U.S. Participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympics Activity
Inquiry Question What were the arguments for and against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics?
The U.S. decision to take part in the 1936 Olympics, which took place in Berlin at the time of Nazi leadership, was a controversial issue that divided participating athletes, administrative organizations, and the American public itself, especially since the country was dealing with its own problems of racism during the era of Jim Crow laws. Use information collected from the provided sources and analyze your findings to explain the arguments presented by both sides: those who felt the U.S. should compete in the games, and those who felt the nation should boycott.
Clarifying Questions
What was the status of civil rights in Germany in the mid1930s, and how did it compare to the situation in the United States? What were the main arguments for participating in the games? What were the main arguments against participating in the games? How did the 1936 Berlin Olympics influence the global perception of Nazi Germany?
Vocabulary
boycott de facto segregation de jure segregation Jim Crow Nazi Party propaganda
Background Information
1936 Summer Olympic Games, Berlin
The 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin, Germany, marked a pivotal moment in the history of the international games. German chancellor Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and the institution of racist and xenophobic policies by the Nazi Party, led many to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
Hitler's Rise to Power
In their choice of Berlin, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had wanted to stress Germany's return to the international sporting world after World War I. When the Olympics were held in 1936, however, it was quite a different Germany and quite a different Berlin from those to whom the IOC had awarded the games in 1931. The rise to prominence of the Nazi Party in the 1930s elevated the party's leader, Adolf Hitler, as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Hitler's seizure of absolute power in 1934 ushered in a totalitarian regime in Germany that ruthlessly suppressed the civil rights of minorities, particularly German Jews.
Organizing the Games
The overwhelming problem for the IOC and for the United States was to get a guarantee that Jewish athletes would not be excluded from the games. At the IOC meeting in Vienna in June 1933, president of the Olympic organizing committee Theodor Lewald was able to give an assurance with the approval of the German government that "all laws relating to the Olympic Games will be respected. German Jews will not as a matter of principle be excluded from German teams in the XI Olympiad."
This guarantee convinced the president of the Olympic Committee, Henri BailletLatour, after a visit to Berlin in November 1935, when he had an audience with Hitler. After that, the attitude of the Olympic Committee was unchanged. There was no wavering, and there was total support for the games in Berlin. From that point onward, both Baillet Latour and Avery Brundage attacked all opponents of the games as being lackeys of Communism. In 1936, Avery Brundage took a place on the IOC at the expense of the American E. L. Jahncke, who had been unremittingly critical of the games in Berlin.
The first thing the Hitler state did was to place its resources wholeheartedly behind the organization committee. A close cooperative relationship developed between Reich Director of Sport Hans von Tschammer und Osten and the organization committee—a collaboration that would be expanded to encompass work on the winter games in GarmischPartenkirchen, which the IOC had no objections about awarding to Germany in the spring of 1933, four months after Hitler came to power. Leading the organization of the latter was Karl Ritter von Halt, who had swiftly joined the Nazi Party in order to assist his career as a banker. All these people combined to convince the outside world that the games in Berlin and GarmischPartenkirchen would take place without discrimination against Jews or other nonAryan races.
Nazi Propaganda and Misdirection
The Nazis reasoned that if the whole world was being invited to Germany as a guest, then the country had to be seen in its most favorable light. Despite the treatment of Jews in Germany, Jews from outside were welcome. The German press was also instructed not to say anything negative about blacks—or only if they could do so by quoting newspapers from America's southern states. Furthermore, at the winter games and the summer games, the German press was forbidden from suggesting that Jews were inferior. Abusive antiSemitic posters were removed, and the SS was given the task of ensuring that these temporary prohibitions were observed.
To underline Nazi goodwill, two German halfJews were allowed to take part in the games: the icehockey player Rudi Ball in the winter games, and the fencer Helene Mayer in the summer games. Both were 50% Jewish according to Nazi definitions, and as such were acceptable. On the other hand, a potential medalist for Germany, Gretel Bergmann, who was a highjumper and fully Jewish, was not allowed to take part.
With the assistance of the Ministry of Propaganda, the Nazis set a largescale campaign in motion to bring the world to Berlin. Bulletins in a number of languages were sent out abroad; German travel agents abroad advertised the Olympic Games in Berlin as the best place to take a summer holiday in 1936; and 156,000 Olympic posters in 19 languages were distributed.
With unlimited funds at their disposal, the organization committee could construct a completely new stadium for the games in Berlin. The style was neoclassical and there was plenty of space for a range of activities, including the socalled Maifeld, which was an exhibition and practice area situated between the stadium's marathon gate and the Olympic novelty, a bell tower with the great bell that summoned the youth of the world to Berlin—"Ich rufe die Jugend der Welt" (I call the youth of the world) was engraved on the castiron bell. The bell tower's foundation consisted of the great Langemarckhalle, originally suggested by Organizing Committee secretary general Carl Diem. The hall was envisoned as a temple commemorating the youth of Germany that had fallen in World War I at Langemarck in Flanders.
The Olympic stadium in Berlin became the site of what were the most successful games of all so far. They were directly transmitted by radio for the first time to countless countries, and in selected cinemas in Berlin it was even possible to see direct television transmission from the games. It was, however, Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia that would stand for posterity as the document of the success of the games. The film was given its premiere on Hitler's birthday in 1938 and from the very first was a roaring success both at home and abroad. It won a number of prizes and at the Venice Film Festival in 1938 was grand prize winner ahead of, for example, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was only in the United States that its success was more muted, since a greater proportion of the public were critical of developments in Germany.
The Games
The games lasted from August 1–16 and lived up to the high expectations in every respect. Athletes from 49 nations competed, 3,738 men and 328 women, and the stadium was sold out for all events, with 105,000 spectators attending every day. The crowning moment of the introductory procession in Berlin was the arrival of the torch bearer into the Olympic stadium. The new German Reich created a perfect staging for sport as an offshoot of ancient Greece. Everything went according to plan, and at the processional entry a number of countries chose to make the Nazi salute when they passed the Fuhrer's box; others stretched out their hands more horizontally and said afterward that it was the Olympic greeting.
