Playing With Fire

It was an inspired idea, and it offered great material for Leni Riefenstahl, the Nazi film meister who produced the brilliant "Olympia" based on the 1936 Games. It was very likely Diem who first approached Riefenstahl (he admired her "Triumph of the Will") and perhaps he deserves a little credit for one of the most extraordinary sequences in 20th-century filmmaking: Through the fog and mists of time, classical Greece emerges, and then bursts into new life, as a chiseled and shirtless torchbearer dips his wand into the sacred flames. It was operatic, it was Wagnerian, it was Promethean, it was a perfect image.

This sort of imagery still pervades the Olympics, which in many ways remain under the shadow of Berlin. It's impossible to walk through the current exhibition without feeling a repetition syndrome. Just as Jim Crow laws blunted the force of moral outrage against the Nazis, the specter of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo has blunted the force of arguments about Chinese political repression.

Then, as now, arguments for a boycott were countered with claims that the Games shouldn't be politicized and that it would be unfair to the athletes not to participate. Avery Brundage, the head of the U.S. Olympic Association (precursor to the U.S. Olympic Committee), pronounced the dispute a "Jew-Nazi" conflict that shouldn't intrude on the independence and integrity of the Games. And the penchant of Olympic officials for Orwellian turns of phrase continues today. Jacques Rogge, current head of the International Olympic Committee, has said that his group is engaged in "silent diplomacy" with Chinese officials over human rights- and Tibet-related issues.

But most galling, and a little-known chapter that should have discredited them out of existence, was the IOC's decision to hold the 1940 Winter Games . . . in Germany. The decision was made in June 1939, after plans to hold them in St. Moritz, Switzerland, fell apart. Even after the Kristallnacht and four years of Hitler's saber-rattling, Germany was once again deemed an acceptable (if last-minute) host of the Olympics. Those Games never happened, though Bachrach points out that the IOC offer to Germany was never rescinded. It was Germany that pulled out of the deal, perhaps because it had invaded Poland in September 1939.

Today's Olympic pageantry still feels quasi-Fascist, with its banners and torches and parading athletes. Perhaps that can't be helped. But lurking in the Holocaust Museum show, in perverse form, is a good idea that might cleanse the Olympics of the political sideshow that has made the torch run to the Beijing Olympics so problematic. Hitler's plan, after conquering the world, was to move the Olympics permanently to Nuremberg.

This idea might productively be adapted by rethinking the premise that the Games must be held in a different city each time, which only encourages an orgy of barely disguised nationalist propaganda. Perhaps the Summer Games should be permanently returned to Greece, where they were first held and where they were successfully held in 2004. And the orchestration of the spectacle should be conducted by a truly international committee, divesting it of anything particular to one country or another. Then, perhaps, the Games would emerge as a truly international, apolitical and open celebration of sport.

That's unlikely to happen, as long as the IOC remains a feckless group and the world is filled with ambitious nations. The current system, in which cities compete for the privilege, and then stage elaborate self-congratulatory spectacles, serves too many people too well. It energizes local fundraising, it excites advertisers and sponsors, it provides new and interesting backdrops for the media, and, in the case of the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, which were rocked by bribery scandals, it lines the pockets of unscrupulous Olympic officials. But it also empowers ugly forces of nationalism, and reminds the world, again and again, that behind the smiles and protestations of goodwill and sportsmanship, the Games are always political and will remain so as long as politicians are allowed to manipulate their symbolism.

The Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936, through Aug. 17 at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, just south of Independence Avenue SW, between 14th Street and Raoul Wallenberg Place. Daily 10 a.m-5:30 p.m. (Monday-Friday 10 a.m.-6:30 p.m. through June 13). Museum admission is free. No passes are needed for the Olympics exhibition; free timed passes are necessary only for the permanent exhibition, "The Holocaust," and can be obtained at the museum or in advance by calling http://Tickets.com at 800-400-9373. For more information visit http://www.ushmm.org.