Beyond Belief: The American Press And The Coming Of The Holocaust, 1933- 1945
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Differentiating between the German people and the Nazi Party and German government or between sports and politics demonstrated the press’s failure to understand the inherent value of a pageant such as the Olympic Games to a totalitarian regime. The German people may have enjoyed the Games, but it was the state that reaped the bounty. In Germany sports, like all forms of Kultur, were transformed into state propaganda intended to glorify the “Aryan” race, the German nation, the Nazi Party, and, above all, the Führer as the embodiment of all that was Germany and Nazism. The Nazis repeatedly used ostensibly nonpolitical events in a blatantly political fashion, and there was no reason to assume that they would act differently when it came to the Games. Germans leaders had already acknowledged that sports were a means to an end. In May 1933 Dorothy Thompson, in an article in The Saturday Evening Post, cited the view of the official Nazi newspaper, the Voelkischer Beobachter, on this topic. “It should always be remembered that sport merely for recreation fails to fulfill its essential purpose, which is to produce hardy man power for the state.”22Immediately before the Games Sigrid Schultz reported in the Chicago Tribune that a handbook published by the office of the Reich sports commissioner stated that “nonpolitical sportsmen are unthinkable.” According to the book, which was required reading for all German competitors, every organized activity in Germany had to be part of “Hitler’s movement.” In the Third Reich nothing was “nonpolitical.”23 Most Americans who visited Germany, including the reporters who came for the Games, failed to grasp this fact.
There were, of course, observers who understood that the Games were designed to legitimize Germany in the eyes of the rest of the world. According to the Des Moines Register the real reason for not participating was that to do so would convert the 1936 Olympic Games “into a falsified proof that Nazi concepts are endorsed by the sportsmen and athletes of the world.”24 Proboycott papers rejected Brundage and Sherrill’s claim that a boycott would exacerbate Jewish disabilities and argued that it might force an improvement of the Jews’ status.25 It would serve, the Atlanta Constitution argued, as “timely notice to Germany that the world does not approve of her campaign of terrorism.”26 America’s not competing might prove to be, according to the Milwaukee Herald, “a wholesome lesson for the Nazi scoundrels.” The Christian Century agreed: moving the Games would “tell Germany” what the world thinks.27
Albion Ross of the New York Times noted that the Reich expected the Olympic Games “to accomplish nothing less than its rehabilitation in the eyes of a still largely hostile world.” Ambassador Dodd and George Messersmith, former American Consul in Berlin who was then American Minister in Vienna, felt similarly. Germany, Messersmith predicted, would use the Games “not only as a political instrument within Germany but also as a propaganda instrument throughout the world.” Because press reports about German brutality had increased in severity in the wake of the riots and the Nuremberg Laws, Ambassador Dodd believed that Germany would use the Games “to rehabilitate and enhance the reputation of the ‘new Germany’” and to convince foreign tourists, particularly non-German-speaking ones, who would visit only Berlin, “to reject as libel press reports respecting such unpleasant occurrences as Jewish persecution which they have previously read in their home papers.”28
A number of papers argued that the most efficacious thing America could do would be to send a team to Germany which included, in the opinion of the Minneapolis Star, the “best Jewish and Catholic talent the country has to offer.” Let them “swamp . . . the Germans, cleanly and sportingly, in every event on the program,” the St. Joseph (Missouri) Gazette advised. Some editors and sports columnists were swayed by the argument that an American boycott would leave the playing field uncontested and Germany would then capture the victor’s laurels. Ed Bang, sports editor of the Cleveland News, said that the United States should go and “force the bitter dregs of defeat down the throats of the Hitlerites.” It was the German performance, not the American one, that was to win the accolades and do the swamping. The Germans won nine more gold medals than did the Americans and surprised most experts with their achievements.29
There were those who counseled that until there was an “affront” to American athletes, this country would not be justified in declining to attend. A boycott, they believed, should only be instituted if American Jewish athletes faced some disability; otherwise the treatment of the Jews remained a German domestic matter. The Lansing Journal argued that “either all Americans must have full privileges and recognition in Berlin, irrespective of creed, race or color, or else all Americans should refuse to participate.”30The argument was, again, that what took place in Germany was none of America’s business per se, and that only when German affairs impinged on Americans’ rights was a protest in order.
