A Serious Game
Newsletter 16: 28 May 1936
“What ought to concern the Christian just as much is the public display for which this campaign of propaganda has been temporarily halted. The extremely important role which sport plays in the Third Reich is well known. What needs to be pointed out is the extent to which the National Socialist conception of sport is fundamentally different form that of the rest of the civilized world. A recognition of this is necessary for the Christian because the biological and pagan essence of the National Socialist Weltanschauung finds its most marked expression in the sporting activities of Hitler’s Germany.
Gymnastics and associations of gymnastics are the point of origin of the sporting traditions of the Third Reich and have achieved complete predominance under National Socialism. On several occasions, the Church has been obliged to take a stand against the theoreticians of gymnastic associations, who even before Hitler’s seizure of power espoused the ‘Aryan principle’ and in their language and rules committed themselves to a reassertion of pre-Christian traditions. In Bohemia and Austria, for example, the gymnastic movement has enjoyed cordial relations with political anti-clericalism.
In the physical culture of the Third Reich, it is not a matter of sport in the accepted sense of the term elsewhere—if it was so, the Church would have no reason for its grave doubts—still less of a ‘game’, which is something completely unknown in todays’ National Socialist German. Instead, it is…a cult, a total worldview, practiced systematically—not to say ferociously—and with a quasi-religious rigidity and seriousness.
The way sport is practiced in the Third Reich today is closely related to the tragedy which has been accomplished in terms of the education and leadership of the German youth. Under specious pretexts—that there is no Catholic fixed-bar gymnastics and no Protestant parallel-bar gymnastics—the confessional sporting associations have been dissolved. By such measures, Christian education has been deprived of an important means of exercising a living influence on the youth. It is well known just how effectively National Socialism exploits the day-to-day activities of the youth. It has taken physical and psychological possession of them— ‘we want you in entirety’—and such absolute control converts them into strict National Socialist followers, not merely members or adherents. It is through National Socialist sport that this total control is exercised. This system is to find its apotheosis at a time when the Kulturkampf is temporarily to depart the scene. But is not this sporting display itself a part of the Kulturkampf, a celebration of the National Socialist victory?”
