Berlin, 1936: Sixteen Days in August by Oliver Hilmes
The Bodley Head, 2018
320 pages / Penguin Random House
Shortly after the end of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Adolph Hitler headed toward his retreat in Berchtesgaden. He had done his duty, attending all sixteen days of the event and he must have been pleased. Jesse Owens notwithstanding, Germany had easily won the most gold medals. More importantly, Hitler had impressed the world both with German efficiency and his own professions of peace. Almost forgotten was the pesky business of his re-occupation of the Rhineland just a few months earlier, a move that Hitler had insisted upon against the advice of his generals.
For Hitler, the athletic events are the sideshow, the real goal is to convince England in particular and the world in general of his good intentions and Germany’s new magnificence. Nothing is overlooked. Goering, Ribbentrop, and Goebbels compete to hold the most glittering reception. The Berlin Philharmonic performs at the Olympic Village. Early on, the government has instructed the German press, “We urgently warn against burdening reports on the Olympic Games with racial perspectives.” The Berlin Police President proclaims that the “deplorable custom” of open air drying of laundry and airing of beds “will no longer be tolerated” especially during the Olympic Games. In his recently translated Berlin 1936 Oliver Hilmes writes, “These sixteen days of August give many people new hope that things will change and Hitler can be trusted to keep his promises of peace. The sporting spectacle has helped pull the wool over their eyes.”
I have a weakness for books like Berlin 1936. Done right, they illuminate far more than the immediate period they describe. Jay Winik’s April 1865 and Bill Bryson’s Summer 1927 both fall into this category. Berlin 1936 does not quite merit this accolade. The organization is sensible enough. Each day of the Olympics is presented as a separate chapter, each one containing cameo appearances of various individuals most of whom are in the midst of some crisis or another. A final chapter describes their ultimate fates but unfortunately we know so little about most of them that it is hard to work up much interest in their destiny.
Still, this rather slender book is a worthwhile read. Its drama lies in the contrast between what Germany is presenting to the world and what is going on out of view: There is, for example, the concentration camp still under construction just outside Berlin itself. Fifteen miles from the Olympic Stadium, hundreds of Roma have been herded into a camp under deplorable conditions. Then, there is the increasingly desperate Wermacht captain, the “unofficial mayor of the Olympic Village” who is one-quarter Jewish (a hybrid of the second degree under German law) and will blow his brains out when the games end.
And there is an abundance of fascinating information. How many know that Goebbels and Hitler both loved the same woman, that Goebbels ended up marrying her and that Hitler blessed the union with the understanding that he and Magda would maintain a close platonic relationship? I certainly didn’t. It is also hard to forget the moment when the famous author Thomas Wolfe is challenged for his casual Anti-Semitism by Mildred Harnack, an American literary scholar living in Berlin who herself will be executed for anti-Nazi activities at Hitler’s personal insistence in February 1943.
Though this is not a great book–it makes no attempt at deep analysis–it is an entertaining one. A light work, if that is possible, on a dark subject. A work of reportage by a writer with a good eye for detail focusing on a moment in history that we forget at our peril. A reminder that athletes and politicians do not share a common agenda when it comes to what is still the world’s most compelling athletic event.
Walter Frank has written two well-received books in retirement after a thirty-five year legal career: Making Sense of the Constitution (Southern Illinois University Press), a primer on constitutional interpretation and Law and the Gay Rights Story, a study of the struggle for gay rights focusing on critical legal cases. He currently lives in Princeton, New Jersey with his wife of forty-three years, Lydia Frank.
