Olympics Return to London: Post-War Healing Begins

London hosted the Olympic Games on July 29, 1948, with a city still scarred by German bombs, food still rationed, and athletes housed in military barracks because no one could afford to build a village. These were the Austerity Olympics, and they proved that sport could help a broken world begin to heal. The Games had been suspended since Berlin in 1936, where Hitler had staged a propaganda spectacle for the Third Reich. Twelve years, a world war, and fifty million deaths later, London won the right to host largely because no other city was willing or able. The British government refused to spend public money on new facilities, so existing venues were adapted: Wembley Stadium hosted athletics, the Empire Pool held swimming events, and the Thames served as the rowing course. Germany and Japan were not invited. The Soviet Union chose not to participate, beginning a Cold War pattern of Olympic absences. Fifty-nine nations sent 4,104 athletes, including, for the first time, competitors from newly independent nations like Burma, Ceylon, and South Korea. Female athletes competed in more events than ever before, though their numbers remained a fraction of the men's. Athletes brought their own towels and shared equipment. The Dutch team arrived with their own food. Fanny Blankers-Koen, a thirty-year-old Dutch mother of two whom journalists had dismissed as too old to compete, won four gold medals in track and field and became the sensation of the Games. Decathlete Bob Mathias of the United States won gold at age seventeen, the youngest male track and field champion in Olympic history. The 1948 Games generated a modest profit of 29,000 pounds and renewed faith in the Olympic movement's ability to survive political catastrophe. London demonstrated that the Games did not require monumental spending or ideological showmanship, just athletes and the will to compete.