1944 Olympics

[Charles EP M.]

I just learned from @Kato that the UK had actually bid for the cancelled 1944 Olympics before the war started. So this gets me thinking: what happens if the war ends about a year earlier, or more likely VE Day is earlier so the ongoing war doesn't mean London's getting bombed, and there's an attempt to have an Olympics in Britain as a general "we've won, everything will be fine" gesture? Who's competing, where do you do it, what do people think of it going on?

Where could you even hold it? Most of the major cities have been bombed and need rebuilding. Would you have to send the Olympiads to the countryside or to small town football & rugby grounds, or would a government send them to a major city that was bombed because it was a major city that was bombed & the propaganda of London/Liverpool/Glasgow Endures is too important to let basic logistics win?

And since a lot of the men who'd compete are off doing war work, do you get a lot more focus on female athletes?

 

[Alex Richards]

Reckon unless the war ends in '43 you're still going to see the Olympics cancelled.

 

[Kato]

Caveat that I've not done much more than a wiki-walk on this - it just caught my eye as a possible background detail for a story set in a no WWII 1945 UK.

So London won the 1944 bid as late as June 1939, which is 2-3 months after the guarantee to Poland, before M-R is agreed but parallel to the earliest hints either way that both parties were open to an arrangement. I don't think anything short of a complete Western Betrayal or a second Munich averts some form of war at that stage. This does lead me to wonder just what the bid leaders were thinking.

(Note the 1940 games had already been re-awarded from Tokyo to Helsinki at this point, and would soon be cancelled entirely).

I also don't think any kind of hot war involving Britain and Germany is going to see a 1944 games take place, unless a German failure to break through in the west leads to the war ending much earlier, or there is some compromise peace after the fall of France. In the latter scenario of course you may seen nations on either side of that compromise boycotting the games, and depending on whether the compromise requires abandoning various governments-in-exile, controversy over who if anyone gets to "officially" represent Poland, France, Benelux at the games.

The London 1948 games was in effect 1944 deferred, and even then there was a debate about cost vs reclaiming national pride - precisely the "London endures" value mentioned above. But that's getting on for 3 years after OTL VJ day, when some degree of economic stability and all the demobbed servicemen scattered across the globe had returned. Based on that I'd say a post-war 1944 games is dependent on at least 2 years of peace beforehand.

But for the sake of an interesting story focused just on the games, there are a few options here. A cliche "Halifax - peace to buy time" scenario I think has the most narrative possibility, as effectively a tripartite Cold War games. Based on what happened at OTL 1948 with a Czechoslovakian athlete, I'm wondering if you'd see defections. Whether or not there is/are war(s) in the east between Germany-USSR, and Japan-China (the latter inevitable given the POD) this is probably an incredibly high tension event, with boycotts, showboating, and propaganda; plus a timeless "keep politics out of sport" counter-tendency.

I don't know what the IOC's rules are on the strictness of "host city", either now or in 1939, but I don't think there'd be a question of 1944 being another British city outside London, if London itself was not able to host. The "Halifax" scenario above averts the Blitz entirely, so London would be viable with minimal damage 4 years on. Scenarios with a longer war I do think rule out the games entirely. 1948 reused a lot of existing grounds and sites without building any special facilities, so London's Interwar sports capacity would I think be enough.

 

[Charles EP M.]

plus a timeless "keep politics out of sport" counter-tendency.

"Keep politics out of sport, lefties!" I write as the German athletes all sieg heil and yell how every medal they win is a symbol of Ayran might

 

[Kato]

"Keep politics out of sport, lefties!" I write as the German athletes all sieg heil and yell how every medal they win is a symbol of Ayran might

1936, but time is a flat circle:

 

[ShortsBelfast]

There would have been a 1944 London Olympics in iainbhx ' Election Rides TL for instance, if the Elser assassination attempt succeeded.