Hans von Tschammer und Osten
Reich Sports Leader
When Herr Hitler asked me, in 1933, to become the Leader of German Sports, the conditions then existing were deplorably bad. On the one hand, there was a people anxious to practise physical exercises, whilst on the other I found a narrow-minded bureaucracy incapable of satisfying that desire by providing the necessary organic foundation. In the course of a century, a kind of sports organisation had developed which looked upon itself as more valuable than the objects it was there to promote. Critics have sometimes asserted that there was no need for us to subject the organisation of German sports to the same process of drastic change that has been applied to our country’s political constitution, its economy, its laws, and all its other activities.