Dan Snow's History Hit - Sportswashing and the Nazi Olympics

Episode Date: December 5, 2022

With the 2022 FIFA World Cup well underway, the phenomenon of sportswashing is once again in everybody's minds. Autocracies and democracies alike have long relied on major sporting events to shore up their legitimacy and project their presence on the world stage. But why is sporting prowess so important for consolidating state power and prestige? Is it inevitable, and if not, how do we prevent it? Dan is joined by Jules Boykoff, Professor of Politics and Government at Pacific University, Oregon to talk about all these things, and more.Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!Download History Hit app from the Google Play store.Download History Hit app from the Apple Store.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History. It's sport washing. Sport washing, the term is all the rage at the moment, but what does it mean? What's the history of sport washing? What is the history of regimes trying to show off to their own populations and the rest of the world how great they are by hosting mega tournaments? What's its relationship with state power and prestige and war? We've seen the term a lot kicking around at the moment because the World Cup has kicked off in Qatar, a country with an appalling human rights record. But given the last World Cup was in Russia, after it had invaded the Crimea, was engaged in a proxy war

in eastern Ukraine, and had poisoned a former spy in Britain, I'm not quite sure why we're getting so excited about Qatar, not even mentioning the recent Winter Olympics in China. I'm not quite sure why we're getting so excited about Qatar, not even mentioning the recent Winter Olympics in China. But still, we are talking about sport washing now, and depending on who wins the next few Olympics and World Cups, we're going to be talking about it a lot more. The practice of using sport to improve your reputation, you'll be surprised to learn, is not new. And there's some great examples of it coming up in this podcast because I've got a scholar athlete on the pod now. Jules Boykoff, he's an American professor of politics and government at Pacific University,

Oregon. He's an author, he's a poet, and he's a former pro soccer player, a pro football player. He played for Milwaukee Wave. It's pretty cool. He's just written a new book about the Berlin Olympics, one of the ur-sportwashing events in world history. It's fascinating stuff. But as you'll hear, sportwashing goes back a lot further than that. Enjoy. T-minus 10. The Thomas bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And liftoff. And the shuttle has cleared the tower.

Jules, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Well, first of all, define. What is sports washing? How would you define that? Absolutely. Great's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Well, first of all, define what is sports washing? How do you define that? Absolutely. Great place to start. You know, for me, sports washing is when political leaders use sports to appear important or legitimate on the world stage while stoking nationalism and patriotism and deflecting attention from chronic problems and human rights woes on the

home front. One big important thing for me with sports washing is that while it's certainly under autocratic regimes, it happens, but it also happens under democratic regimes. As when in Los Angeles, just down the road from me here on the West Coast of the United States, in Los Angeles, just down the road from me here on the West Coast of the United States. They're hosting the 2028 Summer Olympics. And ahead of that, the mayor, Eric Garcetti, said that if they got the Olympics, that that would help them get rid of homelessness. So using big sports mega events to try to erase social problems. And then, of course, that actually doesn't usually happen. The way you talk about nationalism there, and you talk about kind of broadcasting the message out,

this is a post, well, pro sports themselves, but we're talking about kind of a 20th century phenomenon here, right? You see this developing around the same time, do you, as the strong man, quote unquote, these huge kind of propaganda efforts to prop up these kind of regimes? Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting. The term sportswashing was only coined in 2015 in a press release by a sports rights group around the European Olympics in Azerbaijan. But I think as you're indicating, the elements of sportswashing go far back into history. And yes, a lot of its tentacles reach back pretty firmly into the 20th century. But you can even actually go back further if you wanted to. If you go back to Greece, where in 416 BCE, there was a war between Athens and Sparta. And Athens entered numerous teams

into the chariot races at those Olympics. And they did really well. And their success distracted from the fact that Athens was being beaten in the war. And then in a speech one year after the Olympic victories, one Athenian leader, a guy called Alcibiades, he pivoted off this chariot success at the Olympics to try to implore Athenians to invade their rivals in Sicily. So there are elements that go all the way back through history. And I think that example actually points up a key element to sports washing is that it can pave a path for war. Wow, that's cool. I did not know the Sicilian campaign had its roots in a successful chariot competition. That's amazing. What is the first big one that you sort of identify? I guess, are we thinking Nazi Germany? I do think that that's

