The Torch Comes To The Iom

[CaptainElf]

Why has this Nazi tradition continued? Shouldn't it have stopped along time ago?

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Flame

[Albert Tatlock]

Maybe we could burn some threads instead?

 

Isn't this like the 5th thread on this topic?

[John Wright]

Why has this Nazi tradition continued? Shouldn't it have stopped along time ago?

 

 

http://en.wikipedia....i/Olympic_Flame

 

Maybe CaptainElf you should search Carl Diem, no Nazi he, wife was Jewish and the Olympics were awarded to Germany and he headed up the organising committee long before Hitler assumed power in 1933.

 

After all would you describe the flame being burned during the Olympics as a Dutch tradition just because it started in 1928 in Amsterdam

 

The torch relay was a decision of the IOC in 1934 and was actually an attempt to imbue the games with some non nazi ceremonial. Nothing to do with the Nazis as an idea.

 

The flame and the relay were initiated and endorsed by the IOC not the local organising committee

 

You might as well damn the entire Olympic movement because of the way Goebbels and Hitler subverted Berlin 1936

 

The fact he was not a Nazi was commemorated in West Germany post WW2 by the issues of stamps commemorating his contribution to Germans sports and particularly the Olympics from 1896

[doc.fixit]

is this such a burning issue ?

[stopmakingsense]

I've been reading a couple of books on the history of the Olympics lately and from what I can gather the Nazis certainly played a large part in propagandising and popularising the torch relay in an attempt to link their regime to the ancient Greeks. Hitler was particularly obsessed with the Spartans. The 1938 film Olympia also helped ingrain it in the people's mind. But Carl Diem was definitely not a card carrying Nazi although he went along with them like so many others. It didn't harm his reputation though. The rings were also popularised during the Berlin Games but they were created over 20 years earlier.