Hitler

1
Hitlers Olympics
2
In August 1936, Adolf Hitlers Nazi dictatorship
scored a huge propaganda success as host of the
Summer Olympics in Berlin. The Games were a
brief, two-week interlude in Germanys escalating
campaign against its Jewish population and the
countrys march toward war.
3
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.
4
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.
5
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. "Non-Aryans"--Jewish
or part-Jewish and Gypsy athletes--were
systematically excluded from German sports
facilities and associations.
6
(No Transcript)
7
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.
8
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."
9
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.
10
On August 1, 1936, Hitler opened the XIth
Olympiad.
11
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.
12
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.
13
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."
14
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.
15
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.
16
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.