The Olympics, Hitler’s Best Work
The Olympic Torch arrived in Britain this week, carrying the Olympic Flame from Mt. Olympus in Greece, via a very circuitous route around the world. Thousands of Britains cheered the arrival of the torch, and lined the streets to watch it pass.
Carried high overhead, by a single runner, the Olympic Torch must be light enough to carry comfortably for long distances, and produce a bright flame visible from a distance, even in broad daylight. It must withstand high wind, rain or a fall without going out, and it must carry enough fuel to keep the torch burning all day. At night, the torch must allow refueling while it is still lit. The Olympic Torch represents a kind of technological achievement, and its design has remained unchanged since before WWII.
This invention has made the single most archetypical symbol of the Olympics, The Olympic Flame, a reality for millions of people in the ensuing years, as it continues to do, all over the British Isles in anticipation of the start of the 2012 Olympic Games in London. How many other machines remain essentially the same as they were in 1936? Zippo lighters haven’t changed much since Bogart’s day, but of course, everyone uses a Bic now.
The British promised us a new Olympic Torch, with a lower carbon footprint, the Bic of Olympic Torches, if you will, but they failed to deliver. Sure, the London torch has a new look, but underneath, it is still Hitler’s design. So, again in London, the Olympic Torch still liberally burns the same mixture of propane and butane as designed by its inventor, Adolf Hitler, all those years ago.
Yes, that Adolf Hitler. It shouldn’t surprise you that the Olympic Torch comes to us as a result of advanced German engineering, but it may surprise you to know that Hitler was that German engineer. In fact, the whole torch relay thing was Hitler’s idea. Before 1936, there was no torch relay.
Hitler had a very intimate, hands-on, and long lasting effect on the Olympics in other ways as well. In many ways, the Olympics of today remain a living expression of Hitlers creative vision, a vision the Olympic Committee works tirelessly to maintain.
Not only did Hitler invent the Olympic Torch, he, working with filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, defined the aesthetics of the Olympics, creating a work of art, the likes of which the world had never seen before. Hitler and Riefenstahl’s presentation of the Olympics continues to inspire the world today. Hitler and Riefenstahl branded the Olympics, and its a brand the Olympic committee doesn’t dare change. They recognize the creative genius behind that vision, and they do they’re best to recreate it every four years.
Sure, they held the Olympics before 1936, but they were a much more low-key affair. Hitler made the 1936 Berlin Games the centerpiece of his global propaganda campaign. Hitler, and as a result Germany spared no expense in producing a grand spectacle on the global stage. The 1936 Games became Hitler’s pet project, and his fingerprints are all over it, right down to the Olympic Torch that he invented. Hitler elevated a simple sporting event into a sacred ritual that continues to entrance the world. The Olympics represent the pinnacle of Hitler’s creative work as an artist.
The beginning of Riefenstahl’s film “Olympia”
They don’t actually get to the torch until pt2
So, as top athletes from all over the world descend on London to play their parts, tens of thousands of spectators and TV cameras reaching hundreds of millions more all over the world, focus on Hitler’s torch, as it finally arrives at the London 2012 Games, initiating the elaborate opening ceremony, where they will recreate once again, Hitler and Riefenstahl’s choreographed expression of human transcendence through the evolution of a master race, in all of its power and glory.
I’m sure all of the Londoners who lost their homes to The Olympic Village, feel it is a small price to pay to breathe new life into this Masterwork of the 20th Century. After all, Hitler, more than any other artist, and more than any other human being on Earth, in fact, defined the 20th Century. Certainly Hitler had a tremendous influence on the architecture of London in the early 1940′s, and I’m sure all Londoners want to celebrate his influence on their city.
With the best of the best of the world’s athletes gathered beneath snipers and surface to air missiles in their highly fortified enclave, Hitlers vision lives again this Summer in London. What does this tell you about sports fans, and their taste in art?
