Free Hitler's Olympics by Christopher Hilton

Sherrill faced a delicate problem, as many others would, because, as he said, he would not countenance Germans lecturing him on the ‘Negro situation’ in the United States. He had not therefore discussed any ‘obstacles’ German Jewish athletes faced but only the principle of picking at least one – Mayer. The delicacy did not end there. Sherrill knew an American withdrawal risked a domestic anti-Semitic backlash. ‘If our Jews force us to stay out of the Olympic Games they will be taking a great chance with their own comfort,’ he said.
    Still Mayer had received no invitation.
    The German tactic seemed to wear her down and make her refuse to return – the ideal solution for the Nazis, simultaneously absolving them and removing the problem. Mayer seems to have seen that particular feint quickly and clearly.
    Sonja Branting, the daughter of a former Swedish prime minister, told a meeting of the Manhattan division of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in New York that sending a team would be a dangerous step, not least because they would be subject to the ‘most insidious Nazi propaganda’. A resolution opposing the team going was carried unanimously.
    The President of the American Athletic Union, former Supreme Court Justice Jeremiah Mahoney, firmly against, spoke at a dinner with five hundred guests in honour of Branting. He described how some people ‘went to Germany with the intention of keeping their eyes closed’. Pressed if he meant Brundage and Sherrill he said ‘I didn’t mention any names’, although a little later he spoke of ‘my dear friend Sherrill [who’d] spent four days with Hitler and patted him on the back and said “Old Sport Hitler”’.
    Mahoney, of course, was not an athlete and had a very different perspective. He’d discover that from Benjamin Washington Johnson, a black freshman and sprinter (known, inevitably, as the Colombia Comet). In 1932, Johnson qualified for the American Olympic trials but his family were so poor they couldn’t afford for him to go. It took a local appeal to raise the money. Since then he had proved good enough to beat Jesse Owens in a 60-yard dash and Ralph Metcalfe in a 100.
    Mahoney went to Columbia University to gather support for a boycott but after he had spoken Johnson said he was for going: the conditions of blacks in the South were just as bad as those for Jews in Germany. ‘It is futile and hypocritical that Judge Mahoney should attempt to clean up conditions in Germany before cleaning up similar conditions in America,’ said Johnson. 18
    Mahoney remained undeterred. He wrote to Lewald in Berlin saying that if Germany did not have Jewish athletes of Olympic standard might that be because they are ‘either dead, exiled or barred?’ Of the Mayer case, he stressed it was not important whether she made the team but it was important that she be allowed to compete in the trials. He also pointed out that publicly she had been invited four times but actually she hadn’t been invited at all.
    Lewald tried to parry by saying Mayer had accepted the invitation and brandished a telegram from California which read ‘Sickness delayed answering you and Tschammer [ sic ]. Acceptance left yesterday. Love’. It was signed ‘H’. 19
    What moves lay behind all this – Mayer’s biographer speaks of obfuscating ‘lies and pointless statements by many spokesmen’ 20 – have disappeared from the record, but Mayer felt she now had the force with her and made a thrust. She demanded restoration of her full German citizenship, lost under the Nuremberg Laws, as a condition of returning. The Laws stated: ‘An individual of mixed Jewish blood is one who is descended from one or two grandparents who, racially, were full Jews … Full-blooded Jewish grandparents are those who belonged to the Jewish religious community.’ Mayer had the grandparents but had never belonged to a religious community. She sought out the German Consul-General in San