Editing Winter Olympic Games (section)

===Cold War===
The Winter Olympics were an ideological front in the [[Cold War]] since the [[Soviet Union at the 1956 Winter Olympics|Soviet Union]] first participated at the [[1956 Winter Olympics|1956 Winter Games]]. It did not take long for the Cold War combatants to discover what a powerful propaganda tool the Olympic Games could be. The advent of the state-sponsored "full-time amateur athlete" of the [[Eastern Bloc]] countries further eroded the ideology of the pure amateur, as it put the self-financed amateurs of the Western countries at a disadvantage. The [[Soviet Union at the Olympics|Soviet Union]] entered teams of athletes who were all nominally students, soldiers, or working in a profession, but many of whom were in reality paid by the state to train on a full-time basis.<ref name=Benjamin_Daniel/> Nevertheless, the IOC held to the traditional rules regarding amateurism until the '90s.<ref name=Otto_Schantz/>

The Cold War created tensions amongst countries allied to the two superpowers. The strained relationship between East and West Germany created a difficult political situation for the IOC. Because of its role in World War II, Germany was not allowed to compete at the 1948 Winter Olympics.<ref name=Games1948/> In 1950, the IOC recognised the [[German Olympic Sports Confederation|West German Olympic Committee]], and invited East and West Germany to compete as a unified team at the 1952 Winter Games.<ref name=Hill>Hill (1992), p. 34</ref> East Germany declined and instead sought international legitimacy separate from West Germany.<ref>Hill (1992), p. 35</ref>

In 1955, the Soviet Union recognised East Germany as a sovereign state, thereby giving more credibility to East Germany's campaign to become an independent participant. The IOC agreed provisionally to accept the [[National Olympic Committee of the German Democratic Republic|East German National Olympic Committee]] on condition that East and West Germans compete as one team.<ref>Hill (1992), pp. 36–38</ref> The situation became tense when the [[Berlin Wall]] was constructed by East Germany in 1961 to stop migration of its citizens and Western European nations began refusing visas to East German athletes.<ref>Hill (1992), p. 38</ref> The uneasy compromise of a unified team held until the 1968 Grenoble Games when the IOC split the teams and threatened to reject host-city bids from any country that refused entry visas to East German athletes.<ref>Hill (1992), pp. 38–39</ref>