The Olympics and the Cold War, 1948-1968

The Olympics and the Cold War, 1948-1968 PDF Author: Erin Elizabeth Redihan
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476627282
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
For Olympic athletes, fans and the media alike, the games bring out the best sport has to offer--unity, patriotism, friendly competition and the potential for stunning upsets. Yet wherever international competition occurs, politics are never far removed. Early in the Cold War, when all U.S.-Soviet interactions were treated as potential matters of life and death, each side tried to manipulate the International Olympic Committee. Despite the IOC's efforts to keep the games apolitical, they were quickly drawn into the superpowers' global struggle for supremacy, with medal counts the ultimate prize. Based on IOC, U.S. government and contemporary media sources, this book looks at six consecutive Olympiads to show how high the stakes became once the Soviets began competing in 1952, threatening America's athletic supremacy.

The Olympics and the Cold War, 1948-1968

The Olympics and the Cold War, 1948-1968 PDF Author: Erin Elizabeth Redihan
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476627282
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book

Book Description
For Olympic athletes, fans and the media alike, the games bring out the best sport has to offer--unity, patriotism, friendly competition and the potential for stunning upsets. Yet wherever international competition occurs, politics are never far removed. Early in the Cold War, when all U.S.-Soviet interactions were treated as potential matters of life and death, each side tried to manipulate the International Olympic Committee. Despite the IOC's efforts to keep the games apolitical, they were quickly drawn into the superpowers' global struggle for supremacy, with medal counts the ultimate prize. Based on IOC, U.S. government and contemporary media sources, this book looks at six consecutive Olympiads to show how high the stakes became once the Soviets began competing in 1952, threatening America's athletic supremacy.

Winning Hearts and Medals

Winning Hearts and Medals PDF Author: Erin Elizabeth Redihan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cold War
Languages : en
Pages : 394

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Book Description
Despite IOC president Avery Brundage’s and others’ best efforts to keep the Olympic Games free of political concerns, politics had become a driving force behind the Games by the 1960s. What Brundage and others never realized was that politics and nationalism have always been important aspects of the modern Olympic Movement. While Brundage strove to keep the Games true to his construction of their founder’s vision, the Games were not immune to change. They needed to grow and evolve to remain viable. Rather than ruining the Games as Brundage feared, these external politics, and especially those related to the Cold War, actually helped the Games. These forces made the Olympics more relevant to international affairs while simultaneously inflating governmental, spectator, and press interest in the Olympic Movement. Therefore, the superpowers and the Olympic Movement both profited from the Cold War’s intersection with the Games. While Moscow and Washington gained a low-stakes battlefield, the IOC benefitted from the added exposure and intrigue associated with all things Cold War-related during the 1950s and 1960s."--Page [ii].

Cold War Olympics

Cold War Olympics PDF Author: Harry Blutstein
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476686874
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
The political tension of the Cold War bled into the Olympic Games when each side engaged in psychological warfare, exploiting sport for political ends. In Helsinki, the Soviet Union nearly overtook the United States in the medal count. Caught off guard, the U.S. hastened to respond, certain that the Soviets would use a victory at the next Olympics to broadcast their superiority over the Western world. Following the 1956 suppression of the Hungarian uprising, a Soviet athlete struck a Hungarian opponent in the Melbourne water polo semifinals, turning the pool red. The United States covertly encouraged Eastern Bloc athletes to defect, communist Chinese agents nearly succeeded in goading the Taiwanese government into withdrawing from the games, and a forbidden romance between an American and Czech athlete resulted in a politically complex marriage. This history describes those stories and more that resulted from the complicated relationship between Cold War politics and the Olympics.

An Investigation of the Sociopolitical Influences on the Olympic Games

An Investigation of the Sociopolitical Influences on the Olympic Games PDF Author: Laura Lee Holden
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Olympic Games
Languages : en
Pages : 92

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Book Description
Traite des influences socio-politiques sur les Jeux Olympiques. Compare des résultats d'athlètes américains et russes. Une étude de l'époque de la guerre froide et de la propagande des régimes politiques.

The Olympics and the Cold War, 1948-1968

The Olympics and the Cold War, 1948-1968 PDF Author: Erin Elizabeth Redihan
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476667888
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
For Olympic athletes, fans and the media alike, the games bring out the best sport has to offer--unity, patriotism, friendly competition and the potential for stunning upsets. Yet wherever international competition occurs, politics are never far removed. Early in the Cold War, when all U.S.-Soviet interactions were treated as potential matters of life and death, each side tried to manipulate the International Olympic Committee. Despite the IOC's efforts to keep the games apolitical, they were quickly drawn into the superpowers' global struggle for supremacy, with medal counts the ultimate prize. Based on IOC, U.S. government and contemporary media sources, this book looks at six consecutive Olympiads to show how high the stakes became once the Soviets began competing in 1952, threatening America's athletic supremacy.

