Work on the stadium, the Deutsches Stadion ("German Stadium"), began in 1912 at what was the Grunewald Race Course. It was planned to seat more than 18,000 spectators.^[3] On 8 June 1913, the stadium was dedicated with the release of 10,000 pigeons. 60,000 people were in attendance.^[4]

A winter sports week with speed skating, figure skating, ice hockey and Nordic skiing was planned; the concept of this week eventually gave rise to the first Winter Olympic Games. The central venue was to have been the Deutsches Stadion.

Introduction

With the foundation of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on 23 June 1894 in Paris, it was decided to establish the modern Olympic Games as a quadrennial international sporting festival. Following the premiere in Athens in 1896, the Olympic Games were to be rotated among cities around the world. After the beginning of the 20^th century, the Olympic movement became more popular in Germany. In 1904, with the Deutscher Reichsausschuss für Olympische Spiele (DRAfOS), a permanent German National Olympics Committee was established and the German IOC members began to promote Berlin as a future host city. This effort appeared to be succeeding, but the death of head of the campaign in 1909, Count Egbert Hoyer von der Asseburg (1847-1909), led to a withdrawal of Berlin’s bid for the 1912 Olympic Games. Instead, Stockholm was selected as the host.

Preparing for the 1916 Olympic Games in Berlin↑

In 1911, the Germans began a new initiative. At the 1912 IOC meeting, the 1916 Olympic Games were awarded to Berlin, and the DRAfOS was instructed to take over the organization of the event.^[1] Henceforth, the Berlin Olympic Games were the primary concern of the DRAfOS. Its first course of action was to enlist a talented chief organizer. The most suitable person for this role was the young sports official, Carl Diem (1882-1962). Diem started work in March 1913 as the general secretary of the Organizing Committee for the 1916 Berlin Olympic Games.^[2]

A principal issue in the upcoming Games was the role of top level sports. Only five gold medals had been awarded in Stockholm. It was clear to both Diem and the DRAfOS that the traditionalists in the German gymnastic movement had to be drawn into the effort. In view of its role in physical education in Germany, the national gymnastic organization, the Deutsche Turnerschaft (DT), could not be left out of the preparations. However, the DT’s hardliners regarded the international Olympic movement, whose motto was “citius, altius, fortius,” as a French version of Anglo-American record-seeking high performance sports. This starkly contrasted with the vision of the German gymnasts, who stood for tradition, patriotism, and the ideal of versatile physical education for the masses. Therefore, they had resisted participating in the Olympic Games and did not send a team to Stockholm in 1912,^[3] despite the fact that gymnastics had been part of the Olympic competition since 1896.^[4]

A step towards cooperation between Olympic sports and German gymnastics was the inauguration of the “Deutsches Stadion” in Berlin on 8 June 1913, in which some 10,000 gymnasts participated.^[5] In addition, top level German sportspeople began to prepare. Alvin Kraenzlein (1876-1928), a German-American and former Olympic champion, took up his job as head coach of the German team on 1 October 1913. Plans were laid for a “National Olympics” in 1915, as a sort of Olympic trial. On 27 and 28 June 1914, the best German athletes competed in the so-called “Pre-Olympic Games”. Even the DT participated with a large group of gymnasts. However, on the second day of competition, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria-Este (1863-1914) in Sarajevo signalled the beginning of the end for the 1916 Olympic Games.

End of the 1916 Olympic Games

The outbreak of World War I on 28 July 1914 brought an end to preparations for the upcoming Olympic Games. The initial hope of the Organizing Committee, that a speedy conclusion of peace would allow the Berlin Olympic Games to take place, was dashed. By the time of the death of the DRAfOS chairman, Viktor von Podbielski (1844-1916), in January 1916, the failure of the Olympic Games had become a certainty, even though they were never officially cancelled.

In 1915, the French baron Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937), the IOC founder and chairman, had decided to move the IOC headquarters from France to Lausanne in neutral Switzerland. The IOC did not meet again until 1919, when Antwerp was selected as host city for the 1920 Olympic Games. The first post-war Games took place without German participation. As a consequence of World War I, Germany was excluded from the Olympic Games until 1928.

