1944: War Olympics
From Rome to the concentration camps, the Olympic Games under the bombs
Per restare aggiornato entra nel nostro canale Whatsapp
On Christmas Day 1914, when the Great War had already turned into carnage, in the "no man's land" between the German and British trenches near Ypres, Belgium, the unthinkable happened. Soldiers from the two enemy armies called a tacit truce and challenged each other to a game of football. It was a signal, however faint and soon drowned out by the sound of machine guns, that human beings had not entirely lost their humanity and that they still possessed a desire to live, even in places where death often prevailed. This desire resurfaced amid the rubble of the Second World War almost thirty years later, in the bloody summer of 1944. The war was about to enter its fifth year, and no peace seemed in sight. Yet, those months were also a season of sport. They were months of pitched battles and unlikely competitions. Of war propaganda and appeals to the Olympic ideal of peace and brotherhood. Of course, the Olympic Games planned for London never took place, but the anniversary was observed in Rome, Paris, Lausanne, and even in German concentration camps. Journalist Mario Tedeschini Lalli's excellent book, Le Olimpiadi del 1944 (Neri Pozza, 2026, €24.00, 256 pages. Also available as an ebook), reminds us of this. The volume reconstructs these events in the broader political and war context, recounting the stories of some of the participants.
We asked Mario Tedeschini Lalli how the idea for a book on such a unique and little-known topic came about.
"Purely by chance: 15 years ago, an American friend asked me to visit the sites of the 1944 Rome Olympics because his uncle had participated. At first, I thought he was mistaken; then, digging deeper, I discovered that the Allies did indeed organize athletics and swimming competitions in newly liberated Rome, which, in the press of the time and in the memories of the participants, were simply called the 'Rome Olympics.' So I also discovered other 'Olympics' in wartime Europe."
What prompted the celebration of the Olympics, or at least the Olympic ideal, in places so far apart during the war?
Different motivations for different events. In Rome, in addition to entertaining the troops, the Allies wanted to score a propaganda coup by holding the games where Mussolini planned to organize the real Olympics. Lausanne, in neutral Switzerland, kept its pre-war commitment to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the modern Olympics. In German prison camps, Polish officers wanted to keep alive a national spirit and the hope for peace. The collaborationist Vichy government did the same in Paris, with a nationalistic focus, by claiming Pierre de Coubertin's French origins.
How was Pierre de Coubertin, who died in 1937, celebrated?
"The founder of the modern Olympics was actually only a protagonist at the fiftieth anniversary celebrations in Paris and Lausanne. His contributions in sporting, historical, and educational fields were remembered. In Paris, there was an attempt to portray him as a precursor of the 'new man' that the Vichy regime wanted to build."
How were the 1944 Olympics celebrated in Italy?
Immediately after the liberation of Rome, in early June 1944, the Allies thought it would be useful to use the sports center of the then Foro Mussolini (now Foro Italico) to organize games involving athletes from across the Mediterranean Theater of Operations, from Morocco to North Africa, Cyprus, and Italy. The teams, however, were not national, but rather by operational zone (those of the Fifth Army, those of the Eighth, those of the Atlantic Bases, etc.). No one officially called those games the Olympics, but American journalists understood perfectly well: they were the Allied Olympics. And so they remained, as mentioned, in the memories of the athletes—including my American friend's uncle.
Which of the protagonists of those Olympics impressed you the most?
African-American athlete Willie Steele, who spent months serving in a segregated U.S. Army logistics unit, won the high jump and long jump in Rome. He continued the war as if nothing had happened and, in 1948, won the gold medal in the long jump at the London Olympics. Also noteworthy are the stories of the extraordinary Japanese-American swimmers from Hawaii, of a Jewish non-commissioned officer from Yugoslavia who competed in Switzerland but first managed to do so under an assumed name in Italy, and of a Polish officer, a former Olympian, who organized the games in a prison camp in Germany.
