Heather Dichter Cold War and the Berlin Wall

Sport in History Podcast

This episode it's Heather Dichter's paper at the BSSH/IHR Sport & Leisure seminar series from December 2021. The appearance of the Berlin Wall on the morning of August 13, 1961 immediately halted free travel in and out of Berlin, and it also had an immediately impact within sport. East and West German sporting relations came to a halt. More broadly, though, the travel restrictions imposed by NATO on East Germans in response to the Berlin Wall included athletes representing East German national teams. World and European championships in numerous sports felt the impact of these travel restrictions, prompting international sport federations to demand governments provide guarantees for athletes and teams to travel freely. Dr. Heather L. Dichter is an associate professor of sport management and sport history at De Montfort University and a member of the International Centre for Sports History and Culture. She has co-edited with Andrew Johns Diplomatic Games: Sport, Statecraft and International Relations since 1945 (Kentucky, 2014) and edited Soccer Diplomacy: International Relations and Football since 1914 (Kentucky, 2020), which was a finalist for the North American Society for Sport History (NASSH) Anthology Award and the Telegraph Sports Book Awards Football Book of the Year (in conjunction with the Football Writers’ Association). Her monograph, Bidding for the 1968 Olympic Games: International Sport’s Cold War Battle with NATO, has just been published by the University of Massachusetts Press in their Culture and Politics in the Cold War and Beyond series.