kind of one where all these parts come together into a whole. And in fact, if you look at what happened with the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, you can see some key elements of future sports washing being given birth. So for example, the Nazis in 1936 created their own tradition of the Olympic torch relay, something that has continued all the way through today, where they took the torch through these various countries in Europe, supposedly to spread the Olympic spirit, but also they spread Nazi propaganda. These are some of the very same places that they turned around and invaded. So yes, to your question, it all kind of comes together in 1936, where Hitler uses the Olympics

to sportswash what's happening there. But these things are so political, right? I guess the decision to award it to Germany before Hitler got into power was about the international community welcoming Germany back into the fold. In a way, I guess we're looking back, the Olympics in Beijing were from a time before President Xi when it was thought maybe that China was moving towards a slightly more progressive position on the world stage. So it's got politics running through it right from that initial decision in the early 30s, right? No question about it, Dan. There's politics thrumming through every one of these examples. And your connection to Beijing is an important one because a lot of times some of these countries say, hey, if you give us the Olympics, if you give us the us these Olympics in 2008, it'll help us move toward democracy. Well, unfortunately, nothing of the sort happened in Beijing in that direction.

In fact, Sophie Richardson from Human Rights Watch, the China director there, has said that the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing were actually a catalyst for further abuses in the country. Of course, that didn't stop the International Olympic Committee from handing them a future Games they just hosted this year in Beijing, the Winter Olympics. And something similar happened in Hitler's Germany, where we were told this is going to help reintegrate Germany into the fold. Nothing of the sort happened. In fact, Hitler was actually at the beginning not very interested in the Olympics. It took a lot of convincing on the part of propaganda minister Goebbels to let him see that sports could be this incredible propaganda feature for the Nazi regime. And only then did he get on board and push it forward and support it full force. Then he attended a lot of the Olympics themselves and used it as an incredible opportunity to sportswash.

Yeah, I didn't think about that. You're right. used it as an incredible opportunity to sportswash. Yeah, I didn't think about that. You're right. Even within Germany, the buildup was full of pictures of super handsome, toned German Aryan athletes who looked exactly right. And that would have been part of the important domestic propaganda campaign. Absolutely.

And you're putting your finger on a crucial feature, Dan, of sportswashing that a lot of people overlook. And that is how it affects the domestic population. In that Olympic torch relay that I mentioned, by the end, they were all blonde-haired, blue-eyed, perfect, quote-unquote, Aryans. The message was very clearly to try to tell the German people that they were the true and worthy heirs of the Aryans from Greece, from the Olympic history. And so when people ask, does sports washing work? What they often mean is, does it work on an international audience?

And if we look at just the Qatar World Cup, which is unfolding around us right now, it's probably not necessarily working on an international audience. People are learning a lot more about the kafala system there, a lot more about the fact that if you're in a same-sex relationship, you can end up in prison for seven years. But it's working domestically. If you look at the Qatari press, it is all rainbows and unicorns when it's talking about this World Cup. And the same thing goes when you look back at what happened in 1936. Hitler's popularity ratings go through the roof after these Olympics. He gets very into the games. People go wild when he's there. Many of the athletes who come in for the opening ceremony

give the heil to him. It gives him all this international prestige and legitimacy. And he pivots that outward after the Olympics when he uses it, among other things, among other key factors to pivot toward war. You mentioned the German competitors had to kind of look right. What about Jews in this German team? Were they completely excluded? At first, they were excluded. But after some pushback from the International Olympic Committee, a few athletes were reintegrated into these various sports. Helene Meyer, for example, participated, actually won a medal. And when she was on the medal stand, she thrust her hand in a Nazi Heil salute. There were other athletes, Margaret Gretel Bergman,

who was one of the best high jumpers at that time. She was told that she would have an opportunity to compete. But in the end, she was excluded from the team, I think in part because she was actually quite outspoken against what was happening to Jewish people in Germany and beyond. And so there were just two really main athletes who participated in the Olympics in 1936 who had Jewish backgrounds, the other being Rudy Ball. He was a really good hockey player. And so they just wanted to have him on the team. And actually there was other members of the team that said, if you keep Rudy Ball off just because he's Jewish, I'm not going to play either. And so

if they wanted to do well, they had to include Rudy Ball. So there was different reasons, but that fact that there were a couple Jewish athletes that were allowed into the German team, let the Nazis say, hey, look, we're not discriminating against Jewish people when everybody could see it all around the country, everywhere they looked, whether it was the Nuremberg laws or other less known measures. You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit, talking about sport washing. More coming up. Sport washing, more coming up. Over on the Warfare podcast by History Hit, we bring you brand new military histories from around the world.

