Adolf Hitler understood the importance of sport, and exercised his malign and dangerous influence to try to co-opt it for the Nazi cause. He intended to own the Olympic movement, housing it permanently in Berlin from 1940 in a stadium seating 450,000 people. His hijack of the 1936 Games remains one of sport’s most controversial events, using it as he did to promote Aryan supremacy and showcase the Nazi state. Austria was forced to withdraw from the 1938 football World Cup just days before it started because the country no longer existed. The boxing matches between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling in 1936 and 1938 came to represent democracy versus fascism. German technology crushed all comers in Grand Prix racing, as well as the Isle of Man TT. A government ministry was even set up to use physical fitness to prepare the population for war. Hitler understood that sport has many uses: this is how he used it.

'"Adolf Hitler understood the importance of sport, and exercised his malign and dangerous influence to try to co-opt it for the Nazi cause. He intended to own the Olympic movement, housing it permanently in Berlin from 1940 in a stadium seating 450,000 people. His hijack of the 1936 Games remains one of sport's most controversial events. Austria was forced to withdraw from the 1938 football World Cup just days before it started because the country no longer existed. The boxing matches between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling in 1936 and 1938 came to represent democracy versus fascism. German technology crushed all comers in Grand Prix racing, as well as the Isle of Man TT. Hitler even set up a government ministry to use physical fitness to prepare the population for war. He understood that sport has many uses: this is how he used it." --Publisher description.

Jesse OwensÕ gold-medal winning feats at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin struck a mighty propaganda blow against Adolf Hitler. The Nazi leader had planned to use the German games as a showcase of supposed Aryan superiority. Instead, there was American black athlete Owens on the podium being photographed by HitlerÕs personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann. In addition, Owens would figure prominently in the groundbreaking film Olympia by HitlerÕs favorite director Leni Riefenstahl. Photo and film captured OwensÕ stunning success and revealed how wrong Hitler was in his beliefs.

The heart-pounding story of an unlikely band of ragtags who took on Hitler's Grand Prix driver. In the years before World War II, Adolf Hitler wanted to prove the greatness of the Third Reich in everything from track and field to motorsports. The Nazis poured money into the development of new race cars, and Mercedes-Benz came out with a stable of supercharged automobiles called Silver Arrows. Their drivers dominated the sensational world of European Grand Prix racing and saluted Hitler on their many returns home with victory.As the Third Reich stripped Jews of their rights and began their march toward war, one driver, Rene Dreyfus, a 32-year-old Frenchman of Jewish heritage who had enjoyed some early successes on the racing circuit, was barred from driving on any German or Italian race teams, which fielded the best in class, due to the rise of Hitler and Benito Mussolini.So it was that in 1937, Lucy Schell, an American heiress and top Monte Carlo Rally driver, needed a racer for a new team she was creating to take on Germany's Silver Arrows. Sensing untapped potential in Dreyfus, she funded the development of a nimble tiger of a new car built by a little-known French manufacturer called Delahaye. As the nations of Europe marched ever closer to war, Schell and Dreyfus faced down Hitler's top drivers, and the world held its breath in anticipation, waiting to see who would triumph.

This study examines the role of modern sports in constructing national identities and the way leaders have exploited sports to achieve domestic and foreign policy goals. The book focuses on the development of national sporting cultures in Great Britain and the United States, the particular processes by which the rest of Europe and the world adopted or rejected their games, and the impact of sports on domestic politics and foreign affairs. Teams competing in international sporting events provide people a shared national experience and a means to differentiate “us” from “them.” Particular attention is paid to the transnational influences on the construction of sporting communities, and why some areas resisted dominant sporting cultures while others adopted them and changed them to fit their particular political or societal needs. A recurrent theme of the book is that as much as they try, politicians have been frustrated in their attempts to achieve political ends through sport. The book provides a basis for understanding the political, economic, social, and diplomatic contexts in which these games were played, and to present issues that spur further discussion and research.

On 7 May 1945, Grand Admiral Donitz, named in Hitler's will as head of state, authorised the unconditional surrender of all German forces to the Allies on the following day. World War II in Europe was at an end. But many of the German people would continue to endure hardships, as both the country and the capital were to be divided between France, the UK and the USA in the west and the USSR in the east. East and West Germany, and East and West Berlin, would remain divided until 1989. By October 1990, however, the two countries were reunited, and the Berlin Reichstag was once again the seat of government. Here, politicians would put East and West back together again, marrying a totalitarian, atheist, communist system with a democratic, Christian, capitalist one. How did this marriage affect the everyday life of ordinary Germans? How did combining two telephone systems, two postal services, hospitals, farm land, property, industry, railways and roads work? How were women's rights, welfare, pensions, trades unions, arts, rents and housing affected? There had been no warning of this marriage and no preparation for it - and no country had ever tried putting two completely opposite systems together before. This is the story of what happened, in the words of the people it happened to - the people's story of an incredible unification.

In 1982, 8,000 miles from home, in a harsh environment and without the newest and most sophisticated equipment, the numerically inferior British Task Force defeated the Argentinian forces occupying the Falkland Islands and recaptured this far-flung outpost of what was once an empire. It was a much-needed triumph for Margaret Thatcher's government and for Britain. Many books have been published on the Falklands War, some offering accounts from participants in it. But this is the first one only to include interviews with the ordinary seamen, marines, soldiers and airmen who achieved that victory, as well as those whose contribution is often overlooked – the merchant seaman who crewed ships taken up from trade, the NAAFI personnel who supplied the all-important treats that kept spirits up, the Hong Kong Chinese laundrymen who were aboard every warship. Published to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the conflict, this is the story of what 'Britain's last colonial war' was really like.