Brutal dictators who used blockbuster sports activities occasions to spice up their twisted propaganda
For German leader Adolf Hitler, the 1936 Berlin Olympics was meant to be a showpiece for the Nazi regime and demonstrate the supposed superiority of the Aryan race.
But the dictator was left red-faced when the tournament, which began 90 years ago next week, became most famous for black American athlete Jesse Owens winning four gold medals.
It’s not the only time tyrants have used sport to try and big themselves up. Here’s a closer look at others who have tried to pull off the same trick.
Imperial show-offs…
Some of the first leaders to use sport for propaganda purposes were the Roman emperors. In 67AD, Emperor Nero decided that he was going to personally take part in the Olympic Games, forcing the Greeks to hold them two years early.
Emperor Commodus needed gladiators tied up before he could fight them(Image: Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
He competed in the four-horse chariot race with ten horses, but was declared winner despite crashing. Somehow, he was supposed to have won a total of 1,808 events and was presented with an olive wreath for each victory.
Later emperor Commodus would take part in gladiatorial games. He competed 735 times, but the result would always be fixed, with opponents tied up or given wooden weapons.
Hitler’s game…
With a brand-new Olympic stadium draped in banners bearing the Nazi swastika, Adolf Hitler hoped that the televised 1936 Summer Olympics would be a stunning showcase for the Third Reich.
Germany did top the medal table after the Games began on August 1, but Hitler didn’t have it all his own way. While he banned Jewish German athletes from competing, his racist theories were crushed when black American star Jesse Owens won gold in the 100m, 200m, long jump, and 4×100m relay, beating German opposition.
Relay teams at the 1936 Olympic Games(Image: Bettmann Archive)
The Nazis knew football could be a useful tool too. Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels once said: “Winning a match is of more importance to the people than the capture of a town in the east.” But at the 1936 Games Germany were knocked out by underdogs Norway, in front of a humiliated Hitler, the only match he ever attended.
Fascist’s footie…
Italy’s fascist dictator Benito Mussolini saw football’s World Cup as useful propaganda for his regime when the nation hosted the FIFA tournament in 1934.
He filled the country with 300,000 posters promoting it, featuring divine hero Hercules giving a fascist salute, and commissioned an extra cup to award, the Coppa Del Duce, six times bigger than the Jules Rimet trophy.
The Italian team line up before a game in the 1934 World Cup(Image: Getty Images)
Referees were personally selected by Mussolini. One of them, Sweden’s Ivan Eklind, is alleged to have had dinner with the leader before their semi-final with Austria.
Amid allegations of leniency towards the Italian side, the hosts won the final.
At the 1938 World Cup the Italians wore black shirts for a match, a symbol of Il Duce’s paramilitary group. They won that tournament too.
General takeover…
Spain’s right-wing dictator General Francisco Franco was determined to leave his mark on the beautiful game.
In 1939 he had the Copa del Rey, the country’s top knockout competition, re-named after himself as the Copa del Generalísimo or His Excellency, The Supreme General’s Cup. This carried on until his death in 1975.
Oh yes, General Franco. We’re all terribly impressed(Image: Bettmann Archive)
Franco, who saw Catalonia as a bastion of opposition in the Civil War, also made FC Barcelona remove the Catalan flag from their crest and change their official name to make to sound more ‘Spanish.’
When Barca played Real Madrid in the semi-finals of the 1943 Cup, the team were told they were only playing because of the “generosity of the regime.”
Ring leaders…
In 1974 heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali famously beat George Foreman at the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ bout held in Kinshasa, the capital of today’s Democratic Republic of Congo.
Overseeing the action was a huge image of President Mobutu, the dictator who had renamed the country Zaire and put up millions to host the contest in a bid to puff up his regime.
President Mobuto shows Muhammed Ali his walking stick(Image: Bettmann Archive)
But the fight only took place after he’d allegedly had the city cleaned up by rounding up hundreds of criminals and executing 100 of them.
In the same year Uganda’s despotic President Idi Amin opened the All-Africa Amateur Boxing Championships in Kampala by fighting and knocking out his team’s national coach Grace Seruwagi, all while wearing a suit and tie.
Golfing mad…
North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jong-il claimed to have hit a 38 under par score when he played the game for the very first time in 1994 at a golf course in Pyongyang. Apparently, the totalitarian’s round included sinking 11 holes in one. Mmm…
He’s not the only authoritarian ruler to boast about being good with a club. In 2017 Turkmenistan’s Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov apparently scored a hole in one with his first shot on a new course outside the country’s capital Ashgabat. He hit it from 75 metres, according to the state TV channel, but suspiciously there was no video evidence of him doing so.
Kim Jong il was suspiciously good at golf(Image: Corbis via Getty Images)
Putin on a show…
Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin likes to present a macho sporting image. He famously scored eight goals in an exhibition match after donning an ice hockey kit in 2019.
The hosting of the 2018 FIFA World Cup was widely seen as a way of sportswashing his regime after the annexing of Crimea four years earlier.
Vladimir Putin… can also do karate(Image: Getty Images)
He also oversaw Russia hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, but after the tournament it emerged that scores of the nation’s athletes had been involved in a state-sponsored doping programme.
For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters.