The greatest athlete of the games was the African American Jesse Owens, who won five gold medals. Owens won the 100 and 200meter races. He also won the long jump and was in the 4x100 relay, which set a new record of 39.8 seconds, which was the first time ever under 40 seconds and a record that stood for 20 years. Owens's performance was seen by many as a refutation of Hitler's racist theories of Aryan racial superiority and remains the most memorable performance of the games. Basketball, canoeing, and field handball were on the program for the first time, and it caused a sensation when Norway beat Germany in soccer and achieved a bronze. As expected, despite American dominance, Germany ran away with the most medals in athletics.
Reference
Author: Historian and Holocaust scholar Paul R. Bartrop Description: This essay outlines the arguments for and against the international community's participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, hosted during the third year of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin began in the early years of Hitler's regime, which saw laws severely restricting the citizenship and civil rights of Jews known as the Nuremberg Race Laws (1935). Consider the ways in which Germany constructed its image during the Olympic Games. How did that image differ from its image prior to the Olympics? Pay close attention to the arguments for and against a boycott of the 1936 Olympics outlined in the sections titled "Debating Whether to Boycott" and "U.S. Olympic Team." Why did most African American newspapers support participation in the games?
1936 Berlin Olympics: Boycott Debates
The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were highly controversial at the time. From the very start they were marked by racism, with the official Nazi Party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, declaring that Jews and people of African descent, regardless of their country of origin, should not be allowed to participate. Following Nazi demands, the German Olympic Committee denied Jews all opportunity of representing Germany. These measures led many in the international community to call for a boycott of the 1936 games.
Germany Furnishes its Image
When the possibility of an international boycott was threatened, Germany responded with a superficial relaxing of the rules: now, one athlete with a Jewish background was allowed to compete for Germany. Helene Mayer, who had a Jewish father, was a world champion fencer who had already won a gold medal at the 1928 Amsterdam Games. With an eye to the prospect of her winning another gold medal for Germany, she became the token Jew permitted to compete. As it turned out, she won silver in the individual foil event.
The prospect of other Jewish athletes competing for Germany was denied, however. The fourtime world record holder and 10time German national champion in shot put and discus throw, Lilli Henoch, was excluded; she was later deported and murdered in the Riga ghetto in 1942. Gretel Bergmann, an internationally recognized champion high jumper, was replaced on the German team by Dora Ratjen, who was later revealed to be a male who had been raised as a girl.
In order to reassure foreign opinion, Berlin was purged of all traces of Nazi antiSemitism. Local party authorities removed street signs bearing such slogans as "Jews not wanted" from Berlin's main tourist areas. At the same time, all vagrants and Roma were physically moved to a specially constructed "holding camp" outside the city at Marzahn.
Debating Whether to Boycott
In view of Germany's racist domestic policies, there was considerable debate among the international community over whether or not to boycott the games. In some countries, notably Britain, France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands, discussion took place over whether the games should be relocated. Meanwhile, exiled political opponents of the Nazis kept up the pressure for a boycott. These initiatives did not amount to anything definite; opponents of a boycott argued that the games had been awarded to Berlin in 1931 and that it would be wrong to punish the city simply because of a change of government.
Individual Jewish athletes from a number of countries, on the other hand, elected to take matters into their own hands and refused to attend. In this regard, brave athletes such as the South African Sid Kiel and Americans Milton Green and Norman Cahners should be mentioned.
U.S. Olympic Team
As one of the world's leading sporting nations, the position of the United States was crucial. In September 1934, the United States Olympic Committee accepted a German invitation to visit on a factfinding mission. After interviewing German Jews who had been carefully selected by the Nazi regime, U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage concluded that he had not found any discrimination against the Jewish population of Germany. He then became a major supporter of the games being held in Berlin, famously arguing that "politics has no place in sport." By 1935, he had convinced the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States that an American team should be sent to Berlin. The American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee supported a boycott, but they had no say in what was effectively an institutional project by the American Olympic Committee.
Most African American newspapers, on the other hand, supported participation. They argued that this was an opportunity for Nazi racial theories to be challenged and, hopefully, defeated. And to some degree, they were right; the iconic Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events, and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin.
On the day of the men's 4 x 100 relay, the Jewish American sprinters Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman were sidelined from the team. While this gave Owens the opportunity to win his fourth and final gold medal, historians have speculated that the removal of Stoller and Glickman was deliberately antiSemitic and intended to appease Hitler.
Legacy of the 1936 Games
Ultimately, Germany was the most successful country at the games, winning 33 gold medals and 89 medals overall. The United States came second in the medal tally, with 24 gold and 56 overall.
The Berlin Olympics torch relay from Mount Olympus in Greece was the first of its kind, and the games were the first to have live television coverage. Despite these advances, they were also to be the final Olympic Games for 12 years owing to World War II.
Hitler's antihuman ideologies and his quest for supreme domination and racial supremacy were the biggest challenge to the Olympic ideal until 1972—when terrorism and the murder of Jewish athletes at the Munich Games threatened the Olympic ideal once more. The president of the International Olympic Committee then was the same Avery Brundage who so dominated the American team in 1936.
Paul R. Bartrop https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229806
Reference
Author: Historian Natalie Ring Description: This essay defines and illustrates the Jim Crow era of racial segregation and discrimination in the American South.
Context and Things to Consider
What is meant by the term "Jim Crow"? How did Jim Crow laws prevent the social advancement of African Americans from the 1880s to 1960s? What is meant by de jure segregation? What is meant by de facto segregation? Consider race relations in the United States during the 1930s and the extent to which there was a contradiction between Americans' attitudes toward race relations at home and their attitudes related to the 1936 Olympics.
