There was a touch of Teutonic pomp, but the circumstances were markedly different from those of 1936. The colors were cool, breezy pastels, not the strident Nazi red and black; it was Willy Brandt's gemütlich Munich, not Hitler's dark Berlin. With a fanfare of Alpine horns and a gaudy parade of 12,000 athletes from 124 nations, the XX Olympiad opened last week in an 80,000-capacity, acrylic, glass-covered stadium that stands on the site where Neville Chamberlain landed in 1938 to establish "peace in our time."
On this go-round, the atmosphere was eminently more serene. A bright Bavarian sun shone down as the...
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