Georg Gyssling

George Gyssling was working in the German consulate in New York and had no bobsleigh experience at all when he was called up as a last-minute replacement after a series of bad crashes had left a number of German competitors in hospital. Nevertheless team Germany 2 entered the seventh place in the 1932 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid.

Gyssling went on to serve as German consul-general in Los Angeles during the late thirties. One of his responsibilities was to attempt to limit what the German authorities considered anti-Nazi propaganda in Hollywood movies. He was the man who was sent to complain about the Charlie Chaplin film, The Great Dictator, and films such as Confessions of a Nazi Spy. After Pearl Harbor he returned to Germany and worked in anti-American propaganda.