Each week, twice a week, we release new episodes with world-leading historians, expert policy makers, and the veterans who served. From the greatest tanks of the Second World War. And so what are you actually trying to get out of your tank? You're trying to get maneuverability, and you're trying to get a really big gun. Your Tiger and your Panther are there to dominate the battlefield,

primarily on the Eastern Front and in the North Africa and all that sort of stuff. But by the time they're actually coming in in decent numbers, that moment has already passed. Through to new histories that help us understand current conflicts. Any invader, any attacker, any adversary

will exploit gaps within society. It was true then, it's true today. But the Finns signaled that they were united, and I think that's what the Ukrainians should signal today too. Subscribe to Warfare from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts and join us on the front lines of military history. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. To be continued... the best of friends. Murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

Before we come to the games themselves, were there boycotts? Yes, it's really interesting. Here, I'm talking to you from the United States, and there was a really active movement to try to boycott the Olympics, and they were very successful. The NAACP, the big group that supports black rights here in the United States, actually said that they thought it'd be a good idea to boycott the Olympics. And it even went

to a vote at the American Olympic Committee. And they came very, very close to doing a boycott because of the things that we've been talking about. In the end, they decided not to boycott here in the United States, in part because of a fascinating and problematic character from history, a guy called Avery Brundage. Brundage was a big honcho in U.S. Olympic circles. He actually participated in the 1912 Olympics where he got beat pretty badly by Jim Thorpe. And he quit, actually, Avery Brundage did, toward the end of the competition. He gave up. And this is something that haunted him for his whole life. I'll tell you what, though, he never gave up on the notion that the Olympics should not be political. And as he rose the ranks through the American Olympic Committee,

and eventually after the German Olympics in 1936 in Berlin, he was elevated to the International Olympic Committee where he was president from 1952 to 1972. And Mr. Brundage did almost everything he could to make sure that the people from the United States participated and that that boycott movement was quelled. He went so far as to travel to Germany, got a tour very heavily guided by the Nazis themselves. He was at the mercy of their interpreters, returned to the United States and said, you know what, everything is just perfectly fine there. There's no need to boycott whatsoever. And that helped them win the vote to actually go participate in those games. Now, Avery Brundage comes into history later because he becomes known as Slavery Avery for his anti-Black racist views. He was also well-known anti-Semite. I've actually had the,

I wouldn't quite call it a privilege, but I've gone through his papers and wow, did he have some wild ideas. He was actually anti-medicine because he felt like it helped the weak stay alive. He was anti-social security, anti-any welfare programs, and he was also very much anti-black and anti-Jewish. But his efforts in 1936 helped stave off a boycott that was pretty hot and heavy here in the US. And so the other nations, I guess, like the Brits and the Czechs turned up as well. What about when the games were actually on? They were a good calling card, weren't they, for the German government, the Nazi government? I've read accounts of people generally impressed, thought the Germans were kind of building some new, super modern, futuristic society.

Yes, absolutely. They built a massive stadium for the occasion. They spared no expense. They were by and large covered really well in the press. I mean, I've gone through the international press and how they covered these Olympics. It was breathless at times. I mean, the New York Times couldn't heap enough praise on Hitler as like one of this really important set of leaders in Europe. And you couldn't walk away from the Olympics, the New York Times asserted, without feeling that Hitler was one of the greatest leaders in all the world. And so, yes, hosting these Olympics really affected the way that his reputation sort of defrayed and sprayed out into the world. People will know probably about the Jesse Owens story from the Olympics. We should say in passing, the kind of accepted myth of Hitler snubbing

Jesse Owens because he was a black athlete who beats Jesse, that's not entirely true. And Jesse Owens said, if anything, it was the Americans when he got back that snubbed him more, right? Tell me quickly about that. Absolutely. So Jesse Owens won four gold medals at these Olympics, really throwing into question the Nazis' racialized and racist theories. And there is a myth. Yeah, let's dispel that right up. The myth is that, like you said, Hitler snubbed Owens.

