In examining the relationship between sport and politics one can find no better example of the inseparability of the two than the Olympic Games.Footnote ¹ The political dimension of the Olympics was particularly intense during the cold war, a ‘war’ characterised by its inherently political and propagandistic nature.Footnote ² During the cold war, sport was regarded as a legitimate vehicle for diplomacy in the promotion of ideology and national goals.Footnote ³ This is hardly surprising, as sport was the ideal medium for conducting the cultural dimension of the cold war, even when the protagonists were engaged in political negotiations.Footnote ⁴ Thus an understanding of British perspectives on the evolution of the relationship between the two German states and the Olympic movement after 1949 tells us a great deal about the way in which the British state conducted the cold war against the Soviet bloc.

Britain played an important role in the struggle between the two Germanys over the nature of Olympic representation for a number of reasons.Footnote ⁵ First, as a signatory to the Potsdam Agreement of 2 August 1945,Footnote ⁶ Britain had a major say in the making of any future German state, and the government of Clement Attlee played a significant role in the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, West Germany) in 1949. Second, Britain was a key ally of the FRG from the latter's inception, and remained so throughout the cold war and the life of the West German state.Footnote ⁷ Third, Britain was a key target in the campaign by the ‘other Germany’ – the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) – for full international status.Footnote ⁸ Fourth, as the ‘inventors’ of modern sport, Britain's influence within the Olympic movement was, in the words of one historian, ‘out of all proportion to its increasingly modest athletic performance.’Footnote ⁹

While there is a growing body of literature on relations between Britain and the GDR,Footnote ¹⁰ this article seeks to place British perspectives on East German attempts to gain full Olympic status at the very heart of the matter. The attitudes of the British Olympic Association (BOA) and the British government will be examined, and it will be demonstrated that the level of interaction between the two was high. Indeed, by the mid-1960s it was clear to policymakers in London that they could not leave ‘sporting diplomacy’ to sporting bodies alone. The FRG was a vital ally of Britain and it was the importance that the FRG attached to the sporting status of the GDR that made it such a crucial issue. While the relationship between Britain and the two Germanys is best understood in triangular terms,Footnote ¹¹ the Olympic dimension is notable chiefly because of two central factors: first, because of the high degree of influence exercised by Britain in this field (at a time when power elsewhere was visibly waning) and, second, because of the vulnerability of West Germany to East German charges of unfair discrimination in the arena of international sports.Footnote ¹²

There have been a number of studies concerned with the West German desire to keep the East German state marginalised (and recognised by as few countries as possible internationally) during the cold war.Footnote ¹³ In seeking this goal the FRG was initially cautious in its cultural and political diplomacy, with sport being assigned a relatively ‘non-political’ role.Footnote ¹⁴ But the challenge from the GDR soon changed this, as the East German ruling party, the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschland (SED, Socialist Unity Party of Germany), sought to use sport to advance its cause wherever possible.Footnote ¹⁵ Sport witnessed an ongoing struggle between East and West Germany for national legitimacy,Footnote ¹⁶ with the Olympic Games coming to epitomise the link between ‘sport and national symbolism’.Footnote ¹⁷ The East German policy of mobilising sport for political purposes was to be expected and, indeed, had clear precedents in recent German history.Footnote ¹⁸ The GDR first secretary, Walter Ulbricht, thus called for East German athletes to defend the sporting superiority of his stateFootnote ¹⁹ and ‘win the majority of the championships of all-German teams’.Footnote ²⁰ Conversely, the FRG federal chancellor Konrad Adenauer, leader of the centre-right Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands (CDU, Christian Democratic Union of Germany), reminded his state's representatives in June 1961 that they were ‘first and foremost Germans and only secondly sportspersons’.Footnote ²¹

The political struggle over the ownership of the ‘symbols’ of nationhood meant that ‘who represented Germany’ and ‘who were the Germans’ were all-important questions. As Margarete Feinstein has persuasively argued, symbols from Germany's past became an essential part of this struggle, and the danger of nuclear war meant that the sports field displaced the battlefield as the forum for the demonstration of physical prowess and masculinity. Further, ‘[t]he performance of East German athletes at international sporting competitions took on ideological significance as victories were attributed less to individual effort than to improved human development under socialist rule.’Footnote ²² Sport was charged with demonstrating the vitality of the East German state from the start.Footnote ²³ Right up to 1989, the official line in the GDR stressed the ‘intrinsic values to physical recreation that make it an ideal vehicle for instilling in participants progressive sentiments such as solidarity and friendship between Peoples’.Footnote ²⁴ In West Germany, the politicisation of sport, whilst rather less overt, was no less a means to a political end. In the sporting sphere, Bonn's claim to sole representation of the German people (Alleinvertretungsanspruch)Footnote ²⁵ was embodied in the Deutscher Sportsbund (DSB).Footnote ²⁶ Founded in Hanover on 10 December 1950 as the umbrella association for all gymnastic and sports associations in the FRG, the DSB effectively had a dual role: to speak for all Germans and to deny the legitimacy of any equivalent body in the GDR.

International sport therefore represented a battle for legitimacy where national symbolism was strikingly relevant. Of course, in terms of the Symbolpolitik represented by the interplay between sport and nation historically, Germany is not unusual.Footnote ²⁷ But the division of Germany after 1949 – and the refusal of one entity to accept that the other even existed – added a special significance to this case. By the late 1960s, citizens of the FRG strongly identified with ‘their’ Germany and viewed that state (and its athletes) as being the torchbearer for the whole German nation.Footnote ²⁸ At the same time, while many in the East were not communists, a whole generation had grown up identifying with GDR.Footnote ²⁹ Thus, with the burden of history weighing heavily in spheres more normally associated with national pride, full and separate FRG and GDR participation in the Olympics was to become an integral part of the process of the ‘normalisation’ of the two German states.

