While the disappearance of the Olympic Salute after the infamous Berlin Games of 1936 is understandable, its absence in official and academic sources dealing with the inter-war Olympic movement is rather puzzling. No authoritative work has ever established that there ever was such a ritual in modern times.

The International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) official website and various studies give detailed accounts of every innovation and change in Olympic ceremonial practice but completely leave out the straight-armed salute. Were it not for a single newspaper report filed by the New York Times correspondent covering the Berlin Games, amateur essays on the Internet and extremely dubious websites with anti-Jewish or anti-socialist agendas, the Olympic Salute would have disappeared from public view altogether.[i] This is all the more disturbing when one considers that it was the subject of a very heated international controversy during this most notorious and widely-studied sporting event of all time. The French contingent was accused of vulgar appeasement because it gave a straight-armed salute while the Americans were accused of disrespect because they gave an “eyes-right” salute without dipping their national flag, as was the established custom at the time. Yet many researchers specializing in the study of such events have never even heard of the Olympic Salute.[ii]

Quack historians support bizarre theories regarding the American socialist roots of both the Nazi and the Olympic Salutes with some verifiable (or refutable) empirical evidence, such as the alleged 1942 Act of Congress which banned the supposedly common practice of saluting the American flag during pledge-taking with a straight-armed salute. Amateur works also include detailed but conflicting versions of what athletes at the Berlin games knew and thought about the salute controversy. With primary evidence such as film footage of opening ceremonies available for scrutiny, there is much scope for serious academic study surrounding the disappearance of the Olympic Salute.

The IOC’s deafening silence on the Olympic salute is baffling when one considers that footage of opening ceremonies provided on their website clearly record the widespread use of the greeting at the 1928 Amsterdam and the 1932 Los Angeles Games[iii]. While rabid anti-socialist journalist Rex Curry switches unpredictably between empirical investigation and leaps of logic, the hard evidence he provided in the form of the official poster of the 1924 Paris Olympics, portraying athletes with a straight-armed salute cannot be ignored.[iv]

Suggestions that the 1912 Stockholm Games adopted the practice cannot be ruled out as unclear film footage showed some delegation leaders with outstretched arms.

These discoveries greatly aid the task of deciding between confirmation accounts, such as the testimony of Canadian athletes determined not to let Hitler take the Olympic Salute away from them, and dismissals, like that of Australian swimmer Patricia Down, who claimed that “no one had ever heard of the Olympic salute”.[v] The defence of the French contingent, as well as the detailed but unsupported report of the New York Times correspondent, gains a large measure of credibility as a result.

Further investigation needs to be carried out if we are to know when and in what form (e.g. entire contingent or leaders only) the Olympic Salute became the established norm. The French might have conjured their defence only after they were accused of appeasement. While Rex Curry’s claim that the Olympic Salute was never a part of the ancient Olympics requires investigation, it can be safely deduced that the ritual preceded the advent of Fascist regimes. It was well though not universally known and legitimately expected as a traditional courtesy by the time Hitler took his place at the dais in the Berlin Stadium. There is thus much scope for historical inquiry for a fitting first chapter.

Another interesting question centres on how academia and the general public lost track of such information despite the great publicity and copious amounts of hard evidence recorded and distributed (in the form of photos and newsreels) about the Olympics.

A comparison between film footage of the march pass and oath-taking ceremonies of the Amsterdam (1928), Berlin (1936) and Rome (1960) Summer Games clearly show the transformation from uncontroversial universality to partisan selectivity and complete absence respectively – not even flag-dipping was practiced in Rome – of the straight-armed salute.

Was there a concerted effort by everyone to forget the past and let wounds heal after the war? The Olympic movement, like the Catholic Church, had to weather storms of severe criticism for their failure to stand up to the clearly malignant designs of the Fascists. Did the IOC decide to take advantage of benign public amnesia to white-wash its tainted past? Was any pressure exerted by long-serving president Juan Antonio Samaranch, a long-serving Sports Minister for Franco’s right-wing regime in Spain?

Personal and media records contemporary with events and academic works of recent decades have been relatively easy to obtain. However, the enquiry into the alleged amnesia of post-war academia and public life turns on the examination of studies and personal records in the time period between the two.

