ABSTRACT
At the Berlin Olympics in 1936 Danish sports officialdom in its near entirety mustered and could report on the series of impressive German victories and the organizers’ fantastic ability to create an atmosphere and sense of unity at the most grandiose Olympics up until that time. Only among Danish Communists, cultural radicals, workers’ sports movements, Jewish sports and in the social-democratic press was there resistance to a racist, military regime being allowed to hold games in the name of peace and understanding between peoples. Increasingly through the second half of the 1930s Denmark’s small size as a nation state and its vulnerable position owing to its common border with an aggressive and armed German nation gave Danish responses to German sport their peculiar touch. First, in Nazi mythology, Denmark was defined as a pure Aryan zone and therefore was to be treated in the best manner possible. Second, it was possible in a direct geographical sense to link Denmark to Germany through women’s distance swimming between the two countries and through events such as the three-day Berlin to Copenhagen stage race. As a consequence of all this, Denmark was the sole nation among the European democracies to continue cooperation on the sports field with Germany after the Second World War had broken out until the occupation of Denmark on 9 April 1940.