While the Olympic movement constituted an integral part of the international system of the governance of sport, its position on political matters was problematical. The oft-cited separation of sport and politics in the Olympic context is most often associated with two key figures, Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic Games, and Avery Brundage, president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) from 1952 to 1972.Footnote ³⁰ Brundage later took the credit for supposedly maintaining the separation of sport from politics in relation to the ‘success’ of a unified German team at the 1956, 1960 and 1964 games, labelling himself an ‘ambassador to the German people’.Footnote ³¹ Whatever Brundage said, it is clear that both superpowers ‘accepted the image of the Olympic Games as surrogate warfare’.Footnote ³² For Moscow, victories at the Olympics provided ‘irrefutable proof of the superiority of . . . socialist culture over the dying culture of the capitalist state system’.Footnote ³³ The UK Foreign Office recognised that

In similar vein, Abbott Washburn, deputy director of the US Information Agency (USIA), declared that ‘American prestige in the minds of world youth necessarily depends on greater participation in important international competitions by United States athletes and sports teams.’Footnote ³⁵ In 1964, US Attorney General Robert Kennedy asserted that it was ‘in our national interest’ for the United States to achieve ‘Olympic superiority – that we once again give the world proof of our inner strength and vitality’.Footnote ³⁶ Such rhetoric reflected the manner in which the cold war American cultural life became highly politicised, demonising the Soviet system to the nth degree.Footnote ³⁷

Given such a high degree of politicisation on both sides of the Iron Curtain, bitter accusations of gamesmanship, unfair practice, sabotage and espionage were a common feature of the cold war Olympics. Thus, for example, the East German propagandist Julius Mader publicly accused the head of the US National Olympic Committee (NOC), Arthur Lentz, of attempting to distribute a wealth of propaganda (written in Russian, Polish, Hungarian and German) produced by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at the Rome Olympics in 1960.Footnote ³⁸ While Allen Dulles, the CIA chief between 1953 and 1961, denounced Mader's book as ‘scurrilous propaganda’,Footnote ³⁹ such charges were not without foundation.Footnote ⁴⁰ That such subterfuge characterised the cold war Olympic competition is hardly surprising given the prestige that resided in the games in the eyes of both sides. And, as with so many of the issues in the global East–West contest, Germany lay at the heart of the cold war struggle for Olympic supremacy.

The British role in the establishment of the West German state is well documented.Footnote ⁴¹ A corollary of the UK alliance with the FRG was the refusal of British governments of all persuasions to recognise the GDR. This remained the British position until after the West German federal chancellor Willy Brandt had concluded the Basic Treaty with the GDR in December 1972. Britain therefore only entered into diplomatic relations with the GDR in 1973. To have done so earlier would have been detrimental to British relations with the United States and its increasingly vital West German ally.Footnote ⁴² But British attitudes towards the GDR were often ambivalent and, privately at least, policymakers often found their adherence to the West German position on the GDR somewhat inconvenient.Footnote ⁴³ And while anti-FRG (and pro-GDR) sentiment was prevalent in certain sections of British society – such as the left wing of the Labour PartyFootnote ⁴⁴ – by and large the alliance between Britain and the FRG was a solid one. As a result, throughout the period under consideration, the relationship between the British government and the GDR was, as Arnd Bauerkämper notes, ‘profoundly and continuously influenced by the relationship’ the two states had with the FRG.Footnote ⁴⁵

The creation of the FRG and the GDR saw the initiation of a struggle for legitimacy between the two new German states. The Grundgesetz (Basic Law), promulgated by the Parliamentary Council on 23 May 1949, identified the FRG as the sole successor to the German Reich and the representative of the German nation until such time as it should be ‘reunited’. A month after taking office in September 1949, Adenauer declared in the Bundestag that only the FRG was authorised to speak for the ‘German people’.Footnote ⁴⁶ Soon after the founding of the GDR on 7 October, the Allied High Commission (established in 1948 by Britain, the United States and France to regulate the development of the FRG) stated that the East German state was ‘devoid of any legal basis’, and two months later NATO accepted the notion that Bonn represented the sole legitimate German government.Footnote ⁴⁷ This position was reiterated in September 1950, when the foreign ministers of Britain, the United States and France affirmed ‘the Government of the Federal Republic as the only German Government freely and legitimately constituted and therefore entitled to speak for Germany as the representative of the German people in international affairs’.Footnote ⁴⁸ This position was not initially unpopular in Britain, as the GDR was seen as the nastiest manifestation of Stalinism yet exported from the USSR.Footnote ⁴⁹ There was therefore little public disquiet when the acceptance of Bonn's dictum on sole recognition now hardened into the official position of the Western alliance.Footnote ⁵⁰

The adoption of such a pro-FRG policy by the West was a major achievement for Bonn. As the West German politician Franz Josef Strauß, a leading member of the Christlich-Soziale Union (CSU, Christian Social Union – the Bavarian sister party of the CDU), stated, Bonn's chief objective had been to create a ‘situation which makes a Four Power bargain at our expense impossible’.Footnote ⁵¹ For, as Adenauer famously remarked, ‘I have my own nightmare: its name is Potsdam.’Footnote ⁵² Thus Germany was to remain a single entity in international law, and the boundary changes after 31 December 1937 were invalid ‘pending a final peace treaty’.Footnote ⁵³ The West's decision to defer to Bonn on the question of the future of Germany meant that there was now a direct link between policy towards the GDR and the status of Germany within the Olympic movement. This was because the West German assertion of Alleinvertretungsanspruch naturally extended to Olympic representation.Footnote ⁵⁴ The US administration of President Harry Truman therefore believed that any German Olympic participation must be ‘under the auspices of the Federal Republic only’.Footnote ⁵⁵ This was hardly surprising as the United States provided staunch backing for FRG policy towards the GDR.Footnote ⁵⁶ Indeed, US concern about Soviet intentions in Germany meant that the FRG was encouraged to be even more hostile towards the GDR.Footnote ⁵⁷

Since no German state existed in 1948 (outside the status of an occupied entity), and the first post-war Games fell so soon after the end of hostilities, German representation at the 1948 Olympics was never really a serious option.Footnote ⁵⁸ The creation of two German states in 1949, with their respective superpower sponsors, changed this. But, just as the German question remained unresolved, the nature of German representation at any future Olympics remained undetermined. As a model of how the nascent Federal Republic wished itself, and its eastern neighbour, to be treated, the behaviour of the IOC cannot be faulted. The pre-war German NOC was simply reconstituted in the FRG and provisionally recognised by the IOC in 1950 as representing the ‘whole’ of Germany.Footnote ⁵⁹ This upheld the West German claim to be the sole successor to the pre-war German state, although the IOC did specify that representatives of the GDR should be allowed to join as soon as was practicable. But the GDR aimed to do far more than simply contribute to a team dominated by West Germany, and an East German NOC was founded in April 1951. One month later, representatives of both the East and West German Olympic committees signed the ‘Lausanne Convention’ with a view to forming a single German Olympic team. But, following discussions in Hamburg and Kassel, the East Germans cancelled a subsequent meeting scheduled for Berlin in December 1951 and denounced the Lausanne Convention.Footnote ⁶⁰ The GDR simply would not countenance the possibility of the West German NOC representing their athletes. But suspicions were strong on both sides. British officials noted that while the West Germans stood by the Lausanne agreement, they simultaneously expressed concerns about possible infiltration by the communist ‘menace’. This, in addition to East German intransigence, prompted inter-German sporting contacts to be greatly reduced. In sport, as in politics, the division of Germany was deepening.Footnote ⁶¹

