Sport & the Nazis Part One: Introduction

PROLOGUE

Eugene Black loved sport. He played centre-half for his school football team. He was just a normal Czechoslovakian boy.

Until, one day, his entire family were forced onto a lorry and deported to Auschwitz Concentration Camp. He lost all of them, eventually, apart from his older brother. His mother, father, and sisters all perished. He was later sent to Buchenwald and then Bergen-Belsen, as a slave labourer.

His crime? Being Jewish in the Nazi state.

Eugene survived and you can read his story here.

iNTRODUCTION

When the Nazis completed their rise to power, in 1933, nobody could fully appreciate the danger they posed to the world. And yet, the warning signs were there. Hitler, and the party, stated their clear aims of eliminating the Jews from Germany, for years before they took control of the state. They held views on Jewish people, that were contradictory. On the one hand, the propaganda told Germans that the Jews were Untermensch - subhuman and worthless. On the other, that they were a group of dangerous elites that controlled the world, through sinister means.

Ethnic Germans, the only real Germans in the eyes of the Nazis, were the master race. And part of that vision for Germany was to have strong, healthy, master race citizens. Being outdoors and exercising and competing in sports, in other words. The Völkisch movement was one of the biggest inspirations for this fantasy. It was all about being connected to the soil and pure blood and other total nonsense.

Jews were not part of this. It didn’t matter that they had been historically excluded from Völkisch professions. That they were mostly only allowed to work in trade and finance didn’t matter to the Nazis. They saw them as city people, bankers, urbanites. The opposite of real Germans.

It didn’t even matter that the Jews were a really well-assimilated group. It didn’t matter that they had made incredible contributions to art, literature, music, academia, science, economics. And, yes, even sport.

The worst thing you could be, to a Nazi, was Jewish. And, eventually, being Jewish was a crime.

In this series, we’re going to explore the role that sport played in Nazi Germany. It will be an ongoing endeavour, run over the course of several years. We will look at how the Nazis used sport, as a propaganda tool, culminating in the 1936 Winter and Summer Olympics, held in Germany. We’ll look at the societies and foundations and the role they played in German life. And, most of all, we will look at Jewish sports stars. Holocaust survivors and ones murdered by the state.

It is a sad story. A story with many facets, many faces. But also inspirational. To show the best of humanity, facing the worst of humanity. And, sometimes, triumphing.

We hope you enjoy the series, and that you find it valuable.

We will do our best to honour those whose names must never be forgotten, nor the fates that they suffered.

J.S. Leatherbarrow
Founding Editor