As the narrator’s train leaves Berlin behind, he muses that the people he knew there were “now remote from me as dreams, imprisoned there as in another world.”
Soon, though, the American finds himself cheered by his lively, friendly companions in his compartment. Even “a stuffy-looking little man with a long nose,” who fidgets throughout the trip and initially made the other passengers uncomfortable, gradually loosens up and joins in the convivial conversation. Reaching the frontier at Aachen, they all get out for fifteen minutes while the locomotive is changed. The little man says something about needing to pick up a ticket for the rest of the journey, and slips away. The others walk around before returning to the platform to reboard.
As the returning passengers look from the outside, they see the fidgety man—his face now “white and pasty”—sitting in their compartment facing a group of officials. The leader of his interrogators is “a Germanic type . . . His head was shaven, and there were thick creases at the base of his skull and across his fleshy neck.” Even before he learns that his fellow passenger was a Jew who was trying to escape and smuggle money out in the process, the American narrator felt “a murderous and incomprehensible anger” welling up in him. “I wanted to smash that fat neck with the creases in it,” he writes. “I wanted to pound that inflamed and blunted face into jelly.” But he admits to his sense of helplessness, which is shared by everyone around him. Feeling nauseated, he watches as the officials escort the man off the train.
As the train pulls out of the station, the narrator and the others look at him for the last time. He looks back. “And in that glance there was all the silence of man’s mortal anguish,” Wolfe writes. “And we were all somehow naked and ashamed, and somehow guilty. We all felt somehow that we were saying farewell, not to a man, but to humanity.”
The American’s sense of remorse and anger is only heightened by the advice of an attractive blond woman in the compartment, whom he had found seductively appealing, with “an almost shameless physical attraction.” She tries to talk the others in the compartment out of their glum mood. “Those Jews!” she says. “These things would never happen if it were not for them! They make all the trouble. Germany has to protect herself.”
As the German friend in his novella had predicted, the publication of I Have a Thing to Tell You led to the banning of Wolfe’s books in Germany, and he never returned to that country. In an interview in the Asheville Daily News, his North Carolina hometown paper, Wolfe talked about his last trip to Germany. “I came away with the profoundest respect and admiration for the German people, but I feel that they are betrayed by false leadership,” he declared. Reflecting more broadly on his European experiences, he added: “I saw a certain perfection and finish in European life that we do not have here. However, there is a poisonous atmosphere of hatred. I finally wanted to come back home.”
Despite the title of his posthumous novel, Wolfe did make it home.
8
“A Mad Hatter’s Luncheon Party”
During the summer of 1936 when Thomas Wolfe visited Berlin for the last time, it was “the season of the great Olympic games,” as he wrote in his novel You Can’t Go Home Again. George Webber, his alter ego and main character, observed how “the organizing genius of the German people . . . was now more thrillingly displayed than he had ever seen it before. The sheer pageantry of the occasion was overwhelming, so much so that he began to feel oppressed by it.” Webber—in reality, Wolfe—felt oppressed because he was acutely conscious of the ominous nature of this pageantry. “It so evidently went beyond what the games themselves demanded . . . It was as if the games had been chosen as a symbol of the new collective might, a means of showing to the world in concrete terms what this new power had come to be.”
The irony was that Hitler and the Nazis had a long history of virulent opposition to the whole idea of holding the Olympics or other international sporting events in Germany. In 1923, the Nazis had protested against the German Gymnastics Festival that was held in Munich because it was open to “Jews, Frenchmen and Americans,” as a petition that Hitler signed put it. In 1932, right before taking power, the Nazi leader called the Olympics a “plot of Freemasons and Jews”—even though the decision to bring the games to Berlin had already been taken a year earlier. And once the Nazis were in command, they still chafed at the notion of an international competition that would include Jews and blacks. The Völkischer Beobachter fumed that it was “a disgrace and a degradation of the Olympic idea” that blacks could compete with whites. “Blacks must be excluded,” it concluded. “We demand it.”
But Hitler and the Nazis also insisted that the young should be physically fit, engaging in a broad array of sports training on a regular basis. The idea was to strengthen the bodies and aggressive character of their young followers, as well as their allegiance to the movement. “For us National Socialists, politics begins in sport—first, because politics guides everything, and second, because politics is already inherent in sports,” declared Bruno Malitz, who was in charge of sports for the Berlin storm troopers.
Right after the Nazi takeover, Theodor Lewald, the president of the German Olympic Committee and a fervent promoter of hosting the games in Berlin, set up a meeting with Hitler, Goebbels and Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick to convince the new rulers to support his cause. He argued that the games would more than pay for themselves because of the revenue they would generate—and, more important, there would be an “enormous propaganda effect.” Conjuring up the image of about 1,000 journalists converging on Berlin for the games, he pointed out that nothing could “even remotely match” their propaganda value. This proved to be a winning argument.
For precisely the same reason, many Jewish groups in the United States, along with an array of other activists, particularly from the left, pushed hard for a boycott of the Berlin Olympics. They pointed out that the Nazis’ record of discrimination against Jews was in direct contradiction of the Olympic ideal that all competitors were welcome. Avery Brundage, the president of the American Olympic Committee (AOC), initially sounded sympathetic to that argument. “My personal, but unofficial opinion is that the Games will not be held in any country where there will be interference with the fundamental Olympic theory of equality of all races,” he declared.