That the FRG was regarded by the IOC as representing the whole of the divided Germany was an important victory for Bonn. Unhappy at the IOC's partisan attitude, the GDR ignored an invitation to a meeting in Copenhagen in February 1952 to discuss the possibility of an all-German Olympic team.Footnote ⁶² For the GDR to have attended would have been tantamount to accepting Bonn's position. Undeterred, the IOC, and Brundage in particular, nevertheless resolved to oppose the GDR's claim to separate Olympic representation. In line with this, the 46th IOC Session in Oslo in February 1952 announced that a joint team represented ‘Germany's only chance to take part’ in that year's games.Footnote ⁶³ The next day the IOC received an East German delegation pleading for recognition but it remained unmoved by their arguments.Footnote ⁶⁴ The IOC now stipulated that an all-German three-member committee be established. It was proposed that this should include a representative from each German NOC and be chaired by the long-standing German IOC member, Karl Ritter von Halt.Footnote ⁶⁵ The IOC was unashamed in its pro-Western stance (von Halt was even described as having been elected president of the German NOC ‘upon his return from a Russian concentration camp'!).Footnote ⁶⁶ And, of course, von Halt's association with the FRG would have meant a permanent West German majority on the proposed all-German committee. As it was, no East German athletes competed in Helsinki in 1952, although a ‘German’ team composed only of West Germans did (as did a team from the Saarland).Footnote ⁶⁷

The fact that the IOC had accepted Bonn's position as the sole legitimate German state after 1949 meant that, far from adopting a neutral position, the Olympic movement was privileging the Western view. The West insisted that Moscow's wish for its German ally to have an independent NOC ran contrary to the stated position of the majority of the IOC membership.Footnote ⁶⁸ Indeed, many of those IOC members even predicted that dual recognition would merely exacerbate the existing ‘artificial’ division of Germany and that, consequently, sport should not be an agent for promoting national disunity.Footnote ⁶⁹ (Of course, exacerbating the division of Germany was exactly what the USSR sought to do!) Nevertheless, despite the blatant manipulation of sport by the West, the British praised the West German NOC for the manner in which it had ‘categorically refused to renounce its principles and join forces with the functionaries of a communist political regime under the guise of sports representatives’. That this had not been the case in the ‘politically motivated’ GDR, rendered the NOC of the FRG ‘superior’!Footnote ⁷⁰

While Dirk Spilker has recently demonstrated that the GDR initially sought to win the whole of Germany for socialism,Footnote ⁷¹ the GDR was determined to establish itself internationally from the start. Ultimately it was the superpowers that called the shots and just as the FRG had relied on Washington to guarantee its position, so the GDR looked to Moscow. The GDR's campaign for recognition acquired momentum after it became clear that the FRG would remain firmly entrenched in the Western bloc and the USSR gave the GDR full international recognition in 1954–5.Footnote ⁷² Exactly when the USSR embraced a two-state solution in Germany it is hard to say, but the East Berlin rising of June 1953 was clearly a watershed. What is certain is that Moscow's post-June 1953 attitude came as a great relief to the SED, which had feared being sold out by Moscow in return for a wider deal with the West.Footnote ⁷³ Thus freed up, the GDR could and would now pursue international recognition with dogged single-mindedness.Footnote ⁷⁴ Retrospectively, the British recognised that the question of German reunification and German representation at the Olympics was transformed by Moscow's decision to grant sovereignty to its German satellite.Footnote ⁷⁵

Despite Bonn's ascendancy in the Olympic arena, the GDR had a number of advantages in their pursuit of international status through the use of sport as a vehicle. The British government was alarmed that international sporting federations (such as the governing body of association football),Footnote ⁷⁶ while supposedly awaiting IOC guidance on the status of sporting bodies in the GDR, often affiliated East German federations with little or no reference to the IOC. Standing behind the sporting bodies of the GDR was the SED, attempting to gain recognition by the back door. In pursuing this goal, East Germany exploited sympathy for athletes and notions of ‘fair play’ to highlight the fact that the West German state was widely held to be responsible for the exclusion of East German competitors by means of its campaign against the GDR.Footnote ⁷⁷ The British drew the conclusion that West German policy was often at odds with common sense and, privately, they made their concerns clear to Bonn.Footnote ⁷⁸ Yet the fact that only athletes from the Federal Republic represented Germany at the 1952 Olympics (the GDR having declined to participate as part of a single German team) represented a ‘victory’ for Bonn's efforts over the previous three years.Footnote ⁷⁹ But it was to prove a Pyrrhic victory of the most misleading kind.

It was clear in London that while intra-German sporting relations were supposedly dominated by the ‘exploitation of the earnest desire of West German athletes to meet with their Soviet Zone brothers’, the GDR took the view that their sporting teams were actually the rightful representatives of all Germany.Footnote ⁸⁰ Olympic competition was promoted as a way of demonstrating the superiority of Soviet scientific training methods and ergo of communism over capitalism.Footnote ⁸¹ The British saw how the SED used sport as a tool of indoctrination and for imbuing a sense of pride in the new German state. Thus the NOC of the GDR continued to reject all invitations to participate in any all-German joint committee. The East Germans claimed that any such body, which would be based in Bonn, would be unworkable, given the partisan attitude of the IOC. In response to demands for an independent GDR NOC, the IOC took refuge in legalistic evasion, stating that ‘it is not possible for one country to have two Olympic Committees’. Again, this was to accept Bonn's position. Against this, at the IOC session held simultaneously with the Olympic Games in Helsinki, several members had spoken in favour of recognising a separate East German Olympic committee.Footnote ⁸² Lord Burghley, the most prominent British Olympic official and a vice-president of the IOC, supported the ‘two Germanys’ approach on the grounds that only this would allow the youth of the ‘Soviet Zone’ to compete as Olympians.Footnote ⁸³ But raising the status of the GDR, and thus deepening the division of Germany, was something the British government would not countenance. As the prime minister, Anthony Eden, warned,

The GDR's case was again considered at an IOC meeting in Athens in May 1954. Brundage requested that the GDR negotiate with the Soviet IOC member, Konstantin Andrianov, rather than directly with himself.Footnote ⁸⁵ Andrianov reported that the East German NOC was ‘functioning normally’ and predictably pleaded the case for East German youth to be afforded the opportunity to take part in the Olympic Games.Footnote ⁸⁶ But the lack of co-operation from the GDR NOC, coupled with extensive criticism of both von Halt and the IOC in the GDR press, resulted in the rejection of the East German request by thirty-one votes to thirteen.Footnote ⁸⁷ This decision was partly overturned a year later, however, when an IOC meeting in Paris voted for provisional recognition of the East German NOC by twenty-seven votes to seven.Footnote ⁸⁸ The IOC later noted that

Anticipating this, the British had already noted the necessity of assuaging West German fears by stressing that, if a united team failed to compete, the provisional accreditation of the East German NOC would lapse automatically.Footnote ⁹⁰ A second IOC condition, adopted as a sop to the West German position, stated that reunification would mean that German Olympic representation would automatically revert to a single German Olympic committee.Footnote ⁹¹ This did not disguise the advance that the GDR had made.

