• Berlin chosen May 13th, 1931

• Won bid with 43 votes for Berlin and 16 votes for Barcelona, Spain.

• Berlin supposed to hold Olympics in 1916

• Cancelled because of World War 1

• 1920 games held in Belgium, and they didn’t invite teams from Germany or any of it’s allies

• 10 years before they were invited back

• 2 years after Berlin won bid,

Hitler took over Germany

• Hitler wanted to cancel Olympics

• But was convinced Olympics would show off “new Germany”

• He paid 20,000,000 Reichsmark ($8,000,000)

• No more Jews, blacks, or gypsies

•Ethical Cleansing was happening all around Germany

•Hitler decided to do the same with the Games

•Nobody of Jewish decent was allowed to compete in the Olympics for the German team

•That decision ultimately cost the Germans many gold metals

• Responding to reports of the persecution of Jewish athletes in 1933, Avery Brundage, president of the American Olympic Committee inspected Berlin

•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.

•Many American newspaper editors and anti-Nazi groups, led by, president of the Amateur Athletic Union, were unwilling to be duped by Nazi Germany

•But a determined Avery Brundage maneuvered the Amateur Athletic Union to a close vote in favor of sending an American team to Berlin

•President Franklin D. Roosevelt didn’t become involved in the boycott issue

•He didn’t listen to many advisors or diplomats

•Roosevelt continued a 40-year tradition in which the American Olympic Committee operated independently of outside influence

However bad the Jews were being treated, Olympic officials were promised by German leaders to treat African Americans fairly.

Jessie Owens and Eulace Metcalfe

They felt that their victories would show that the Nazi ideals were wrong

Metcalfe sprained his ankle, and never went

                                                                                                                                  

                                                  

•Newspapers argued that victories by Blacks would show Nazis that their Aryan views were wrong.

•18 African Americans -- 16 men and 2 women -- went to Berlin, 3 times as many as the 1932 Olympics

•All of these athletes came from white universities, and showed many Black journalists the poor conditions of training equipment and facilities at black colleges where the vast majority of African American students were at

Many Olympians from all over the world chose to boycott the Olympics.

 Herman Neugass, an American Jewish sprinter

Milton Green (left), captain of the Harvard University track team

Sammy Luftspring, the top-ranked lightweight boxer in Canada

                      

Ruth Langer, an Austrian swimmer

Afghanistan Argentina Australia Austria Belgium Bermuda Bolivia Brazil Bulgaria Canada Chile China

Colombia Costa Rica Czechosloki Denmark Egypt Estonia Finland France Germany Great Britain Greece Hungary

IcelandIndia Italy Japan Latvia Liechtensten Luxembourg

Malta Mexico Monaco The Netherlands New Zealand

Norway Peru The Philippines Poland Portugal Romania South Africa

Sweden Switzerland Turkey United States Uruguay Yugoslavia

•49 Teams Competed

•Germany had the most athletes, 348

•America had the second highest amount, at 312

•February 6 to February 16, 1936, Germany hosted the Winter Olympics in the Bavarian Alps.

•Olympic leaders' insisted on "fair play," so German officials allowed half-Jewish

Rudi Ball to compete on the nation's hockey team. •Anti-Jewish signs were temporarily removed from the public

                          

                      

  The presence of the German military at the Winter Games made the games a little less light hearted

                            

Photograph #14914

•Germany promoted the Olympics with colorful posters and magazine spreads.

•imagery drew a link between Nazi Germany and ancient Greece.

•The Nazis reduced their vision of classical antiquity to ideal "Aryan" racial types: heroic, blue-eyed blonds with finely-chiseled features.

In August 1936 Olympic flags and swastikas bedecked the monuments and houses of a crowded Berlin.

Most tourists were unaware that the Nazi regime had temporarily removed anti-Jewish signs.

                

             

                                          Tourists wouldn’t have known of a police "clean up" that swept Gypsies off the streets and kept them in a camp at the edge of Berlin.

• During the Olympics, the Germans were secretly building a concentration camp 18 miles north of Berlin

•liberals, socialists, and Communists, and Jehovah's Witnesses were imprisoned there

Sachsenhausen

• August 1st, 1936 Summer Olympics begin

• They started a new ritual, having a single runner run the Olympic torch from Olympia, Greece

Jessie Owens "the fastest human being"

• Hero of the Olympics

• Won 4 Gold Metals

• 100 meters, the 200 meters, the long jump, and part of the 4x100 meter relay

• Olympic Record on Long Jump

• Despite claims Hitler snubbed him, he wasn’t mad or angry

“Hitler didn’t snub me- it was FDR who snubbed me. he didn’t send me a telegram”

•African American athletes won 14 medals,• That is about one-fourth of the 56 medals awarded the U.S. team in all events

                                                                                                                                  

                                                  

         

             

Thirteen Jews or people of Jewish descent won medals in the Nazi Olympics, including six Hungarians

•Germany was very successful during these Olympics.

•Its athletes captured the most medals overall

•German hospitality and organization won the praises of visitors

•Hitler made plans to keep the Olympics in Germany for eternity.

"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."

Adolf Hitler

•The 1940 Winter Games were supposed to be held in Switzerland, but plans fell through.

•In 1939, the committee voted unanimously to return to Germany for the 1940 Olympics

•In November 1939, two months before invading Poland, Germany withdrew.

•In 1937, Hitler inspected a design for a stadium that would host the Olympics for forever.

•It was a 400,000-seat stadium that exemplified German supremacy.