The Long Run

The Greatest Game of All

THE 1916 OLYMPICS never took place. But they still exist.

Officially known as the Games of the VI Olympiad, they were scheduled to be held in Berlin, Germany, in the summer of 1916. Due to the outbreak of World War I, they were eventually cancelled.¹ But because the Olympic Games are numbered according to the Olympiad, a four-year period as certain as the march of time, the Olympiad still progresses even if the competitions themselves are not held.²

Berlin was selected as the host city during the 14th International Olympic Committee Session in Stockholm on July 4, 1912. The city defeated bids from Alexandria, Amsterdam, Brussels, Budapest, and Cleveland. French Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the IOC’s second president, hoped that awarding the games to Berlin might staunch some of that country’s growing militarism, and avert looming hostilities.³

Germany was not the only nation adhering to this increasingly martial state of mind. The idea that war was the answer to a lot of problems was gaining traction in several European governments, especially in the latter half of the 1900s.

Germany’s provocative mentality actually aspired to ancient Olympic ideals: participation in the Olympics, just like participation in war, was a nation-definer, and Germany had just been unified in 1871. Its bid for the games had been pugnaciously impressive, with marching parades and the promise of a new stadium, over which would fly de Coubertin’s new Olympic flag with its Delphic-inspired rings.

In Germany, military thought was infused throughout its political policy and stoked increased investment in armaments and mobilization. The German Army was called a State within a State and was absolutely complicit in the deteriorating international situation.

But many other nations were increasingly belligerent. Britain was rapidly weening its foreign policy off appeasement.⁴ Austria-Hungary, Italy, Russia, France, and Britain all pumped up their military expenditures. The naval arms race between Germany and Britain had doubled the German battle fleet and produced the first British dreadnought (literally fear nothing), which was bigger, faster, and brandished with more firepower than anything else at sea. (Although it would be the weapons introduced and enhanced during the war—like gas, submarines, and tanks—combined with anachronistic or unproven battle strategies, that so massively extended the First World War’s destructive power.)⁵

Still, Germany did not neglect preparations for the Olympics. Work on the Deutsches Stadion, German Stadium, began in 1912 at what was the Grunewald Race Course. Its capacity was 18,000. On June 8, 1913, the stadium was dedicated with the release of 10,000 pigeons flying over the 60,000 in attendance. Program details were being finalized at the IOC Congress in Paris when word came that Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been assassinated.⁶

Even this news, in itself, did not affect the planning process. No one foresaw catastrophe. Indeed, even after Austro-Hungary declared war against Serbia on July 28, causing Russia to mobilize in Serbia’s defence, and Germany invaded Belgium and Luxembourg and set their sights on France, causing Britain to declare war on Germany on August 4,⁷ organization for the 1916 Olympics carried on, as no one expected the hostilities would continue for many months, let alone several years. None of the Allied or Central Powers, with the exception of Austro-Hungary, had a direct stake in the Balkan unrest that led Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip to open fire on the archduke and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg.

The early twentieth century was studded with similar crises. The fortunes of small states were often dice cast by greater nations. Still the power-wielding nations had always managed to cope with and contain the entanglements (or at least postpone the consequences for another day).

But not this time. Negotiations buckled under the weight of Germany’s bellicose, rigid demands and unchecked mobilization.⁸ With the German invasions of late summer, an international conflict erupted. Still, all involved anticipated a short, decisive campaign.

During the first month and even into the second year of the war, the Germans, along with most everyone else, continued to expect the fighting to conclude quickly. German athletes were keenly interested in American coaching and training techniques and kept up with their studies in preparation for competition. A four-man team had been dispatched to tour American university campuses and military schools.⁹ The IOC carried on their own work as well, wrangling with the renewed commitment to amateurism (they had just demanded Jim Thorpe, the American sportsman considered one of the most versatile in the world, return his medals for playing two seasons of semi-professional baseball before competing in the pentathlon and decathlon). They were also considering a proposal (from Canada, among other countries) to establish a Winter Games.¹⁰

When it did become apparent that the war would in fact last much longer than most people anticipated, and certainly through 1916, six cities in the US—which was still isolated from the war—offered to host the Olympics: Chicago, Cleveland, Newark, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. There was concern over interrupting the cycle; the modern games had only restarted in 1896, twenty years before. But the German Olympic Committee held firm to their city’s nomination.¹¹ And de Coubertin, who, though he was fifty-one, had enlisted in the French army, supported them, writing,

The IOC has not the right to withdraw the celebration of the Olympic Games from the country to which the celebration has been given without consulting that country. The VIth Olympic Games remain and will