Segregation and Jim Crow
The term "Jim Crow" refers to the system of racial segregation and oppression that existed primarily in the South from 1877 to the mid1960s. Segregation existed in some parts of the North, yet by the turn of the century it had become a distinctly Southern phenomenon. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court declared that "separate but equal" was constitutional, and this provided the legal backbone for segregation until it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In reality, "separate but equal" was never really equal. Racial segregation violated the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, but the federal government continued to sanction the state laws and practices of Jim Crow until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Jim Crow era marked the ascendancy of white supremacy and not only consisted of the social separation of the races, but more broadly included lynching and mob violence, the manipulation of the justice system, inequality in education, economic subjugation, and the elimination of Black suffrage.
Origins of "Jim Crow"
The term Jim Crow is derived from the name of a character in a minstrel song performed by Thomas Rice in the 1830s. Blackface minstrelsy was a form of popular entertainment in which white actors blackened their face with cork and imitated what they considered to be authentic African American dialect, dance, and song. These theatrical performances frequently ridiculed African Americans and exaggerated alleged Black characteristics.
Rice named his act "Jump Jim Crow" and claimed to have based it on a dance he saw performed by an aged crippled slave in Louisville, Kentucky, owned by a Mr. Crow. Wearing ragged clothing representative of a field hand, Rice sang and danced to lyrics that included the stanza "Weel about and turn about / And do jis so, / Eb'ry time I weel about / And jump Jim Crow." The routine was immensely popular during the antebellum period, and the figure of Jim Crow became a recognizable and enduring icon in American popular culture. In the 1840s, abolitionists used the phrase Jim Crow to describe segregated railroad cars. By the end of the 19th century, the term came to signify the social separation of the races.
De Jure Segregation
Two forms of Jim Crow existed in the South: de jure and de facto. De jure segregation referred to the separation of the races as mandated specifically by law, and de facto segregation occurred by custom or tradition. In the 1880s, such laws as the segregation of street cars appeared sporadically across the South. Between 1890 and 1915, Southern states enacted an array of statutes that led to a more rigid and universal framework for the social separation of the races.
This explosion of de jure segregation reflected Southern whites' growing unease about a younger, more assertive generation of African Americans who demanded respect and recognition of their rights. In addition, the intent of widespread codification was to solidify custom and to eliminate uncertainty about the social status of blacks and whites. Signs labeled "For White" and "For Colored" dominated the Southern landscape, and Jim Crow regulated social contact in such places as restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, parks, schools, libraries, hospitals, and waiting rooms. In many cases, social separation often meant total exclusion. State legislatures also enacted antimiscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriage, and passed laws or rewrote the state constitution to make voter registration difficult, if not impossible.
De Facto Segregation
Although Southern states passed an elaborate network of laws, de facto practices of segregation endured. Patterns of de facto segregation varied depending on the location, the traditions of a community, or even the whim of a white person.
In most places, whites and blacks were expected to abide by an unspoken racial etiquette. For example, blacks could not enter a white home through the front door, address a white person by their first name, or refuse to give way to a white person on a sidewalk. Courtrooms often swore in black witnesses with separate bibles, and in many stores, blacks could not be served until white customers were finished. Whites did make exceptions for black domestic workers, but only because a black servant tending to white children in a space marked as white still clearly retained a position of inferiority. For many African Americans, Jim Crow caused incredible apprehension about the repercussions of crossing the color line. Any action taken by a black man or woman that whites perceived to be impudent or disrespectful could lead to swift and violent retaliation.
The Civil Rights Movement
After World War II, the edifice of Jim Crow began to break down. Black soldiers questioned the logic of having to fight for democracy abroad while returning home to face continued racial inequality. Protest on the grassroots level as well that initiated by institutions and celebrated leaders spread in the 1950s and early 1960s. The growing civil rights movement ultimately pressured the federal government to take action.
In 1964, the U.S. Congress answered President Lyndon B. Johnson's call to support racial equality and end Jim Crow. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade discrimination in public places, provided funding for assistance to further desegregate schools, created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and gave the attorney general more authority to prosecute civil rights violations involving voting, the use of public facilities, government, and education. It was the most extensive piece of federal legislation in support of civil rights ever ratified by Congress. While racial discrimination and oppression did not entirely disappear following passage of the Civil Rights Act, it truly marked the end of the widespread legal and social system of Jim Crow.
Natalie J. Ring https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 1903177
Image
Photographer: Unknown Description: This photograph shows a public notice on the streets of New York City announcing a meeting to advocate for a U.S. boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Date: December 3, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The location of the Olympic Games is chosen several years in advance. Germany was selected as the host country for the 1936 Olympics in 1932, shortly before the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Opposition to Hitler's regime mounted, and by the fall of 1935—around the time this photograph was taken—groups in the United States had organized for the express purpose of enacting a boycott of the games. Use the magnifying glass to zoom in on the posters in this image. Think about how the word "summons" contributes to the argument against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics. The poster suggests that boycotting the Olympic Games will help "Preserve the Olympic Ideal." What sort of characteristics does the "Olympic ideal" represent?
Notice announcing public meeting on 1936 Olympic Games boycott
A pedestrian in New York City reads a notice announcing a public meeting, scheduled for December 3, 1935, to urge Americans to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The racist and xenophobic policies of German chancellor Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led many countries to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration] https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230486
Commentary
Author: Historian Harold J. Goldberg Description: This commentary presents a historical interpretation of the 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin and argues that the games were used as a propaganda mechanism for the Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
Consider the notion of the "Olympic spirit" and the "spirit of the games." Did the 1936 undermine those values? Why or why not? Propaganda refers to information that is spread to influence public opinion regarding a specific cause or ideology. For example, a government may spread propaganda during war time to win support for the war or boost morale. Propaganda is often biased and may include disinformation or appeals to emotion rather than reason. How does the author build the case that Germany "turned the games into a propaganda showcase?" Pay close attention to the events described in the section titled "The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity." Why does the author believe the Jewish American athletes were pulled from the 4 X 100 relay team?
