Published
29 June 2006 (UK)
8 August 2006 (USA)
Praise
A gripping account of what occurred inside and outside the notorious 1936 Olympic Stadium. Whether writing about the sporting events themselves,the high politics that threatened to envelop them, or the round of not so innocent parties and receptions, Walters brings erudition and wit to bear in a book that is always fascinating. Berlin Games is a major achievement that will appeal to people interested in sport as well as history and politics.
Michael Burleigh, prizewinning author
of The Third Reich: A New History
This terrific account of naivety and political apathy illuminates the process of appeasement on a human scale...The book is also a gripping account of the games themselves.
Robbie Hudson, The Sunday Times
A gripping, beautifully written account...the product of proper detailed research and a passion for historical accuracy. Walters presents a serious work of history that’s also an addictive read. It would have been at home on the big non-fiction shortlists such as the Samuel Johnson as it is on the William Hill.
The Observer
A meticulous and often vivacious account of the events surrounding Hitler’s propaganda coup.
Matthew Syed, The Times
Nothing short of riveting. There have been books written about how Hitler hijacked the Olympics, but nothing as wide-ranging as Walters’ dramatic account...This is a work of real significance.
Scotland on Sunday
For most readers the joy of this book will be the reliving of the 1936 summer Olympics, which Walters evokes with all the cut and dash of an accomplished sports writer. For others who are less inclined towards sport, there is the macabre spectacle of the festivities surrounding the Games, and the lavish parties thrown by Hitler and his henchmen, most of whom would have been awkward in white tie and tails.
Giles MacDonogh, Literary Review
A panoramic perspective of the most controversial sporting event of the 20th century...
The strongest of the three books in terms of the meticulousness of his research and the quality of his writing...Walters also dramatically reveals how the Nazis bought the silence of Pierre de Coubertin...
Matthew Syed, The Times
A superb account of bribery and corruption and the Nazis’ hijacking of the 1936 Olympic Games.
Nick Pitt, Top Five Sports Books of the Year, The Sunday Times
If you ever wondered what possessed the International Olympic Committee to allow its showpiece event to be staged in Nazi Germany, many of the answers are here. A diligent researcher, Walters also has a journalist’s eye for a story.
David Owen, Sports Books Picks of the Year, The Financial Times
My book of the year...written with such finesse and voyeuristic detail. The pages turn like a thriller as Walters brings alive the differing worlds that collided in Berlin in 1936...This is a book for a long winter evening or even sun-drenched beaches later in 2007.
Kevin Rafter, The Sunday Tribune (Ireland)
A rich, entertaining and sobering narrative...Walters has done a splendid job of threading together the two strains of the Games, the political and the sporting, and in doing so has opened a window on German society at the time, which is often only breezed over by historians.
The Melbourne Age
A book of range and quality...
Michael Beloff, The Times Literary Supplement
Walters has done a tremendous amount of digging...Lively, often humorous and frequently moving.
Andrew Baker, The Daily Telegraph
Chronicling the politicking and propaganda machine that went into overdrive for the Berlin Olympics, the book also brings to life the trials and triumphs of the athletes and the moral choices they faced. The result is a fascinating, broad canvas that brings into sharp focus the deadlier political games being played at the time.
Alan Chadwick, Metro
...this excellent book.
David Llewellyn, The Independent
A complex and engaging account..demonstrating an impressive and well-controlled sense of scope...Walters lays on the pathos without falling into melodrama or sports cliché. Instead, his rigorous journalism relies on succinct summations of his characters' histories, which prove both even-handed and generous. Walters strays from objectivism only in his tireless maligning of the Nazi agenda, providing the work a righteous momentum.
Publishers Weekly
Walters does an excellent job of painting the big picture while zeroing in on the small details. He writes with a journalist’s precision and a novelist’s dramatic flair, and he packs a staggering amount of information into the book. The combination of sports, history, and politics should guarantee this volume a large and enthusiastic audience.
David Pitt, Booklist
It is a tribute to Guy Walters that the real story continues to shock 70 years on...Walters tells the story well.
David Herman, The Jewish Chronicle
This vigorous documentary points to the real and present dangers when democratic leaders (and indeed diehard sports fans) see and hear only what they want.
The Canberra Times
If you find history a turn-off and books about athletics make you run a mile in under four minutes, then prepare to be converted by Berlin Games, which reads like thriller with lashings of sex, skulduggery and political intrigue...Guy Walters has a newspaperman’s nose for sniffing out extraordinary stories to flesh out the political context of these outrageous Olympics. Walters is also an accomplished thriller writer, but this book will have proved to him that truth is always stranger than fiction.
Mike Ripley, The Birmingham Post
Guy Walters’s book is a comprehensive account of the events leading up to the games.
