Many foreigners commented on the extraordinary cleanliness of Berlin during the Games – ‘there wasn’t a vacant lot that had a weed in it’.14 But the few who ventured beyond the Olympic bubble encountered a different story. The American water polo team went to the northern outskirts of Berlin to play a friendly match at Plötzensee – site of the notorious Nazi prison where some 3,000 people were to be executed. They were surprised to find that the ‘swimming pool’ was just a roped off section of a seedy canal.