Prodded by Lewald, the Nazis responded that Germany would welcome “competitors of all races,” but also stipulated that the composition of the German team was its own affair. In September 1934, Brundage traveled to Germany, supposedly to investigate whether German Jews were getting fair treatment. German sports officials gave him a quick tour of their sports facilities, also acting as translators when he talked to Jews. Arno Breitmeyer, a top Nazi sports official, even came dressed in his SS uniform for a meeting with Jewish sports leaders. Brundage didn’t stop to consider the intimidating effect of those arrangements on the Jews he met; he appeared satisfied that he was getting their candid assessments. He also reported that the Germans had assured him that there would be “no discrimination in Berlin against Jews.” Pleased by those declarations, he added: “You can’t ask for more than that and I think the guarantee will be fulfilled.” In one of his more expansive moments, Brundage suggested a common bond with his hosts, pointing out that his men’s club in Chicago didn’t admit Jews.
Charles Sherrill, another member of the AOC, traveled to Germany in 1935 to try to convince the Nazis to name at least one Jew to the German team, unabashedly arguing that they needed the equivalent of “the token Negro.” But in a personal meeting with Hitler, he called himself “a friend of Germany and of National Socialism” and didn’t seem at all bothered by Hitler’s adamant opposition to including any Jews in Germany’s Olympic squad. According to the Nazi leader, this would contaminate the Aryan contingent. Sherrill described his meeting with Hitler as “wonderful,” and used similarly effusive terms in describing his subsequent four days as Hitler’s personal guest at the annual Nuremberg Nazi Party rally in mid-September. “It was beautifu
l!” he wrote. “You could almost hear the [Nazi] units click, as each fitted into place, exactly on time.”
As the battle lines were drawn back home between the pro- and antiboycott factions, including within the AOC and other athletic organizations, several top American diplomats in Germany were offering a far more accurate picture than “fact finders” like Brundage and Sherrill. Ambassador Dodd met with Jewish sports officials privately, avoiding the kind of staged sessions that had been arranged for the visitors. He reported to Washington that his interlocutors described “flagrant discrimination” against Jewish athletes and widespread intimidation of the few who were admitted to Olympic training camps.
As early as 1933, Consul General Messersmith, who had made a habit of not allowing himself to be fooled by the Nazis, had predicted that the new regime might make a show of allowing a few Jews to compete in the Olympic trials. But he warned that “this will be merely a screen for the real discrimination that is taking place.” He and Raymond Geist, another top embassy official, kept reporting on the discrimination, trying to counter the “whitewash” of Sherrill and others. After his transfer to Vienna in 1934, Messersmith continued to urge Secretary of State Cordell Hull to oppose American participation in the Olympics. The Berlin event, he argued in a cable in December 1935, “has become the symbol of the conquest of the world by National Socialist doctrine.” If the Olympics were stopped, “it would be one of the most serious blows which National Socialist prestige could suffer within an awakening Germany.” He added that many “wise and informed observers” believed the fate of the games would have a major role “in determining political developments in Europe”—and that he fully concurred with this view.
Despite the impassioned opposition to the Berlin games by Jeremiah Mahoney, the president of the American Athletic Union, and several other sports officials back in the United States, the Brundage-Sherrill view narrowly prevailed. Hull was largely unmoved by the pleas from his diplomats in Berlin and Vienna, and Roosevelt remained studiously silent on the controversy. As David Clay Large wrote in his authoritative study Nazi Games: The Olympics of 1936: “A consummate politician, FDR certainly understood that throwing his weight behind either position carried more risks than taking no position at all.” Besides, Large continued, his administration was already perceived as too “Jew friendly,” and even Judge Samuel I. Rosenman, one of his Jewish advisors, warned him against supporting a boycott.
When the games got under way, they were every bit the triumphant pageant that both their proponents and opponents had predicted. Wolfe offered this vivid description in You Can’t Go Home Again:
The daily spectacle was breath-taking in its beauty and magnificence. The stadium was a tournament of color that caught the throat; the massed splendor of the banners made the gaudy decorations of America’s great parades, presidential inaugurations, and World’s Fairs seem like shoddy carnivals in comparison. And for the duration of the Olympics, Berlin itself was transformed into a kind of annex to the stadium . . . the whole town was a thrilling pageantry of royal banners . . . banners fifty feet in height, such as might have graced the battle tent of some great emperor.
All of which served as the stage for every triumphant appearance of the modern emperor. “At last he came—and something like a wind across a field of grass was shaken through that crowd, and from afar the tide rolled up with him, and in it was the voice, the hope, the prayer of the land,” Wolfe continued. As Hitler arrived, standing stiffly in a shining car, he raised his hand “palm upward, not in Nazi-wise salute, but straight-up, in a gesture of blessing such as the Buddha or Messiahs use.”
