Bidding for the 1968 Olympic Games

International Sport's Cold War Battle with NATO

Heather L. Dichter

• Éditeur: University of Massachusetts Press
• Année: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781613768716
• Sujet: Geschichte
• Sous-sujet: Weltgeschichte

Winner of the 2022 Lord Aberdare Literary Prize from the British Society of Sports History
During the Cold War, political tensions associated with the division of Germany came to influence the world of competitive sport. In the 1950s, West Germany and its NATO allies refused to recognize the communist East German state and barred its national teams from sporting competitions. The construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 further exacerbated these pressures, with East German teams denied travel to several world championships. These tensions would only intensify in the run-up to the 1968 Olympics.In Bidding for the 1968 Olympic Games, Heather L. Dichter considers how NATO and its member states used sport as a diplomatic arena during the height of the Cold War, and how international sport responded to political interference. Drawing on archival materials from NATO, foreign ministries, domestic and international sport functionaries, and newspapers, Dichter examines controversies surrounding the 1968 Summer and Winter Olympic Games, particularly the bidding process between countries to host the events. As she demonstrates, during the Cold War sport and politics became so intertwined that they had the power to fundamentally transform each other.

Chapter 1

Travel Restrictions, State Symbols, and East German Recognition in Sport

With the defeat of the Third Reich in 1945, the international community, including for sport, initially excluded occupied Germany, but with the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, the country sought to return to international organizations. International sport federations and the IOC recognized the Federal Republic of Germany, largely as the resumption of a membership that had been terminated in 1945. This return of Germany to international sport largely took place from 1949 to 1952—albeit not at the same time or with the same level of smoothness across all of the international sport federations.1 The German Democratic Republic, on the other hand, did not receive consistent treatment from these bodies and instead had to fight for recognition for several years. The Soviet Union, which had only recently joined the IOC and other international federations, and its communist bloc allies pushed for simultaneous recognition of the GDR alongside the Federal Republic.2 Many international sport delegates from Western states pushed back at these efforts, attempting to support the stance taken by their West German colleagues who upheld the Hallstein Doctrine, their country’s policy of not recognizing East Germany. Western sport delegates supported the line that the Federal Republic was the only legitimate and democratically elected German state, and therefore only one Germany should have membership within international sport organizations.

The IOC took this concept to the extreme, believing that all Germans should compete on one Olympic team.3 Negotiations for an all-German Olympic team in 1952 broke down when the East German delegation, which had arrived in Copenhagen to negotiate with the West Germans and IOC representatives (IOC president J. Sigfrid Edström, vice president Avery Brundage, and chancellor Otto Mayer), failed to appear at the meeting. After waiting several hours, the IOC delegation, offended by the East German slight, consented to having only athletes from the Federal Republic participate as Germany in the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki.4 After replacing those sport leaders who had offended the IOC, East Germany received provisional recognition from the IOC and negotiated its participation on an all-German Olympic team for 1956 and subsequent games. This arrangement continued for the next decade but became increasingly more difficult as the Cold War intensified. The two states’ sport leaders repeatedly debated how the all-German team would be represented and selected. Their agreement over the use of the black-red-gold tricolor for the flag and emblem came under question again with the introduction of the new East German flag with the communist symbol in the middle. Similarly, the East Germans advocated for playing the East or West German national anthem when an athlete won instead of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The two sides also argued where the selection events between East and West German athletes for every single sport would take place, with West Berlin a particularly thorny location. Finally, whichever German state provided the most athletes for the all-German team appointed the chef de mission, an important role at the games as the leader of the country’s entire delegation.5 Nonetheless, Edström’s successor as IOC president, the American Avery Brundage, frequently promoted the fact that the IOC was able to overcome the problem of two German states, which politicians had been unable to solve.6

How each international federation treated East Germany became a contentious and frequent problem. Some international federations admitted East Germany early in the 1950s, although not always easily. Other federations, such as for rowing, only provisionally recognized East Germany, leaving them in a state of limbo for years. This issue was particularly acute when athletes representing an East German national team sought to compete in international events. The IOC’s insistence on an all-German team for the Olympic Games meant that NATO states easily granted travel documents and entry into member states for all athletes on the combined German Olympic teams that competed in 1956 (Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy) and 1960 (both Squaw Valley, United States, and Rome, Italy). European and world championships, however, received entries from individual athletes or teams officially representing the GDR—and thus had to confront its flag, symbol, and anthem. Because the GDR sought de facto recognition in any way it could, NATO member states regularly confronted this problem of East Germany and sport. Member states on both sides of the Atlantic had to invite all members of an international federation when hosting world championships, European championships (for all NATO members except the United States and Canada), or qualification rounds (such as for football’s World Cup or Olympic tournaments).

