“Come on,” Martha implored. “Don’t I deserve to know, if only for getting you that great seat?”
“He said—” Mildred hesitated, pained. “He said that people whose ancestors came from the jungle are primitive. He says that their physiques are stronger than those of civilized whites, and therefore they should be excluded from future Games.”
“That’s damn foolishness,” said Thomas. “I wish Jesse Owens could win a fourth gold medal just to spite him.”
Later, he seemed poised to do exactly that.
As the runners for the first heat of the men’s 4-by-100 meter relay took their places on the track, Martha gasped. “Isn’t that Owens in the lead leg?”
“That’s him all right,” said Thomas. A faint roar surged through the crowd as if everyone else had simultaneously made the same observation. “And that’s Ralph Metcalfe lining up to run second.”
Martha checked the program. “They weren’t originally in this relay. The coach must have made a last-minute substitution.”
“They’re replacing Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller,” said Mildred, studying her program. “They’re Jews. Do you suppose the Nazis pressured the U.S. Olympic Committee to replace them? Or perhaps the coach wanted to avoid offending Hitler?”
“I certainly hope not,” said Martha. “However, as much as Hitler hates Negroes, he hates Jews more.”
“That probably has nothing to do with it,” said Thomas. “Owens took the gold and Metcalfe the silver in the hundred meters. It’s a strategic decision.”
“The original team was already heavily favored to win,” Mildred pointed out. “Why fix what wasn’t broken?”
“Well, now the odds have improved even more,” said Thomas, but he frowned slightly as if he too wondered about ulterior motives.
Martha leaned forward as the runners settled in their lanes. She jumped at the sharp crack of the starter’s pistol, her heart beating faster and faster as Jesse Owens pulled away from the other runners and flew around the first curve, his feet seeming barely to touch the ground. A blink of an eye, a flawless baton exchange, and suddenly Owens was gradually slowing as Metcalfe sped away, down the straightaway to Foy Draper, who took the second curve with the Italian runner on his heels. As the roar of the crowd rose, louder and louder, Frank Wyckoff carried the baton down the final stretch with an Italian barely a second behind him. And then it was over. The United States and Italy, first and second, would advance to the finals.
Exultant, Thomas leapt to his feet, cupped his hands around his mouth, and let out an earsplitting war whoop. Hitler twisted in his seat, fixed him with a furious gaze, glaring with stark hatred. If looks could kill, Thomas would have been finished. Martha seized his left arm and Mildred his right, and they pulled him back into his seat.
“What the hell,” he protested, laughing. “It’s the Olympics and our team won. Owens was wonderful. I’m proud, so I yelled.”
“Maybe not so loudly at the back of the Führer’s head next time,” Martha advised, but she smiled, not at all sorry that Jesse Owens had spoiled both Hitler’s fun and his theory of Aryan supremacy.
The German team won the third heat, much to Hitler’s jubilation, but in the finals the Americans triumphed yet again, with the Italian team taking the silver and the Germans the bronze. Thomas celebrated the victory, but less ostentatiously, so Martha did not have to worry that he might spark an international incident. This time the Führer remained in the Honor Loge as the medals were awarded, possibly out of loyalty to the third-place Germans. But if he ever shook the hand of Jesse Owens or the other men on the American relay team, Martha did not see it.
“He is such a child,” Martha said to Mildred and Thomas later as they left the stadium. “Throughout the Games, he hasn’t shown the slightest indication that he understands good sportsmanship, or that he has any appreciation of sport for its own sake.”
“His sportsmanship is the least of our worries,” said Mildred. “If he’s a child, with a child’s impulsiveness and irrationality, then he’s an extremely dangerous one, powerful and cruel, able to act on any hateful whim with the full force of the German military and millions of devoted fanatics.”
Sobered, Martha made no reply. Of course there was no question that to Hitler the Berlin Games had nothing to do with the Olympic ideals of international friendship, peace, solidarity, and fair play. They were an entirely Germanic affair, pure and simple, meant to demonstrate German superiority, might, and peaceful intentions to the world, regardless of the truth.
And in that, Martha feared, he had triumphed.
Chapter Thirty-six
August–December 1936
Greta
After the Olympics, the international tourists went home impressed by the unprecedented magnificence of the Games and much reassured that Hitler’s intentions were peaceful, that he would make Germany great again without any peril to its neighbors. But as the eyes of the world turned away from Berlin, Greta and her friends braced themselves for the Nazi persecution of the Jews to resume with a vengeance.
Almost immediately, the signs announcing “Juden unerwünscht” returned to the front windows of shops and businesses. Arrests for the slightest offenses, or merely the suspicion of offenses, redoubled. Storm troopers resumed their arbitrary attacks on Jews in the streets of Berlin. The Reich Ministry of Education banned Jewish teachers from the public schools. And two days after the Games concluded, Captain Wolfgang Fürstner, designer of the much-lauded Olympic Village, committed suicide after he was dismissed from the military because of his Jewish ancestry. The Nazis claimed he had died in a car accident and interred him with full military honors, but drawing upon his network of informants, Natan Weitz swiftly uncovered the truth. Unfortunately, even after his report was picked up by the international press, millions of ardent Nazis insisted upon believing the lie.
Greta fumed with anger and frustration that the world could be so easily duped by the spectacle of the Olympics. She understood the yearning to believe that Hitler was a man of peace, that Germany was ready to rejoin the fold of civilized nations after the horrors of the Great War, but wanting desperately for something to be true did not make it so. The flame of the Olympic torch, the fanfare of trumpets, the inspiring display of physical perfection, and the glitter of gold medals had distracted attention away from the battered Treaty of Versailles, ground under the boots of the German military as they marched into the Rhineland. What more evidence of Hitler’s expansionist intentions did world leaders require?
The resistance had to keep writing, keep speaking, keep bearing witness to what was really happening in Germany. They had no arms, no tanks, no storm troopers. Their only weapon was the truth, but Greta had to believe that in the end, the truth would always defeat a lie.
Earlier that year, she had moved from her sublet room in Pichelswerder into a modest flat on Scharnweberstrasse a few blocks north of the Volkspark Rehberge. Her new place was only six kilometers away from Adam’s home on Dortmunder Strasse, more anonymous than the boathouse and more convenient for Adam’s overnight visits.
“You know what would be even easier?” he asked wryly. “If you just moved in with me.”
