Nazi history and a Euro Championships final

BERLIN (AP):

SPAIN AND England will play the European Championship final today in an imposing stadium with a dark history.

Built for the 1936 Olympic Games, Berlin’s Olympic stadium still bears the scars of World War II and contains relics from its Nazi past.

But the Olympiastadion, as it’s known in German, is also associated with the rebirth of a democratic Germany after the war. It hosted matches during the 1974 World Cup in what was then West Germany, and again at the 2006 World Cup, 16 years after German reunification.

Adolf Hitler was personally involved in the design and construction of the 100,000-seat track-and-field stadium after the Nazis assumed power in 1933, two years after Germany had been awarded the 1936 Games.

Initially unenthused by the idea of hosting the Games, the Nazi dictator changed his mind after being convinced of their potential for propaganda.

Plans to remodel the existing national stadium were quickly scrapped in favour of constructing a whole new sports complex, the Reich Sports Field, on the same site. Werner March is credited as the architect of Olympiastadion.

Drawing inspiration from the Colosseum in Rome, the stadium was designed to impress. The Olympic Square in front of the main entrance is tapered, with flagpoles and lines of trees on either side heightening the sense of perspective. The idea was to increase the dramatic effect, raising visitors’ expectations and making them feel part of the event.

Up to 2,600 workers toiled on the Reich Sports Field at one stage, to have it ready in time for the Games, which started August 1, 1936. The Nazi regime’s racist ideology deeply influenced the project, as construction companies were told to only hire “complying, non-union workers of German citizenship and Aryan race”.

Hitler watched from his stadium balcony as Jesse Owens, a black American athlete, won four gold medals to become the star of the Games, dealing a blow to Hitler’s notions of racial superiority.

However, the Games also delivered a propaganda victory for Nazi Germany. It won more medals than any other country, and presented to the world a carefully crafted image of peace and tolerance that Hitler and his associates wanted to show. It was arguably the world’s first major case of sportswashing.