The Culture and Sport of Skiing: From Antiquity to World War ll

Chapter 15. Skiing Under Siege

chapter 15 Skiing under Siege La formidable tralala. —The 1936 Winter Olympic Games Wenn die Olympiade vorbei Schlagen wir die Juden zu Brei! When it’s over, this Olympic bash, We’ll beat the Jews all to hash. —S.A. slogan, 1936 The aristocracy of Europe delighted in skiing, perhaps to escape the horrifying thought of another war brewing. They might even meet Hjalmar Schacht or Albert Speer, two of Hitler’s top henchmen, on the slopes. Not the Führer though; he found skiing frivolous and dangerous.1 The nearest he got to it was opening the Garmisch-­Partenkirchen Olympic Games of 1936 and having a photo op with locals on skis around Berchtesgaden. On the other hand, they might meet up with Mussolini, who liked to make everyone believe that he could ski well even though he never got the hang of putting his hands through the loops of his ski poles correctly. His “torso of bronze,” on display in the springtime snow proved his fitness,2 and he was keen on sport as a means to better the health of the nation. Italian skiing had had a slow start in comparison with the neighboring snow countries. Only the Alpini had made an impact on the public’s imagina-­ tion, but there had been such a debacle in the mountains at the end of the Great War that Italy, in spite of being on the victors’ side, was left in economic and political chaos so that mere existence took people’s entire energy. In 1921, there were only seven ski clubs in the Val d’Aosta; but a summer race on the Italian side of the Théodul attracted a crowd of five hundred the next season. The Ski Club of Turin published ski tour itineraries in 1920, but they looked back to the prewar years. In 1926, Piero Ghiglione, who had done much to popularize skiing, judged that Italy had two ski stations worthy of the name: Clavières, the site of the first women’s national championship in 1922, and Cortina d’Ampezzo.3 Compared to Germany, Austria, and France, few Italians The park in Milan provided the ski grounds for the 300 members of the city’s ski club in 1924. (La Domenica del Corriere, January 20, 1924. Author’s collection) skiing under siege 243 took to skiing. Mussolini changed that; by 1936, an estimated 600,000 of his people were on skis.4 mussolini infiltrates sports Government sponsored Dopolavoro (after-­work) excursions brought city folk out into the countryside. It is not too much to say that the success of Terminillo (2,213 m) was due to Mussolini’s initiative. He had been told about the moun-­ tain, took the old mule path up, and ordered a road built. An instant resort with hotel and restaurants quickly materialized about two and a half hours from Rome. A little further away, Gran Sasso d’Italia’s (2,914 m) téléférique took skiers up to 2,100 meters. Hotel, restaurant, bar with dancing, and ski rentals were booming.5 Both were excellent venues for bus trips from Rome, just right for Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro pleasures. The numbers of participants (not just skiers) rose steadily from an initial 280,000 in 1926 to 1,445,000 in 1929, to 2,785,000 in 1936, and 3,832,000 in 1939.6 These impressive statistics were not lost on the French, who sent a reporter to inspect “the black uniforms on the white snow.” The correct positioning of the skis “affirmed the artistic attraction of repetition.” Skiers were being choreographed, just like the whole nation. More and more, people were becoming anonymous and interchange-­ able parts of the fascists’ social organism.7 Mussolini wanted fit youth for Italy’s armies, which were going to turn the Mediterranean Sea into Mare Nostrum. He was able to control the sports associations by infiltrating them with fascist members, taking them over, and abolishing some. Through the Opera Nazionale Balilla (ONB), children were brought up from birth under fascist programs. The Duce ordered that Italian women were not to be Americanized, by which he meant that the honor and prizes attached with winning interfered with the “modesty, meditation or docil-­ ity of bride or mother.”8 In order to produce strong babies, Mussolini excluded women from the more vigorous sports but allowed “tennis, archery, skating, dressage, swimming...