The year 1936 was one of  cautious optimism. In America, the Great Depression still gripped the nation though Franklin D. Roosevelt had, through massive federal projects and regulations, brought hope. Europe was teetering between the destructive leftovers of World War I and the slowly growing realization that national tensions were heading in that same direction. In Germany, Adolf Hitler was in power, the Chancellor who would soon turn his sights on conquering Germany’s neighboring countries.

And in the midst of all that the summer Olympics, formally known as the Games of the XI Olympiad, came to Berlin. The Games had been awarded to the city two years before the Nazis came to power, and there was nothing that could be done to change the venue. Politics has always been a part, however much the Olympic Committee would like to think it can operate outside of the realities of world affairs. But in Germany in 1936, politics did, perhaps for the first time, have a larger role than any competitor or country has before or since. It was a battle less of athletes’ muscular strength than of brute global force. Much of the credit for that goes to Hitler whose determination to promote his ideological belief in Aryan supremacy fell before an American tract & field competitor named Jesse Owens. 

At the time the Olympics were held, the Nazis were still sensitive enough to the world’s opinion that signs stating “Jews not wanted” and similar slogans were removed from the city's main tourist attractions. The laws against homosexuality were relaxed against foreign visitors. But Jews were forbidden to compete for Germany, and the German Ministry of the Interior ordered the arrest and sequestration of all Romani (Gypsies).

Sports were important to the Nazis plans. Their Olympic team had been allowed to train fulltime at a time when the concept of competitors’ amateurism was rigidly controlled by the Committee. Hans von Tschammer und Osten, who was head of the Reich Sports Office, believe that sports would harden the German spirit and instill  unity among the German youth. “German sport has only one task,” noted Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels on April 23, 1933, “to strengthen the character of the German people, imbuing it with the fighting spirit and steadfast camaraderie necessary in the struggle for its existence.”

Throughout the 1930s, German sports imagery promoted the Aryan superiority and physical power. Artists depicted athletes with well-developed muscle tone, heroic strength and favored the blond, blue-eyed features. The Olympic team that year included a talented long jumper named Lutz Lang, the perfect physical specimen of the Nazi athlete. But Gretel Bergmann, despite equalling a national record in the high jump only a month before the Games, was excluded from the team because she was Jewish.

The idea of holding the Games in Berlin was offensive to many. The United States considered boycotting them so as not to be seen supporting the Nazi regime and its policies. But others argued, as has been ever since, that the Games should be above politics, that it should be strictly a contest of the greatest athletes of each nation.

One of those who supported the boycott was Jeremiah Mahoney, president of the Amateur Athletic Union. He led newspaper editors, American Jewish organizations, and anti-Nazi groups in protest.

Avery Brundage of the American Olympic Committee was in opposition, arguing that “The very foundation of the modern Olympic revival will be underminded if individual countries are allowed to restrict participation by reason of class, creed, or race.” Most African American newspapers also supported this view, among them the Philadelphia Tribune and the Chicago Defender. They felt that black victories would be the greatest weapon in undermining the Nazi policy of Aryan supremacy. Eventually, however, the decision was made to participate though some individual athletes declined to particpate.

Other countries also boycotted. In Spain the government, led by the newly-elected and liberal Popular Front, actually organized a People’s Olympiad as a parallel event in Barcelona. More than 6,000 athletes from twenty-two countries registered. Unfortunately, the event was cancelled when the Spanish Civil War broke out the day before the start of the People’s Olympiad. 

On August 1, 1936, Hitler opened the XIth Olympiad at the new Berlin Olympic Stadium. Internationally known composer Richard Strauss directed the musical fanfares that announced the dictator’s arrival to the largely German crowd. Like all Olympic opening days, the ceremonies were dramatic and rich. Hundreds of athletes in opening day regalia marched into the stadium, team by team in alphabetical order.

For the first time in the history of the Games, the now common ritual of a lone runner bearing a torch borne by a relay team from the site of the ancient Games in Olympia, Greece arrived. It was the second time the Flame was used, but the first time it was came via the relay. Another first was live television coverage of the Games, More than seventy hours of coverage was provided by the German Post Office and broadcast to special viewing rooms throughout Berlin and Potsdam and a few private television sets. And famed German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl was commissioned by the IOC to film the Games. Olympia was the first documentary film on the Games ever made, and she used a number of revolutionary techniques (now common) such as unusual camera angles, smash cuts (an abrupt and unexpected transition from one scene to another) extreme close-ups, and railway tracks to shoot the crowd.

