Sporting democracy : the Western Allies' reconstruction of Germany through sport, 1944--1952

This dissertation examines how the three western Allies used sport to rebuild western Germany during the occupation and early years of the Federal Republic. The Allies believed that the sports in which Germans chose to participate before 1945, in particular fencing and gymnastics (Turnen), helped define ones Germanness through demonstrations of militarism and hyper-masculinity. The development of Directive 23 on the Limitation and Demilitarization of Sport within the quadripartite Allied Control Authority imposed on sport the goals of the Potsdam Declaration: denazification, demilitarisation, decentralisation, and democratisation. By using sport as a vehicle to examine the achievement of western Allied goals, this dissertation demonstrates the centrality of sport to occupation policy.\nSport became a highly effective instrument of public diplomacy because of its broad appeal and also because it allows for a public display of national capabilities. By encouraging competition with athletes from other countries, the western Allies fostered a transformation of German sport from defining individual characteristics to supporting broader, group-oriented ideas of democracy. The problems of creating national sport organisations mirrored the geo-political situation as the western occupation zones merged to form the Federal Republic. The debate over the structural organisation of sport provided the Germans with an opportunity to demonstrate the democratic ideals learned from the western Allies but also allowed them to use these same ideals to gain autonomy.\nGermans used the internationalism of sport to regain a position within the international community because international sport federations lay outside official state control. Examining unofficial international football matches and West Germanys reacceptance by the international federations illustrates how sport provided a place for Germans to participate in the international system when no formal German state existed. The division of Germany forced the worlds sportsmen to address the political realities of Germany even though they considered sport separate from politics. This dissertation demonstrates how the western Allied efforts to dissociate sport and politics instead created the environment which enabled sport to assume a place of primacy during the Cold War, making the use of sport to democratise West Germany an ironic continuation of the politicisation of sport within Germany.

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