Ansgar Molzberger, Deutsche Sporthochschule Köln

They were supposed to be the greatest Olympic Games ever staged.

Dignitaries from around the world arrived in Paris in early June 1914, in a festive mood. They had gathered to celebrate the 20^th anniversary of the modern Olympics, and to fortify plans for the next Summer Games — to be held in 1916, in the German capital of Berlin.

At the Sorbonne building in Paris’ Latin Quarter, the Germans announced they were ready. They had built a new, state-of-the-art stadium. They had hired a legendary American runner to coach their Olympic team. They planned to dazzle the world, on the field of play and off it.

“It showed that the Germans really realized how important sport had become, and what a vehicle it was starting to be for national prestige,” said Philip Barker, an Olympic historian.

On the last day of the Sorbonne congress, though, a 19-year-old Bosnian Serb named Gavrilo Princip stood outside a café in Sarajevo, 1,800 kilometres away, and shot the Archduke Franz Ferdinand — the presumptive heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne.

Within a month, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Russia backed Serbia. Germany, an Austrian ally, invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg, drawing the ire of France and Great Britain.

Europe was at war by Aug. 4, 1914. Two summers later, Berlin’s Games — intended to showcase Germany to the world — made history for another reason. They were the first Olympics that never were.

Still, they were not cancelled immediately.

In the mind of Pierre de Coubertin, nothing could stop the Olympics from proceeding. Berlin 1916 was to be the sixth edition of the modern Games, after Coubertin, a French educator, led a revival of the ancient Greek spectacle in 1894. Each of the world’s sporting titans had already hosted a Games: Greece, France, the United States, Great Britain and Sweden.

“Coubertin … believed that the power of the Olympic movement was such that the Germans, who had wanted the Games since their revival, would reduce their belligerent conduct,” authors John Findling and Kimberly Pelle wrote in a 1996 book, Historical Dictionary of the Modern Olympic Movement.

“According to Coubertin, the dream of Olympia had to be preserved, and Berlin would host the Games in 1916.”

German sporting officials agreed. For decades, Findling and Pelle wrote, the nation’s leaders had “viewed themselves and their vigorous culture as the reincarnation of the ancient Greeks.” In 1881, a Berlin professor had led a mission to excavate the sanctuary of Olympia, the site of the original Games. Hosting the world may not have been Germany’s divine right, but it wasn’t an opportunity they planned to waste.

In the months before Princip’s murderous gambit, all levels of German government poured money into plans for Berlin. Officials weren’t happy with the country’s showing at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, where Germany won 25 medals — 40 fewer than host Sweden, and 38 fewer than the U.S. — and finished fifth overall.

“Sport in Germany could not keep pace with the nation’s commercial and military achievements,” the authors wrote. “The Germans believed that if the 1916 Berlin Olympics were going to be a success, athletic reform in Germany was necessary.”

In sporting terms, Berlin is best known for hosting the Olympics of 1936, played under the watchful eye of Adolf Hitler. Those Games are remembered infamously, in Findling and Pelle’s words, as “a triumph of the theatrical self-portrayal” of Nazi Germany. They were crafted to show the world just how powerful and mighty Germany was.

In the lead-up to 1916, though, the Germans were content to learn from the feats of others. For two months in early 1913, four German officials flocked to the U.S., touring college campuses across the Midwest to study how Americans trained their young athletes.

They returned to Europe with an idea: hire the University of Michigan’s German-speaking football coach — Alvin Kraenzlein, four-time track and field champion at the 1900 Olympics — and give him total oversight over German sport. He would accomplish, Findling and Pelle wrote, what Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke did for the Prussian army in 1871: “organize victory.”

And he would do so in a grand new arena. Berlin’s Olympic stadium — the Deutsches Stadion, with room for 30,000 spectators — was unveiled to a capacity crowd on June 8, 1913. Athletes paraded around the track. Ten thousand carrier pigeons flew breathless recaps across the country. “The structure was dedicated with almost religious fervour and military pomp,” The New York Times reported on June 9.

