battle. They in turn resolved that Berlin be denied the chance to engender patriotism through sporting events, and set to persuading the IOC to outlaw its new ‘neighbour’. Persuaded it duly was, and the existing agreement held; GDR athletes would be permitted to compete in Finland only as part of a united team. Their politicians refused even to contemplate the idea (so much for German unification), but the IOC told them to take it or leave it.
So that was that. In carrying the fight, the GDR had declared itself an opponent of the Olympic movement. All international sporting bodies under its auspices were notified accordingly, rendering Berlin a sporting heretic. It had upped the stakes, lost disastrously, and now its athletes found themselves out in the cold.
The Peace Race, however, was different. Conceived in the Soviet Bloc, it hadn’t been sanctioned by the International Cycling Union (UCI), and therefore remained outside of the IOC’s sphere of influence. Berlin applied to become an anchor city, and in 1952 Warsaw–Prague became Warsaw–Berlin–Prague. The perfect opportunity to disseminate East German unity, values and identity, it would be the first major international sporting event to be hosted on socialist German soil. In light of the IOC snub it would also be the best opportunity to generate serious political traction through sports.
Klaus Huhn would be installed as co-organiser of the four German stages. He would take the innate passion for cycling, harness it to his own ideological zeal and set about placing the race right at the heart of the East German sporting map.
Enthusiasm for the race was unprecedented, still more so because of the sanctions. As regards international sports it was just about the only show in town, and Neues Deutschland stoked it for all it was worth. In the event the best amateurs from Italy, Belgium and Holland were too good, and the GDR ‘collective’ was outmuscled once more. For the third Peace Race in succession the GDR failed to land even a stage, as the English (of all people) helped themselves to the team prize and, through Ian Steel, the yellow jersey.
Shortly afterwards FIFA, the governing body of world football, accepted the GDR into the fold, though it would be five years before a ball was kicked meaningfully. In the meantime the GDR played a slew of friendly matches with communist Poland (three times), Bulgaria (three) and Romania (four). Football’s administrators had led their horses to water, but they were damned if they were about to share it with the class enemy. Moreover, the Peace Race was played out against a backdrop of continual westward migration. It was a dazzling festival of colour, speed and community, but it was at
variance with the prevailing mood.
By 1953 some 700,000 – a catastrophic 4 per cent of the population – had already left, the GDR brain-drain a matter of everyday fact. From the outset it had been clear even to the party stalwarts that building communism would be tough. However, the haemorrhage, allied to ongoing war reparations to the Soviets and the totemic absence of inward investment, was having a profound effect. Those who defected were portrayed as ideologically decadent by the party, but the consumer goods and cars they bought in the west constituted handsome recompense. They were declaring themselves satisfied with the benefits of materialism, while those left behind worked more and received less.
Ordinary East Germans very well understood that theirs was a Soviet satellite in all but name. They had been promised peace, and yet some 11 per cent of the country’s budget was being spent on militarisation. A further 10 per cent went directly to Moscow in the form of reparations, while the ‘sovietisation’ of society saw farms and small businesses collectivised. With the emphasis placed on heavy industry, shops had nothing to sell. Food shortages ensued, and even basics like electricity were rationed. Communism, the antidote to imperialist land-grabbing and to genocide, required of them very real sacrifice. The price they were paying, much like tension on their factory floors, was high, but more depressing still was the growing feeling that they’d been conned. Denuded of self-determination, they’d become Stalin’s marionettes. By the time the ‘Gardener of human happiness’ died in March, the seeds of popular disillusionment were bearing acrid fruit in East German soil. By the eve of the sixth Peace Race it was clear that something good needed to happen, and soon.
Stage eight would travel 226 hugely emblematic south-easterly kilometres. Rolling out of Berlin, it would conclude in the border town of Görlitz, on the River Neisse. During the war the city had been the site of the wretched Stalag VIII-A POW camp, where thousands of Poles and Russians had perished through malnutrition and dysentery. When its eastern borders had been redrawn at the cessation, however, Germany had lost all points east of the Neisse, 23.8 per cent of its pre-war territory. The right bank of the city was thus annexed to Poland, and renamed Zgorzelec. Those ethnic Germans who escaped with their lives were expelled, and replaced for the most part by Greek and Macedonian refugees. The figurative importance of the stage was therefore impossible to overstate. The Peace Race, the sporting embodiment of communism and the new Central European realpolitik, had been created explicitly to promote reconciliation. On VE Day 1953 it would unite a city – and its people – torn apart by fascism.
Denmark’s Hans Andresen led the race from a team-mate, Christian Pedersen. The Danes also led the team event, while the GDR lay second. Meanwhile, one of them, young Gustav-Adolf ‘Täve’ Schur, stood third overall at 7’31". None of the above were present when a break of six went, but Bernhard Trefflich, a GDR racer with a very tidy sprint, made it on. Before a massive crowd in (of all places) Görlitz, Trefflich delivered a GDR stage win at long, long last.
East Germany finally had something to cheer about. Furthermore, the remaining stages saw the two Danes, hammer and tongs for the GC win, dump the rest of their colleagues. As such the combined efforts of Trefflich, Schur and Lothar Meister saw the GDR overtake them in the race for the team prize. The winner of the Peace Race wore yellow, just as he did at the Tour, but beyond that the culture and substance of the two events were as different as night and day. At the Peace Race the winning team wore a blue jersey, and its import was colossal. Not only did it signify primacy on the road, but also unity, shared purpose and self-sacrifice – the very best values of communism.4
The blue jersey, allied to Täve’s engaging personality, fired the public imagination as never before. The hard cases of the party took note, and Neues Deutschland went into hyperbolic overdrive. An internal Sports Committee report deduced that ‘Almost the entire population was under the spell of the Peace Race, and of the patriots fighting for the GDR … For the first time people were laying claim to ownership of the country, speaking of the GDR as our team …’
Nobody could have imagined the outpouring of national pride that ensued, but it would be short-lived. The following month work quotas were increased by 10 per cent. There would be increases in taxation, too, and those who failed to meet their quotas would simply have their salaries cut. Berlin’s construction workers downed tools, and the strike escalated into an uprising on 17 June. Then Russian tanks rolled into the capital, Leipzig and Dresden, as innocents were slaughtered in scenes every bit as horrific as those which Budapest and Prague would subsequently witness.
