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 enlarge | Author: David Clay Large
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
Buy New: $12.63
You Save: $15.32 (55%)
New (32) Used (9) from $12.63
Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 41955
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 416
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.6
ISBN: 0393058840
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.48
EAN: 9780393058840
ASIN: 0393058840
Publication Date: April 16, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Good Condition, Dispatched from UK, delivery time 10 to 12 Working days
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Would a widespread boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympics really have made a difference? October 5, 2007
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
That is the million dollar question that governments, historians and academics have been wrestling with for the past 70 years. On the surface it would certainly appear that a successful boycott of the 1936 Summer Olympics by the major democracies of the world might have dealt Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party a serious setback. But would a boycott alone have been enough to deal the Third Reich a fatal blow? And why were nations like England, France and the United States so reluctant to withdraw from these games?? The answers to these questions and numerous others are not quite as simple as they might seem. In "Nazi Games: The Olympics of 1936" author David Clay Large presents a comprehensive look at the social and political upheaval leading up to the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin as well as offering a pretty revealing look at the games themselves and at the athletes who chose to participate in them.
The fact of the matter was that the goals and ideals of the Olympic movement were antihical to just about everything that the Nazi party stood for. But Adolf Hitler and his henchman saw in these Olympic games a propoganda opportunity of momentous proportions. With the obvious benefit of 20/20 hindsight it is really difficult to understand why various world leaders and members of the International Olympic Committee chose to play along with these thugs and seemed unwilling to do due diligence and dig a little deeper and demand answers to so many of the troubling questions that government officials, journalists and average citizens were asking in the weeks and months leading up to the games. Did the Nazis actually get to some of these prominent people or did the vast majority of Olympic officials truly agree with the AOC official Avery Brundage when he opined time and again that "the Olympics should supercede politics?" David Clay Large explores these important questions in great detail throughout "Nazi Games".
Now as I indicated earlier Large also presents his readers with a fairly detailed summary of the 1936 summer games themselves. You will meet many of the athletes who excelled in areas such as track and field, rowing, boxing and of course gymnastics. And you will find out which nations dominated these sports and why. American readers will be especially interested in the athletic prowess displayed by the legendary black athlete Jesse Owens who almost single-handedly dominated the track and field events in these games. Likewise, Glenn Morris, a 24 year old car salesman from Denver, scored an impressive victory in the decathlon and snatched a gold medal for the U.S. There were many other impressive performances by athletes from all over the globe in these games. In fact, many observers declared that the 1936 Berlin games were indeed the best games yet since the Olympics were revived in 1896. Yet it is quite clear that there was a pall of hatred and racism hanging over these games that was clearly about to explode. Seems like far too many people were in a state of denial. It really makes you wonder if we are not seeing this same phenomenon repeating itself as the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China draw near. Stay tuned.
In "Nazi Games: The Olympic Games of 1936" author Daniel Clay Large does a workmanlike job of weaving together two disparate story lines. Readers get an inside look at the horrors of Nazi politics while at the same time learning all about the Olympic movement and the international sports scene. I thought that Large pulled this off quite well most of the time but every once in a while I found "Nazi Games" to be just a bit long-winded. Nonetheless, "Nazi Games" certainly is a fine addition to the historical record and a book worthy of your time and attention. Recommended.
Fantastic, insightful overview of the 1936 Olympic Games August 20, 2007
2 out of 6 found this review helpful
I suppose that I should issue a pre-review caveat: I am hardly an expert on the history of World War II in general, and am even less of an expert when it comes to the history of sports (Olympic or otherwise). Consequently, some of the notes mentioned in the other reviews--and, especially, some of the errors pointed out--flew right by me.
That said, I greatly enjoyed "Nazi Games" for what it did provide: a fantastically written account of one of the strangest sporting events of the twentieth century. Large eschews the standard, overly dry historical tone in favor of something befitting the energetic subject matter at hand, while simultaneously taking into account the looming dread and foreboding captured by the epoch in question. By detailing the historical events (both directly related to the Olympics and otherwise) that led up to the 1936, Large is able to contextualize the 1936 games with an preestablished cast of characters, and thus move his reader with considerable ease through a tale that involves a fair bit of action, but also a good amount of bureaucratic wrangling, diplomatic maneuvering, and domestic/international upheaval.
As someone entering a new period of enthusiasm for WWII-era history, I found Large's subject matter and execution to be very refreshing. While my lack of expertise in the subject at hand makes me wary of recommending the work based on factual accuracy alone, I can heartily recommend it as a well-written and well-researched look into the Olympic "calm"--although it was, of course, nothing of the sort--before the storm of WWII.
1936 Olympics: Triumph of the Propagandist April 28, 2007
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
Berlin's Olympics of 1936: The mother of all monuments to the unholy mix of sports and politics. For three weeks in the summer of that year (and earlier at the Winter Games, also held in Germany), the Nazis camouflaged (or nearly so) the ugly reality in favor of a happy face of Teutonic pride and prowess.
In a tour-de-force of probing research and supple exposition, history professor David Clay Large (himself an accomplished distance runner) first sets the Olympics of 1936 in the context of Baron de Coubertin's revival of their Greek forerunner, and then delves into the unsavory brew of athletics and nationalism, which Berlin has come to epitomize.
The picture isn't edifying, for many foresaw the implications. Though today the duplicity of Leni Riefenstahl's film "Olympia" is widely recognized (whatever its merits as innovative documentary), few know of the efforts of the American Jewish Congress, the NAACP, as well as labor, socialist, and communist organizations to thwart the Berlin games, or at least instigate a boycott by athletes. Large also sheds new light on the tale of "Hitler snubbing Jesse Owens." Not only are most accounts fundamentally mythic, Owens directed harsh words for withheld congratulations to FDR, not Hitler.
Emblematic of Nazi propaganda aims was the campaign leading up to the Winter Games to rid the Garmisch-Partenkirschen area of anti-Semitic signs. The world, of course, soon learned all-too-well of the Nazis' commitment to Jewish extermination. (This was no drive to reform the population, such as seen in the recent move by the Chinese to curtail public spitting in advance of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.)
The role of Olympic Goliath, American Avery Brundage, receives a thorough bruising. Brundage's papers collected at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, prove a revealing trove. Not only did the leader of the U.S. Olympic Committee vehemently oppose the boycott proposals, he gave open support for racial explanations of African-American victories trumped up by the German hosts. (Not to mention Brundage's subsequent reward in the form of the construction contract for the German Embassy in Washington, D.C.!)
Finally, in a well-considered epilogue Large explores the fallout from Berlin's 1936 Games. The U.S.'s "ill-advised" participation helped leverage Jimmy Carter's boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics (in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan), leading to the USSR's refusal to attend the Los Angeles Games four years later. In 1972, Avery Brudage, by then head of the International Olympic Committee, still suffering from the myopia exhibited in Berlin, ordered the Games in Munich to proceed a mere day after the killing of eleven Israeli athletes by armed Palestinians. Are there parallels between the Third Reich's propaganda triumphs of 1936 and the possibilities for China to mask its human rights abuses in the up-coming Beijing Olympics? "Nazi Games" frames the question nicely.
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