In the first years of its existence, West Germany was obsessed with its campaign to deny the legitimacy of the East German state. Immediately following his visit to Moscow in September 1955, Adenauer wrote to the Soviet premier Nikolai Bulganin, stating that the establishment of diplomatic relations with the USSR did not mean that the FRG in any way recognised the GDR.Footnote ⁹² Adenauer then told the Bundestag that any country recognising the GDR would be deemed to have engaged in an ‘unfriendly act . . . tending to deepen the division of Germany’.Footnote ⁹³ The Western allies backed this position unreservedly, asserting that only Bonn ‘was entitled to speak for Germany as the representative of the German people in international affairs’. The West did not ‘recognize the East German regime nor the existence of a state in the Soviet zone’.Footnote ⁹⁴ Once again, Western policy on the GDR was scrupulous in its observation of West German sensibilities.

The Paris vote of the IOC was limited in that it accorded the GDR only partial recognition, as a ‘geographical area’, rather than full recognition as a sovereign state. But even this was too much for the FRG. Willi Daume (head of the West German NOC and president of the DSB) gloomily advised the West German minister of the interior, Gerhard Schröder, that the ‘yardstick of sporting practice’ internationally ‘unfortunately already regarded the GDR as a sovereign state’ as much as a ‘satellite state of Russia’.Footnote ⁹⁵ Nonetheless, each fearing charges of intransigence, the two German Olympic committees reached an accommodation, and a united German team competed at the 1956 Melbourne Games.Footnote ⁹⁶ Brundage eulogised that ‘in sport we do such things’,Footnote ⁹⁷ later commending ‘the spectacle of East and West German athletes in the same uniform marching behind the . . . same flag [as] an inspiration under present political conditions’.Footnote ⁹⁸ But the appearance of a united team was largely illusory. The ski-jumping bronze won by Harry Glass at the 1956 Winter Olympics was claimed by the GDR as its own first Olympic medalFootnote ⁹⁹ and official GDR literature began to list the medals won by their athletes.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Regardless of who had won what, the FRG now stepped up its diplomatic campaign against the GDR. In June 1956, a few months prior to the games, the FRG government declared that

In line with this so-called ‘Hallstein Doctrine’, a lobby in the Auswärtiges Amt (the West German foreign ministry) even favoured withdrawing from the Melbourne Games so as to avoid any contact at all with the GDR.Footnote ¹⁰² While this was rejected as self-defeating, the proposal was indicative of the constraints that the Hallstein Doctrine would impose on FRG foreign policy henceforth. Bonn's dogmatic stance also imposed severe restrictions on the ability of allied or neutral states to establish links with the GDR.Footnote ¹⁰³ D. A. Logan, the assistant private secretary to the British foreign secretary Selwyn Lloyd, thus lamented that while ‘I do not see why our insistence on the non-recognition of the East German régime need necessarily be sacrosanct’, unfortunately ‘we are for the time being largely the prisoners of Dr. Adenauer's policy’.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ But while there is little doubt that the central goal of the FRG – the isolation of the GDR – was ‘largely realised’,Footnote ¹⁰⁵ the consensus among historians is that the rigidity of Bonn's policy was counterproductive in the long term.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ In its campaign against the GDR, the FRG made great use of its economic strength,Footnote ¹⁰⁷ but this ability diminished over time and Bonn was always vulnerable to challenges from the cultural and sporting spheres. And it was because of Bonn's insistence that Britain adhere to the rigid dictates of the Deutschlandpolitik of the FRG that sections of British society expressed most, and increasing, disquiet.Footnote ¹⁰⁸

Following the 1956 Olympic Games, the GDR continued to reiterate that its non-recognition as a separate sporting entity was anachronistic. It condemned the all-German formula, alleging that its athletes had been unable to perform optimally as a result of mixing with ‘bourgeois’ team members from the West.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ The West Germans remained intransigent and when the GDR won a gold medal in the European canoeing championship at Duisberg in summer 1959, the West German hosts played Beethoven's ‘Ode to Joy’ instead of the GDR anthem, ‘Auferstanden aus Ruinen’. But the fact was that the distinctive hammer, corn and compass emblem of the GDR, adopted in October 1959, was to become ever more prominent in international sporting fixtures, and the official paper of the SED, Neues Deutschland, printed maps indicating where the East German flag had flown over sporting events.Footnote ¹¹⁰

In November 1959, Adenauer informed the West German cabinet that Daume and von Halt had specifically expressed their alarm to the IOC at the prospect of the newly adopted GDR flag making an appearance at the Olympics.Footnote ¹¹¹ In truth, the solution that had been adopted for the 1956 games was not an acceptable long-term solution for Adenauer either. Bonn's absolutist position required an effective acceptance by the IOC of Alleinvertretungsanspruch. Adenauer thus informed Daume and von Halt that the proposed compromise solution of allowing the FRG and the GDR contingents to carry the modified ‘German’ Olympic flag was unacceptable: ‘Put the Olympic rings on the national flag and the Sarrasani Circus will be along wanting an elephant and the butcher's guild wanting a pig's head on the flag.’Footnote ¹¹² Despite this, a compromise solution on a German Olympic flag for 1960 was reached on 12 December 1959.Footnote ¹¹³ While this was preferable to having the GDR flying its own flag at the Rome Olympics in 1960, the West German state was in a bind. If it wanted German representation at the Olympics, in whatever form, it had to allow West German sporting bodies to communicate with their East German counterparts. The necessity of West German sporting bodies engaging in extensive contacts with their East German counterparts infuriated Bonn's foreign minister, Heinrich von Brentano, and other advocates of a hard line against the GDR.Footnote ¹¹⁴ In practical terms, however, there seemed little option. In retrospect, the years 1958 and 1959 clearly marked the inexorable advance of East German sport, carefully manipulated by Pankow.Footnote ¹¹⁵ Bonn's main problem lay in the very nature of international sport. As Daume informed Schröder, ‘sports [do] not know any political blocs like NATO, there is no rock-solid Western community; on the contrary there is a very strong aversion to all Germans, including the Germans of the Federal Republic’.Footnote ¹¹⁶