These two events, the 17 June uprising and the Peace Race, would significantly shape the lives of generations of East Germans. When the dust settled the latter had proved itself, once more, infinitely more effective in creating social ballast than ideology. While people had had a gutful of politics and politicians, they couldn’t get nearly enough of sport. The questions, therefore, were essentially two: how best to make more of it, and how best to capitalise on it?
Socialist canon made little distinction between work and free time. It was the responsibility of all citizens to create communism, wherever they were and whatever the context. Unlike in bourgeois capitalist societies, ‘leisure’ wasn’t regarded as an autonomous entity, but as a contributory element to the whole. The party was of the opinion that ‘Everyone, everywhere, should play sports’, but the significance of organised sporting activities extended beyond simple physical wellbeing.
Under communism viewing sport wasn’t a passive, pejorative exercise, and wasn’t limited simply to individual spectatorship. Instead it involved participatory activities, and social responsibility at communal level. When, therefore, the Peace Race travelled through East German towns and villages, the local populations were expected to mobilise around its appearance. Schools would organise events weeks in advance, their syllabuses reconfigured in anticipation. Pupils would learn not only about the riders and tactics, but also the inherent symbolism of 100 disparate cyclists coming together from around the globe. Teachers were expected to articulate the communist context in which it was set, and to teach their children that only through socialism could it be possible. Favourable comparison would be made with the Tour de France, a race conceived purely as a commercial entity and disfigured by sponsorship and professionalism.
The Peace Race was a perfect vehicle for cultivating both patriotism and social control. Schools and factories piped radio broadcasts of the race around their buildings, and took pride in contributing prizes for the cyclists. On the day of their stage entire towns and villages would engage, pupils and workers bussed to the roadside to form part of the spectacle. Everybody felt an obligation to attend, because to do otherwise was perceived as an abrogation of civic responsibility. Community leaders would will their constituents into formation in the hope of creating the most colourful show of support. Though doubtless people were corralled into being involved, the race quickly became synonymous with fun, togetherness and civic pride. Whole communities were mobilised, the event the undoubted highlight of the sporting calendar. Not for nothing was the Friedensfahrt known as ‘the Race of Millions’.
Previously the global sporting community had wanted nothing to do with the GDR, but the Peace Race was becoming a catalyst for international recognition. So big had the event become that sixteen national teams took to the start in 1954. The UCI president, Achille Joinard, was invited to attend, and pronounced himself amazed by the ambition. Claiming that he’d never seen cyclists so well taken care of, he welcomed it enthusiastically into the fold. Only the Tour, he added, was comparable as regards pure spectacle, and even there only eight nations were represented. Furthermore nowhere had the sport – or for that matter any sport – aspired to such high moral principle.
The GDR wouldn’t compete at the 1954 football World Cup, held in Switzerland. The West Germans, on the other hand, reached the final. They were huge underdogs against the all-conquering Hungarians, but somehow they
won. The so-called ‘Miracle of Bern’, like the success of their estranged cousins at the Peace Race, was highly instrumental in creating the idea of nation. Neues Deutschland predictably (and shamefully) peddled the idea that theirs was a victory for fascism, but it made the Federal Republic of Germany a cultural and emotional reality for millions. By the autumn of 1955 the FRG had joined NATO, the GDR the Warsaw Pact. Whether the great unwashed liked it or not, ‘Germany’ was receding further into the distant past.
International sporting competitions were unequivocal, straightforward and absolute, and they were becoming authentic geopolitical battlegrounds. The party recognised the correlation between sporting success and political opportunity, and in that sense the 1955 Peace Race was a godsend. Täve Schur won it for the GDR, sealing emphatic victory before 100,000 Poles in Warsaw. That he became the most popular sportsman in GDR history is irrefutable. The best amateur cyclist in the world, he’d add another Peace Race four years later, in addition to successive World Championships. Nine times in succession he was voted his country’s sportsman of the year, but the Täve phenomenon (and I use the word advisedly) could never be measured simply by the bike races he won.
For all that we construct myths around them, the likes of Fausto Coppi and Eddy Merckx were, when all is said and done, simply very famous cyclists. Though largely unknown in the west, Täve Schur was something else entirely. In winning that first Peace Race he became a pin-up boy not just for an entire population, but for the state itself. A committed, card-carrying communist, he was the perfect mascot for a unique socio-political experiment, the construction of the model socialist proletariat. They named a planet in his honour, wrote countless best-selling biographies, venerated his name and all that he stood for. Every May hundreds of thousands of German children would belt out his name as one. Täve was Karl Marx and Gino Bartali, Elvis Presley and Roy Rogers. Heart-throb and philosopher, diplomat and prole, he was all things to all men, the very personification of the neue Mensch. He was, quite simply, political gold dust; the living, breathing synthesis of socialism’s great victory. The proof is to be found at the Peace Race Museum, where they retain several thousand letters sent to him by a gushing public. A great many of them come from German womanhood. Some are really quite wanton (at least by the standards of the puritanical GDR in the 1950s), and most constitute marriage proposals.
