“The American victory was due largely to two factors. First, there was Tom Moone of Boston, who played a flawless game defending his cage. Second, there was the fact that the German forwards knew how to get down the ice close to the American cage but apparently did not know what to do after they got there.”

That was the word from Albion Ross of The New York Times early in February of 1936, when the United States opened its Winter Olympics schedule in Garmisch-Partenkirchen with a 1-0 win over the hosts from Germany at the main rink. Gordon Smith got the goal — that’s him here, dark-sweatered, bespectacled, putting the puck past German goaltender (and local Garmisch boy) Wilhelm Egginger in the first period. Two days later, when the U.S. lost in an upset to Italy, Smith was again at the fore, booed by the Italian bench for his rough play. At one point, he accused an Italian opponent of deliberately knocking his glasses off, complaining “bitterly” to the referee that a penalty should have been called.

Out in the lead against Germany, the Americans went with a stalling strategy, firing the puck down the ice when they got the chance, forcing the Germans back to retrieve it. The weather played its part throughout the game. “Starting the final period,” an AP  correspondent advised, “the snow was so thick that newspaperman in the open stand scarcely could see across the arena and good hockey was impossible.”

The crowd of 8,000 included an odious trio of prominent Nazis in propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess, and Dr. Alfred Rosenberg, Reich cultural director. The Times took note of them, and of Rudi Ball, “who enjoys the uncomfortable distinction,” Ross wrote, “of being very much a non-Aryan in a fanatically Aryan land.”

A speedy forward, Ball had long been Germany’s best player. “Without their Jewish teammate the German players would not have been much of a threat,” Ross continued. “Although it often and insistently has been repeated that the Jews have no place in ‘German sport,’ there could be no doubt that Rudi Ball was the Fuehrer of the German hockey team and without their Jewish Fuehrer the Germans would have been in a very embarrassing situation indeed.”