The dictatorship of sport: Nationalism, internationalism, and mass culture in the 1930s

This study examines the roots of modern Western sport's global hegemony, focusing on the interaction between nationalism and internationalism in the creation of a global cultural form. It argues that the 1930s were a critical era in the internationalization of modern sport, as rising nationalism pushed sport into preeminence and marginalized competing visions of physical culture. Part One describes the increasing popularity of sport and international competitions in the interwar years and traces the growing powers of international nongovernmental organizations like the International Olympic Committee and the Federation Internationale de Football Association, as they asserted monopoly control over rules and membership policies and embarked on globally expansionist policies. The United States also played a central role in this expanding global culture of sport. As the dominant power in many amateur sports, its practices and methods were widely emulated. Many Americans were eager internationalists in the realm of sport, convinced that popularizing sport was an effective means of spreading democracy and freedom. Part Two examines the defeat of ideological challenges posed by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The Nazi Party's racist ideology was fundamentally hostile to the universalizing and democratic vision embodied in modern sport. The Nazis, moreover, could draw on the indigenous German gymnastics movement known as Turnen, which had a long tradition of opposition to sport. Yet the Nazis quickly became among the most eager adherents of the international sport structure. The Soviet Union's attempt to develop an anti-capitalist, "proletarian" sport system was similarly unsuccessful. By the 1930s the regime was avidly emulating Western sport, with significant domestic consequences. A major reason why the Nazi and Soviet regimes chose rapprochement with the international sport community constructed and controlled by organizations in liberal democratic countries was the apparent ease of comparison offered by sport's universalism, which made the international sport system an attractive means of asserting national power on an international stage. The result was that nationalist impulses pushed culture in internationalist directions.