Things worth remembering as we look forward with dread to the London Olympics

Things worth remembering as we look forward with dread to the London Olympics:

1)   The ‘tradition’ of the Olympic torch journey is a Nazi invention, by Carl Diem for the controversial 1936 Berlin Olympics.  There had been an ancient Olympic Flame or Torch that was kept burning throughout the celebration of the ancient Olympics.
2)   The Royal Mint’s Olympic coins feature Roman – not Greek Gods!  Sacrilegious.  See here, all-greek-to-me.  Roman gods featured include: Mars, god of war, Vulcan, god of fire. One eminent historian said, on the BBC, that this was a bit like the Church of England featuring the image of Mohammad!

Adolf Hitler himself provided the impetus for the torch journey, commissioning his propaganda chief Josef Goebbels to oversee things.  Goebbels got in touch with Diem and the rest is history.
Fascinatingly the 1936 Olympic torch was designed by weapons manufacturer Krupp, according to a terrific Daily telegraph blog, Daily Telegraph (blog)

Carl Diem facts, from Wikipedia:
“In March 1945, as the Red Army was closing in on Berlin … Diem staged another famous event in the city's Olympic stadium. Addressing a rally of thousands of teenage Hitler Youth, Diem exhorted them to defend the capital to the death, in the spirit of the ancient Spartans. Some two thousand of the young men … did exactly that, sacrificing themselves before Berlin … fell in May.

After the war, Diem returned to his career as a historian of German sport and the Olympic games. In 1960, he published an authoritative general history of sport. The Carl Diem Institute at the German Sports University was created in his honour, and run by his wife, Liselott, until 1989. After her death in 1992, the institute was renamed the Carl and Liselott Diem Archive. Diem remains the most influential historian of sports in Germany.

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