Berlin, it seemed, would be no less than a referendum on Germany’s place in the world. “We shall stake everything on victory,” German sportsman Carl Diem had written in a March 1913 opinion piece, sent to newspapers around the world.

“We desire, above all, that the world, if it accepts our hearty invitation for 1916, shall find, in competition with us, that it is matching its muscle and brain against men who are true friends of genuine sport.”

According to Barker, no one knows exactly when the Berlin Games were officially abandoned. (“The minutes of the IOC weren’t terribly good in those days,” he said.) Still, it is clear the Germans did all they could to preserve their hosting hopes — even as the calendar turned to 1915, and the war showed no signs of abating.

They did so without Kraenzlein, who had returned to the U.S. by boat days before the war began, “fearing,” Findling and Pelle wrote, “a devastating struggle in Europe.” British IOC member Theodore Cook demanded Germany’s expulsion from the committee; his motion was denied, and Cook resigned.

In March 1915, Germany told the IOC that the Games would go on — but only its allies and neutral countries were welcome to compete.

In theory, that included the U.S., which didn’t enter the war until April 1917. But a number of American cities — New York City, Chicago, San Francisco and even Newark, N.J. — sensed weakness, and tried to take advantage. They suggested Coubertin wrest the Games from Berlin’s grasp, and hold them stateside.

Hosting the Games an ocean away would likely still have been impractical, says Barker: ”They could have probably done it, but who are you going to get over if people are fighting a war? There’s your difficulty … Today, of course, had there been a war going on, it would have been considered absolutely unseemly.”

In the end, Coubertin refused to budge, noting in a March 1915 letter to The Associated Press that the IOC didn’t have “the right” to forcibly move the Games without the host country’s assent.

“The Sixth Olympic Games remain and will remain credited to Berlin,” he wrote, “but it is possible that they will not be held.” His words soon became an epitaph.

“The summer of 1916 found European civilization at the brink of destruction and the Berlin stadium vacant,” Findling and Pelle wrote. “The flag of peace in Europe was not seen for another two years or the Olympic flag for another four years.”

It is possible — in some hypothetical world without rampant nationalism and Gavrilo Princip’s gun — to predict how the 1916 Games would have gone. The U.S., top-two medal finishers at five straight Olympics, would have likely fared well. “This meeting of the world’s athletic directors hailed Americans as the kings of sport,” U.S. Olympic official James E. Sullivan told The New York Times after the 1914 Paris conference.

“At Berlin I am confident we will win as usual.”

Canada, meanwhile, “had just started getting into sport,” Barker said. “They weren’t yet a big power.” But the Canadians did boast some elite athletes, including George Hodgson, who won two swimming gold medals as an 18-year-old at Stockholm in 1912. And in 1920, Canada achieved a momentous first: the Winnipeg Falcons won the first Olympic ice hockey tournament.

Those Games were played in Antwerp, Belgium, in the shadow of the war. German forces had massacred thousands of Belgian civilians after the 1914 invasion, and occupied the country until Germany’s surrender.

“There was a sort of feeling of empathy and wanting to do something for Belgium,” Barker said. They were awarded the Games in April 1919.

Germany and its allies weren’t invited. “It was not long ago that the last German soldiers had left Belgian soil,” Findling and Pelle wrote, “and hostile feelings against the former invaders still ran high.” Indeed, Germany did not return to the Olympic stage until 1928.

The Games began, on Aug. 14, 1920, with a religious ceremony at the Antwerp Cathedral, to honour the casualties of war. Athletes who had fought for Allied nations marched in their military uniforms into the Olympic stadium. There, the Olympic flag, with five unified rings of different colours, flew for the very first time. It had been revealed at the Paris congress in 1914.

Victor Boin, a Belgian fencer, swimmer and war pilot, walked into the stadium and delivered the first Olympic oath, pledging to compete “in a spirit of chivalry, for the honour of our country and for the glory of sport.” And then a flock of doves — “symbolizing the ideals of brotherhood and world peace,” Findling and Pelle wrote — was released into the sky.

The doves, the authors added, “were ironically accompanied by the firing of a gun salute.”