Olympic Games
German and American athletes have participated in the Olympic Games since the beginning of the modern Olympic movement in 1896. Whereas American sportsmen entered the Olympic arena with much athletic clout and have maintained it for over a century, Germans had to earn their Olympic currency, reinvesting it over the century in the development of powerful Olympic teams.
Before World War II, in the first serious encounter between American and German Olympic teams in 1936, race defined the Olympic rivalry between the two nations, as black Americans confronted the professed Aryan superiority of the Third Reich in Berlin. After World War II, the geopolitical division of Germany between east and west shaped the Olympic rivalry between Germany and America. Germans did not compete against Americans in 1980, when West Germany joined the United States in boycotting the Olympic Games in Moscow. Similarly, Americans did not compete against East Germans in 1984, as East Germany supported the Soviet Union in boycotting the Olympic Games in Los Angeles. West Germany, in support of the United States, however, competed in that event. With German reunification in 1990, Germany formed a single Olympic team—one that benefited significantly, but temporarily, from the legacy of the powerful East German Olympic teams—to offer a formidable challenge to American Olympic superiority.From 1896 to 1932, Americans dominated the Germans in the Olympic Games, winning 771 to 135 medals in the Summer Games and 46 to 16 medals in the Winter Games. World War I hampered Germany’s Olympic development, as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) canceled Olympic Games, scheduled to be held in Berlin, in 1916, and did not permit Germany to participate in the eighth and ninth Olympiads in 1920 and 1924, respectively, as punishment for its wartime conduct. Germany won a total of 31 medals in the 1928 Olympic Games, its best performance since 1912, when it garnered 25 medals.
Germany’s 1928 performance, in which it finished second in the total medal count to the United States total of 56, reflected the political stability and relative prosperity of the Weimar Republic. In the 1932 Summer Olympic Games, Germany won only 20 medals, finishing ninth in the total medal count, whereas the United States, competing in Los Angeles, led all nations with 103 total medals. Germany’s 1932 performance, in contrast to its 1928 success, reflected the nation’s downward political and economic spiral since the collapse of the global economy in late 1929.The 1936 Olympic Games marked a turning point in relations between America and Germany in the competition. In 1928 the IOC awarded the eleventh Summer Olympic Games to Berlin and the fourth Winter Olympic Games to Garmisch- Partenkirschen, both scheduled for 1936. With the rise of the National Socialist German Worker’s Party (NSDAP) to power after 1933, which avidly promoted its policy of Aryan racial purity and anti-Semitism, the United States began to reconsider participation in the so-called Nazi Olympics. American opposition to participation in the 1936 Olympic Games came not from the United States government, which remained silent on the issue, but from athletic organizations, such as the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU). Although the AAU voted to boycott the 1936 Olympic Games, the American Olympic Committee (AOC), led by Avery Brundage, an unabashed supporter of Nazi Germany, declared that American athletes would participate in Berlin. Germany defeated America, winning a total of 89 to 56 medals, in the 1936 Summer Olympic Games. Germany’s victory, however, was bittersweet, in that the U. S. cadre of black track and field athletes, led by Jesse Owens, spoiled Nazi ambitions to showcase its notion of Aryan racial superiority on the athletic field. American black athletes won 11 of the 23 medals won by the United States in track and field. Owens alone won 4 gold medals in the 100- and 200-meter races, the long jump, and the 4 x 100-meter relay.
In the long jump, German Lutz Long befriended Owens, advising the American on how to correct his technique. After congratulating the Finnish medal winners in the 10,000- meter race, German leader Adolf Hitler refused to congratulate black American Cornelius Johnson, who had won the high jump. Hitler refrained from congratulating medal winners after the IOC informed him that he must congratulate all or none.The IOC cancelled the 1940 and 1944 Olympic Games during World War II and, once the games resumed in 1948, did not permit Germany or Japan to compete in them that year. When Germany returned to the Olympic fold in 1952, the IOC debated how to treat the newly divided nation, offering East Germany, which had not yet formed a national Olympic Committee, the opportunity to participate as part of the West German team. East Germany refused to compete as part of the West German team that year, but did so in subsequent Summer Olympiads until 1968, when it fielded its own team in Mexico City. Over the next twenty years, East Germany, a small nation of roughly 18 million people, developed powerful Olympic teams, rivaled only by those of the Soviet Union. In the 1976 and 1988 Summer Olympic Games, East Germany finished second to the Soviet Union in the total medal count, with the United States finishing third, and West Germany fourth. East Germany finished first in the total medal count at the 1984 Winter Olympic Games. Much of East Germany’s strength came from its female contingent, which dominated its western counterpart and the United States in track and field, canoeing, gymnastics, handball, and rowing. East Germany’s much-acclaimed female swimmers, however, failed to dominate the Americans, as the latter claimed 103 medals to East Germany’s 76 in the pool from 1968 to 1988.
