The rowers of poorer America who embittered Adolf Hitler at the Berlin Olympics

• 36 Hitler games, a football game in his life and a historic tantrum

The

went down in history as the great propaganda event of the

victorious

.

The stage in

worked perfectly, launching a global image that served to partially camouflage the monster that even at that time was seen, by some international chancelleries, as a daring politician.

Graffiti against the Jews was cleaned up, the city shone like never before and the delegations of the countries were received with flowers.

All engraved with

n grandeur for the fine aim of

, the head filmmaker of the

.It was

, the sinister propaganda minister, who gave the director an unlimited budget - also with the intention of taking her to bed - and who previously convinced the top leader that the Olympic event could be a powerful weapon of external image.

When he came to power in 1933, he found himself at the table with the organization of some Games that he viewed with contempt, considering them an invention of the enemy powers. Little illusion made him the melting pot of races in his capital, while he inoculated the entire Racism was the flag.

However, he ended up accepting an event of which he would become the first star, despite not wearing sports shoes.

But in those days of displaying the power of his ambitious regime, of parades, receptions and swastikas on every corner, the tyrant had to swallow quinine more than an afternoon and not only because of

.

In addition to the triumph of the black sprinter, at the Berlin Games other foreigners brought out the colors to

, in episodes not as related as that of the mythical champion of the 100-meter dash.

, was recalled last summer the

history of the norway national team

, capable of eliminating Germany by surprise in the soccer tournament, causing a monumental tantrum to Hitler, who was never seen again for a match.

Just as convinced of victory and with the same anger, he left the box of the rowing channel when he saw how the North American team beat the

his German boys and the Italian brothers boat, the second team of local fans for the Nazi alliance with the dictatorship of the

The 70,000 spectators were speechless by the unexpected triumph of the Americans in the queen test of the day, the eight with helmsman, after having celebrated five golds in the other five races of the day.

Nor the suspicious location of the Americans' boat in the worst lane of the waters of

not even the pneumonia of one of his boys prevented the success of a team that has since become a legend of the sport of its country.

Your helmsman, the little

, was in charge of going up to the podium to collect the gold, without the Nazi hierarchs who attended the ceremony knowing of his Jewish blood. He himself learned about it shortly before traveling to Germany, when he read a letter that his father had left, worried that his authentic origins would cause problems for him in a society, the American one, where anti-Semitism was also throbbing.

After the Games, Bobby toured

visiting relatives who a few years later would be eaten by the

.

Moch did not carry an oar in the boat, but a loudspeaker, but his companions always pointed to him as the great leader.After trying in all sports and always taking pumpkins for his short stature, he found the place as a helmsman.

Cunning, ambitious and of superior intelligence, the strategies set by the coaches were later interpreted in his own way by him, amid shouts in secret code, personal appeals to the lazy rower and provocative tactics.

His "10 of the greats" to ask for an extra effort busted the races in the final section, after having been faking, with the boat far from the head.

An exciting sprint

The story of

Moch

and his companions is related with passion by

Daniel James Brown

in

Rowing as one man

(

Captain swing

), a book with the rhythm of a novel, a magnifying glass for a journalistic report and a detailed essay on this sport that is pain and technical choreography.

Now that the Tokyo Games continue to appear in a haze, without certainty yet about their celebration, something that fills uneasiness to the athletes who intend to attend there next year, Brown's work recalls the effort that an Olympic gold, in 1936 and (hopefully ) in 2021, this championship group arrived in Berlin forged in the extreme competition that were the qualifying rounds in their own country, where they broke pools by first defeating the Californian rowers on the west coast and then the elite teams from the east.

New York

they got the Olympic square, something that was already celebrated in their city,

Seattle

, as the greatest sporting milestone in its history.

Royal brougham

, the journalist of

Seattle Post Intelligencer

years covering his progression, he could not see his chronicle of the gold of

Berlin

published the next day because of the newspaper strike.

National heroes

Because the escalation of the eight rowers who defeated Hitler's team occurred in the troubled America of the late 1920s and early 1930s, between the Great Depression, the meteorological plagues that ravaged the country, unemployment, hunger and waking up with him

New Deal

of

Rooselvelt

, while on the other side of the ocean there was a gigantic criminal dictator that the United States would have to help defeat years later for the good of humanity. The hardships were not lacking even with the classification to

Berlin

obtained.

He

United States Olympic Committee

, who strove to prevent the boycott of Hitler's Games, announced to the

Washington

that he would only be in Germany if they found funding for the trip.

If not, some wealthy East Coast representative would go. In a few hours, everything

Seattle

mobilized to get the 5,000 dollars that it cost to travel to

Berlin

.

Despite the terrible economic crisis in the city, workers, housewives, factory workers and university students made donations so that their children could go fight for gold. Many of the rowers of the University of

Washington

-in Seattle- they suffered both on the boat and off to pay the annual tuition, with the adventures of

Joe rantz

, abandoned by his family when he was a child, as a vital example of the spirit of a fabulous team, capable of making the

Husky clipper

.

Created in wood by

George pocock

, a kind of wizard of racing boat design, still hangs from the ceiling of a pavilion in the

University of Washington

as an inspiring icon for new generations of athletes. "Harmony, balance and rhythm. These are three things that accompany you throughout your life. Without them, there is no possible civilization. And that is why a rower, when faced with life, knows how do it and he manages. That comes from the paddle ".

Quotes thus converted

Pocock

in a guru capable of building champion boats and giving the team the right advice.

British by birth, exported from

Thames

to the United States a new type of shovel, more lively and shorter than the classic, as well as a unique art in the treatment of wood.

He was convinced that the cedar sheets, carved to the touch of a goldsmith, were still alive in the water, giving the boats a spark of basic tension for departures.

Guru word

Part of the success of the guys from

Washington

He came from his discreet tutoring, in the afternoons he left his workshop to check the rhythm of the team that was growing towards Berlin.

Joe rantz

, one of the boat's pulmotors.

After observing him closely and knowing his hard life history, he made him see that it was in his hands to go to the Games, that he had to abandon his resentment towards others to completely trust his teammates.

Only in this way, being a united group, would they achieve the perfect stroke, the one where the excruciating muscle pain is mitigated by the perfect cadence of eight rowers articulated like a meccano.

Rantz

He got it perfectly.

The boy found in the

Husky clipper

the warmth and reinforcement that he lacked in his childhood, when his stepmother forced his father to leave him behind in one of the many family moves in search of bread.

Suddenly, when he was barely 15 years old, he had to suddenly mature, work to find a hot dish and go out into the mountains, on weekends, to cut trees.

The wood, its mysteries, united him to

Pocock

to end up being a capital part of a legendary team that embittered that afternoon to

Adolf hitler

.

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