Another argument popular with those in favor of an American presence at the Games had also been voiced before, and would be heard again, in connection with foreign protests about Nazi behavior: Rather than improve matters for Jews, a boycott would make them worse. Germans would blame the Jews for marring the competition and would only persecute them more severely. At best such an action would be of “little practical value.” In the 1930s this argument was marshaled against an economic boycott or diplomatic protests. In 1944 it was taken to its most ludicrous extreme when State Department officials used it to explain their refusal to bomb the death camps. (John McCloy of the State Department somehow concluded that bombing Auschwitz would inflict worse punishment on the Jews interned there, Jews who he knew were destined for the gas chambers.)31
This argument, that action would make things worse, ignored Germany’s desire to enhance its international stature and the fact that it had already proved responsive to foreign criticism. One of the grandparents of the president of the German Olympic Committee (GOC), Theodor Lewald, had been Jewish, and as a result the Nazis had forced Lewald to resign in 1933. Ensuing world criticism and German fears of an Olympic boycott led to his reinstatement as GOC “adviser.” The new head of the German Sports Committee acknowledged that the reinstatement as well as the announcement that Jews would not be excluded from the Games was due to the “foreign political situation.”32
The years 1935 and 1936 were a crucial period for the Nazi rulers, who, increasingly confident that they had consolidated their domestic rule, were now intent on improving Germany’s economic and political status. Dodd described this as a time when the Nazis were committed to introducing the “New Germany” to the family of nations and were, therefore, still susceptible to foreign criticism and pressure.33 While a boycott of the Games might not have changed the Nazis’ ideological commitment to antisemitism, it might well have prompted them to moderate their antisemitic policies.
Although the July 1935 riots and their aftermath strengthened the opposition to the Games, the opposition tended not to last. The Charleston Post’s doubts about participating were dispelled because Germany had provided “satisfactory assurance” regarding the treatment to be given “its own and visiting athletes.”34Other papers regained their optimism about Germany’s intentions to abide by these promises when it invited two Jews, Helen Mayer, a fencer who had won a gold medal as a member of the German Olympic team in 1928 and who in 1935 was living in Los Angeles, and Rudi Ball, one of Germany’s best ice hockey players, who was then in France, to join the German teams. Although it had taken two years of prodding by Brundage and others to get Germany to issue these invitations, they convinced a number of papers that Germany had softened its attitude toward Jews in general. This new faith in a repentant Reich came in the fall of 1935 at the same time that Germany had disenfranchised the Jews and Joseph Goebbels had removed the names of 1,200 Jews from the honor roll of Germany’s war dead.35
Ironically, some of the most fervent advocates of American participation were cognizant of German intentions. Bill Henry, sports editor of the Los Angeles Times and an outspoken proponent of the Games, returned from a visit to Berlin and admitted that Germany saw the Games as an opp
ortunity to show the world the “possibilities of the new Germany.”36 The Los Angeles Times editorial board followed its sports editor’s lead and strongly supported the Games. Ignoring the fact that Henry himself had openly acknowledged Germany’s propaganda and political goals, the paper denied that the Games were a political institution. They were neither German nor Nazi, but “one of the world’s greatest institutions.” Hitler, the paper predicted, would have nothing to do with them. Ignoring numerous reports to the contrary, many of which it had carried in its pages, the Los Angeles Times argued not only that the eligibility rules were “impartial” but that “there has been nothing to indicate prospective discrimination against any athletes because