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Hitler’s Olympics
In August 1936, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi dictatorship scored a
huge propaganda success as host of the Summer
Olympics in Berlin. The Games were a brief, two-week
interlude in Germany’s escalating campaign against its
Jewish population and the country’s march toward war.
Minimizing its antisemitic agenda and plans for
territorial expansion, the regime exploited the Games to
impress many foreign spectators and journalists with an
image of a peaceful, tolerant Germany.
Having rejected a proposed boycott of the 1936
Olympics, the United States and other western
democracies missed the opportunity to take a stand
that contemporary observers claimed might have
restrained Hitler and bolstered international resistance
to Nazi tyranny.
After the Olympics, Germany's
expansionism and the persecution of Jews
and other "enemies of the state"
accelerated, culminating in World War II and
the Holocaust.
Hitler harnessed sport as part of its drive to
strengthen the "Aryan race," to exercise
political control over its citizens, and to
prepare German youth for war. "NonAryans"--Jewish or part-Jewish and Gypsy
athletes--were systematically excluded from
German sports facilities and associations.
Forty-nine athletic teams from around the
world competed in the Berlin Olympics.
Germany had the largest team at the Berlin
Games with 348 athletes. The Soviet Union
did not participate in the Berlin Games or
any Olympiad until the 1952 Helsinki
Games.
The United States had the second largest
team with 312 members.
Choreographed pageantry,
record-breaking athletic feats,
and warm German hospitality
made the 1936 Olympic
Games memorable for
athletes and spectators.
Behind the facade, however, a
ruthless dictatorship
persecuted its enemies and
rearmed for war to acquire
new "living space" for the
"Aryan master race."
Germany skillfully promoted
the Olympics with colorful
posters and magazine
spreads. Athletic imagery
drew a link between Nazi
Germany and ancient
Greece. These portrayals
symbolized the Nazi racial
myth that superior German
civilization was the rightful
heir of an "Aryan" culture of
classical antiquity.
On August 1, 1936, Hitler opened the
XIth Olympiad.
Eighteen Black athletes represented the United States in the 1936
Olympics. African-Americans dominated the popular track and
field events. Many American journalists hailed the victories of
Jesse Owens and other Blacks as a blow to the Nazi myth of
Aryan supremacy.
A controversial move at the Games was the
benching of two American Jewish runners, Marty
Glickman and Sam Stoller. Both had trained for
the 4x100-meter relay, but on the day before the
event, they were replaced. Avery Brundage,
head of the US Olympic Committee, was
accused of anti-Semitism because he had
stated he wanted to spare the Fuhrer the
embarrassing sight of two American Jews on the
winning podium.
Germany emerged victorious from the
XIth Olympiad. Its athletes captured the
most medals overall, and German
hospitality and organization won the
praises of visitors. Most newspaper
accounts echoed a report in the New York
Times that the Games put Germans "back
in the fold of nations," and even made
them "more human again."
The pause in the Germany's anti-Jewish
campaign was brief. William E. Dodd, the
U.S. ambassador to Germany, reported that
Jews awaited "with fear and trembling" the
end of the Olympic truce. Two days after the
Olympics, Captain Wolfgang Fürstner, head
of the Olympic village, killed himself after he
was dismissed from active military service
because of his Jewish ancestry.
In 1938, Germany incorporated Austria into the Reich
and intensified the anti-Jewish campaign. On the
evening of November 9-10, 1938 -- Kristallnacht, "The
Night of Broken Glass" -- rioters burned over 1,000
synagogues in Germany and Austria, vandalized and
looted 7,000 Jewish businesses and homes, and killed
dozens of Jews in an assault.
WWII began on September 1, 1939, when Hitler invaded
Poland.
Many former German athletes met brutal
fates, including wrestler Herman
Seelenbinder, member of a resistance
group in Germany who was arrested in
1942 and later beheaded for treason.
Johann Trollman, a Gypsy boxer who was
expelled from the German Boxing
Association in 1933, died ten years later at
a Nazi concentration camp.