As you may know, the Olympic salute is just like the Nazi one. The Nazis borrowed it from the Fascists, who borrowed it from Greece. I feel safe to say that the ONLY delegation that did the NAZI salute in 1936 was the German one - and who knows if all the German athletes were Nazis !
There were heated debates among the other delegations whether to salute the official tribune (where Hitler was) in the Olympic way. And while it is true that after these debates the French delegation saluted in this way, I want to make clear that they WEREN'T doing a Sieg Heil, and that other delegations also chose to salute in the Olympic way. France at that time was ruled by a left-wing government who really had nothing to do with Nazi Germany, and whose leaders like Leon Blum, our first Jewish prime Minister, was sent into a concentration camp by the Germans themselves.
As for de Villepin, you've got a point, he's a stupid and pompous man I'd gladly see rolled in tar and feathers - or in honey and fire ants.
Sorry, about that.
I didn't mean to imply that the official line then was catering to the Nazis.
I merely meant to point out which way the winds were blowing at the time.
I could have just as easily inculpated England's policy at the time as being responsible for Germany's rapacious appetite for more land and more concessions from Western Europe.
Blame for this fiasco could be apportioned to many different bodies. The League of Nations, Neville Chamberlain's gov't, Stalin/Ribbentrop and even the United States Congress, all share equal responsibility for ignoring Hitler's rearmament.
I was simply pointing out that as the country neighboring Germany, and as the anchor of the W. European defense alliance, France should have taken the initiative in this arena.
After all, it was the French army that had the opportunity to crush the Nazis when they made an incursion into the Rhineland, but ultimately failed to do so.