It wasn’t only Hitler’s followers who were impressed. “Berlin is now a handsome, hustling place to be at home in,” the New Yorker’s Janet Flanner wrote. “The past year has been closer to physical prosperity and farther from political nervousness than any Germany has known since the war, and its capital city shows it.” Everything was done to convey exactly that impression to the foreign visitors. Rudi Josten, a German staffer in the Associated Press bureau, recalled the abrupt revival of many of the attractions of the Weimar era. “Everything was free and all dance halls were reopened,” he said. “They played American music and whatnot. Anyway, everybody thought: ‘Well, so Hitler can’t be so bad.’” The Nazis even allowed 7,000 previously banned prostitutes to ply their trade once again in the German capital.
Whether it was on the streets or in what passed for the new high society, the visitors were given every opportunity to revel. “A glittering swirl of Olympic receptions,” Fromm wrote in her diary. “The foreigners are spoiled, pampered, flattered, and beguiled.” Shirer was depressed by the degree to which the visitors were taken in by the lavish show. “I’m afraid the Nazis have succeeded with their propaganda,” he noted as the games were ending.
Carla de Vries, an older American woman, was so caught up in the fervor that she managed to elude Hitler’s bodyguards and kiss Der Führer on the cheek during his visit to the swimming stadium. Swimmer Eleanor Holm Jarrett, the twenty-two-year-old wife of bandleader Art Jarrett and a gold medalist at the 1928 Los Angeles Olympics, had already partied so hard on the transatlantic crossing that Brundage had her dropped from the team. She remained in Berlin anyway, convincing Hearst’s International News Service to give her an assignment to report on the festivities. She did her job enthusiastically, showing up at receptions hosted by top Nazi leaders. When Goering gave her a silver swastika pin, she happily wore it on her chest for everyone to see.
But none of this was enough to completely satisfy Hitler. Fromm recorded in her diary that he applauded German winners in “an orgasmic frenzy of shrieks, clappings, and contortions,” but that he displayed a “disgusting” lack of sportsmanship when others emerged victorious—especially Jesse Owens and his fellow black American athletes. “It was unfair of the United States to send these flatfooted specimens to compete with the noble products of Germany,” he complained. “I am going to vote against Negro participation in the future.”
When Owens scored one of his victories, Wolfe was sitting in the diplomatic box with Martha Dodd. He let out “a war whoop,” Martha recalled, which didn’t go unnoticed by the Nazi leader, who was also in attendance. “Hitler twisted in his seat, looked down, attempting to locate the miscreant, and frowned angrily.” In fact, the German leader was ignoring some of the guidelines of his own regime. A Nazi directive to the German press had warned that “Negroes should not be insensitively reported . . . Negroes are American citizens and must be treated with respect as Americans.”
Although such instructions were inspired by cynical calculation that an appearance of respectful reporting could fool the world into believing that the Nazi movement was based on tolerance, the irony was that many Germans were genuinely enthusiastic about the black American stars, especially Owens. Cheers went up in the Olympic Stadium whenever he appeared. The black American sociologist and historian W. E. B. DuBois, who spent nearly six months on a fellowship in Germany in 1935 and 1936, wrote: “Jesse Owens ran before the astonished eyes of the world. He was lauded and pictured and interviewed. He can scarcely take a step without being begged for his ‘autogramme.’ He is without doubt the most popular single athlete in the Olympic Games of 1936.” And while Hitler and other top Nazis bitterly complained about the black American Olympians, some of those athletes were invited by ordinary German citizens for coffee or dinner.
Little wonder that Owens and his black teammates returned from Germany with less bitterness than many of their countrymen expected—especially since these athletes all too often would see no change in the discrimination they faced at home. Richard Helms, the young United Press reporter in Berlin and future CIA chief, happened to be crossing the Atlantic on the Queen Mary with Owens after the games. In their conversations, the runner shrugged off all the stories about how Hitler had allegedly snubbed him. “Owens was a quiet, modest man,” Helms recalled. “He did not feel he had been insulted, as conventional reporting
had it, when Hitler failed to award him the gold medal.”
Reflecting on his stay, DuBois elaborated on the reasons why black Americans would have mixed feelings about their experiences in Hitler’s Germany. “I have been treated with uniform courtesy and consideration,” he reported. “It would have been impossible for me to have spent a similarly long time in any part of the United States, without some, if not frequent cases of personal insult or discrimination. I cannot record a single instance here.”
He observed that Germany felt “contented and prosperous” under its new rulers, but also that it was “silent, nervous, suppressed” and all opposition was banned. He certainly noticed the “campaign of race prejudice carried on openly, continuously and determinedly against all non-Nordic races, but specifically against the Jews, which surpasses in vindictive cruelty and public insult anything I have ever seen.” The situation, he added, was “so complicated that one cannot express it without seeming to convict one’s self of deliberate misstatement.” All of which got him back to the Olympics, concluding that “the testimony of the casual, non-German-speaking visitor to the Olympic Games is worse than valueless in any direction.”
Many of the American athletes, black or white, gave little or no thought to such considerations. They were there for the competition—and, just like the spectators, out for a good time. In at least one case, this led to a German-American personal drama that played itself out almost as publicly as the races on the field.
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