Kirkus Review
The drama and personal stories behind one of the most famousand infamousOlympic Games.Hitler's goal for the 1936 Berlin Games, as Hilmes (Malevolent Muse: The Life of Alma Mahler, 2015, etc.) writes, was "to give visitors a positive impression of the Third Reich using the Olympics as camouflage." The author uses this eventthe book has 16 chapters, one for each day of competitionto show the extent of Hitler's deception and its effect on actors, nightclub owners, everyday Berliners, and others. Among the ordinary citizens are a woman with a secret so painful that, rather than confess to her husband, she stepped in front of a moving train and a transvestite so afraid of detection she would not leave her apartment to see a doctor and died from a burst artery. Among the celebrities are Richard Strauss, who disdained "sports foolishness" yet still composed an "Olympic Hymn"; Jesse Owens, the American track star whose four gold medals were, in Joseph Goebbels' view, "an affront to the idea of white supremacy"; Leni Riefenstahl, whose film about the Games gives "a seemingly objective picture of an open-minded, cosmopolitan and peaceful Germany"; and Thomas Wolfe, whose falsely sanitized view of Germany changed dramatically during the event. Though Hilmes bogs down the story with too many unnecessary detailse.g., the streets people live on, the clubs they frequent, weather forecastshe still offers memorable sequences, from chillingly amusing (Hermann Gring appearing in public in a different uniform depending on which of his many appellations an occasion called for) to harrowing, such as that prisoners already in Nazi camps were "beaten with sticks and hung from hooks with their hands bound behind their backs" while athletes celebrated 40 minutes away.Thomas Mann, listening to the Games from exile in Switzerland, knew that Hitler's intent was "to intimidate, indeed overwhelm the rest of the world." This mostly illuminating book chronicles those efforts and suggests the horrors to come. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Among the throngs gathered for the 1936 Olympics in Germany, the American novelist Thomas Wolfe marveled at how the Nazi hosts had managed crowds with a quietness, order, and speed that was astounding. Probing behind the facade, Hilmes exposes the hidden human travail. Carrying readers to venues far from the fields of athletic competition, the richly detailed 16-day narrative spotlights men and women who receive no medals but who deserve empathetic attention: the nightclub owner Leon Henri Dajou, forced to flee Berlin when the gestapo uncovers his Jewish roots; the musical genius Mitja Nikisch, completing a pathos-filled concerto just before he dies; jazz saxophonist Teddy Stauffer, injecting the daring thrill of officially forbidden rhythms into Berlin nightlife. Naturally, readers do witness the triumphs and frustrations of the Olympic competitors including, especially, Jesse Owens, the gifted African American track star who deflated the Nazis' Aryan-supremacy theme with his four gold medals; and Luz Long, the German broad jumper who incurred the gestapo's wrath for embracing Owens. With the skill of a novelist, Hilmes weaves into his account the menacing presence of Hitler, deviously staging the Games to deceive a global audience unaware of the horrific evils he is about to unleash. A riveting drama.--Christensen, Bryce Copyright 2017 Booklist
Library Journal Review
The legendary feats of Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Olympics are one of numerous story lines in Hilmes's (Franz Liszt: Musician, Celebrity, Superstar) panorama of that fateful summer. Many of the characters who populate the Berlin venue, such as American author Thomas Wolfe, were already famous. Meanwhile, the circumstances of Peter Forhlich, a sports-obsessed child of Jewish descent, whose father managed to obtain tickets to the Olympic venue normally denied to Jews, gave little hint as to his later renown as the scholar Peter Gay-one of the foremost historians of European culture of his generation. Though Hilmes provides fascinating insight into the events, sounds, and even the weather of Berlin during those momentous 16 days, it is easy to get lost in the various narratives. Some individuals, such as the Berlin housewife who commits suicide, appear for only a paragraph; other anecdotes last for a few pages, while some figures, such as Wolfe, are continuing characters. Hilmes, however, does provide a beneficial "What become of..." epilog. Those interested in more detailed analysis should read Richard Mandell's Nazi Olympics. VERDICT A unique sports history recommended for all libraries.