In order to have the Renaissance, an area needed several things. It needed peace and stability. It needed money. It needed an intelligencia. It needed the writers, artists, and musicians. And it needed the Patrons. The Austrian Empire established peace. The trading houses of Venice and other coastal cities created money. Instability in the Islamic world caused many of their writers, artists, and musicians to flee on the trading boats and move to that area. The church had an intelligencia that saw how they could be used. Rich patrons existed who would pay for them to draw pictures and do other things for the churches.

Dictators will always do the following:

1) CONTROL THE PRESS (MEDIA): They don't want the people to know what is going on outside their borders, and the people get the government's spin on all matters. Control the press (and media), control the minds of the people.

2) SEIZE THE INTELLIGENCIA: The intellectually elite will share ideas, and dictatorships hate a thinking people.

3) SECRET POLICE: The Secret Police are the key to a dictatorship. They are the ones who keep the local people affraid, who will cultivate the neighborhood spies who report on those speaking out against the government. The Secret Police will then make a show of arresting the subversive, which will make others think twice about speaking out aganist the government.

4) MILITARY BUY IN: Without the "Buy In" of the Military, a dictatorship is doomed. The dictator must keep them happy and make sure they will enforce then dictator's policies, as well as brutally put down any revolts. The Military can't have a consious, but follwo their leadership's orders.

I'm not sure of your questions...if you mean sports that were being played around the world while the holocaust was going on, then that was in the early 1940's, so you got most of the olympic sports (not new inclusions like sand v-ball), baseball/football/soccer...pretty much all the same ones today unless they were invented in the last 60 years.

Buddhism is the most advance philosophical system in the world, it can actually help evolve human beings into next evolutionary steps unimaginable by mere common human minds; as such it became the religious choice of the intelligencia of the world.

Once you understand it, and if you are willing to spend time to understand it and practice it, then the powers you can developed are unimaginable by even Gods themselves.

A mere common human mind obviously can not comprehend the greatness and unimaginable fortune that they can even hear the base theories of Buddhism, because they think the teaching is from a mere human being,Siddhartha Gautama.

Not knowing that the teachings are actually come from a group of super beings on the other side, who have tried to elevate our human into a higher levels of consciousness, and Siddhartha Gautama- also known as Shakyamuni Buddha was their messenger; as oppose to a God or Gods based religions- who kept humans as their pets and servants to worship them.

Once a person took the journey of studying Buddhism, and has a little intelligence, then he will gain a lot insights and powers to understand and manipulate his environments. With powers of understanding the truth; he will at once see through the power plays and motivation of the leaders of people, and be able to stay objective.

As leaders of Religious orders are jealous of the powers and understanding of Buddhism, with self-interest of survivals, they have stirred up the anti-Buddhism movement.

About the same time a more violent religion, from the Barbaric states of Middle East, begun their advance into India; unable to convert neither Buddhists and Brahmins, they resolved to kill and plunder the Buddhists, a smaller group of practitioners, who by Buddha peaceful teaching refused to fight back with deadly forces. Moslems had killed, along with followers of Brahmanism- who saw an opportunities to get ridded of their most fierce competitor, had exterminated all Buddhists from India.

Immediately following the destruction of Buddhism, the Brahmanism in term was destroyed as well. After the Brahmanism was destroyed, it remain as local believes and was no longer an organized religion; until after the British took colony of India, and with the rise of nationalism the Brahmanism was revived as Hinduism),

Fortunately many Buddhist teachers with missions foresaw the destruction ofBuddhism in India, and began their journeys to East, and South East and other parts of the world, so the Buddhism exists today.