Jonathan Beckman, The Observer
The story of the most controversial Games in the history of the modern Olympiad has been captured magnificently...this landmark book is written in such a way that at times it bears all the hallmarks of a thriller or a whodunnit.
The Blackpool Gazette
The definitive account, shattering well-entrenched myths...and shedding new light on the numerous dodgy deals struck by the Nazis to ensure the games went ahead as planned...Admirable.
The Good Book Guide
A riveting account of a time, a place and an event that haunts us still. Author Guy Walters brings together the characters, issues and dramas great and small of the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Guy Walters has written a meticulously researched work of nonfiction...Berlin Games is a worthy addition to the literature of the Olympics.
A comprehensive study...Walters’s central theme, the corruption of sport by politics, cannot be stated too often.
Michael Barber, The Oldie
One of the best works on 1936 that I have seen.
Bill Mallon, past-president and co-founder of the International Society of Olympic Historians (ISOH)
A tremendous account of the 1936 Olympics: the athletes, the atmosphere, and most importantly, the politics behind those infamous games. Recommended for sports, history and travel buffs.
Jim Caple, espn.com
One of the most satisfying and insightful books I’ve yet read about the Olympic movement...
Walters tells a fascinating story of political and sporting intrigue, backed by the fruits of impeccable research.
Freddie Lawrence, Brighton Argus
A fascinating retrospective view of the period leading up to the Games...Walters has done an impressive amount of research, especially on the political issues...A valuable contribution to the history of the 1936 Olympic Games.
Journal of Olympic History
Guy Walters presents a fascinating and brilliantly detailed account...A riveting examination of the Berlin Olympics and the political maelstrom that served as its backdrop.
The Register-Pajaronian
A disturbing and detailed look at the 1936 Games and the machinations and corruption that challenged the Olympic ideal.
Alan Chadwick, Metro
Walters has done a creditable job in outlining the Nazification of the Games...For anyone interested in the history of sport, this book is an object lesson of what can happen when opportunists get involved and it is a salutary example of the guard that sporting purists should keep over their greatest assets.
Lynn McConnell, Sportal.co.nz
Nicely written, this historic gem of the times is not to be taken lightly.
Joan Sutter, Shelf Life
...vividly evokes the besmirching of sport.
The Jewish Chronicle
Mr Walters has talked to participants and looked through contemporary records to give us a splendid description...
Contemporary Review
[An] impressively researched work...
Christopher Hirst, The Independent
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The blurb says
THE 1936 Berlin Olympics brought together athletes, politicians, socialites, diplomats, journalists, soldiers, novelists and artists from all over the world. They convened in the heart of the German Reich in grandstands and glittering parties, unaware that on their next encounter they would be brandishing machine guns.
Behind the scenes, the Berlin Olympics were a crucible of the world’s discord, a dress rehearsal of the horrors of the forthcoming conflict. Hitler had secretly determined that the Games would showcase Nazi prowess and, when they arrived in Berlin, the unwitting athletes found themselves to be helpless pawns in his sinister political game.
For the first time Walters reveals how it was not only the Nazis who corrupted the Games, but the Olympic officials themselves, not least Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics, who received a secret massive donation from the Nazis.
From the remarkable tableau of the Games themselves, Walters stretches the story across a broad canvas, placing those two crucial weeks in the wider context of the 1930s. With brilliant narrative flair he brings a wide cast of characters and a complex political backdrop thrillingly alive and casts new light on a momentous yet little explored set piece of Nazi history.
Guy says
Berlin Games is my first ‘proper’ foray into nonfiction, and I’m very pleased with the result, if that doesn’t sound too dreadfully smug. The book features all sorts of weird and wonderful characters. Transvestite high jumpers, drunken backstrokers, Fascist femmes fatales, chain-smoking marathon runners, sexually incontinent Nazis –– all are to be found within its pages. This is not to trivialise the tone of the book, but the old cliché about truth being stranger than fiction certainly applies.
Berlin Games came about as a result of researching a new thriller. I wanted to set a novel during the Games, but found that there were no books that were both decent and recent about the event. The last came out nearly twenty years ago, and I immodestly thought it was time for a new history. I interviewed some 25 surviving participants, which saw me undertake quite a lot of globetrotting –– Los Angeles, Seattle, Germany, Switzerland, and even Croydon –– and I was astonished at how crisp their memories were.
I also spent a lot of time researching at the IOC headquarters in Lausanne and the Avery Brundage Collection in Illinois, both of which revealed a wealth of information about this most controversial sporting event of the last century. I have written what I hope to be both an enjoyable book and a timely one –– the controversies surrounding Beijing 2008 are very similar to those of Berlin 1936.
BERLIN GAMES
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2006 WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD
UK Paperback Edition
(John Murray)
US Paperback Edition
(HarperCollins)
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2007 NASSS OUTSTANDING BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD
Polish edition (Rebis)
Czech edition (BB Art)
