Hitherto such a case has never occurred in the history of the Olympics. Count Baillet-Latour, President, IOC In the winter of 1935 the national Olympic Committees received details of the accommodation for the Games. An Olympic exhibition opened in Berlin, and remained open until the spring. An Olympic Publicity Week, run by a Nazi leisure organisation, proferred ‘Strength Through Joy’. Training areas were being selected for the athletes before and during the Games. A news service charted progress in fourteen languages. The pace was quickening and that kept the twin themes of sport and politics flowing in something approaching tandem. It does not make for a smooth narrative because the staccato sequence of events in both strands were not themselves smooth. By now Hitler held Germany in an iron grip. All news was heavily censored so that an ordinary citizen had no informed perspective about anything. German cultural and artistic life, once so wonderfully vibrant and challenging in so many spheres, lay dead; in its place Hitler put his hatred of Jews and communists.