The East German push for separate recognition within international sport brought the postwar German problem onto the world stage through two main areas: ability to travel and state symbols. International sport’s acceptance of East Germany therefore came into direct conflict with NATO’s explicit refusal to recognize the communist German regime. The introduction of a new East German national anthem and flag at the end of the 1950s increasingly drew NATO into the world of international sport as these state symbols are a highly visible element of sporting events. With NATO member states hosting numerous international sporting events, the alliance could not avoid confronting the potential recognition of these symbols of the East German state. The uneven treatment within international federations left the East Germans continually battling for recognition on several fronts while further decreasing support for the alliance among the general public unfamiliar with the intricacies of international sport. As the GDR sought to use sport to achieve its goal of international recognition, NATO countered these efforts by restricting the ability of East German athletes to travel to competitions. NATO’s actions may have hindered East German efforts at the end of the 1950s and start of the next decade to use sport to achieve political aims, but they ushered in a new era where international sport forced diplomats to take frequent action.

Travel Restrictions

Germany joined NATO in 1955 following the dissolution of the Allied High Commission, which had existed since 1949 when the three occupation zones combined. The Federal Republic gained full sovereignty over its affairs with the termination of the Allied High Commission and the establishment of formal ambassadorial relations with its former occupiers.7 While NATO finalized the Federal Republic’s accession, the alliance was already implementing the nonrecognition of East Germany in sport. The Italian delegation informed its NATO allies that Italy had refused to issue visas to an East German rugby team for an April 1955 tournament “on the grounds that Eastern Germany was not recognised as a sovereign state.”8 Just days before the 1957 wrestling world championships began, the Turkish foreign ministry also refused to issue visas to the East German athletes.9 Although these were isolated incidents in the early years of NATO, by the end of the decade the issuing of visas and travel permits to East German athletes frequently arose as a discussion point within NATO meetings. The imposition of a travel ban for sport, imposed by the tripartite powers (the United States, Great Britain, and France) but upheld by all NATO member states, served as a form of retaliation for actions taken by East Germany more generally. Although multiple countries confronted the issue of East German travel in 1959, the international sporting events held in the United States garnered the most publicity. The broad appeal of sport—covered extensively in newspapers and attended by tens of thousands of spectators—forced NATO to confront the public perceptions of its travel restrictions on East Germany, which no longer remained a quiet policy impacting few people.

A year before the Federal Republic joined NATO, the alliance had already agreed to support the Federal Republic’s nonrecognition of East Germany, commonly known as the Hallstein Doctrine.10 Named for Walter Hallstein, a state secretary in the the Federal Republic’s foreign ministery, this policy sought to prevent countries from establishing diplomatic relations with East Germany. The underlying belief within the government was that recognition of the GDR would signal the permanent status of a divided Germany.11 Most states and international organizations did not recognize the GDR in the 1950s, whereas they did recognize the German state with its government in Bonn, actions that the Federal Republic claimed reinforced the lack of legitimacy of East Germany and its government. Without a formal peace treaty ending the World War II and finalizing postwar state boundaries, combined with the difficult position of supporting West Berlin deep inside East German territory, the Americans, British, and French retained reserve powers within the Federal Republic even after 1955.12 West German sovereignty was not therefore wholly complete as the three former occupation powers continued to hold tripartite meetings in Bonn and also met with Auswärties Amt representatives in regular quadripartite meetings. The Americans, British, and French still controlled, via the Allied Travel Office (ATO), the decisions regarding East German citizens wanting to visit or transit through countries that fell outside of the Soviet bloc or were considered nonaligned.

During their regular quadripartite meetings in Bonn, matters regarding East Germany frequently arose, and the four countries then reported at NATO meetings any relevant agreements made in Bonn. Acting this way contravened the very concept of NATO, where all member states made mutual decisions. When East German issues arose at NATO, the major powers’ desires held sway, although they tried to couch their ideas in ways that would bring all NATO states on board and minimize debate. The smaller states at times voiced their concerns, which the quadripartite powers sometimes took into consideration as they revised or finalized policies back in Bonn. Travel by East German athletes to sporting events in NATO countries fell into this area as the tripartite powers set the travel restrictions imposed on East Germans. The rest of NATO, however, pushed back on these regulations when their national interests and domestic public opinion of the alliance came under attack.

Because the tripartite powers still controlled travel authorization, this practice became the method through which the West could damage internal support for the East German regime from its general population. The ATO, located in West Berlin, reviewed applications from East Germans for travel to or through NATO states and issued Temporary Travel Documents (TTDs) when they deemed the individuals and trips acceptable. Limiting travel or access to West Berlin had be...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index