OLYMPICS BERLIN 1936
In August 1936, Adolf Hitler's Nazi absolutism scored a huge misinformation attainment as crowd of the Summer Olympics in Berlin. The Games were a brief, two-week interval in Germany's growing campaign against its Jewish inhabitants and the country's march toward war.
From April 25 to August 17, 2008, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is hosting a special exhibition, The Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936 that originally debuted in 1996 in conjunction with the opening of the Atlanta sports opposition and the 60th anniversary of the 1936 Olympics. The exhibition now returns to Washington D.C. for a limited run. The exhibition explores the issues neighboring the 1936 Olympic Games--the Nazis' use of propaganda, the intense boycott debate, the history of the torch run, the historic performance of Jesse Owens, and more.
BERLIN 1936
The worldwide Olympic board, headed by Count Henri Baillet-Latour of Belgium, awarded the 1936 Summer Olympics to Berlin On May 13, 1931. The choice pointer Germany's return to the world society after defeat in World War I.
Two years later, Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany and quickly turned the nation's fragile democracy into a one-party dictatorship. police force curved up thousands of political opponents, detaining them without trial in concentration camps. The Nazi regime also put into practice racial policies that aimed to "purify" and strengthen the Germanic "Aryan" population. A relentless campaign began to exclude Germany's one-half million Jews from all aspects of German life.
For two weeks in August 1936, Adolf Hitler's Nazi tyranny covered away its racist, militaristic character while hosting the Summer Olympics. Softpedaling its antisemitic agenda and plans for territorial expansion, the regime broken the Games to bedazzle many overseas spectators and journalists with an image of a peaceful, tolerant Germany. Germany competently promoted the Olympics with colorful posters and periodical spreads. Athletic images drew a link between Nazi Germany and ancient Greece.
These portrayals symbolized the Nazi racial myth that superior German society was the rightful heir of an "Aryan" culture of classical antiquity. Concentrated propaganda efforts continued well after the Olympics with the international release in 1938 of "Olympia," Leni Riefenstahl's controversial film documentary of the Games.
On August 1, 1936, Hitler opened the Games of the 11th Olympiad. Melodic fanfares directed by the famous composer Richard Strauss announced the dictator's arrival to the largely German crowd. Hundreds of athletes in opening day symbols of office marched into the stadium, team by team in alphabetical order. Inaugurating a new Olympic ritual, a lone runner arrived bearing a torch carried by relay from the site of the ancient Games in Olympia, Greece.
THE OLYMPIC TORCH RELAY
The 1936 Games were the first to employ the torch run. Each of 3,422 torch bearers ran one kilometer (0.6 miles) along the route of the torch relay from the site of the ancient Olympics in Olympia, Greece, to Berlin. Former German Olympian Carl Diem replica the relay after one that had been run in Athens in 80 B.C. It completely suited Nazi propagandists, who used torch-lit parades and rally to attract Germans, particularly youth, to the Nazi movement. The torch itself was made in 1936 by Krupp, a German corporation better known for its creation of steel and weapons.