The 1936 Olympics were a Nazi Propaganda Showcase
In the early 1930s, enthusiasm for the Olympic Games in Europe was at a historic high. The modern Olympic Games had been held every four years since 1896, except in 1916, when they were scheduled for Berlin and canceled due to World War I. In 1932, the next Olympic Games were awarded to the Weimar Republic to celebrate Germany's new democracy, but in 1933 the republic gave way to Nazi dictatorship with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. Just as the war they started in 1939 destroyed cities, towns, villages, and people, the Nazis also ruined the Olympics held in Berlin in 1936.
A Brief History of Olympic Conflicts
The philosophy of the Olympics seeks to transcend politics and nationalism, as the world comes together to admire pure athletic skill, without concern for race, religion, or national origin. In fact, the games have frequently failed to live up to their ideals. Geopolitical crises and controversies have disrupted the games on multiple occasions, including the cancelation of the games in 1940 and 1944 due to World War II, the terrorist attack and massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972, and the U.S. boycott of the games hosted in Moscow in 1980. Among all of these flawed contests, the 1936 Olympics are still considered the most notorious for violating the spirit of the games.
Berlin, 1936: Propaganda and Discrimination
Visitors to Germany after Hitler consolidated power could not fail to see Berlin bedecked with swastika flags or hear the constant drone of Nazi propaganda on the radio. The Nazi racist agenda was clear, leading Olympic officials to debate a change of venue to another country. The fear was that the games would be spoiled by a Nazi ban on Jewish athletes and a simultaneous propaganda barrage glorifying the Nazi Party. Representatives of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) visited Germany to seek assurances that Nazi propaganda would not dominate the city and that German racial policy would not prevent athletes from participating. IOC officials were greeted by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who saw the games as a propaganda machine for the Nazis and had no reservations about lying and affirming that the games would be open to all. The IOC believed Goebbels and allowed the games to proceed in Berlin.
The result was exactly what people had feared. Nazi officials broke their pledge and refused to allow Jewish athletes to participate. Already in 1933, the German Boxing Association had expelled Erich Seelig, their light heavyweight champion, due to Jewish heritage. For the same reason, Germany's No. 1 tennis player was cut from its Davis Cup team. Likewise, Gretel Bergmann, a strong contender for a medal in the high jump, was put on the German team and then, with less than two weeks to go, was not allowed to compete. The Nazis disguised this discrimination by waiting until the American team was already on its way to Germany before they dropped her because she was Jewish. As she was the favorite for a medal, this treatment indicated that initial fears over keeping the games in Berlin were justified.
Germany turned the games into a Nazi propaganda showcase, with the Nazi flag flying from every balcony in Berlin. Hitler himself opened the games in the new Olympic Stadium on August 1, to the sound of 100,000 spectators shouting "Sieg heil" as they gave the Nazi salute. A recordsetting 49 teams paraded into the stadium; Germany had the most athletes in the stadium, with the United States bringing the secondlargest team. Interestingly, the medal count finished in that order as well: Germany won the most gold medals and the most overall medals, and the U.S. finished second in both medal categories. To complete the spectacle, the last of over 3,000 runners who carried an Olympic flame from Greece arrived to light the torch in Berlin. This Nazi innovation of having the last runner light the flame was intended to link ancient Greece with the present "Aryan" athlete.
The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity
The American team experienced both triumph and selfembarrassment. Jesse Owens, the star of the American track and field team, had already won three gold medals when the coaches called a meeting just before the relay. Owens was not scheduled to participate in that event, but two Jewish Americans had qualified and were anxious to go. One of them, Marty Glickman, described what happened at the team meeting:
"The event I was supposed to run, the 400meter relay, was one of the last events in the track and field program. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial heats, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach. Robertson announced to the 7 of us that he had heard very strong rumors that the Germans were saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400meter relay. Consequently, Sam Stoller and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. We were shocked. Sam was completely stunned. He didn't say a word in the meeting. I was a brash 18yearold kid and I said 'Coach, you can't hide worldclass sprinters.' At which point, Jesse spoke up and said 'Coach, I've won my 3 gold medals [the 100, the 200, and the long jump]. I'm tired. I've had it. Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it,' said Jesse. And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said 'You'll do as you're told.'" (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936)
American coaches had caved in to the Nazi agenda. There were never any secret German runners; in reality, the American coaches had decided that winning with Jewish runners would upset the Nazis more than winning another race with Jesse Owens. Owens went home with four gold medals, while Marty Glickman never got to participate in another Olympics due to the coming war. The United States celebrated the medal victories of Owens, but this great track and field star returned to a segregated America where he could not freely choose a restaurant or hotel for his postOlympic celebration.
Despite the mixed legacy of these games, the IOC was optimistic that 1940 would see an improvement. The games were planned for Tokyo, but Japan withdrew from hosting because of its military activity in China. Immediately the 1940 Olympics were rescheduled for Helsinki, Finland, but again the games were canceled when war started in nearby Poland in 1939. With the war still in progress, there was no possibility of holding the games in 1944, so the next Olympics were finally staged in London in 1948.
During the war, the Nazis killed more than 40 Jewish Olympic athletes as they occupied European countries.
About the Author
Harold J. Goldberg is the David E. Underdown Distinguished Professor of History at Sewanee: The University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee. His published works include Daily Life in NaziOccupied Europe (Greenwood, 2019), Competing Voices from World War II in Europe: Fighting Words (Greenwood, 2010), and DDay in the Pacific: The Battle of Saipan (Indiana University Press, 2007). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229716
Quote
Author: American Committee on Fair Play in Sports Description: This quote expresses the opinion of the American Committee on Fair Play in Sports on the political implications of holding the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Date: November 15, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The American Committee on Fair Play in Sports was assembled in the fall of 1935 to oppose U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympic Games. The committee produced publications and public service announcements intended to educate the public on the totalitarian Nazi government and its policies of racism and anti Semitism. Consider the ideals of the Olympic Games and the extent to which Germany undermined the ideals of democratic competition and sportsmanship.