But what was happening was he was congratulating various winners, Hitler was, once they won their gold medal. But he was told by the International Olympic Committee that if he was going to do that for some athletes, he had to be open to doing it for all. And so he actually decided at that point that he wasn't going to do it for all the athletes. That would have been too big of a burden. And so he decided to leave the stadium ahead of two other black athletes from the United States who had won medals. So in fact, if anyone was snubbed, it might have been those athletes, but even they really weren't directly snubbed. So it was an agreement between the International Olympic Committee and Hitler that if he was going to congratulate one gold medal winner, he would congratulate them all. that snubbed me was the US government, was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In fact, he came back,

Jesse Owens, to the United States and he campaigned against Franklin Delano Roosevelt and for the candidate running against him. And he, for the rest of his life, would talk about how actually Hitler wasn't that bad to him, but really the disgrace was when he returned to the United States. Crazy. What about visitors? We've seen stories in Qatar at the moment with LGBT plus visitors or even visitors that want to have a beer. What was the visitor experience like? Did the Nazis, were they heavy handed? Nazis were. They knew that the global press had descended on Berlin and that they were ready to write stories and that they were alerted to some of the things that were happening already in Nazi Germany. And so as with numerous sports mega events, whether it's the Berlin Games, whether it's the 1978 World Cup in Argentina, or whether it's what we're seeing in Qatar right now, governments were on their best behavior. If anything, maybe the Qataris are the least of the three in terms of their behavior. They've been cracking down on people for

wearing LGBTQ shirts, rainbow shirts, rainbow bucket hats for the people from Wales. But by and large, it was a safe space for people to travel and do their tourism during those Olympic Games. Of course, we know exactly what happened immediately afterwards. That's precisely what also happened in Argentina in 1978 when they hosted the World Cup, was that there was a sort of respite in the repression. But as soon as the sports mega event was over, boom, they clicked back into gear and the repression intensifies once the global media depart. So was it mission accomplished, do you think, for the Nazi regime? You mentioned the New York Times came away with glowing reviews. I mean, do you think it did successfully wash, launder the reputation of that administration, of that regime? Yeah, I think you're right, Dan. And it was successful on both the domestic and the international fronts. As I mentioned, domestically,

Hitler came out of those Olympics with his highest approval ratings ever, especially among domestic workers. Again, there were other factors at work with that. I mean, there was a whole lot else happening at that time. Also, in terms of his global reputation, he looked great for a lot of the world. He hosted this big event that was largely successful, the Chinese Stadium. There were a number of records broken. Black athletes did well and they weren't heavily repressed. It is kind of an interesting side note, though, that the German secret police were watching very carefully these black athletes. And when German women approached them, they were often carted off and stopped from engaging with them. So it's not like it was these black athletes

were just able to roam around without any surveillance whatsoever. But overall, yeah, Black athletes were just able to roam around without any surveillance whatsoever. But overall, yeah, I think it's fair to say that Berlin Olympics were a successful sports wash for Hitler and the Nazi regime. And this should be a warning call for the rest of us to pay attention when these problematic, autocratic, authoritarian dictators get these sports mega events because it does allow them to appear important or legitimate on the world stage, while at the same time stoking up that patriotism and nationalism that can pave a path for war. So it's interesting that you're very struck by how it's important

domestically. So actually China having the Olympics or Qatar having the World Cup isn't in my own selfish way. I'm assuming it's designed to impress us. But yes, it's actually to shore up the regime within. I think that that's fair. Certainly, China saw very different Olympics in 2022 than the rest of the world did. There's been some really interesting analysis of the opening ceremony in Beijing in 2008 versus the rest of the world. So like the version that they saw in China saw Hu Jintao looking really important. And whenever Taiwan was mentioned, they panned to him and he'd look tough. That didn't happen on the international version. So you actually get literally different versions of key events like the opening ceremony. And certainly,

