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The Olympic torch’s shadowy past
Posted on: April 10, 2008
- In: Beijing 2008 | Berlin | Eifrig | Greece | Mount Everest | Olympic | past | shadowy | Sparta | Torch
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The Olympic torch is being welcomed this weekend in the UK as a symbol of the sporting spirit, uniting people around the world in peaceful competition. But the idea of lighting the torch at the ancient Olympian site in Greece and then running it through different countries has much darker origins. It was invented in its modern form by the organisers of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. And it was planned with immense care by the Nazi leadership to project the image of the Third Reich as a modern, economically dynamic state with growing international influence.
The organiser of the 1936 Olympics, Carl Diem, wanted an event linking the modern Olympics to the ancient. The idea chimed perfectly with the Nazi belief that classical Greece was an Aryan forerunner of the modern German Reich. And the event blended perfectly the perversion of history with publicity for contemporary German power. The first torch was lit in Greece with the help of mirrors made by the German company Zeiss. Steel-clad magnesium torches to carry the flame were specially produced by the Ruhr-based industrial giant Krupp. Media coverage was masterminded by Nazi propaganda chief Josef Goebbels, using the latest techniques and technology. Dramatic regular radio coverage of the torch’s progress kept up the excitement, and Leni Riefenstahl filmed it to create powerful images. Beijing relay The route the torch takes has always been a matter of careful political planning too. This year’s route has already proved highly controversial. Beijing wanted to take the torch through Taiwan’s capital, Taipei, but this had to be changed by Olympic authorities due to political tensions between the Chinese and Taiwanese leaders. And there is now great tension over plans to run the torch through Tibet after recent disturbances there. In 1936 the torch made its way from Greece to Berlin through countries in south-eastern and central Europe where the Nazis were especially keen to enhance their influence.
Given what happened a few years later that route seems especially poignant now. “Sporting chivalrous contest,” Hitler declared just before the torch was lit, “helps knit the bonds of peace between nations. Therefore may the Olympic flame never expire.” Yet the flame’s arrival in Vienna prompted major pro-Nazi demonstrations, helping pave the way for the Anschluss, or annexation of Austria, in 1938. In Hungary gypsy musicians who serenaded the flame faced within a few years deportation to Nazi death camps. Other countries on the relay route like Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia would soon be invaded by Germans equipped not with Krupp torches but with Krupp munitions. And Carl Diem, the relay’s inventor, ended the war as fanatical military commander at the Olympic stadium in Berlin, refusing to accept that the Third Reich was over. Sparta Reinhard Appel, a teenage member of the Hitler Youth based at the stadium, described to me a speech made by Diem in 1945 as the Red Army closed in. “He kept referring to Sparta – the history of how the Spartans had not feared dying for their country. He demanded that we be heroes.” Hundreds of the youngsters were killed in a futile attempt to defend the stadium. Diem however survived, and reinvented himself after the war as an academic specialising in the philosophy of sport. Germans are still debating his reputation today.
In 1936 itself there was no doubt that the spectacle of his torch relay was judged a great international success. As a suitably Aryan-looking German athlete carried the torch into the stadium in Berlin the BBC radio commentator was deeply impressed: “He’s a fair young man in white shorts, he’s beautifully made, a very fine sight as an athlete.” Another relay runner was Siegfried Eifrig, who had carried the torch as it arrived in the centre of Berlin. Flanked by huge swastika flags, he then lit a fire on an altar – typical of the pseudo-religious symbolism Nazism relished. Eifrig is still alive, aged 98, and still has his Krupp torch engraved with the route of the 1936 relay. But he told me this week that he was saddened by the controversy this year’s relay has attracted, as it ought to be kept a “purely sporting” affair. And he is critical of the way the politicians always seek to exploit it, seeing the plan to take the torch across the summit of Mount Everest as a “pointless gesture” that makes a nonsense of the relay as an athletic challenge. Having survived the war as a soldier and then a British prisoner of war, he now sees the 1936 relay in a more sober light than when he was one of its stars. No matter how great the emphasis on the torch as a bright sporting symbol, he knows better than most that, amid the political wrangling and media hype, less welcome historical ghosts are running alongside |
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San Francisco set for torch relay
Posted on: April 9, 2008
- In: Athens | Beijing 2008 | china | Greece | march | Official | Olympia | protesters | San Francisco | Tibet | Torch
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Richard Gere at vigil
Hundreds of pro-Tibet protesters have marched in San Francisco, as the city prepares to host the next leg of the international Olympic torch relay.
Demonstrators carrying Tibetan flags marched to the Chinese consulate to denounce Beijing’s policy on Tibet.
Officials have promised tight security for Wednesday’s torch relay, following chaotic scenes in London and Paris.
Officials in Beijing have condemned the disruption to the procession but promised that it would continue.
Extra police will line the torch’s route as it follows a six-mile (10km) route through San Francisco, starting at 1300 (2000 GMT).
Mayor Gavin Newsom said he had been in touch with officials in the UK and France to discuss ways of handling the protesters.
“I’m not naive to the challenge associated with this event,” he said.
At a candle-lit vigil on Tuesday near City Hall, South African Archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu urged world leaders not to go to the Games.
“For God’s sake, for the sake of our children, for the sake of their children, for the sake of the beautiful people of Tibet – don’t go,” he said.
“Tell your counterparts in Beijing you wanted to come but looked at your schedule and realised you have something else to do.”
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Hollywood actor and long-time Tibet activist Richard Gere attacked China’s plans to parade the torch through Tibet.
“The game-plan of bringing this torch to Tibet, as if it was a harmonious society, is so patently false and insulting to the Tibetans,” Mr Gere told the rally.
But in San Francisco’s Chinatown, community representatives held a news conference to call for a peaceful relay and voice pride over China’s hosting of the Games.
“If I support the Olympics, of course I don’t support the protests,” local resident Ling Li told the Associated Press News agency.
“This is the first time China has had the Olympics. We should be proud of this.”
The flame was lit in Greece on 24 March and is being relayed through 20 countries before being carried into the opening ceremony in Beijing on 8 August.
Protests have already caused serious disruption to legs in London and Paris. In Paris, the torch had to be extinguished three times, while in London there were 37 arrests.
The demonstrators are protesting over a security crackdown in Tibet after anti-Chinese unrest.
Tibetan exile groups say Chinese security forces killed dozens of protesters. Beijing says about 19 people were killed in rioting.
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