American Committee on Fair Play in Sports: quote on the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Sport is prostituted when sport loses its independent and democratic character and becomes a political institution … Nazi Germany is endeavouring to use the Eleventh Olympiad to serve the necessities and interests of the Nazi Regime rather than the Olympic ideals.
–American Committee on Fair Play in Sports (November 15, 1935). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229811
Reference
Author: ABCCLIO Description: This reference article discusses goldmedalist sprinter Jesse Owens's participation in the 1936 Olympic Games, including his attitude toward Adolf Hitler as he readied for one of his races.
Context and Things to Consider
African American sprinter Owens became the first athlete in the history of the modern Olympic Games to win four gold medals in a single year. Owens's feat was celebrated by opponents of Hitler's regime as an embarrassing rebuke of Hitler's theories of Aryan racial supremacy. Consider the mindset of Owens as he readied for the 100meter finals heat and the laserfocus required of Olympic athletes. What does Owens's comment suggest about his views on Hitler? Evaluate Owens's comment in relation to the other sources. How does it illustrate the desire to reflect the ideals of the Olympic Games?
Jesse Owens: "Why Worry about Hitler?" (1936)
Jesse Owens was an African American track and field athlete. During the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, he became a national hero for defeating Adolf Hitler's Aryan athletes in a series of athletic contests.
In 1936, just a few years after Hitler rose to power in Germany, the Summer Olympic Games were held in Berlin, the nation's capital. Hitler believed in an Aryan "master race," an allegedly pure Germanic/Nordic race of people who were, according to Hitler, racially, physically, and intellectually above "lesser" peoples. The Aryan ideal was a Nordic type—tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.
Owens became the star of the 1936 Games, winning a total of four gold medals, including a world recordtying performance in the 100meter dash. Reflecting on this race, Owens discussed its personal significance and his state of focus despite the political implications of competing in Nazi Germany:
When I lined up in my lane for the finals of the 100 meters . . . I thought of all the years of practice and competition, of all who had believed in me, and of my state and university [Ohio, and the Ohio State University.]
I saw the finish line, and knew that 10 seconds would climax the work of eight years. One mistake could ruin those eight years. So, why worry about Hitler?
Hitler did not approve of Black athletes participating in the Games. By 1936, his views on the superiority of the Aryan race were known around the world, though Germany made an effort to obscure its antiSemitic policies as host of the Games. As someone who did not fit Hitler's ideal, Owens's victory in the 1936 Olympics was widely considered to be a refutation of the dictator's racist worldview and an embarrassment for the Nazi regime.
Mark Strong https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230575
COPYRIGHT 2021 ABCCLIO, LLC https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337 U.S. Participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympics Activity
Inquiry Question What were the arguments for and against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics?
The U.S. decision to take part in the 1936 Olympics, which took place in Berlin at the time of Nazi leadership, was a controversial issue that divided participating athletes, administrative organizations, and the American public itself, especially since the country was dealing with its own problems of racism during the era of Jim Crow laws. Use information collected from the provided sources and analyze your findings to explain the arguments presented by both sides: those who felt the U.S. should compete in the games, and those who felt the nation should boycott.
Clarifying Questions
What was the status of civil rights in Germany in the mid1930s, and how did it compare to the situation in the United States? What were the main arguments for participating in the games? What were the main arguments against participating in the games? How did the 1936 Berlin Olympics influence the global perception of Nazi Germany?
Vocabulary
boycott de facto segregation de jure segregation Jim Crow Nazi Party propaganda
Background Information
1936 Summer Olympic Games, Berlin
The 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin, Germany, marked a pivotal moment in the history of the international games. German chancellor Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and the institution of racist and xenophobic policies by the Nazi Party, led many to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
Hitler's Rise to Power
In their choice of Berlin, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had wanted to stress Germany's return to the international sporting world after World War I. When the Olympics were held in 1936, however, it was quite a different Germany and quite a different Berlin from those to whom the IOC had awarded the games in 1931. The rise to prominence of the Nazi Party in the 1930s elevated the party's leader, Adolf Hitler, as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Hitler's seizure of absolute power in 1934 ushered in a totalitarian regime in Germany that ruthlessly suppressed the civil rights of minorities, particularly German Jews.
Organizing the Games
The overwhelming problem for the IOC and for the United States was to get a guarantee that Jewish athletes would not be excluded from the games. At the IOC meeting in Vienna in June 1933, president of the Olympic organizing committee Theodor Lewald was able to give an assurance with the approval of the German government that "all laws relating to the Olympic Games will be respected. German Jews will not as a matter of principle be excluded from German teams in the XI Olympiad."
Page 2 of 24 This guarantee convinced the president of the Olympic Committee, Henri BailletLatour, after a visit to Berlin in November 1935, when he had an audience with Hitler. After that, the attitude of the Olympic Committee was unchanged. There was no wavering, and there was total support for the games in Berlin. From that point onward, both Baillet Latour and Avery Brundage attacked all opponents of the games as being lackeys of Communism. In 1936, Avery Brundage took a place on the IOC at the expense of the American E. L. Jahncke, who had been unremittingly critical of the games in Berlin.
The first thing the Hitler state did was to place its resources wholeheartedly behind the organization committee. A close cooperative relationship developed between Reich Director of Sport Hans von Tschammer und Osten and the organization committee—a collaboration that would be expanded to encompass work on the winter games in GarmischPartenkirchen, which the IOC had no objections about awarding to Germany in the spring of 1933, four months after Hitler came to power. Leading the organization of the latter was Karl Ritter von Halt, who had swiftly joined the Nazi Party in order to assist his career as a banker. All these people combined to convince the outside world that the games in Berlin and GarmischPartenkirchen would take place without discrimination against Jews or other nonAryan races.
