IOC Postgraduate Research Grant 2010 - Final Research Report Title: An Unwitting Target: The IOC, Exiled Athletes, and U. Government Covert Operations, 1950-1960 By Toby C. Rider, PhD Candidate, The University of Western Ontario Abstract: By the time the Cold War emerged after World War II, the Olympic Games had become the largest and most prestigious international athletic festival in the world. This also made it a perfect target for both the United States and the Soviet Union to use as a medium for propaganda and psychological warfare.
In this study, I will demonstrate how a refugee organization called the Hungarian National Sports Federation (HNSF) lobbied the International Olympic Committee (IOC) throughout the 1950s, and demanded a change to the Olympic Charter which would accommodate the participation of exiled athletes at the Games. What the IOC did not know, and what the HNSF did not tell them, was that the Hungarian group received funding indirectly through the U. The efforts of the HNSF were very much political, and stand as yet another example of how both superpowers used culture as a means to fight the Cold War, even encroaching on the Olympics. Unfortunately for the HNSF, the IOC did not succumb to the pressure.
The leaders of the IOC continually repelled the efforts to change the Olympic Charter, even though they unwittingly provided a platform for the HNSF to create anti-communist propaganda. Key Words: Cold War, propaganda, psychological warfare, exiled athletes, state-private network 1 Final Research Report An Unwitting Target: The IOC, Exiled Athletes, and U. Government Covert Operations, 1950-1960 By Toby C. Rider Introduction When one of countless letters crossed Avery Brundage’s office desk in Chicago early in 1950, he opened it and surveyed the contents.
It was from a Count Anthony Szápáry, and politely informed Brundage of the Hungarian National Sports Federation (HNSF). The letter explained that the organization sought to aid Hungarian athletes who fled the Iron Curtain, and help them to compete in international competition. Perhaps more significantly, Szápáry added: “Our Federation is in the service of anti-communist propaganda and our main purpose is to gain the free, democratic world for the fight against communism.” 1 Szápáry’s letter had arrived at a well chosen desk. At the time he received the correspondence, Brundage was possibly the most powerful man in the U.
sporting administration, President of the United States Olympic Committee and Vice- President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). This made him a potentially important ally. One more fact adds to the significance of this letter. Szápáry also told Brundage that the HNSF was at the service of the National Committee for a Free Europe Inc., but he did not mention that this organization was secretly funded and directed by the highest authorities of the U.
government’s intelligence establishment. Nor did Szápáry 1 Count Antal (Anthony) Szápáry to Avery Brundage, 17 January 1950, Avery Brundage Collection, 1908- 75 (hereafter cited as ABC), Box 132, Reel 73, International Centre for Olympic Studies Archives (hereafter cited as ICOSA), the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada. 2 mention that the HNSF drew support and funding through the very same government conduit. When the Olympic Movement emerged from its self imposed hiatus after World War II, there was much that its leaders needed to do.
Business could not simply resume as normal. After all, there were representatives in the International Olympic Committee who advocated, or even collaborated with, the fascist axis powers. For the IOC members from countries overrun and decimated by Hitler’s forces, having to face a Nazi sympathizer within meetings of the IOC was, understandably, a sensitive matter. Other persisting problems had to be faced.
The issue of professionalism had not disappeared like so many grand buildings across Europe during the war; while political interference within National Olympic Committees remained nettlesome. Above all else, however, an immediate challenge for the leaders of the IOC remained war. As we know, the atomic bombs dropped consecutively on Japan in 1945 ended the Second World War almost at a stroke. But barely had the process of reconstructing all the devastation begun, than the Soviet Union and the United States, formerly allies, embarked on a war upon each other.
The Cold War, as it was coined, was not primarily a military conflict. In fact, Soviet troops never stood toe to toe on the battlefield against American, even though proxy wars were fought, most notably in Korea and Vietnam. The Cold War was essentially a war of persuasion, where each superpower attempted to gain the allegiance of nations across the globe using more obscure weapons such as propaganda and psychological warfare. Simply put, the Soviet Union wanted a world where communism was the only political ideology; whereas the U.
craved the antitheses, the spread of capitalism and democracy. 3 In order to sell their particular political ideology, both superpowers used a range of methods, including culture. Musicians, artists, authors, and dancers were used as a way to project ideological messages, to prove, as it were, that one system was more vibrant than the other. Even sports had a role in this battle.
Athletes were used as diplomats, sent around the world to open up channels in foreign policy, while victory at international sports events were viewed as nothing less than a victory for a political system. It stands to reason that the Olympics could not be insulated from such a war. Indeed, by the time of the Cold War, the Olympic Games had become the largest and most prestigious international athletic festival in the world. This made the Games a natural target for the U.
and Soviet Union to use as a vehicle in what many scholars have called the ‘cultural Cold War.’ For some time now, it has been accepted that the Soviet Union and its European satellites looked upon the Olympic Games as the most important international sporting festival. It has been well argued that Soviet sports officials prepared athletes for specific events on the Olympic program, as they knew that victory at the Olympics served as powerful propaganda.2 Other scholars have revealed how Soviet IOC members used the International Olympic Committee as an avenue to leverage a political agenda, by raising issues that suited the mood in the Kremlin.3 A far less conclusive picture has been assembled in this respect for the American Olympic experience. In the case of the early years of the Cold War, research on the use of the Games by the U. government as a 2 James Riordan has written the most extensive amount on this subject.
