(See front cover and pictures, pp. 38 & 39)
Sixty miles southwest of Munich, on the fringe of the Bavarian Alps, lie the twin villages of Garmisch-Partenkirchen. The houses have brightly painted walls. The inns have tiled stoves in the dining rooms. Woodcutters in green felt hats, puffing pipes that reach down to their waists, use oxcarts to haul pine logs down the snowy mountain roads. Last week the wintry quiet of Garmisch-Partenkirchen was pleasantly shattered by an event which mystified the woodcutters as much as it delighted the innkeepers by accounting for the presence in the town of some 50,000 visitors, including Realmleader Hitler himself. The event was the opening of the Fourth Olympic Winter Games.
As scene of the games which were held at Chamonix in 1924, at St. Moritz in 1928 and Lake Placid in 1932, Garmisch-Partenkirchen was selected two years ago because it was supposed to be the finest winter sports resort in Germany. Since then, Germany's Olympic Committee has spent 3,000,000 marks ($1,200,000) building headquarters for officials, a mile bobsled run, an artificial ice rink, a huge ski stadium, a ski jump so tall it makes the town's old one look like a mink-slide. All these preparations were keyed to the widespread German belief that the 11th Olympiad, which reaches its climax next summer in Berlin, was to be a rare chance to win back some of the international goodwill lost during three years of Naziism. The whole country had been carefully primed to play the perfect host to the visiting athletes from 28 nations, who, Germans fondly hoped, would afterward scatter to the world as friendly missionaries for the Third Reich.
First event on the program was the parade of the contestants and the ceremony of the Olympic Oath. A crowd of 50,000 gathered in the stadium below the ski jump to watch Herr Hitler, who has never sat on a bob-sled and cannot stand on skis, review the parade.
While four German regimental bands tootled merrily in a snowstorm, the march began. First of the 1,600 athletes to appear through the stadium gates were the Greek skiers. Next came the Australians: two officials and a lone speed skater. First misunderstanding of the Olympic Winter Games promptly followed. To avoid confusion in such matters, Olympic authorities long ago devised a special salute to be used on gala occasions: raising the right arm straight into the air. This salute when made quickly closely resembles the Nazi salute. To most spectators, the, acknowledgment which the athletes gave as they passed Herr Hitler, standing on the balcony of the club house, doubtless appeared to be a return of his own Nazi hand-wag. To avoid giving this impression, the 115 U. S. athletes, next to last in the alphabetically arranged procession, failed to salute at all, merely turned eyes right. When they were cheered less loudly than the rest, U.'S. correspondents cabled that the U. S. team had been "snubbed."