-Frederic Krome, Univ. of Cincinnati Clermont Coll. © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Saturday, 1 August 1936 REICH WEATHER SERVICE FORECAST FOR BERLIN: Heavy clouds and occasional rain showers. Moderate wind from the west/southwest. Somewhat cooler with highs of 19°C. The telephone is ringing softly in Henri de Baillet-Latour's hotel suite. "It's 7:30 a.m., Your Excellency," the porter says. " Bon ," the count replies. "I'm already awake." The employees at the Hotel Adlon where Baillet-Latour is residing treat their guest with irreproachable deference. He is something like a head of state, although he doesn't lead a nation, preside over a republic or rule a monarchy. Henri de Baillet-Latour is the president of the International Olympic Committee, the IOC. Today, at precisely 5:14 p.m., the Olympic flag will be raised at Berlin's Olympic Stadium, and the 60-year-old Belgian will assume a kind of sovereignty over Berlin's sporting venues for the next sixteen days. In the meantime, Baillet-Latour has a busy schedule. He has to attend a religious service with his colleagues from the Olympic Committee, review a Wehrmacht guard of honor and place a wreath at Berlin's Memorial to the Fallen in the Great War. After the military ceremony, Hermann Göring--in his capacity as the state premier of Prussia--will officially welcome the IOC members. It's now 8 a.m., and the sound of marches, wake-up calls and the song " Freut euch des Lebens " (Rejoice in Life) are sounding on Pariser Platz in front of the hotel. The "Great Wakening," as this ritual is known, is one of many ways the National Socialists are seeking to honor the IOC. As Henri de Baillet-Latour stands at the window of his suite, watching the action, he no doubt feels like a head of state, with the Adlon as his seat of government. The IOC has taken up quarters in one of Berlin's best neighbor hoods. The hotel is located directly across from the French embassy; on the left is the Brandenburg Gate, and directly adjacent to Berlin's most famous landmark is Palais Blücher, property of the United States of America. That spacious building is normally the home of the American embassy, but it is still being rebuilt after a fire in 1931. To the right of the Adlon on Pariser Platz is Berlin's venerable Academy of Fine Arts, while next to it on Wilhelmstrasse is Palais Strousberg, which contains the British embassy. Baillet-Latour has now finished breakfast and is preparing to leave the hotel. To celebrate this special day, the count has dressed formally in gray trousers, a dark cutaway jacket, gaiters, a top hat and a magnificent chain of office. When Joseph Goebbels sees him, the German propaganda minister can only shake his head, later noting in his diary: "The Olympians look like the directors of a flea circus." * Pauline Strauss is someone who speaks her mind. The wife of the famous composer Richard Strauss is not chary about telling total strangers precisely what she thinks of them. Even friends and acquaintances aren't exempt from her legendary tactlessness. "Mrs. Strauss, who contrary to her usual self had been quite charming over tea, now had another of her semi-hysterical fits of impoliteness," Count Harry Kessler would later recall of their encounter in a Berlin gourmet restaurant. The tables are covered with expensive china, luxurious silver cutlery and hand-ground glasses. Liveried waiters move about almost noiselessly, and the diners are all conversing in hushed tones. Everyone except Pauline Strauss, that is. As Kessler relates an apparently not very interesting anecdote about a famous Parisian restaurateur, Mrs. Strauss loudly interjects: "He'll be long dead by the time you finish this story! How can someone tell something so bland so slowly! You should feast your eyes on that fattened pig over there instead." The diners look around in bewilderment. "The fat pig, that overweight officer over there." Mrs. Strauss points at a rather corpulent lieutenant sitting at the next table. "What's the problem? I'm just flirting with that pig," says Mrs. Strauss, continuing to stare before adding triumphantly, "You see, the fattened pig is looking at me as though he's in love. I think he'll come over and sit with us." The rest of the group is mortified. The writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal stares down at his plate, at a loss for words, while Richard Strauss turns first white, then red. But Strauss doesn't comment on his wife's scandalous behavior, no doubt in order to avoid exacerbating the situation. It is rumored that once, when he had chastised her for making a similar scene, she had said loudly enough for everyone present to hear: "One more word from you, Richard, and I'll take to Friedrichstrasse and go off with the first man who crosses my path." It's no wonder that Pauline Strauss is the nightmare of all hotel porters, waiters and servant girls. The Strausses, accompanied by their housekeeper Anna, arrived in the Hotel Bristol yesterday. The Bristol is only a stone's throw away from the Adlon on Berlin's splendid boulevard Unter den Linden. As goes