Nazi Propaganda and Misdirection
The Nazis reasoned that if the whole world was being invited to Germany as a guest, then the country had to be seen in its most favorable light. Despite the treatment of Jews in Germany, Jews from outside were welcome. The German press was also instructed not to say anything negative about blacks—or only if they could do so by quoting newspapers from America's southern states. Furthermore, at the winter games and the summer games, the German press was forbidden from suggesting that Jews were inferior. Abusive antiSemitic posters were removed, and the SS was given the task of ensuring that these temporary prohibitions were observed.
To underline Nazi goodwill, two German halfJews were allowed to take part in the games: the icehockey player Rudi Ball in the winter games, and the fencer Helene Mayer in the summer games. Both were 50% Jewish according to Nazi definitions, and as such were acceptable. On the other hand, a potential medalist for Germany, Gretel Bergmann, who was a highjumper and fully Jewish, was not allowed to take part.
With the assistance of the Ministry of Propaganda, the Nazis set a largescale campaign in motion to bring the world to Berlin. Bulletins in a number of languages were sent out abroad; German travel agents abroad advertised the Olympic Games in Berlin as the best place to take a summer holiday in 1936; and 156,000 Olympic posters in 19 languages were distributed.
With unlimited funds at their disposal, the organization committee could construct a completely new stadium for the games in Berlin. The style was neoclassical and there was plenty of space for a range of activities, including the socalled Maifeld, which was an exhibition and practice area situated between the stadium's marathon gate and the Olympic novelty, a bell tower with the great bell that summoned the youth of the world to Berlin—"Ich rufe die Jugend der Welt" (I call the youth of the world) was engraved on the castiron bell. The bell tower's foundation consisted of the great Langemarckhalle, originally suggested by Organizing Committee secretary general Carl Diem. The hall was envisoned as a temple commemorating the youth of Germany that had fallen in World War I at Langemarck in Flanders.
The Olympic stadium in Berlin became the site of what were the most successful games of all so far. They were directly transmitted by radio for the first time to countless countries, and in selected cinemas in Berlin it was even possible to see direct television transmission from the games. It was, however, Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia that would stand for posterity as the document of the success of the games. The film was given its premiere on Hitler's birthday in 1938 and from the very first was a roaring success both at home and abroad. It won a number of prizes and at the Venice Film Festival in 1938 was grand prize winner ahead of, for example, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was only in the United States that its success was more muted, since a greater proportion of the public were critical of developments in Germany.
The Games
The games lasted from August 1–16 and lived up to the high expectations in every respect. Athletes from 49 nations competed, 3,738 men and 328 women, and the stadium was sold out for all events, with 105,000 spectators attending every day. The crowning moment of the introductory procession in Berlin was the arrival of the torch bearer into the Olympic stadium. The new German Reich created a perfect staging for sport as an offshoot of ancient Greece. Everything went according to plan, and at the processional entry a number of countries chose to make the Nazi salute when they passed the Fuhrer's box; others stretched out their hands more horizontally and said afterward that it was the Olympic greeting.
The greatest athlete of the games was the African American Jesse Owens, who won five gold medals. Owens won the 100 and 200meter races. He also won the long jump and was in the 4x100 relay, which set a new record of 39.8 seconds, which was the first time ever under 40 seconds and a record that stood for 20 years. Owens's performance was seen by many as a refutation of Hitler's racist theories of Aryan racial superiority and remains the most memorable performance of the games. Basketball, canoeing, and field handball were on the program for the first time, and it caused a sensation when Norway beat Germany in soccer and achieved a bronze. As expected, despite American dominance, Germany ran away with the most medals in athletics.
Reference
Author: Historian and Holocaust scholar Paul R. Bartrop Description: This essay outlines the arguments for and against the international community's participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, hosted during the third year of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin began in the early years of Hitler's regime, which saw laws severely restricting the citizenship and civil rights of Jews known as the Nuremberg Race Laws (1935). Consider the ways in which Germany constructed its image during the Olympic Games. How did that image differ from its image prior to the Olympics? Pay close attention to the arguments for and against a boycott of the 1936 Olympics outlined in the sections titled "Debating Whether to Boycott" and "U.S. Olympic Team." Why did most African American newspapers support participation in the games?
1936 Berlin Olympics: Boycott Debates
The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were highly controversial at the time. From the very start they were marked by racism, with the official Nazi Party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, declaring that Jews and people of African descent, regardless of their country of origin, should not be allowed to participate. Following Nazi demands, the German Olympic Committee denied Jews all opportunity of representing Germany. These measures led many in the international community to call for a boycott of the 1936 games.
Germany Furnishes its Image
When the possibility of an international boycott was threatened, Germany responded with a superficial relaxing of the rules: now, one athlete with a Jewish background was allowed to compete for Germany. Helene Mayer, who had a Jewish father, was a world champion fencer who had already won a gold medal at the 1928 Amsterdam Games. With an eye to the prospect of her winning another gold medal for Germany, she became the token Jew permitted to compete. As it turned out, she won silver in the individual foil event.
The prospect of other Jewish athletes competing for Germany was denied, however. The fourtime world record holder and 10time German national champion in shot put and discus throw, Lilli Henoch, was excluded; she was later deported and murdered in the Riga ghetto in 1942. Gretel Bergmann, an internationally recognized champion high jumper, was replaced on the German team by Dora Ratjen, who was later revealed to be a male who had been raised as a girl.
In order to reassure foreign opinion, Berlin was purged of all traces of Nazi antiSemitism. Local party authorities removed street signs bearing such slogans as "Jews not wanted" from Berlin's main tourist areas. At the same time, all vagrants and Roma were physically moved to a specially constructed "holding camp" outside the city at Marzahn.