of race or religion.”37 By this point not only Jews but Catholics and even certain Protestant youth were feeling the pressure of Nazi discriminatory actions. Even when the Nuremberg Laws were issued two days later, the Los Angeles Times did not change its stance. Other papers reacted similarly. In November, two months after the promulgation of the first phase of the Nuremberg Laws and four days before the second phase of the laws were announced, the Mobile (Alabama) Register came out in favor of the Games. Its doubts had been eased by Hitler’s “personal assurance that Olympic athletes and visitors would be treated courteously no matter what their religion or race.”38
Westbrook Pegler, columnist for the Scripps-Howard papers and the featured columnist of the United Press syndicate, strongly opposed the Games, which he termed an “official project of the Nazi government.” He was particularly critical of Bill Henry of the Los Angeles Times, who not only laudatorily described the preparations for the Games but argued that “nothing would be gained” by a boycott and promised that there would be “fair treatment for Jews, Catholics and everybody else.” Pegler dismissed Henry’s claims by noting that the sports writer had served as an adviser to the German government on the planning of the sports extravaganza. He had visited Berlin as a “sort of guest” of the government and was obligated to say that the event would be a “rousing success.”39 Pegler eventually infuriated Goebbels at the winter contest when, instead of discussing the hospitality and good will of the German hosts, he told readers about the war maneuvers of some “5,000 to 10,000 hard looking disciplined troops.”40
One of the most interesting aspects of the Los Angeles Times’s position on the Games was that it was absolutely contrary to its position on Nazi Germany in general. At the same time that it vigorously advocated sending Americans to the Games, it accused German authorities of “directly and openly inspiring” the July riots. It contended that a government, such as Germany’s, which “publicly sponsors and encourages hooliganism becomes itself a hooligan.”41 Though these international sporting events would enhance this “hooligan” government’s prestige in the eyes of its own people and those of the myriad of visitors who came from abroad, the Times continued to support participation. This kind of dissonance was not, of course, unique to the Los Angeles Times. In fact much of the press reaction throughout the period was characterized by optimistic interpretations and expectations even when the evidence indicated that optimism was not in order; e.g. a conciliatory speech by Hitler negated the persecution and incarceration of thousands of innocent Germans, Jew and non-Jew. Assurances of fair play and equal treatment of Jews rendered the reality of the Nuremberg Laws moot.
William Shirer recalled that reporters in Germany “could scarcely believe it” when they read statements by Americans claiming that the Germans were not discriminating and would not discriminate against Jews.42 Fifty years later, in an interview, he again expressed his utter amazement at how some Americans were able to ignore what Germany had become under the Nazis. The July riots, the Nuremberg Laws, the exclusion of Jewish athletes from training facilities, and the progressively harsher treatment being meted out to Jews throughout Germany did not shake the faith of the pro-Games faction that Hitler and the Nazis were abiding by their promises to behave as a civilized nation and observe the Olympic code of sportsmanship.
Fall 1935: The Final Heat
Although it took some papers until November to decide to do so, ultimately close to two-thirds of the papers that commented on the Games opposed going. The press favored a boycott of the Games far more enthusiastically than it ever favored any form of economic boycott. This was understandable, for a trade boycott had the potential to cause economic repercussions in America, while a sports boycott demonstrated contempt for the Nazi system at little direct cost to America. Furthermore, while an economic boycott constituted a political statement, an Olympics boycott could be interpreted as a commitment to neutrality.
