Introduction

     In August 1936, Adolph Hitler planned to camouflage his anti-Semitic agenda when Germany hosted the 1936 XI Olympic Games in Berlin. Hitler planned to amaze foreign spectators with Germany's Aryan "supreme" master-race.  He wanted to strengthen the German Aryan race and prepare Germany's youth for war.  He thought it was his great chance to convince the world of the superiority of the Aryan race.          

1931-1933      

     On May 13, 1931, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), headed by Count Henri Baillet Latour of Belgium, awarded the 1936 Olympic Games to Germany.  The choice signaled Germany's return to the world community after their defeat in World War I.  They didn't know that two years later Nazi Party leader Adolph Hitler would become chancellor of Germany and rise to power and turn the democracy into a dictatorship.         

1936

     German sports imagery promoted the myth of Aryan racial superiority and physical power.  It portrayed them with chiseled-out muscles and with blond hair and blue eyes.  Hitler initially held the Olympics in low regard because of their internationalism, but he became an avid supporter after Joseph Goebbels, his minister of propaganda, convinced him of their propaganda value.  The regime provided full financial support for the event, 20,000,000 Reich marks ($8,000,000).

Exclusion of Jews

     Soon after Hitler took power Jews were banned from sports. The German Boxing Association expelled amateur champion Eric Seelig in April 1933 because he was Jewish.  Daniel Prenn, a Jew, Germany's top-ranked tennis player, was removed from Germany's Davis Cup Team.  Gypsies, including the Sinti boxer Johann "Rukelie" Trollmann, were also purged from German sports.  In June 1933, Trollmann, the German middleweight boxing champion, was banned from boxing for "racial reasons".         

Boycott of '36 Olympics

     Soon after Hitler took power in 1933, observers in the United States questioned the morality of supporting Olympic Games hosted by the Nazi regime.  Responding to the reports of the persecution of Jewish athletes in 1933, Avery Brundage president of the American Olympic Committee, stated: "The very foundation  of the modern Olympic revival will be undermined if individual countries are allowed to restrict participation by reason of class, creed, or race."  Brundage, like many others in the Olympics movement, initially considered moving the Games from Germany.  After a brief and tightly managed inspection of German sports facilities in 1934, Brundage stated publicly that Jewish athletes were being treated fairly and that the Games should go on, as planned.  Debate over participation in the 1936 Olympics was greatest in the United States.  Brundage opposed this, because he arqued that politics had no place what so ever in sport, saying, "The Olympic Games belong to the athletes and not to the politicians."  

The Games

     The Olympics were a perfect arena for the Nazi propaganda machine, which was unsurpassed in staging an elaborate public spectacles and rallies.  Behind the facade, however, a ruthless dictatorship persecuted it's enemies and rearmed for war to acquire a 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 protrayals symbolized the Nazi racial myth that superior German civiliaztion was the rightful heir of an "Aryan" culture of classical antiquity.  The Nazis reduced their vision of classical antiquity to ideal "Aryan" racial types:  heroic, blue-eyed, blonds, and with finely-chiseled features.  

     In August 1936, Hitler opened the XIth Olympiad, with musical fan fares directed by the famous composer Richard Strauss, which announced the dictators arrival to the dominant German crowd.  Inaugurating a new Olympic ritual, a lone runner entered the stadium carrying a torch which was relayed from the site of the ancient Games in Olympia, Greece.

     The United States was able to dominate the track and field events largely in part by the help of Jesse Owens, 14 of the 56 medals won by the U.S. were won by African Americans.  This was seen by many as a blow to the Nazi myth of Aryan supremacy.  It was well known that after Jesse had won or any of the other black athletes, at the first day of the competition officers of Olympic protocol as Hitler to either shake the hands of all the winners or none, he chose none.