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Munich 1936 & Beijing 2022: Our Inability To Learn From History Is Our Greatest Undoing
It’s simply unacceptable
In 1931, the decision was made to allow Germany to host the 1936 Olympics.
It didn’t matter to the IOC that Germany’s economy hadn’t fully recovered nor did it matter that reparation payments had stopped, everyone, it seemed was anxious to appease the vanquished nation.
Even when the Nazis took over power in 1933 and had turned their backs on democracy and its democratic institutions, you would think that the International Olympics Committee would rescind its decision?
No chance.
We all know what happened subsequently when Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, Belgium, France and Romania were invaded and captured by the Germans and Europe became a fascist enclave. That Britain didn’t fall to the Nazis owed more to luck than anything else, despite arguments to the contrary from the natives.
We also know that centuries of anti-semitism in Europe found great expression in Hitler’s Germany, when six million Jews were rounded up from all over the continent and taken to the gas chamber in Auschwitz.
We musn’t forget the complicity of the IOC, the United States of America and its wealthiest citizens, the British royal family and its…