In the period following the issuance of the Nuremberg Laws, opposition to the Games increased markedly. By mid-October the fight began to gain momentum as the number of papers advocating a boycott increased. The New York Times cautioned that it was not necessary to “indulge in violent denunciations of what the Nazis are doing and proposing to do.” Just refusing to send players to the Games would be “the application of a moral sanction which could not be hidden from the German people and which they would not fail to understand.”43 Though in comparison with some other papers’ editorials during this period the New York Times was reserved, the fact that the leading newspaper in the country advocated a boycott as a form of moral protest was significant.44 As the date for the AAU’s final vote on whether to certify athletes for the Games grew near, press opposition became increasingly vocal and the list of prominent Americans and American organizations demanding a boycott grew apace.45
The tenor of the fight also became more vehement. Sherrill again predicted an outbreak of American antisemitism upon his return from Germany, and the AOC published a pamphlet in favor of the Games which posited that the opposition was “essentially Jewish and Communistic.” These claims elicited a number of editorial responses which argued that it was not Jews who were leading the fight against participation and that Jews were not Hitler’s only victims. Brundage also introduced the Jewish issue, sometimes by innuendo. He called the fight one between “principles and dollars” and claimed that there was a million-dollar war chest so that the fight for a boycott could go on “whether or not there was any truth to the reports (from Germany).” On another occasion he claimed that newspapers—which by November were two to one against going—had been warned that if they did not oppose the Games, they would lose millions of dollars in advertising, and that the colleges which sent athletes would lose substantial donations. Brundage’s stress on the existence of powerful monied forces anxious to halt the games was clearly intended to raise the specter of “Jewish money” in the minds of the public. The threat of loss of advertising dollars was linked to the popular notion of Jewish department store owners who controlled the press with their monies. Sherrill later reiterated his premonitions about domestic antisemitism in a letter to the editor of the American Hebrew. In an admonitory tone he warned American Jews that there existed a “present danger of increased antisemitism . . . among thousands of young Americans . . . once [they] get the idea that Jews are scheming to get America to boycott the Berlin Games.”46
The opposition of prominent non-Jews and publications such as the Protestant Christian Century and the liberal Catholic journal Commonweal made it more difficult, but far from impossible, for Brundage and Sherrill to suggest that the Jews were behind it all. Christian Century and Commonweal took Sherrill to task for his warning to American Jews.
Reading accounts of torture and oppression, of hunger and degradation, which are the daily fate of hundreds of thousands living under the Hitler lash, Jews are bidden remember that silence alone can preserve them from a like fate here.47
The Committee on Fair Play in Sports, a proboycott group whose chairmen and members included secretary of the Federal Council of Churches Dr. Henry Smith Leiper, prominent theologian Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, former owner of The Nation Oswald Garrison Villard, the president of Mt. Holyoke College Mary Woolley, and Governor of Massachusetts James M. Curley, chastised Sherrill b
ecause he “gratuitously” tried to turn the debate over the Games into a “purely Jewish issue.”48 Until the participants set sail for Germany, Brundage and Sherrill continued to blame Jews—both directly and by innuendo—for placing obstacles in the team’s path.
Sports writers were also debating the propriety of American attendance. The Column Review polled sports writers and found a strong division of opinion. A survey by the United Press was almost evenly divided. Of the thirty writers polled, thirteen supported participation, eleven opposed it, and six were undecided. (The close nature of the United Press results did not prevent the pro-Games Los Angeles Times from headlining its story “SPORTS SCRIBES FAVOR SENDING OLYMPIC TEAM.”)49Among the sports writers who favored participation were Fred Digby of the New Orleans Item Tribune, Maurice O. Shevlin of the St. Louis Globe Democrat, and Richard Vidmer of the New York Herald Tribune, who made a special point of attacking Jeremiah T. Mahoney, former New York State Supreme Court justice and president of the AAU, who opposed the Games because of his conviction that Jewish athletes were not being given a fair chance. Harry Smith of the San Francisco Chronicle and Tom Laird of the San Francisco News gave guarded approval to participation if strong assurances of fair play could be obtained. Ralph McGill of the Atlanta Constitution, Shirley Povich of the Washington Post, and Bill Cunningham of the Boston Post all opposed participation, as did most of the New York dailies. Cunningham wondered whether the Germans planned to “declare a moratorium for six weeks and then go back to their beatings, sluggings and boycott?”50 Christian Century, which had adopted an anti-Olympic editorial stance within a few weeks after the riots, considered the sports writers’ opinions important enough to urge its readers to write to their local papers to protest United States participation and address their letters to the sports writers because they might pay more attention than editorial boards. The influence of Christian Century was reflected by the fact that the New York Times reprinted its statement in full and by the number of different editorials—both those for and against participation—which cited the Protestant journal’s stance. Some felt compelled to take issue with it, while others cited it as support of their own position.51