By Paul Doyle
THE GUARDIAN
Thu 24 Nov 2011
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| Peruvian goalkeeper Juan Valdivieso |
The Nazis knew the power of football. They encouraged folks to play it and oversaw the proliferation of clubs across the country, all part of their efforts to build a fit, regimented nation. Before it flourished under the Reich, however, football was first broken apart and reorganised, with the worker- and church-run clubs abolished and replaced by outfits run along lines more in keeping with the Nazi movement.
That, of course, meant sports clubs were forbidden from selecting Jewish athletes – although for football that decree was not imposed until after the 1936 Olympics, for fear that such blatant discrimination would increase support for activists around the world who were calling for a boycott of the Berlin Games (in the buildup to the Games most image-savvy German towns temporarily removed all anti-Jewish signs and other visible evidence of persecution). The Nazis wanted the Games to go ahead and were particularly eager for football to be included – not merely because of the propaganda value of a German victory in the world's most popular sport but because they needed the money: football was the one sport guaranteed to fill stadiums.
Football had been ditched for the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles amid arguments over the definition of amateurism and because the American organisers did not want to help the sport take root in the land of gridiron, and Fifa did not want anything detracting from the lustre of the World Cup, the first edition of which had taken place two years earlier. German organisers successfully lobbied for it to be reinstated for the Berlin Games and wanted to widen the tournament to include more teams, but in the end only 16 turned up. In April 1936 organisers even wrote to the FA to invite a team from Great Britain, which had not entered the Games since their humiliating 3-1 loss to Norway in 1920. Britain had stood on the sidelines in the 1920s whingeing about others' uncouth disregard for pure amateurism.
Although the Scottish and Welsh FAs were, as now, wary about weakening their autonomy by contributing to a united British team, all four home nations eventually agreed to take part in the 1936 event – but all insisted that only players who met the British definition of amateurism could be selected. The squad, captained by Bernard Joy of Casuals FC, comprised 14 English players, four Scots and a pair of Welshmen and Northern Irishmen. The handbook issued to each player on their call-up gives an idea of how amateur it was, with the British Olympic Association (BOA) stipulating that players' travel expenses would be met and kit provided but warning players to bring their own toilet soap. As Steve Menary notes in his fine book, GB United?, the head of the BOA wrote to each player to notify them of their call-ups and included the following postscript to his letters: "As there is a month to go before we leave for Berlin, kindly take some exercise."
The official seeding ranked Great Britain as joint-favourites with Germany, although this reflected the complacency of those two countries rather than the actual state of the world game, as would become evident. Britain did not begin their campaign until the end of the first week, after a farcical opening match of the tournament between Italy and the USA. The Italians, with a completely different side to the one who triumphed in the 1934 World Cup but with the same manager, Vittorio Pozzo, took on the USA and won 1-0 thanks in part to an incident that may have gone some way towards establishing stereotypes that persist even now: the defender Achille Piccini clattered two American players so badly that they were unable to continue and when the German referee made to intervene, Italian players surrounded him, covered his eyes and held his arms by his sides as they dished out more punishment to their opponents. Incredibly, the referee was so shocked and/or intimidated that he neglected to send any Italians off before allowing play to resume.
Germany were one of the lesser teams in Europe until the 1920s, when their manager Otto Nerz transformed them into a force with which to be reckoned. They made their debut in the competition the day after Italy v USA and delighted the home crowd by sweeping to a 9-0 victory over Luxembourg. It was such a devastating display that Nazi officials decided they should invite Adolf Hitler to the next game – the Führer was no fan of football and had never been to a match but surely, his lackeys reasoned, he would want to be personally associated with an emphatic German triumph, especially as Nerz was a prominent member of the Nazi party, having joined up shortly after Hitler's accession to power in 1933.
Hitler duly showed up for the next match, along with Joseph Göbbels, Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess and 55,000 spectators, anticipating the righteous destruction of Norway. Before the final whistle, however, the Führer left his first and last football match in a mighty huff, as the underdogs pulled off a shock 2-0 victory.
The Norwegian win was thanks partially to the coaching of Asbjorn Halvorsen, who had taken time out from playing for Hamburg to manage his home nation. "He was ahead of his time," says sports historian Matti Goksoyr of the Norwegian University of Sports Science. "He trained the players to peak physical condition and tactically he was very astute at a time when many coaches had still not properly adapted to the changes in the offside law. Also, the players were especially highly motivated for that match – the captain, Jorgen Juve, was also the sports editor of the Tidens Tegn newspaper in Oslo and he had been publishing a daily diary from the tournament. You could see how his scepticism towards the German authorities grew as he complained more and more about the militarism of the Games and about how there were far too many uniforms about for his liking. That match is one of the most famous in Norwegian sporting history and, of course, its symbolic power would become particularly strong during the Nazi occupation during the war."
