Olympics '72: The Olympics: A Summitry of Sport

TOO many men—from France's Baron Pierre de Coubertin to General of the Army Douglas MacArthur to Adolf Hitler—have tried to make too much of the Olympic Games. The baron, father of the modern Games, once said: "The Olympic movement tends to bring together in a radiant union all the qualities which guide mankind to perfection." The general, as president of the U.S. Olympic Committee in 1928, wrote: "Nothing is more characteristic of the genius of the American people than is their genius for athletics." The Führer envisaged the 1936 Games in Berlin —the last...