In late 1959, the government in Bonn conceded that the view that the FRG would have little option but to tolerate the GDR flag at (non-Olympic) international sporting events was likely to be proved right.Footnote ¹¹⁷ Thus Bonn's decision of 6 December 1959, forbidding its sports teams to compete at events where the GDR flag was allowed,Footnote ¹¹⁸ had to be rescinded in March 1961 after angry protests from international sports organisations.Footnote ¹¹⁹ The FRG now looked nervously to its allies for reassurance. Aware of increasing West German sensitivity in this matter, in January 1960 US secretary of state Christian Herter stressed that it was crucial that when arriving for the upcoming winter Olympics at Squaw Valley, the ‘East Germans do not constitute themselves as a separate Olympic team after admission to US’.Footnote ¹²⁰ US policy remained exceptionally friendly to Bonn – the Americans even asked the FRG to supply details of GDR attempts to subvert the ‘all-German’ team.Footnote ¹²¹ But West German policy, ultimately reliant on allies, neutrals and sporting bodies themselves, was only as strong as its weakest link.

Signally, US attempts to limit the GDR presence at Squaw Valley were fraught with difficulty. A State Department memorandum advised that a lenient attitude be adopted towards the East Germans, as ‘It was now clear that . . . the [State] Department might be subjected to criticism by the world-wide Olympic movement as violating the spirit of this international event.’Footnote ¹²² Furthermore, while ‘we did all we could to pin the label of blame of political activity on the East German[s] . . . the overall impression remaining is that it was we who injected politics into the Olympics’.Footnote ¹²³ Taking stock of the ascendancy of the East German case, a Foreign Office memorandum advised that while it was opposed to recognition of the GDR, the waters of the debate must be kept somewhat murky. This was British ‘pragmatism’ at its most extreme. It was accepted that the territorial area of East Germany was, to a limited extent, ‘legitimate’ (as was the role of the East German ‘authorities’ within that geographical area). These were necessary practical steps, but they did not specifically pertain to de facto recognition of the GDR.Footnote ¹²⁴ In questions relating to the GDR, and the prospects for German unity, any hint of British ‘flexibility’ was anathema to Bonn and fuelled concerns over British willingness to ‘appease’ the Soviet Union on the question of Germany.Footnote ¹²⁵ By the early 1960s the West German government was increasingly suspicious of British ‘softness’ on these issues. And they were right to be – to the highest levels. Lord Home, the foreign secretary, had told the cabinet in July 1961 that the GDR should be recognised as part of an overall settlement with the USSR.Footnote ¹²⁶ Despite the willingness to trade the vital interest of Britain's German ally, such a dramatic step on such a sensitive issue was too much for the British to take unilaterally. But recognition of the strength of the East German position was correct, and the Olympic issue was one with which the GDR could continue to make real progress.

Bonn insisted that the joint team for the 1960 Olympics was recognition of the ‘indivisibility’ of the German nation, and all German Olympic medallists were invited to an official reception in Bonn in December 1960.Footnote ¹²⁷ But the GDR had derived great advantage from once again participating in an all-German team. Unable to secure the political unification of Germany, Bonn had been forced to accept the kind of half-measures that the Olympic compromise typified. In agreeing to participate in an all-German team, the East had put the West Germans in a bind. A unified team of such blatant artificiality actually undermined the long-term goal of unity by reminding people of the existence of ‘another’ Germany. Furthermore, of the 331 members of the all-German team of 1960, nearly half were from the GDR.Footnote ¹²⁸ This number was, from the East's point of view, a considerable improvement over 1956 and it exceeded the share that simple demographics might have suggested.

The Adenauer government continued to seek to patronise West German sports in an attempt to overshadow the efforts of the GDR in this sphere. But while Interior Minister Schröder stressed the importance of the West German government's hosting of an official ceremony in Bonn to mark the tenth anniversary of the DSB in December 1960,Footnote ¹²⁹ such events only served to remind observers of the increasingly fractured nature of German sporting representation. This was having a detrimental effect internationally, as the special status accorded the German case was growing unpopular among IOC member states. Daume informed Schröder that the international community increasingly evinced a general ‘violent aversion’ to the notion of an all-German team, with special malice being reserved for the West German delegation.Footnote ¹³⁰ It was clear that separate Olympic representation was only a matter of time. Somewhat pessimistically, the British sought to make the best of the situation and found the United States increasingly compliant.Footnote ¹³¹

This conversion in US thinking was crucial. It was now clear that West Germany would have to accommodate itself to the unpalatable truths about East Germany, and the British resolved to assist it in doing so. Yet the West Germans were not entirely passive in the face of pressure from the East Germans. In 1963, Daume and the mayor of West Berlin, Willy Brandt of the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD, Social Democratic Party of Germany), privately suggested hosting the 1968 Olympics across both sides of divided Berlin.Footnote ¹³³ This represented a desire to focus the attention of the world on that divided city and the Berlin Wall. Even in the charged atmosphere of some of the tensest moments in the cold war this would have been provocative, as virtually every cultural and social activity in Berlin was entirely politicised at this time.Footnote ¹³⁴ Had the proposal been made public, there would have been advantages from a propaganda perspective. The British embassy in Bonn noted that ‘at least a hole would be punched in the wall’.Footnote ¹³⁵ However, the possibility of the GDR liasing with the FRG over this issue was remote, and, in any case, Daume's proposal was nothing more than an attempt to promote Bonn's agenda. This was clear to all parties, and the British noted that it ‘would inevitably be considered . . . a calculated political move’.Footnote ¹³⁶ What all of this demonstrated to London was that the Olympics were, at the political level, a weapon of far greater utility to the GDR than it was to the FRG. In consequence the British now viewed the current arrangement as being increasingly untenable. For while there would be an all-German team in 1964, this had only been possible as a result of extensive, long-term negotiations by the NOCs and sports organisations involved (and on the understanding that the team be selected on the basis of trials to be held in Berlin).Footnote ¹³⁷

After 1960, the GDR managed to capitalise on simple appeals to the notion of the apolitical nature of sport and to plain common sense. The non-recognition of the GDR meant that many NATO member states had always refused to grant visas to GDR athletes so that they could compete abroad.Footnote ¹³⁸ But in 1962 a decision by both France and the United States to refuse visas to GDR competitors for world championships in various cities, as a sanction for the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961, led to threats from the IOC which might potentially preclude those cities from hosting future Olympic Games by virtue of the blatant politicisation of sport.Footnote ¹³⁹ The UK Foreign Office saw this IOC stance as an attempt to end the draining wrangling about the status of the divided Germany. However,