In 1972 Munich hosted the Summer Olympic Games, marking the return of the Olympics to Germany after 1936. Eager to shake free of its Nazi past, West Germany wanted this Olympiad to showcase world harmony and peace.
Terrorism, however, spoiled the peaceful and harmonious tone of the Games, as eight Palestinian gunmen broke into the dormitory housing the Israeli Olympic team, killing two, and taking nine as hostages. Demanding safe passage from Germany and the release of 200 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, the terrorists and their captives arrived by helicopter at a military airport, where West German police opened fire on them. As a result of the ensuing battle, all nine hostages died, as well as five terrorists, and one policeman. For thirty-four hours, the IOC suspended Olympic competition and held a memorial service for the slain Israelis in the main Olympic stadium, before American Avery Brundage, president of the IOC, proclaimed that “the Games must go on.” Before the hostage crisis disrupted the Games, a controversy over the type of pole used in the pole vault directly affected the outcome of that event in favor of East Germany. Before the start of the Games, East Germany complained about the Cata-Pole, a newly designed, very flexible carbon composite pole used widely by U.S. and Swedish vaulters, but unavailable to the East Germans. Initially, the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF), the governing body of track and field, banned the pole, but four days before the start of the Olympic pole vault competition lifted the ban, only to reimpose it before the event. As a result, Wolfgang Nordwig, ofEast Germany, won the pole vault, ending American hegemony over the event that had prevailed since 1896.
In December 1979 the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and in January 1980 President Jimmy Carter announced that his country would not participate in the Summer Olympic Games to be held in Moscow that year. Sixty-five nations, including West Germany, joined the United States in boycotting the Moscow Olympics. East Germany, on the other hand, competed in Moscow, in support of its Communist brethren. The 1980 Summer Olympic Games became, in track and field parlance, a “dual meet” between the Soviet Union and East Germany, as the Soviets won 195 medals and East Germany garnered 126.
Hungary, in third place, won only 41 medals. In 1984 the Soviet Union returned the favor, leading a boycott of the Summer Olympic Games held in Los Angeles that year. Thirteen nations, including East Germany, joined the Soviet Union in boycotting the Los Angeles Olympics. Although fewer nations boycotted the 1984 than the 1980 Olympics Games, those that stayed away from Los Angeles accounted for 58 percent of the medals won at Montreal in 1976. The United States dominated the games, winning 174 medals, compared to the 59 won by West Germany in second place.Since the reunification of Germany in 1990, Germany has competed in the Olympics as a single team. With the dissolution of the East German Olympic program, however, the world learned that many of East Germany’s medal-winning performances resulted from an official government policy of including performanceenhancing drugs in the training of athletes. Despite the widespread use of these stimulants by the East German Olympic team, none of its athletes ever tested positive for doping during Olympic competition, as team physicians developed successful means to mask the drugs. German inquiries into the use of performance-enhancing drugs as part of the Olympic- training regimen led to the prosecution of many former East German sports officials. Nevertheless, the German Olympic movement benefited from the unification of the former East and West teams, as the single German team inherited many of the athletes of the once powerful East German program. While Germany won the total medal count at the 1992 Winter Olympic Games, it managed to finish third behind the Soviet Union, which finished first, and the United States, which finished second, in the 1992 Summer Olympic Games. In 1996 Germany finished third to Russia in the total medal count, as the United States prevailed above all that year. The United States won the total medal count again at the 2000 Summer Olympic Games, while Germany finished fifth behind Russia, China, and Australia.
Adam R. Hornbuckle
References and Further Reading
Dyerson, Mark. Making the American Team: Sport, Culture, and the Olympic Experience. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois, 1998.
Guttmann, Allen. The Olympics: A History of the Modern Games. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois, 1994.
Hill, Christopher. Olympic Politics: Athens to Atlanta, 1896-1996. Manchester and New York: Manchester University, 1996.
Mandell, Richard D. The Nazi Olympics. New York: Macmillan, 1971.
Wallechinsky, David. The Complete Book of the Winter Olympics. New York: Overlook, 1988.
------. The Complete Book of the Summer Olympics: Sydney 2000 Edition. New York: Overlook, 2000.