ABSTRACT
This chapter evaluates the role of sport for the fascist governments in Europe. Although the emphasis is on Germany, Italy and Spain, other fascist governments are also covered to explain certain distinctive features and to differentiate their kind of sport from that of contemporary democratic countries. Things physical played an important role for fascist regimes as radical Darwinism was one of its basic features (Wippermann 1983, Payne 1995). Historically, the use of sport by the Nazis seems to have been the most extensive and efficient of the fascist regimes (in spite of the fact that the so-called thousand years’ empire lasted only twelve), and it is therefore dealt with as the main case, although fascist Italy served as a model for the Germans, and the Spanish fascists made the longest use of sport. Sport for the sake of national fitness and the demonstration of it was nothing new at the time of the fascist governments in Europe (Kruger 1995), but the extensive use of it for indoctrination to establish a totalitarian system was new.
