The Boys in the Boat: Chapter 16 Summary & Analysis

While the U.S. Olympic team sailed to Europe, Nazi soldiers in Berlin were arresting thousands of Romani families and sending them to detention camps, where foreigners wouldn’t be able to see them. Only a few years later, most of them would be murdered in death camps. Goebbels had converted Berlin into “a place where illusion could be perfected,” so that journalists and statesmen would return to their own countries singing praises for Hitler’s country. Goebbels arranged for international journalists attempting to interview Berlin’s Jews about their lives to be referred to state offices, so that they wouldn’t learn anything that could damage the Reich’s reputation. Leni Riefenstahl prepared her team of cameramen to film the Olympics, instructing them to film Hitler and his entourage from below eye level so that they looked larger than life.

During the voyage to Europe, Roger Morris and Don Hume became very seasick and lost a lot of weight. Joe didn’t get too seasick, but he resented that the ships cook wouldn’t serve him more food. He liked the blue Olympic uniform he’d been issued, however, considering that he “had worn the same rumpled sweater to rowing practice for a year.” During the voyage, he and the rest of team worked out with the rowing machine, but Ulbrickson quickly ordered them not to, arguing that too much machine rowing would interfere with their form on the water. The teammates succeeded in lifting the ban on large portions of food, though Ulbrickson stopped them from eating anything too fattening.

Eleanor Holm, a gold medalist in swimming, and one of the most popular athletes on the ship, was notorious for drinking. More than once, she stayed up late drinking champagne with journalists and friends. Even after Avery Brundage threatened to send her back to America, she continued drinking, and Brundage expelled her from the U.S. Olympic team. In the long run, Holm’s expulsion was good for her career, since it made her even more famous.

On July 21 the ship reached Ireland, and then proceeded to France. The ship finally arrived in Germany on the night of July 23. The oarsmen were glad to be at the end of their voyage—they hadn’t had a chance to exercise very much, and they had all gained weight. In Hamburg, the team listened as the city’s Bürgermeister (mayor) delivered a welcome address in German—a language none of them could understand. They arrived in Berlin by train that afternoon, and were stunned to find a lavish reception awaiting them. A bus carried the athletes toward the city hall. There, Avery Brundage accepted the keys to the city of Berlin and made a speech to the athletes. He declared, “No nation since ancient Greece has captured the true Olympic spirit as has Germany!”

The Olympic team was to stay in the police cadet training academy, a beautiful, perfectly clean, modern building. Later that evening, Joe took a walk and passed by a Jewish synagogue, a Prussian mansion, and, finally, the regatta course at Grünau, where he’d be competing in a few days. Joe had no way of knowing Berlin’s “bloody secret”—indeed, he thought the neighborhood to be the most peaceful place he’d ever visited.

The next morning, the rowing team began training. Ulbrickson noticed that the Germany rowing team was highly disciplined. As the American team was preparing to practice, a photographer accidentally broke the Husky Clipper. Pocock worked to repair the shell while the team practiced in a less aerodynamic boat. Their form was sloppy—Ulbrickson hadn’t seen his team row so poorly in months. For the next few days, the team performed badly, and then spent afternoons exploring Berlin. When Germans greeted them by saying, “Heil, Hitler!”, they answered, “Heil, Roosevelt!” Then, Gordy Adam and Don Hume fell ill. Meanwhile, George Pocock studied the competition. The Italian and German teams were impressive, but the biggest threat was the British team.

On August 1, the Olympic Opening Ceremony took place—“perhaps the most spectacular public ceremony the world had yet seen.” Inside the Olympic stadium, Leni Riefenstahl and Joseph Goebbels were, as usual, arguing. Riefenstahl wanted to place cameras in certain areas of the stage, while Goebbels thought that the cameras would be distracting and unsafe. Reifenstahl refused to move until Goebbels allowed her to place her camera close to Hitler; the conflict only ended when Hermann Göring, the Marshal of the Reichstag (and Hitler’s second-in-command), allowed the camera to remain in place. For the rest of the Olympics, however, Goebbels and Riefenstahl would continue to argue.

In the afternoon, Adolf Hitler made his way to the stadium. He arrived at the stadium at exactly 4 pm, at which time over one hundred thousand Germans rose to their feet and cried his name. A little girl sang the German national anthem, and then the bell from the bell tower began to ring. The Olympic teams were invited to the stage, one by one, to raise their countries’ flags and listen to their national anthems. When the American team came to the stage, there were cheers but also whistling and stamped feet (the European counterpart to booing and catcalling). George Pocock remembers that the American athletes deliberately marched out of step with the music to sabotage the formality of the proceedings. Some of the Americans began singing “The gang’s all here,” even as the orchestra played Wagner and Strauss music.

When all the athletes were assembled on the stage, the president of the German Olympic Committee read a long, boring speech, and then introduced Hitler, who promptly announced the games open. The orchestra swelled, and the Olympic flag was raised high. The ceremony was stunning—almost nobody in the audience had seen anything like it. Roger Morris and Johnny White agreed that it was “Grand” and “impressive.” In effect, Nazi Germany used the Olympic ceremony to send a message: “Welcome to the Third Reich. We are not what they say we are.”