The consequences of the Second World War on the development of the International Olympic Committee 1945–1948

Abstract

The dominance of political dimensions in the context of the institutional development of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which was very evident around the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, entered a new, even more intense phase with the outbreak of the Second World War. The biggest world conflict completely paralyzed the institution that had existed since 1894, and the death of the President of the International Olympic Committee, the Belgian count Henri de Baillet-Latour (1876-1942), at the beginning of 1942, additionally contributed to the total shutdown of the activities of the world's leading sports organization. The very end of the Second World War saw a rapid and intense revitalization of the IOC, where a clear intention was demonstrated within the organization to put the ideals that guided the development of world sports in the previous decades back on a pedestal, primarily in the sense of wider inclusiveness. The newly created political constellation, marked by new dramatic divisions, did not favour the realization of the aforementioned ideals. However, the organization progressed relatively quickly in terms of internal personnel revitalization, and the preparations for the Olympic Games in London in 1948 represented the main thematic unit of the IOC in the first years of the ever-present Cold War. The aim of the work is to present the evolution of the International Olympic Committee in the period 1945-1948, primarily through the prism of political and personnel reorganization, institutionally implemented through the sessions of the IOC in the post-war period. The notes of the mentioned sessions, preserved in the IOC Archives, in the Olympic Studies Centre in Lausanne, represent the basic source for the work, which will be based on comparative analysis in the context of the institutional development of international organizations, and on an interdisciplinary overview of the general relations between politics and sports.