Three Olympics That Never Happened: The Wars That Silenced the Games

The 1916 Berlin Games: The First Cancellation

When the IOC awarded the 1916 Summer Olympics to Berlin in 1909, Germany was at peace and the award was an acknowledgment of the country's growing role in international sport. Preparations proceeded normally through the early 1910s, with Berlin planning an expanded program and construction of facilities underway.

Then came the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in July 1914 and the subsequent chain of mobilization that drew Europe's major powers into the most destructive conflict the world had yet seen. The First World War made the concept of a gathering of international athletes for peaceful competition not just logistically impossible but conceptually absurd in a Europe where millions of young men were being killed in unprecedented industrial slaughter.

The IOC formally cancelled the Berlin Games in 1915. The next Olympics would not be held until 1920 in Antwerp, Belgium — a choice that acknowledged Belgium's suffering during the war. Germany was not invited to the 1920 Games, and several other nations that had been on the opposing side were also excluded. The wounds of the war shaped the 1920 Olympics in every aspect of their organization and political context.

The 1940 Games: Two Cancelled Events

The 1940 Olympics were to be split between Tokyo (Summer Games) and Sapporo (Winter Games) — the first Olympics to be hosted in Asia. Japan had been awarded both events in 1936, but the escalation of the Second Sino-Japanese War led Japan to renounce the hosting rights in 1938. The IOC reassigned the Summer Games to Helsinki and the Winter Games to Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Germany, but the outbreak of World War II in September 1939 made both alternatives impossible.

Helsinki, the planned site of the 1940 Summer Olympics, was actually invaded by the Soviet Union in the Winter War of 1939-1940. The country that would have hosted the Games was fighting for its survival. The poignancy of this coincidence — Helsinki preparing to welcome the world's athletes while Soviet forces crossed its border — is a striking illustration of how completely the war overwhelmed the Olympic context.

The 1940 Winter Games were similarly cancelled before any preparations could meaningfully proceed. Two entire Olympic cycles were absorbed by the war.

The 1944 Games: Planning Under Occupation

The 1944 Olympics tell an even starker story. The Summer Games had been allocated to London, which had hosted the Games in 1908 and was considered a natural second host. The Winter Games were assigned to Cortina d'Ampezzo in Italy. By 1944, London had survived the Blitz and was a city that had endured years of aerial bombardment. Italy had undergone its armistice with the Allies in 1943 and was still the site of active combat operations. Neither venue was remotely capable of hosting an international athletic festival.

The cancellations of 1940 and 1944 meant that a generation of athletes — those who came of age in the late 1930s and early 1940s — had their Olympic opportunities taken from them entirely. Unlike the post-COVID period, when the 2020 Tokyo Games were merely delayed, these athletes received no second opportunity. The wars simply consumed the years that would have been their Olympic windows.

Recovery and Return

The 1948 London Olympics, held three years after the end of World War II, became known as the "Austerity Games" because they were organized under severe resource constraints in a city still recovering from wartime damage. Spectators brought their own food. Athletes were housed in repurposed military facilities. The Games were modest by design and necessity.

But they happened. The resumption of the Olympics in 1948 — and in particular the inclusion of many nations that had been enemies or neutral parties during the war — was itself a statement about recovery and the enduring value of international athletic competition. The three cancellations between 1916 and 1944 have never been repeated in the same form. The 2020 Tokyo Games' one-year delay, the only other interruption in the modern Olympics' continuity, was significant but far less absolute than the three Games that the world wars simply erased.