A nation using the Olympics to demonstrate its resurgent economic might, an impressively modern stadium commissioned specifically for the games, allegations of human rights violations and calls for an international boycott—the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin witnessed similar controversies as those dogging this year’s games in Beijing. Tragically, history proved the world’s worst suspicions correct, and the games that have come to be known as the “Nazi Olympics” still cast a shadow over the world’s most famous sporting event.
By the time the games opened on August 1, 1936 the Nationalist Socialists had ruthlessly cemented their control over the nation’s political and economic machinery. Seeing the games as the perfect opportunity to demonstrate the supposed superiority of their fascist system, the Nazi leadership spared no expense in the preparations. A new Olympic Stadium was commissioned, new swimming and entertainment facilities were laid out, and an entire village was built in the countryside to house the international athletic teams.
The extensive propaganda efforts of the National Socialists resulted in a number of memorable Olympic firsts; as runner Fritz Schilgen carried the sacred flame into the stadium to open the XI Olympiad it ended the final leg of the first ever Olympic Torch Relay, and the Berlin games marked the first broadcast of the competitions on live television. Basketball appeared in the games for the first time and Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler’s favorite film-maker, produced her classic meditation on sport, Olympia, at the request of the International Olympic Committee.
As well as attempting to awe international audiences with cutting edge athletic facilities and mass spectacle, the Nazi dictatorship tried to defuse the controversies regarding its despicable racial and social policies by hiding their most visible manifestations. Propaganda Minister Goebbels ordered all signs targeting Jews to be removed from public locations and specified that anti-homosexual laws not be applied to foreign visitors during the games. But behind the scenes the racial discrimination continued as before. Jewish athletes were forbidden from competing on the German teams and on July 16, just two weeks before the start of the games, some 800 Sinti and Roma in Berlin were arrested and interned in a concentration camp in the eastern suburb of Marzahn, where they would be imprisoned until their deportation to Auschwitz.
Despite early calls for an international boycott, more than 49 nations participated in the XI Olympiad, making it the most well attended in history. Tens of thousands of fans crowded into the Olympic grounds to welcome the athletes from around the world, and the Berliners were praised in the international press for their hospitality and organization.
Frustrating the Nazi’s propaganda aims and claims of Aryan racial superiority, however, the greatest star of the summer games turned out to be African-American Jesse Owens, who collected four gold medals in the track and field events. But despite his international achievements, Owens, a sharecropper’s son from Alabama, faced continued discrimination upon his return to a pre-civil rights era America. Pleased with the results of their propaganda efforts, Hitler and his henchmen began planning to host the 1940 Winter Olympics. But all talk of peace and international cooperation, however, fell silent when, only three years later, Germany invaded Poland triggering history’s deadliest war.