Germany were out and the next day Great Britain were eliminated too, trounced 5-4 by Poland even though the Poles had omitted their best player, Ernst Wilimowski, due to his refusal to curb his drinking. Britain had begun their campaign with an awkward 2-0 win over China but they were no match for Poland, who raced into a 5-1 lead.
Britain came back only when the Poles relented and through some overly rugged play, notably from Queen's Park's John Gardiner, who drew scorn from the crowd. "The Poles were a lively lot and gave the British defenders a harassing time," reported the Guardian. "Gardiner annoyed the crowd by his hefty charging and there was some booing when he bowled over God." They meant the Polish forward Hubert Gad, so what appeared as a stupendous Nietzschean achievement is in fact the only known instance of a typo in the Guardian.
The British team's presence was notable not only for their poor play. Between their two matches the players were taken to meet Hitler for propaganda purposes. "According to [Casuals'] Terry Huddle, the squad were taken to Berchtesgaden, Hitler's castle nearly 400 miles away from Berlin," writes Menary in GB United?. "Huddles even saved a photo showing the squad escorted by black-suited SS guards. All the footballers had to shake the dictator's hand. Into their nineties Huddle and [Cambridge University's] Daniel Pettit had still not forgotten. 'I've been washing my hand ever since,' said Pettit."
To their credit, however, the Great Britain players disobeyed instructions to give the Nazi salute before their matches, although the ferocity of the reaction from German diplomats would ensure the snub was not repeated: hence the infamous Nazi salute that the England team gave when they visited Berlin in 1938.
After Germany's elimination the Nazi authorities turned their attention to Austria, whom they expected to uphold Aryan pride even though this was a team of amateurs rather than the celebrated Wunderteam. In the quarter-finals they – and their English manager Jimmy Hogan – came up against Peru in what would turn out to be the most controversial match at the Games. The South Americans were a slick side, underlined in their first match with a 7-3 defeat of Finland. Austria took a two-goal lead in the first half but Peru took control in the second and drew level. They then had three goals disallowed by the Italian referee in the first half of extra-time. No matter, they scored two more in the second half to go 4-2 up … but a pitch invasion in the 119th minute led to an Austrian player suffering a leg injury and the match being abandoned. An epic dispute erupted.
The Peruvians decried a Nazi conspiracy, saying the pitch invasion was obviously staged to sabotage a South American victory that would have been all the more unpalatable for the host regime because five of the Peruvian players were black. The Austrians claimed that the invaders were Peruvian fans, a version backed up by the English newspaper the Daily Sketch, whose report of the time carries an extraordinary account of "about 1,000 Peruvian supporters" storming on to the pitch with "iron bars, knives and even a pistol".
An inquest and replay were ordered but the Peruvians, claiming they had no confidence in getting a fair hearing, packed up and went home, and Colombia joined them out of solidarity. Oddly, reports in Peru claimed that the reason for the abandonment of the match was that in the 119th minute the referee had suddenly noticed the pitch was the wrong size. This provoked tremendous anti-German protests in Peru, with dockers refusing to load goods on to German ships (and also on to a Norwegian one, apparently because all these northern Europeans are the same). The inquest went ahead but was unable to establish the identity of the invaders. After Peru did not turn up to the replay, Austria advanced to the semi-final, where they beat Poland.
The sense of injustice persisted in Peruvian folklore until two local journalists sought to debunk it. For the 2008 book Ese gol existe, Luis Carlos Arias Schreiber produced an array of reports suggesting that the official version was accurate and criticised the Peruvian press which had been maligning the Nazis all these years. Another Peruvian journalist, Teodoro Salazar, meanwhile, claimed he had information that Peru had intended to go the hearing but got stuck in traffic (there was a military parade on the day) and then, when Fifa rescheduled it for the next day, the Peruvians missed that date too. To this day uncertainty prevails.
What is known is that, regardless of how they got to the final, Austria did not win Olympic gold. They were beaten 2-1 by Italy thanks to a pair of goals from the bespectacled Udinese striker Annibale Frossi.
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