The British were aware that German participation in the 1956, 1960 and 1964 Olympics (as a united team) had represented only the most superficially successful of arrangements. It was clear that a mutual resentment was becoming manifest and new demands for a completely separate GDR Olympic team seemed likely to profit from the obvious disillusion in FRG sporting circles.Footnote ¹⁴¹ The West Germans were certainly unhappy over selection procedures (which were seen to favour GDR athletes) and their unhappiness was exacerbated by political agitation from Pankow.Footnote ¹⁴² Bonn's disquiet was hardly likely to diminish as ever-increasing investment in training techniques in the GDR meant that the East would inevitably provide a greater and greater proportion of Olympians in any future all-German teams.Footnote ¹⁴³ The USSR now sought to take advantage of the increasing criticism of the FRG's position by making all manner of proposals to the Olympic movement (including an October 1963 motion tabled by Andrianov calling for a separate NOC for West Berlin).Footnote ¹⁴⁴ It was now clear that Bonn's difficulties were likely to multiply.

The Tokyo Olympics of 1964 were a turning point, in that they demonstrated to much of the international community the illogical nature of the arrangement for German Olympic participation. This also represented a turning point in the West German campaign to prevent East Germany moving towards full Olympic representation.Footnote ¹⁴⁵ The lack of any progress towards German reunification had obvious ramifications for future German Olympic representation.Footnote ¹⁴⁶ Most obviously, there was an increasing feeling within the broader sporting community that two German teams should be allowed to compete in 1968. This was something the Soviets were keen to encourage, and the FRG ambassador in London warned that, in moving further away from accepting the notion that there be one NOC for the German nation, the Soviet Union was attempting to ‘misuse sport to gain ground . . . for the theory of the existence of even three German states’.Footnote ¹⁴⁷ At a meeting in Tokyo in autumn 1964 the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF), headed by Lord Burghley, decided to accept the GDR as a fully accredited member and representing the ‘geographical area of East Germany’ (although the FRG would still be referred to as ‘Germany’).Footnote ¹⁴⁸ Brundage was keen to point out to both the FRG and the GDR that the IAAF was distinct from the Olympic movement and was not overseen by the IOC.Footnote ¹⁴⁹ The British government, however, could see that this was merely a smokescreen.

At a meeting of NOCs in Lausanne on 11 April 1965, a proposal that the GDR be recognised as a full member of the IOC was carried by nineteen votes to five (Britain voting against). The British ambassador in Bonn, Sir Frank Roberts, observed that the IAAF decision had set a dangerous ‘precedent in the sporting field’ for the FRG.Footnote ¹⁵¹ Burghley cautioned the Foreign Office that he believed that the IOC would follow suit, as only five NOCs on that body seemed likely to continue to support the current arrangement.Footnote ¹⁵² It was clear to the Foreign Office that this recognition of the GDR had set a crucial precedent.Footnote ¹⁵³ This was also plain to Western publics, and the UK Observer newspaper wrote that the notion of joint FRG and GDR Olympic representation was becoming ever more discredited, given the situation elsewhere in the sporting sphere.Footnote ¹⁵⁴ Yet, even now, Brundage continued to argue for the continuation of ‘[a] combined German Olympic team [in order to] demonstrate to . . . the [entire] quarrelling world the humanitarianism of the Olympic movement . . . It would be an enormous loss to international sport and to the German people if there is no united German team in 1968.’ Brundage stubbornly adhered to his idealistic vision, stating that ‘Contestants on Olympic fields are athletes and not countries or governments. Neither ideologies . . . nor political doctrines are at stake. In the Olympic Games it is sport and sport only . . . German sport leaders have again a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate their devotion to the Olympic idea.’Footnote ¹⁵⁵ However, Burghley was pointing the way forward, and was certainly more realistic, when he warned the Foreign Office that France's hosting of the 1968 winter Olympics would be imperilled if the French authorities again refused to grant entry visas to GDR athletes.Footnote ¹⁵⁶ Signally, the French gave way. Of course, the political motive contained in East German initiatives was clear, and the State Department noted that the GDR would welcome any competition with a US sports team ‘because, even if their team lost badly, the fact that competition took place at all would create an impression that they are “salonfähig”’.Footnote ¹⁵⁷

Increasingly convinced of the inevitability of full East German status, Burghley now personally advocated the abandonment of an all-German Olympic team in time for the 1968 games, adding that displays of ‘ardent nationalism’ should be abandoned and that teams should be admitted in the future as representing ‘geographical entities’.Footnote ¹⁵⁸ The Foreign Office was alarmed at this, indicative as it was of the manner in which British sporting organisations were far more prone to accepting what they saw as the de facto status of the GDR. Given his influence, Burghley's perceived ‘pro-East German leanings’ were also the subject of much West German concern and apprehension. Further, FRG opposition to the GDR achieving any kind of sporting recognition had resulted in ‘considerable resentment’. This had rebounded on Bonn, and the IOC voted (by a very large majority) that a joint German team was no longer possible. There would therefore now be two German teams. One team would represent ‘Germany’, the West German Olympic Committee, and the other ‘the geographical area of East Germany’, in line with IAAF precedent. Although the term ‘geographical area’ was used in an attempt to minimise the implication of any political recognition of the wider issue of the East German state, this was of little consolation to Bonn.Footnote ¹⁵⁹

Enraged and impotent, Bonn denounced the manner in which the actions of international sporting bodies had led to ‘the political upgrading of the Soviet-zonal regime in world public opinion’.Footnote ¹⁶⁰ But West German policy was being overtaken by events. In Madrid, on 8 October 1965, the IOC announced the recognition of the East German NOC. The GDR representative, Heinz Schöbel, was therefore happy to agree to take part in the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 1968 under a joint Olympic flag and the de facto German Olympic anthem (‘Ode to Joy’) one last time. For the GDR this was another step towards attaining full and separate Olympic representation.Footnote ¹⁶¹ The West German government had, as one historian of the Hallstein Doctrine terms it, ‘fought and lost a crucial battle’, and in 1968 ‘television audiences would see athletic proof of two competing German states’.Footnote ¹⁶²

After so many years of bitter hostility towards the GDR, the IOC decision came as a shock to the FRG public and there was an outburst of bitterness in the West German press. But the IOC decision did not affect the FRG government quite as severely as some observers might have imagined. Daume had warned the Auswärtiges Amt that the West Germans would be seen as the ‘last cold warriors’ if they demanded a continued boycott of the GDR and so, privately, in 1964 and 1965 the West Germans had prepared ‘retreat positions’ for the eventuality of full East German representation in international sport.Footnote ¹⁶³ Nevertheless, the US embassy in Bonn, noting the blow to West German policy, advised Washington that ‘acceptance of separate East German Olympic membership will seem a big step towards international recognition of the GDR’.Footnote ¹⁶⁴ Burghley similarly explained to the UK Foreign Office that Bonn's concern that separate Olympic representation for the GDR would amount to de facto recognition of the existence of two German states was entirely justified. At the same time, West German pressure on IOC member states had caused ‘considerable resentment’ and had acted as something of a diplomatic ‘boomerang’.Footnote ¹⁶⁵ This was similar to the effect exerted by the Hallstein Doctrine on the international position of the FRG. In truth, the West German position was too intransigent, too complex and too contradictory to have sustained international support indefinitely.