Debating Whether to Boycott
In view of Germany's racist domestic policies, there was considerable debate among the international community over whether or not to boycott the games. In some countries, notably Britain, France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands, discussion took place over whether the games should be relocated. Meanwhile, exiled political opponents of the Nazis kept up the pressure for a boycott. These initiatives did not amount to anything definite; opponents of a boycott argued that the games had been awarded to Berlin in 1931 and that it would be wrong to punish the city simply because of a change of government.
Individual Jewish athletes from a number of countries, on the other hand, elected to take matters into their own hands and refused to attend. In this regard, brave athletes such as the South African Sid Kiel and Americans Milton Green and Norman Cahners should be mentioned.
U.S. Olympic Team
As one of the world's leading sporting nations, the position of the United States was crucial. In September 1934, the United States Olympic Committee accepted a German invitation to visit on a factfinding mission. After interviewing German Jews who had been carefully selected by the Nazi regime, U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage concluded that he had not found any discrimination against the Jewish population of Germany. He then became a major supporter of the games being held in Berlin, famously arguing that "politics has no place in sport." By 1935, he had convinced the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States that an American team should be sent to Berlin. The American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee supported a boycott, but they had no say in what was effectively an institutional project by the American Olympic Committee.
Most African American newspapers, on the other hand, supported participation. They argued that this was an opportunity for Nazi racial theories to be challenged and, hopefully, defeated. And to some degree, they were right; the iconic Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events, and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin.
On the day of the men's 4 x 100 relay, the Jewish American sprinters Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman were sidelined from the team. While this gave Owens the opportunity to win his fourth and final gold medal, historians have speculated that the removal of Stoller and Glickman was deliberately antiSemitic and intended to appease Hitler.
Legacy of the 1936 Games
Ultimately, Germany was the most successful country at the games, winning 33 gold medals and 89 medals overall. The United States came second in the medal tally, with 24 gold and 56 overall.
The Berlin Olympics torch relay from Mount Olympus in Greece was the first of its kind, and the games were the first to have live television coverage. Despite these advances, they were also to be the final Olympic Games for 12 years owing to World War II.
Hitler's antihuman ideologies and his quest for supreme domination and racial supremacy were the biggest challenge to the Olympic ideal until 1972—when terrorism and the murder of Jewish athletes at the Munich Games threatened the Olympic ideal once more. The president of the International Olympic Committee then was the same Avery Brundage who so dominated the American team in 1936.
Paul R. Bartrop https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229806
Reference
Author: Historian Natalie Ring Description: This essay defines and illustrates the Jim Crow era of racial segregation and discrimination in the American South.
Context and Things to Consider
What is meant by the term "Jim Crow"? How did Jim Crow laws prevent the social advancement of African Americans from the 1880s to 1960s? What is meant by de jure segregation? What is meant by de facto segregation? Consider race relations in the United States during the 1930s and the extent to which there was a contradiction between Americans' attitudes toward race relations at home and their attitudes related to the 1936 Olympics.
Segregation and Jim Crow
The term "Jim Crow" refers to the system of racial segregation and oppression that existed primarily in the South from 1877 to the mid1960s. Segregation existed in some parts of the North, yet by the turn of the century it had become a distinctly Southern phenomenon. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court declared that "separate but equal" was constitutional, and this provided the legal backbone for segregation until it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In reality, "separate but equal" was never really equal. Racial segregation violated the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, but the federal government continued to sanction the state laws and practices of Jim Crow until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Jim Crow era marked the ascendancy of white supremacy and not only consisted of the social separation of the races, but more broadly included lynching and mob violence, the manipulation of the justice system, inequality in education, economic subjugation, and the elimination of Black suffrage.
Origins of "Jim Crow"
The term Jim Crow is derived from the name of a character in a minstrel song performed by Thomas Rice in the 1830s. Blackface minstrelsy was a form of popular entertainment in which white actors blackened their face with cork and imitated what they considered to be authentic African American dialect, dance, and song. These theatrical performances frequently ridiculed African Americans and exaggerated alleged Black characteristics.
Rice named his act "Jump Jim Crow" and claimed to have based it on a dance he saw performed by an aged crippled slave in Louisville, Kentucky, owned by a Mr. Crow. Wearing ragged clothing representative of a field hand, Rice sang and danced to lyrics that included the stanza "Weel about and turn about / And do jis so, / Eb'ry time I weel about / And jump Jim Crow." The routine was immensely popular during the antebellum period, and the figure of Jim Crow became a recognizable and enduring icon in American popular culture. In the 1840s, abolitionists used the phrase Jim Crow to describe segregated railroad cars. By the end of the 19th century, the term came to signify the social separation of the races.
De Jure Segregation
Two forms of Jim Crow existed in the South: de jure and de facto. De jure segregation referred to the separation of the races as mandated specifically by law, and de facto segregation occurred by custom or tradition. In the 1880s, such laws as the segregation of street cars appeared sporadically across the South. Between 1890 and 1915, Southern states enacted an array of statutes that led to a more rigid and universal framework for the social separation of the races.
This explosion of de jure segregation reflected Southern whites' growing unease about a younger, more assertive generation of African Americans who demanded respect and recognition of their rights. In addition, the intent of widespread codification was to solidify custom and to eliminate uncertainty about the social status of blacks and whites. Signs labeled "For White" and "For Colored" dominated the Southern landscape, and Jim Crow regulated social contact in such places as restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, parks, schools, libraries, hospitals, and waiting rooms. In many cases, social separation often meant total exclusion. State legislatures also enacted antimiscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriage, and passed laws or rewrote the state constitution to make voter registration difficult, if not impossible.
