The Struggle for Danish Youth: Fascism, Sport, Democracy

Abstract

This article demonstrates the potential fascination of Nazi ideology outside Germany's borders in a country declared by the Nazis to be a friendly and racially pure zone and with the celebration of the athletic body as the common denominator. The article also shows that the use of sexuality as a political weapon is not a new phenomenon invented by modern American politics. The great paradox of the life of the internationally renowned Danish gymnastics innovator Niels Bukh is that he created a liberating male gymnastics but tried to use it for totalitarian purposes. Nazism's enormous gravitational pull stemmed from an extremely competent aestheticization of politics. Without a realization of the power that a cult exerts, it is impossible to understand, let alone resist, the appeal of Nazism to the human subconscious. Bukh was a master at playing on exactly these emotional strings. And this was why the Nazi authorities were so pleased with Bukh that they invited him to present displays in the Third Reich, rushed off to Bukh's little cult refuge in the North and introduced his gymnastics into German sports education. For the Nazis, Bukh's gymnasts were the incarnation of a perfection of the Aryan race.