The IOC decision was the signal defeat for the sporting and cultural dimensions of the Hallstein Doctrine, and there was an air of resignation at the highest levels of the West German government soon afterwards.Footnote ¹⁶⁶ Moreover, the decision only reinforced the British belief that the doctrine had been doomed for some time (as Prime Minister Harold Wilson informed Chancellor Ludwig Erhard in March 1965).Footnote ¹⁶⁷ Sir Frank Roberts noted that the IOC had finally recognised political reality, for although it had not yet relented to offer absolutely separate representation this now seemed a formality.Footnote ¹⁶⁸ Gerhard Schröder, now foreign minister of the FRG, privately conceded to Bonn's key allies that the GDR had, by means of the IOC decision, improved its internal and international position. Paul Gore-Booth, permanent under-secretary of state at the UK Foreign Office, assured Schröder that while he could see that the GDR had made progress, London would not modify its policies towards that state.Footnote ¹⁶⁹ In reality, politicians, diplomats and the IOC could see the waning power of the West German campaign against East Germany, and Roberts dismissed the Olympic flag and anthem agreement of 1959 as a redundant fig-leaf.Footnote ¹⁷⁰ Following the IAAF decision of April 1965, the GDR competed at the 1966 European Athletics Championships in Budapest with its own flag, uniform and anthem. In May 1966 Schröder confessed to Wilson that the Hallstein Doctrine had been rendered impotent.Footnote ¹⁷¹ A few months later it was noted that a recent West German cabinet meeting had pessimistically discussed ‘the mysterious links between sporting activities and the German problem’.Footnote ¹⁷² The gloom engendered by the GDR's success in the sporting sphere only added to the air of failure that surrounded the Erhard government in its terminal phase.

After Erhard was replaced as federal chancellor by his party colleague Kurt Georg Kiesinger in the ‘grand coalition’ of the CDU/CSU and SPD in late 1966, it soon became clear that even the West German government now accepted that it did not speak for all Germans.Footnote ¹⁷³ This was indicative of the manner in which many of the fundamentals of West German foreign policy were now called into question domestically.Footnote ¹⁷⁴ Signally, Bonn's establishment of diplomatic relations with Romania on 31 January 1967 meant that, to all intents and purposes, the Hallstein Doctrine was dead.Footnote ¹⁷⁵ It was little mourned by the British government.Footnote ¹⁷⁶ While diehards in the FRG sought to ensure that the doctrine continued to be applied to neutrals, this foundered in the face of opposition from Willy Brandt, the new foreign minister.Footnote ¹⁷⁷ The new head of the planning staff of the Auswärtiges Amt, Egon Bahr (Brandt's long-standing confidante), advised his friend that Kiesinger's refusal to negotiate with the USSR for fear of raising the stock of the GDR was now quite redundant.Footnote ¹⁷⁸ Despite the coalition in Bonn, London recognised the tentative nature of the new direction in West German policy and the lack of any real consensus on the future of Ostpolitik between the CDU/CSU and the SPD. The British therefore resolved to remain loyal to the line – albeit an evolving one – peddled by their West German ally. After all,

London's resolve against the GDR was strengthened not least by a desire to keep Rhodesia out of the Olympics (after it had unilaterally declared independence from Britain in November 1965). The British were therefore sympathetic when Bonn explained that it seemed difficult to envisage a compromise between East and West Germany for the forthcoming Mexico City Olympics in 1968.Footnote ¹⁸⁰ But the process of sporting separation was irreversible and two German teams competed in Mexico (although German athletes marched into the stadium together under the German Olympic flag). This was to prove the final manifestation of the facade. At the 67th Session of the IOC, held on 7–11 October 1968, just prior to the opening of the Mexico games, full recognition of the GDR's NOC was accorded by forty-four votes to four.Footnote ¹⁸¹ Thus, ‘effective as of 1st November 1968, the teams of the East German Olympic Committee would be called DDR, and the team will have its [own] flag, hymn and emblem’.Footnote ¹⁸² As Uta Balbier remarks, once again the IOC had been exposed to the realities of power politics.Footnote ¹⁸³ Burghley asked the British government for clarification of their official position on the GDR, specifically requesting that their co-operation on this matter be kept confidential. The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) informed Burghley that their position on East Germany remained unchanged.Footnote ¹⁸⁴ In reality, the IOC decision marked a huge step in the GDR's long struggle for full international recognition in the political, as well as the sporting, sphere.Footnote ¹⁸⁵

*****

While the IOC decision taken at Mexico City did not confer full and universal sporting, let alone political, legitimacy on the GDR, it set a precedent that was impossible to ignore. The British remained attuned to West German sensibilities, but were keen that the situation be clarified as rapidly as possible once Bonn reluctantly accepted the IOC's decision in December 1968.Footnote ¹⁸⁶ The minister of state at the FCO, Lord Chalfont, wrote to Denis Howell, the minister for sport, in February 1969:

Chalfont specifically ruled out action that bypassed Bonn and concluded that there was no question of Allied initiatives for the time being.Footnote ¹⁸⁷ Howell did not agree, believing that since virtually all Western sporting organisations now recognised their East German counterparts (and West Germany itself had agreed to East German participation in the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich), Britain should now relax its position over GDR participation in sporting events in the United Kingdom. Western unity and co-ordination of action was of paramount importance if the GDR's victory was not to be greatly magnified. Following Brandt's election as federal chancellor in September 1969, Thomas Brimelow, the deputy under-secretary at the FCO, noted ‘a real and urgent need for consultation and co-operation’ between the United Kingdom and the FRG.Footnote ¹⁸⁸ For their part, the West Germans steeled themselves for the political battle that lay ahead in the sporting arena. In December 1969, the interior minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, advised the first Bundestag meeting of the Special Committee for Sport and the Olympic Games that ‘I'll make no bones about the fact that in the opinion of the government the political aspect of sport as a form of national self-representation, particularly with a view to the Olympic Games that will take place on German soil, should not be underrated.’Footnote ¹⁸⁹