Twenty-one events made up the Olympics that year: athletics, basketball, boxing, canoeing, cycling, diving, equestrian, fencing, football, gymnastics, handball, hockey, modern pentathlon, polo, rowing, sailing, shooting, swimming, water polo weightlifting, and wrestling. Of those, basketball and handball were making their debut. Baseball and gliding were demonstration sports. 

A total of forty-nine nations competed. It was a dramatic rise from the thirty-seven that competed up in 1932. Of the 49, six were there for the first time: Afghanistan, Bermuda, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Liechtenstein, and Peru.

For Americans, the story of James Cleveland “Jesse” Owens and Adolph Hitler is the story of the Games. It’s not, but it does have an interesting angle. Owens was born on September 12, 1913, in Alabama. When he was nine, his parents moved to Ohio in hopes of bettering their future. It was while he was in high school that his running talent was discovered. In college, he continued to set records but he also experienced the racial segregation that dominated the U.S. at the time. Despite the discrimination, he set his sights on the 1936 Olympics.

And on a single afternoon, he succeeded brillantly, winning four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events. He met and became close friends with Long who offered Owens advice after he almost failed to qualify for the long jump and whom he subsequently beat out for the gold while setting a record that stood for 24 years.

The most defining moment of the Games that has come down in history, the apparent snub of Owens by Hitler is false. On August 8, the Baltimore Afro-American and other newspapers spread the story that Hitler refused to shake Owens’s hand. But the fact is that Hitler chose to shake hands with no medal winners rather than all as IOC guidelines required he should maintain Olympic neutrality. Whether that was because of the African American competitors or not is unknown. Owens himself said, “When I passed the Chancellor he arouse, waved his hand at me, and I waved back at him, I think the writers showed bad taste in criticizing the man of the hour in Germany.” He also made the point of noting that “Hitler didn’t snub me—it was FDR who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.”

For Germany, the Games proved a victory in both medal-winning and political ways. A total of eighty-nine medals—33 of them gold, 26 silver and 30 bronze—was taken home by German competitors. (By contrast, American athletes, the second highest winning team, took home fifty-six medals.) German hospitality and organization won praise even from the New York Times which said that the Games put Germans “back in the fold of nations” and made them “more human again.” There was hope, albeit temporarily, that the peaceful spirit of the Games might endure. But not everyone felt this way. Foreign correspondent William Shirer feared that the glow of the Games would hide the danger the country’s regime represented: “I’m afraid the Nazis have succeeded with their propaganda. First, the Nazis have run the Games on a lavish scale never before experienced, and this has appealed to the athletes. Second, the Nazis have put up a very good front for the general visitors, especially the big businessmen.”

Shirer’s observations were astute. Hitler’s plans included not only world domination but Olympic domination as well. In a conversation with Albert Speer in the spring of 1937, Hitler stated: “In 1940, the Olympic Games will take place in Tokyo. But thereafter they will take place in Germany for all time to come, in this stadium.”

That did not come true, of course. They survived Hitler and they have survived though not avoided political crises since. Perhaps it can best be said that they offer a feeling of “cautious optimism” because they have a history that has never been without scandal. An early report by Pausanias stated that at the ninety-ninth festival, “Sotades . . . was victorious in the long race and proclaimed himself a Cretan, as in fact he was. But at the next Festival he made himself an Ephesian, being bribed to do so by the Ephesian people. For this act, he was banished by the Cretans.”

If there is a danger to the spirit of the original Olympic Games, it is, I believe, much less the politics than the capitalism that grips them. The money-making machine they have become was certainly there at the 1936 Games. These bookmarks, no doubt sold to attendees, attest to that. But unlike much of the modern crap that is turned out by official and unofficial vendors alike, these bookmarks offer a respectful reminder of the spirit of the Games.

Bookmark specifications: BERLINER BORGER-BRÄU
Dimensions: 8” x 2”
Material: Silk
Manufacturer: Unknown
Date: 1936
Acquired: eBay

Bookmark specifications: BERLIN 1936
Dimensions: 6” x 1”
Material: Silk
Manufacturer: Unknown
Date: 1936
Acquired: eBay


Almost since her childhood days of Mother Goose, Lauren has been giving her opinion on books to anyone who will listen. That “talent” eventually took her out of magazine writing and into book reviewing in 2000 for an online review site where she cut her teeth (as well as a few authors). Stints as book editor for her local newspaper and contributing editor to Booklist and Bookmarks magazines has reinforced her belief that she has interesting things to say about books. Lauren shares her home with several significant others including three cats, nearly 1,300 bookmarks and approximately 1,200 books that, whether previously read or not, constitute her to-be-read stack. She is a member of the National Books Critics Circle (NBCC) as well as a longtime book design judge for Publishers Marketing Association’s Benjamin Franklin Awards. Contact Lauren.