like the opening ceremony. And certainly, Russia benefited tremendously from hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics. Vladimir Putin's approval rates went through the roof ahead of those games. And while the rest of the world was pretty tough on Putin, especially in England and the United States for their anti-gay propaganda law that they had passed in 2013, just ahead of those Olympics, law that they had passed in 2013, just ahead of those Olympics, the fact that Putin stood up to the United States, to England, to the West, and stood by his policy, and also did a number of other things, made him tremendously popular at home. His approval ratings, Putin's, were 86% at the conclusion of the Sochi Olympics. And of course, all your listeners will know what he did immediately after those Olympics. And before the Paralympics, he invaded Crimea. So again, sports washing is not just a mere branding exercise, but it can actually be

a conveyor belt of life and death. And I guess the minute the international media left Berlin, the repression kind of cranked back in, did it, in the 1930s? That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And that is standard practice when it comes to sports washing and sports mega events. So you were as a scholar and as a former pro athlete, what can we do to stop the sport washing? Is it just inevitable now? I do not think it is inevitable. And I think we need to look long and hard at the organizations that assign these big sports events like the Olympics and the Soccer World Cup to these regimes. If you look at the International Olympic Committee's own Olympic charter, they have all sorts of provisions in what they call their fundamental principles of Olympism that are about non-discrimination, that are about support for LGBTQ people and support for people to be who they are.

And yet they turn around and assign the Olympics to places where those very rights are violated. Same with FIFA. If you look at the world governing bodies for soccer's own statutes, it talks about how discrimination is not to be tolerated in any form. They even talk about discrimination around sexual orientation that's in their statutes. So a good place to start would just be to have the International Olympic Committee and FIFA live by the old standards that they put in their core documents. Now, they haven't shown a real willingness to do that. They have instead shown a real willingness to follow the money.

I mean, FIFA says they're going to get $7.5 billion from the Qatar World Cup alone just from that. That's a billion dollars more than Russia four years ago. And similarly, the International Olympic Committee gets billions upon billions every time they host the Olympic Games. So there's a lot of money at stake. If they can't do that, well, then we need to think about alternatives to these organizations. And I think certainly when it comes to the International Olympic Committee,

it's past time to think about how to get rid of the folks that are in there right now and replace them with people who will stand up for these principles, one. Or I think it'd be great to have athletes who've participated in the Olympics, who are thinking athletes, who are committed to the ideals in the Olympic charter around non-discrimination, let them have a go at it, because they certainly couldn't do much worse than the people that are there right now. We could do a whole separate podcast on the International Olympic Committee, buddy. Yes, we could.

Have the Olympics and the World Cup as a brand ever been seriously challenged by breakaway groups? Absolutely. You know, in the 1920s and 1930s, because of the discrimination against women, there was the Women Olympics that started. Women were largely excluded from the Olympic Games in the early days. In fact, in the first Olympics in 1896, not a single woman was allowed to compete. Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the French aristocrat who started the Olympics, felt like the only thing that women should do when it comes to the Olympics is place the laurels on the heads of the successful men, or he said, produce male babies that could eventually become Olympians. And so from that exclusion came innovation. And these women started the Women's Olympics.

Numerous installations happened in the 1920s and 30s. Alongside that, there was also something called the Workers' Olympics. Because in the early days of the Olympics, the definition of amateurism was such that if you were a great picker or a bricklayer, you were considered a professional and thus excluded from participating in the early days, thereby leaving the field wide open for aristocrats such as the Baron. And in fact, the Baron, as a side note, won the prize for poetry at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm. But anyways, out of that exclusion of workers came numerous installations of the workers' games. And these were huge endeavors. I'm telling you, Dan, there was like hundreds of thousands of people that would participate in these. There was high-level

athletes that were like very serious. There were sort of middle-level. There were people that were just doing it for fun. And they had numerous installations. They had an installation of the workers' games planned for 1936 in Barcelona, but because of the Franco dictatorship, it was totally scuppered, and they had to move it elsewhere. They actually had it the next year. I think it was in Antwerp, actually, in 1937, but that was going to be a big event in Barcelona in 1936 that, unfortunately, was undercut by what happened there historically. And shame it didn't manage to survive the Second World War. Well, Jules, thank you very much for coming on the show. Tell us what the new book's called.

It's called The 1936 Olympics, Race, Sportswashing and Power. And yeah, I'm really excited about it. It was a really great time talking to you, Dan. Thanks for having me on the show. Jules Boykoff, thank you very much for coming on. Cheers. you