A vigorous attempt to gather relevant old books, magazines, news records and documentaries dating from the end of World War II onwards will have to be carried out before one can establish if there was a time after the greeting fell out of use when academia and journalists were confident of the existence of the Olympic Salute.

While this can be done gradually, the task of consulting older academics, reporters and eye-witnesses – people who actually had something to forget – is an urgent one, as anyone old enough to remember the Olympic Salute would logically be rather advanced in years.

Ideally, the IOC should be approached directly, perhaps after one has downloaded all relevant evidence found on its websites and publications. While a researcher has to maintain control over the scholarly process of his/her work, any study that does not extend the right of reply loses much moral authority. It is not clear if the IOC intended to whitewash this aspect of its past. Even if it did, there is no reason to assume that the present management feels the same way. One can only imagine the great repositories of historical knowledge held by Olympic archives and the impact on scholarly understanding of individual episodes should minutes of meetings be made available for study. Otherwise, a comprehensive analysis of the triumphs and failures of sports officials, IOC as well as national, with regards to the promotion and perversion of sporting ideals will have to suffice.[vi]

Postscript

The Olympic Salute is only one of many mass sports-related controversies worth examining for a thesis. Both the World Cup and the Olympics oscillated between championing progressive idealism, seen from the high profile performances of athletes from countries under foreign or colonial rule and abject political prostitution as seen in the 1934 World Cup.

The pre-WWII Soviet boycott of such events and the existence of two rival Olympiads are other fertile grounds for exhilarating research. Grand sporting events offer great historical insights into many aspects of mass psychology, national and international culture, and an idealistic form of political discourse with “teeth”.

It is a field Rankean traditionalists, political scientists, Foucauldian social theorists, historiographers and advocates of Jacob Burckhardt’s inspirational empiricism will all feel at home with. Moreover, there is no lack of professors of all persuasions interested in supervising such projects from a variety of angles. If one is fishing for a research topic, this is a good place to start.

The author is currently a Masters candidate at the Department of History, National University of Singapore.

[i]Birchall T. Frederick, 100,000 Hail Hitler; U.S. Athletes Avoid Nazi Salute to Him, New York Times, 1^st Aug 1936, p.1 web version at http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0801.html. Arvo Vercamer and Jason Pipes, The 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, web version at http://www.feldgrau.com/1936olymp.html, CollegeTermPapers.com, Jesse Owens and the Berlin Olympics, web version at Jesse_Owens_and_the_Berlin_Olympics. National Vanguard May 1984, The Big Lie about the Berlin Olympics, web version at http://www.faem.com/natvan/olympics.htm. All accessed 14th June 2007.

[ii] This student first came across the Olympic Salute while researching an essay for A/P Peter Borschberg. Despite having intensively studied the Berlin Games, particularly the manipulation and use of ceremonial grandeur and symbolism for some time, the very capable scholar has never heard of the ritual. A/P Malcolm Murfett, a great Olympic history enthusiast, Dr Maurizio Peleggi, a specialist in the study of manipulation of public memory through ceremonial display and selective amnesia and Dr Daniel Crosswell, a sporting enthusiast and European specialist teaching “Sports and History” at NUS have all never heard of the Olympic Salute.

[iii] Official Website of the Olympic Movement (English Version) at http://www.olympic.org, accessed 4^th June 2007. Opening ceremonies from various years can viewed by choosing the year/City in the box at the bottom of the page

[iv] Tim Curry, Pledge of Allegiance Secrets, web version at http://rexcurry.net , accessed 4^th June 2007. See http://rexcurry.net/bookchapter1a1c.html for details on alleged origins of both the Olympic Salute and the American pledge of allegiance. This has been verified against the one displayed on the IOC website. Go to Official Website of the Olympic Movement, http://www.olympic.org/uk/games/past/index_uk.asp?OLGT=1&OLGY=1924 , accessed 4^th June 2007

[v] The Canadian account can be found at McGill University Track and Field, web version at http://www.mcgilltrack.com/edwardsHOF.php and the Australian one at Munsey and Suppes, Ballparks, web version at http://users.california.com/~csuppes/Olympics/misc/index.htm, accessed 4^th June 2007.

[vi] Information and evidence for this is abundant as displayed in an extended undergraduate exercise submitted to A/P Borschberg in 2003. This student is currently in possession of the hard copy and will gladly make it available for perusal with the consent of his project partners.