Who was the president of the International Olympic Committee during the first Summer Olympics after WWII

1. A reluctant steward turned formal president

Edström had served as IOC Vice‑President and, because the charter had no clear succession, assumed the responsibilities of the presidency after Count Henri de Baillet‑Latour’s death in 1942; he kept the IOC functioning from neutral Sweden through the war and was elected by acclamation as President in Lausanne in 1946 ^{[1] [4]}. Contemporary IOC accounts highlight that his communications from neutral Sweden were key to maintaining links with members during the conflict ^[2].

2. The 1948 Games: rebirth under Edström’s watch

The 1948 London Summer Olympics — widely described as the “rebirth of Olympism” — were awarded to London and staged in austerity conditions; they were the first Summer Games Edström oversaw as formal president and marked a complex restoration of international sport after wartime disruption ^{[2] [5]}. Reporting notes the Games featured 59 nations and more than 4,000 athletes, symbols of recovery even as the Olympic field remained politically constrained ^[3].

3. Political exclusions and postwar choices

Edström’s presidency faced immediate political questions: Germany and Japan were not invited to the 1948 Games, and the IOC under his leadership wrestled with whether to readmit Axis powers and how to handle divided and emerging communist states — issues documented in IOC and Olympic‑history sources ^{[1] [6]}. Records show Edström had to “take the sensitive decision to exclude Japan and Germany” and later worked on Soviet and German participation arrangements in the early 1950s ^{[7] [1]}.

4. Institutional continuity and contested authority

Multiple sources stress that Edström’s wartime stewardship kept the IOC intact; there was no automatic succession process in the Olympic Charter, so his role shifted from de facto leader to elected president in 1946 ^{[4] [8]}. Historians note both the necessity of his stewardship and the political limits he inherited — the IOC had to reconstitute itself and make rapid, often controversial decisions about membership and invitations ^{[6] [1]}.

5. Competing perspectives and legacy debates

Olympic institutional accounts and historians portray Edström as a stabilizing figure who restored the Games; at the same time, episodes such as his earlier IAAF role in the Paavo Nurmi controversy and the exclusionary postwar policies complicate his record ^{[9] [10]}. Sources emphasize his diplomacy and administrative experience while also documenting the morally and politically fraught choices the IOC made during his tenure ^{[2] [7]}.

6. What the sources don’t resolve

Available sources do not mention detailed internal debates of every IOC member at the 1946 session beyond broad outcomes (for example, detailed vote tallies or transcribed objections are not provided in the materials cited) and do not present extensive first‑hand dissenting voices from excluded nations in IOC archives supplied here (not found in current reporting). For a deeper archival reconstruction one must consult the IOC’s primary archival collections referenced by the Olympic Studies Centre ^[6].

7. Bottom line for the original query

The president of the International Olympic Committee during the first Summer Olympics after World War II (the 1948 London Games) was J. Sigfrid Edström, who had acted as president from 1942 and was formally elected at the 1946 Lausanne session ^{[1] [2]}. Contemporary Olympic histories credit him with steering the IOC through the transition from wartime suspension to the restored postwar Olympic movement ^{[2] [3]}.