without saying, the hotel offers all the most modern conveniences. The spacious rooms and suites are appointed with exquisite furniture, and all have their own bath. Moreover, the hotel's public rooms are particularly splendid. The library, for instance, is done out in the Gothic style, while the tea salon is full of heavy English leather furniture. Richard Strauss has had little opportunity to enjoy the amenities of his hotel. Yesterday he was busy with rehearsals, this afternoon he has the world premiere of a new composition, and tomorrow morning he'll leave Berlin and return to Bavaria. As one of the most important contemporary composers, Richard Strauss is always a busy man. The previous March he went on a concert tour of Italy and France. In April he conducted orchestras in Paris and Cologne, and in June in Zurich and once again in Cologne. In between performances, the 72-year-old Strauss somehow finds the time to compose new works. The piece that he'll debut in a few hours is called "Olympic Hymn" and was commissioned by the IOC for the opening ceremony today. Strauss has boasted about being capable to put anything to music. "If you want to be a true musician, you have to be able to set a restaurant menu to music," he once mockingly remarked. For Strauss, writing music is a matter of hard work and discipline. With stoic calm, he sits at his desk creating work after work. Years later Theodor W. Adorno will disparagingly call him a "composing machine." Strauss, Adorno will write, betrayed modernism and sold out to a mass audience, becoming a master of superficiality who only composed what he could sell for hard currency. The "Olympic Hymn" for choir and large symphony orchestra definitely falls into that category. Strauss couldn't care less about sport. Skiing, he once opined, is an activity for rural postmen in Norway. In February 1933, upon learning that the town where he lived in Bavaria, Garmisch, was planning a special levy to finance the Winter Olympics, Strauss protested vehemently. In a letter to the district council, he wrote: "On the assumption that it will go to covering the costs of this sports foolishness and totally unnecessary Olympics propaganda, I object to this new tax on citizens. Since I don't use any sporting facilities-- bobsleigh runs, ski jumps and the like--and can do without a triumphal arch at the train station, I ask to be freed from this tax, which should be passed on to all those who have an interest in the Olympic Games and similar sorts of swindles. My wallet has been burdened enough by government taxes to support layabouts in the name of so-called social security and all the door-to-door beggars rampant in Garmisch." Such objections didn't deter Strauss from demanding 10,000 reichsmarks for composing a hymn to "sports foolishness." That fee, however, was well beyond the Olympic Committee's budget, and in the end, after some negotiations, Strauss agreed to forgo his honorarium. So it's hardly surprising that he was less than enthusiastic about the job. "I'm keeping the Christmas boredom at bay by composing an Olympic hymn for the proletarians," Strauss wrote to the writer Stefan Zweig in December 1934. "I am a dedicated enemy of sport. I despise it. It's true: the devil makes work for idle hands." The lyrics were chosen in a public competition, won by the unemployed actor and occasional poet Robert Lubahn. Some of the lines were changed after Goebbels complained that Lubahn's poem didn't reflect the spirit of the Third Reich. "Peace shall be the battle cry," for instance, became "Honor shall be the battle cry." "The rule of law is the highest thing" was altered to "Loyalty to one's oath is the highest thing." However much he may have disliked the changes, Lubahn had to accept them, and the IOC, as the body that had commissioned the hymn, voiced no objections. Richard Strauss presumably didn't care one way or the other. In December 1934, immediately after finishing the four-minute composition, Strauss contacted Hans Heinrich Lammers, the director of the Reich Chancellery, and asked if he could play the piece for Hitler. "As the Führer and the patron of the Olympic Games, it's especially important that he like it," Strauss wrote. After a bit of back and forth--Hitler was less eager for a meeting than the composer--a date was set for late March 1935. After the private performance in Hitler's Munich flat, Strauss presented "his Führer" with an autographed copy of the sheet music, which the dictator gratefully accepted. There were concrete, practical reasons why Strauss cozied up to the regime. His new opera, The Silent Woman , was set to premiere in Dresden in June 1935. Goebbels opposed this work because the libretto was written by the Jewish author Zweig, a persona non grata in the Third Reich, but Hitler gave special permission for the opera to be performed. The "Olympic Hymn" was Strauss's