In London, while Howell did not carry the same policymaking weight as senior cabinet colleagues, his stance was indicative of how the norms of international sporting competition were increasingly favouring the East German case. While the FCO hesitated to take steps to relax its attitude towards the GDR, it recognised the logic of Howell's argument. But it was clear in London that, in terms of sporting representation, the GDR sought to maximise its advantage and intended ‘to give Federal authorities a pretty rough ride over the 1972 [Munich] Games as well as to do their utmost to extract the maximum political advantage from them’.Footnote ¹⁹⁰ This being the case, it was concluded that ‘It is clear that we at the FCO should take the lead in handling matters connected with the Olympic Games with a political or representational content ([on] for example GDR and Rhodesian participation).’Footnote ¹⁹¹

At Munich in 1972 the East Germans revelled in their acknowledged equality of status with the host country.Footnote ¹⁹² Schöbel told a press conference in Munich that ‘the GDR particularly enjoyed winning medals, because for the first time in the summer Olympic summer games our anthem was played as our flag was simultaneously raised’.Footnote ¹⁹³ Nonetheless, the fact that the 1972 games were held on West German soil directly contributed to mutual German recognition and acceptance of the reality of two German states. Further, having accepted the inevitability of the GDR's existence, the 1972 Olympics offered the FRG the opportunity, in Willy Brandt's words, ‘to introduce modern Germany to the worldwide public’.Footnote ¹⁹⁴ The contemporary international environment was increasingly dominated by the era of détente and the associated West German policy of Ostpolitik. The award of the 1972 Olympics to Munich certainly helped the West Germans to stand down gracefully on the issue of sporting representation and, as Michael Geyer has noted, ‘After years of German–German disputes over national symbols, this was characteristic of the self-confidence and the new identity, which the FRG had gained by this time.’Footnote ¹⁹⁵ The process was actually mutually reinforcing, as Brandt later recalled that he used the Olympic Games to advance the cause of détente (and of reconciliation with the GDR in particular).Footnote ¹⁹⁶

In discussing Olympic diplomacy, it is important to note that desirable outcomes did not necessarily arise from entirely laudable motives. Soviet (and East German) national interests were pursued by their manipulation of (and professed devotion to) the ‘Olympic ideal’. Valentin Falin, a former Soviet ambassador in Bonn, recalls informing Daume in 1972 that the Olympics represented ‘a continuation of the confrontation of the nations and aggravated nationalism’ and that, in order to avoid this, national teams should be dissolved.Footnote ¹⁹⁷ Of course, since this was not going to happen, the Soviet bloc sought to gain as much benefit as possible from international sport. The British were only too aware of this, and the fact that Brundage termed the Munich Olympics the ‘greatest peaceful occasion’ in history while Daume hailed ‘competitive sport in an honest light’,Footnote ¹⁹⁸ did not in any way diminish the significant victory that the GDR had enjoyed. Erich Honecker, Ulbricht's successor, was entirely correct when he asserted that ‘competitive sport, mass sport, and school sport have [all] contributed to the esteem of our socialist state and gained us respect abroad’.Footnote ¹⁹⁹

Developments in the arena of Olympic sport, pertaining to the recognition of East Germany in particular, were reflected in the wider cold war. British pragmatism over the question of the recognition of the GDR conveniently dovetailed with Lord Burghley's acceptance of the desire for Eastern bloc athletes to compete with their Western counterparts. Conversely, Brundage asserted his ‘apolitical’ stance by accepting, at face value, West German arguments over German unity. Such thinking was as outdated in the sporting arena as it was in the diplomatic arena. Of course there was no ‘apolitical’ position – one accepted the arguments either of Bonn or of Pankow. In reality, the acceptance of the GDR at the Olympic level was indicative of the recognition internationally of the reality of enduring German division. Ironically, the institutionalisation of the division of Germany was an essential part of the ‘normalisation’ of the two German states. Klaus Larres has noted that the decision of the IOC to represent the GDR in 1965 was a ‘rare success’ in obtaining international recognition, and that it was only after Bonn's signature of the Basic Treaty in late 1972 that Britain recognised the GDR.Footnote ²⁰⁰ But the significance of the 1965 decision goes further than that. For, such was the edifice of non-recognition that West Germany erected, any breakthrough by East Germany had extreme ramifications for the entire German question in the cold war system. Thus, paradoxically, East German failure to achieve diplomatic recognition only highlighted the fact that, in the Olympic sphere, the GDR was moving towards full international status. The archival record demonstrates that while the Olympic Games did not prompt the British to recognise the GDR, it did facilitate the process whereby the British prepared themselves to support Bonn when the FRG did so.

In the years after 1972 the fierce sporting rivalry between the two Germanys did little to promote understanding.Footnote ²⁰¹ As with political relations, the intense rivalry between the Germanys at the Olympics and other sporting events mirrored, in miniature, the relationship between the two superpowers. And yet, as the GDR's insistence of the nature of sport for all had served as a major prop in its campaign for international recognition, so it came to be seen as a fact of life in the West, accompanying Brandt's ‘two states, one nation’ theory. In 1985 the then federal president, Richard von Weizäcker, stated,

For many in both East and West, sporting excellence came to symbolise the success of the GDR as a state, just as the SED had always intended. This was replicated with varying degrees of success by all the states of the Soviet bloc. Opponents of communism recognised this and sought to counter sporting propaganda as assiduously as they did any other instrument of Soviet policy. In May 1980, the UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher warned the BOA that British participation in the Moscow Olympics was in the interest of neither the British state nor the athletes themselves.

Thatcher was right to fear the ability of the Soviet bloc to harness sport for political ends. By this time the sporting prowess of the GDR had become a metaphor for its success and its legitimacy as a state. At the 1988 Seoul Olympics the GDR won thirty-seven gold medals.Footnote ²⁰⁴ This was one more than the United States and second in total only to the USSR (while the FRG managed only eleven golds). In any terms, this was a fantastic advertisement for the ‘supremacy’ of socialism. All of this was, however, illusory in terms of the sustainability of the East German state. The GDR was closer to its end than anyone could have imagined. At a speech on the fortieth anniversary of the GDR in East Berlin on 7 October 1989, in a barely disguised reference to the fact that the SED seemed determined to ignore the changes sweeping through eastern Europe, Mikhail Gorbachev warned, ‘He who comes too late will suffer the consequences of history.’Footnote ²⁰⁵ One month later the Berlin Wall came crashing down. One year later the GDR ceased to exist. International sport had served the GDR well, but it could not hold back the tide of history.