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On the reviewing stand President Karl Ritter von Halt of the German Organizing Committee announced Realmleader Hitler, who had arrived by train from Munich an hour before. Into the profound snowy silence the voice of Der Führer came out of six loudspeakers: "I hereby declare these Fourth Olympic Winter Games of the year 1936, held in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, open." In a steel bowl high up above the stadium on one side of the ski-jump, a pale spout of flame from the
Olympic torch popped up. On the other side of the run, the Olympic flag, which consists of a white background decorated with five interlocking circles to represent the Continents, floated into the air. The Olympic bell rang. All the church bells of Garmisch tinkled in response. A cannon, lugged into the arena by oxen, boomed. The bands played the Olympic hymn. The crowd cheered, clapped, yelped "Heils" that echoed down from the mountains. When the uproar began to die down, German Skier Willi Bogner scrambled up the steps of a rostrum decked with fir boughs, raised his right arm in Olympic salute, touched the flag of the German delegation with his left hand and recited the Olympic oath: "We swear that we will take part in the Olympic Games in loyal competition, respecting the regulations which govern them and desirous of participating in them in the true spirit of sportsmanship for the honor of our country and for the glory of sport."
As the athletes paraded out of the arena, observers thought they saw Herr Hitler, whose tiny mustache was by this time white with snow flakes, smile with special gratification at the particularly loud cheers given the Austrian delegation, look yearningly at the mountain tops, a few miles beyond which lies the Austrian border. Half an hour later the last of the athletes had filed out of the skistadium and the Olympic Games were under way.
Adolf Hitler was by no means the only bigwig in Garmisch-Partenkirchen last week. His entourage included Air Minister Göring, Minister of Propaganda Goebbels, War Minister von Blomberg, Julius Streicher, Interior Minister Frick, Storm Troop Leader Lutze and almost every other important Nazi in Germany. Nonetheless, Correspondent Frederick T. Birchall of the New York Times, which last autumn gave the loudest bursts of publicity to Jeremiah T. Mahoney's efforts to have the U. S. withdraw from the 1936 Olympic Games (TIME, Nov. 4), felt justified in writing: ". . . Not the slightest evidence of religious, political or racial prejudice is outwardly visible here. Anti-Jewish signs have been removed from villages. The Stürmer, anti-Semitic newspaper, is being kept out of sight. A Jewish hockey player has even been drafted for the German team. In short, politics is being kept out of a sphere in which it has no place. . . . Only sports count and nobody thinks of anything else. ..."