See especially James Riordan, Sport in Soviet Society (London: Cambridge University Press, 1977). 3 See for example, Allen Guttmann, The Games Must Go On: Avery Brundage and the Olympic Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 136-38 4 Cold War weapon has halted.4 The question warrants a second look. After all, the U. government’s clandestine arm, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), managed to wrap its almost never ending tentacles around all other conceivable forms of culture during the Cold War.
In an effort to promote American ideals and to denigrate those of Soviet style communism, few stones were left unturned. The CIA secretly funded the publication of hundreds of books, tours of musicians, orchestras, ballet troupes and poets; organized cultural congresses and symposia across the world; invested millions in American artists and abstract expressionism; covertly created and funded intellectual journals across the globe, and worked closely with Hollywood to make films that projected a ghastly vision of communism.5 All these covert initiatives have been studied and analyzed since they were revealed by the American media in the late 1960s. But one cultural form has yet to be tied to the CIA or U. covert operations: sport.
We know relatively little about the use of sport for Cold War imperatives by the U. There was no state controlled Soviet style sports system in the U., so that avenue of enquiry is closed. Any attempts to use government money for the U. Olympic team in the 1950s were voted down in Congress on account of the traditional separation of the state from sport.
In a wider political context, some work has been done on the diplomatic use of athletes by the U. State Department as ambassadors of “good will,” but this program was small and not directed at the Olympic Games in any coordinated manner.6 4 The first and only person to investigate the subject in real depth was Thomas M. Domer, “Sport in Cold War America, 1953-1963: The Diplomatic and Political Use of Sport in the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations,” (Unpublished PhD Dissertation: Marquette University, 1976). 5 For a remarkable examination of this see Frances Stoner Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (Great Britain: Granta Books, 1999).
6 Roy Clumpner, “Federal Involvement In Sport To Promote American Interest Or Foreign Policy Objectives, 1950 – 1973,” in Sport and International Relations, eds. Domer, “Sport in Cold War America, 1953-1963: The Diplomatic and Political Use of Sport in the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations;” 5 The dominant discourse on Cold War politics and propaganda at the Olympic Games regarding the two superpowers has, thus, been mainly directed at the Soviet Union or communist countries. It is my intention to redress this trend in regard to the early years of the Cold War (1950-1960). As the letter from Szápáry reveals, the Olympics were embroiled in subversive initiatives promoted by the U.
Nor was it an isolated case of private organizations being co-opted to serve a wider national effort to destroy communism - quite the contrary. The question is, why? Historians wanting an answer have been trying to re-approach the study of U. foreign policy and the Cold War. This has seen an effort to move beyond the more traditional rubric of top down analysis that privileges high level diplomats debating national security, militarization, or economic imperatives.
Ideology has been repositioned to the forefront of understanding how the U. government formulated strategy and the means used to implement it.7 Scholars such as Scott Lucas argue that the U. government mobilized all aspects of American life to promote “freedom” and “democracy” at home and abroad, in an attempt to shatter the expansion of Soviet style communism. It was essential to project an image of American culture that might win over the hearts and minds of people around the world.8 Psychological warfare and propaganda, through overt and covert channels, Damian Thomas, “Playing the ‘Race Card’: U.
Foreign Policy and the Integration of Sports,” in East Plays West: Sport and the Cold War, eds. Stephen Wagg & David L. 7 Scott Lucas, “Beyond Diplomacy: Propaganda and the History of the Cold War,” in Cold War Propaganda in the 1950s, ed. Rawnsley (New York, NY: St.
Martins Press, 1999), 11-30; Giles Scott-Smith, “Building a Community Around the Pax Americana: the U. Government and Exchange Programmes During the 1950s,” in The U. Government, Citizen Groups and the Cold War: The State- Private Network, eds. Helen Laville & Hugh Wilford (New York, NY: Routledge, 2006), 83-99.
8 Scott Lucas, “‘Total Culture’ and the State-Private Network,” in Culture and International History, eds. Gienow-Hecht & Frank Schumacher (New York: Berghahn Books, 2003), 206-214; Scott Lucas, Freedom’s War: The American Crusade Against the Soviet Union (New York, NY: New York University Press, 1999), 1-5; Helen Laville, “The Importance of Being (In) Ernest: Voluntary Associations and the Irony of the State-Private Network During the Early Cold War,” in The U. Government, Citizen Groups and the Cold War: The State-Private Network, 47-48. 6 became crucial instruments in the arsenal of political warfare; that is, “the employment of all means at a nation’s command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives.”9 For this, the private sector was fully utilized.
In the early years of the Cold War, the U. became cautious about official government-sponsored propaganda programs, fearing that the outside world did not want to hear dogmatic statements about the wonders of American life compared to that under communism.