The Emergence of the Cold War Olympics

The Emergence of the Cold War Olympics PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Olympic Games
Languages : en
Pages : 11

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Book Description


Bidding for the 1968 Olympic Games

Bidding for the 1968 Olympic Games PDF Author: Heather Dichter
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781613768716
Category : Cold War
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
"During the Cold War, political tensions associated with the division of Germany came to influence the world of competitive sport. In the 1950s, West Germany and its NATO allies refused to recognize the communist East German state and barred its national teams from sporting competitions. The construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 further exacerbated these pressures, with East German teams denied travel to several world championships. These tensions would only intensify in the run-up to the 1968 Olympics. In Bidding for the 1968 Olympic Games, Heather L. Dichter considers how NATO and its member states used sport as a diplomatic arena during the height of the Cold War, and how international sport responded to political interference. Drawing on archival materials from NATO, foreign ministries, domestic and international sport functionaries, and newspapers, Dichter examines controversies surrounding the 1968 Summer and Winter Olympic Games, particularly the bidding process between countries to host the events. As she demonstrates, during the Cold War sport and politics became so intertwined that they had the power to fundamentally transform each other"--

Bidding for the 1968 Olympic Games

Bidding for the 1968 Olympic Games PDF Author: Heather L. Dichter
Publisher: Culture and Politics in the Company
ISBN: 9781625345950
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
During the Cold War, political tensions associated with the division of Germany came to influence the world of competitive sport. In the 1950s, West Germany and its NATO allies refused to recognize the communist East German state and barred its national teams from sporting competitions. The construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 further exacerbated these pressures, with East German teams denied travel to several world championships. These tensions would only intensify in the run-up to the 1968 Olympics. In Bidding for the 1968 Olympic Games, Heather L. Dichter considers how NATO and its member states used sport as a diplomatic arena during the height of the Cold War, and how international sport responded to political interference. Drawing on archival materials from NATO, foreign ministries, domestic and international sport functionaries, and newspapers, Dichter examines controversies surrounding the 1968 Summer and Winter Olympic Games, particularly the bidding process between countries to host the events. As she demonstrates, during the Cold War sport and politics became so intertwined that they had the power to fundamentally transform each other.

The Olympic Games

The Olympic Games PDF Author: Kevin B. Witherspoon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The period from 1948 to 1972 was a time of great growth and expansion of the Olympic Movement, but also a time filled with challenges and controversy. Early in these years, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) grappled with questions about how best to revive the Olympic Games in the aftermath of World War II. Key issues in the immediate post-war years included selection of host cities, how and when to honour the hosting designations that had been cancelled during the war, and the readmission of belligerent nations. As the period progressed, the growing Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union took centre stage, and the IOC wrestled with issues such as whether and when to admit Soviet athletes, how to handle apparent breaches of the amateur ideal by "state athletes" of the Eastern bloc, and sporadic instances of hostility on the fields of sport. In the later years of the period, the globalisation and expansion of the Olympic Games predominated, as host cities included Rome, Tokyo, and Mexico City, and the number of athletes and participating nations grew dramatically. The Olympic Movement also confronted the spasm and tumult of the era, as the chaos of the year 1968 struck the Mexico City Olympic Games, first in the form of a violent attack against peaceful student protesters ten days before the Opening Ceremony, and then in the form of Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their fists in protest on the medal stand as part of a broader wave of protest known as "the revolt of the black athlete." Finally, as the period came to a close, the Olympics endured their most jarring episode, the terrorist attack against the Israeli team at the Munich Games in 1972. That attack, and the ensuing decision by IOC President Avery Brundage to resume the Games soon after, signaled the end of Brundage's presidency, and the end of an era in Olympic history.

International Security and the Olympic Games, 1972–2020

International Security and the Olympic Games, 1972–2020 PDF Author: Austin Duckworth
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031051335
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Drawing on new archival documents and interviews, this book demonstrates the evolving role of international politics in Olympic security planning. Olympic security concerns changed forever following the terrorist attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. The International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) choice to ignore security after the attack in Munich left individual Olympic Games Organizing Committees to organize, fund, and provide security for the major international event. Future Olympic hosts planned security amidst increasing numbers of international terrorist attacks, and with the Cold War in full swing. For some Olympic hosts, Olympic security now represented their nation’s largest ever military operations. By the time the IOC made security more of a priority in the early 1980s, the trends in Olympic security were set for the future.