way of saying thank you. Nonetheless, a short time later, the world-famous composer got himself into trouble after the Gestapo intercepted a letter in which he made fun of his position as the president of the Reich Music Chamber. In mid-July 1935, Strauss was forced to step down, and The Silent Women was performed only three times. The incident would have spelled the end for a lesser-known artist. But Strauss is too high profile for the Nazis to do without him. Now, one year later, in the summer of 1936, the whole affair has been forgotten, and Strauss is being allowed to direct the first ever public performance of the "Olympic Hymn." As the composer and his wife take breakfast in the Hotel Bristol's terrace salon, and Pauline bullies the staff as usual, Strauss imagines what it will be like to conduct in front of more than 100,000 proletarians this afternoon. * "Where exactly are we?" Max von Hoyos asks his companion Hannes Trautloft. Max has just woken up and has no idea how long he's slept. He yawns, rubs his eyes and stretches out his arms. "Still on the River Elbe," Hannes answers. Max doesn't seem particularly surprised. "I'm starving!" he exclaims, swinging himself out of his bunk. The two young men are sharing a berth aboard the steamship Usaramo on its way from Hamburg to Spain. They and more than eighty others are part of a group called the Travel Club Union. This exclusively male party behaves somewhat oddly, keeping its distance from the other passengers. When asked about the purpose of their journey, they say nothing. They don't seem stylish enough to be affluent tourists on a cruise. They could almost be mistaken for soldiers, if they weren't wearing civilian clothing. They have a conspicuous amount of luggage. What do all the large crates loaded onto the ship in Hamburg contain? Again, no answers are forthcoming. One thing is for sure: something isn't right about the Travel Club Union. * At noon, the Hitler Youth holds a rally in Berlin's Lustgarten. Some 29,000 boys and girls stand at attention. The roof of the City Palace affords a good view of the broad stretch of land between the Old Museum, Berlin Cathedral and the palace itself. It's impossible to make out individuals. All you can see is a mass of people. Like so many things these days, the rally is a powerful demonstration aimed at foreign visitors. Adolf Hitler can rely on Germany's youth--that's the message. It can also be understood as a warning. The various items on today's agenda interlock like a welloiled mechanism. The ceremony welcoming the members of the IOC ends on time, and the guests of honor only need to walk a few yards from the domed hall of the Old Museum to get to the Lustgarten. A speaker's podium has been installed on the steps outside the building. One after another, Reich Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach, Reich Sports Leader Hans von Tschammer und Osten, Education Minister Bernhard Rust and Joseph Goebbels address the Hitler Youth. "An imposing spectacle," the propaganda minister records in his diary. "How can you say something original about it? Then the Olympic flame arrives. A moving moment. It's raining slightly." The journey of the Olympic torch, of which the Lustgarten is the penultimate stop, is not the Ancient Greek tradition it is often taken to be. It's the brainchild of a sports official from the southern German city of Würzburg. The 52-year-old secretary general of the Olympic Organizing Committee, Carl Diem, is one of the central figures behind the Berlin Games. In his inventive eyes, the 1,800-mile-long trip the torch has made from Athens to Delphi, Thessaloníki, Sofia, Belgrade, Budapest, Vienna, Prague, Dresden and Berlin connects antiquity with the present day. It doesn't matter that there were no torch processions at the original Olympic Games. Diem is only interested in depicting the Berlin event as a particularly solemn occasion. At the Propaganda Ministry, which has been responsible for organizing the Hitler Youth rally, Goebbels was immediately enthusiastic about the idea. At Goebbels's behest, the athlete carrying the torch runs through the ranks of the Hitler Youth up to the Old Museum, where he lights an altar of fire. Then the young man continues to the City Palace and ignites a second flame at what is called the "Banner Altar of Nations." A fleet of limousines is now ready to chauffeur the IOC representatives and other guests of honor to the Reich Chancellery on Wilhelmstrasse. There, Henri de Baillet-Latour thanks Hitler for Germany's hospitality. The dictator keeps his reply short, stressing the ability of the Olympic Games to bring various peoples together. Under 2 p.m., the itinerary for the day simply reads: "Snack." Excerpted from Berlin 1936: Fascism, Fear, and Triumph Set Against Hitler's Olympic Games by Oliver Hilmes All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