De Facto Segregation
Although Southern states passed an elaborate network of laws, de facto practices of segregation endured. Patterns of de facto segregation varied depending on the location, the traditions of a community, or even the whim of a white person.
In most places, whites and blacks were expected to abide by an unspoken racial etiquette. For example, blacks could not enter a white home through the front door, address a white person by their first name, or refuse to give way to a white person on a sidewalk. Courtrooms often swore in black witnesses with separate bibles, and in many stores, blacks could not be served until white customers were finished. Whites did make exceptions for black domestic workers, but only because a black servant tending to white children in a space marked as white still clearly retained a position of inferiority. For many African Americans, Jim Crow caused incredible apprehension about the repercussions of crossing the color line. Any action taken by a black man or woman that whites perceived to be impudent or disrespectful could lead to swift and violent retaliation.
The Civil Rights Movement
After World War II, the edifice of Jim Crow began to break down. Black soldiers questioned the logic of having to fight for democracy abroad while returning home to face continued racial inequality. Protest on the grassroots level as well that initiated by institutions and celebrated leaders spread in the 1950s and early 1960s. The growing civil rights movement ultimately pressured the federal government to take action.
In 1964, the U.S. Congress answered President Lyndon B. Johnson's call to support racial equality and end Jim Crow. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade discrimination in public places, provided funding for assistance to further desegregate schools, created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and gave the attorney general more authority to prosecute civil rights violations involving voting, the use of public facilities, government, and education. It was the most extensive piece of federal legislation in support of civil rights ever ratified by Congress. While racial discrimination and oppression did not entirely disappear following passage of the Civil Rights Act, it truly marked the end of the widespread legal and social system of Jim Crow.
Natalie J. Ring https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 1903177
Image
Photographer: Unknown Description: This photograph shows a public notice on the streets of New York City announcing a meeting to advocate for a U.S. boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Date: December 3, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The location of the Olympic Games is chosen several years in advance. Germany was selected as the host country for the 1936 Olympics in 1932, shortly before the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Opposition to Hitler's regime mounted, and by the fall of 1935—around the time this photograph was taken—groups in the United States had organized for the express purpose of enacting a boycott of the games. Use the magnifying glass to zoom in on the posters in this image. Think about how the word "summons" contributes to the argument against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics. The poster suggests that boycotting the Olympic Games will help "Preserve the Olympic Ideal." What sort of characteristics does the "Olympic ideal" represent?
Notice announcing public meeting on 1936 Olympic Games boycott
A pedestrian in New York City reads a notice announcing a public meeting, scheduled for December 3, 1935, to urge Americans to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The racist and xenophobic policies of German chancellor Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led many countries to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration] https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230486
Commentary
Author: Historian Harold J. Goldberg Description: This commentary presents a historical interpretation of the 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin and argues that the games were used as a propaganda mechanism for the Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
Consider the notion of the "Olympic spirit" and the "spirit of the games." Did the 1936 undermine those values? Why or why not? Propaganda refers to information that is spread to influence public opinion regarding a specific cause or ideology. For example, a government may spread propaganda during war time to win support for the war or boost morale. Propaganda is often biased and may include disinformation or appeals to emotion rather than reason. How does the author build the case that Germany "turned the games into a propaganda showcase?" Pay close attention to the events described in the section titled "The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity." Why does the author believe the Jewish American athletes were pulled from the 4 X 100 relay team?
The 1936 Olympics were a Nazi Propaganda Showcase
In the early 1930s, enthusiasm for the Olympic Games in Europe was at a historic high. The modern Olympic Games had been held every four years since 1896, except in 1916, when they were scheduled for Berlin and canceled due to World War I. In 1932, the next Olympic Games were awarded to the Weimar Republic to celebrate Germany's new democracy, but in 1933 the republic gave way to Nazi dictatorship with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. Just as the war they started in 1939 destroyed cities, towns, villages, and people, the Nazis also ruined the Olympics held in Berlin in 1936.
A Brief History of Olympic Conflicts
The philosophy of the Olympics seeks to transcend politics and nationalism, as the world comes together to admire pure athletic skill, without concern for race, religion, or national origin. In fact, the games have frequently failed to live up to their ideals. Geopolitical crises and controversies have disrupted the games on multiple occasions, including the cancelation of the games in 1940 and 1944 due to World War II, the terrorist attack and massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972, and the U.S. boycott of the games hosted in Moscow in 1980. Among all of these flawed contests, the 1936 Olympics are still considered the most notorious for violating the spirit of the games.
Berlin, 1936: Propaganda and Discrimination
Visitors to Germany after Hitler consolidated power could not fail to see Berlin bedecked with swastika flags or hear the constant drone of Nazi propaganda on the radio. The Nazi racist agenda was clear, leading Olympic officials to debate a change of venue to another country. The fear was that the games would be spoiled by a Nazi ban on Jewish athletes and a simultaneous propaganda barrage glorifying the Nazi Party. Representatives of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) visited Germany to seek assurances that Nazi propaganda would not dominate the city and that German racial policy would not prevent athletes from participating. IOC officials were greeted by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who saw the games as a propaganda machine for the Nazis and had no reservations about lying and affirming that the games would be open to all. The IOC believed Goebbels and allowed the games to proceed in Berlin.
The result was exactly what people had feared. Nazi officials broke their pledge and refused to allow Jewish athletes to participate. Already in 1933, the German Boxing Association had expelled Erich Seelig, their light heavyweight champion, due to Jewish heritage. For the same reason, Germany's No. 1 tennis player was cut from its Davis Cup team. Likewise, Gretel Bergmann, a strong contender for a medal in the high jump, was put on the German team and then, with less than two weeks to go, was not allowed to compete. The Nazis disguised this discrimination by waiting until the American team was already on its way to Germany before they dropped her because she was Jewish. As she was the favorite for a medal, this treatment indicated that initial fears over keeping the games in Berlin were justified.
Germany turned the games into a Nazi propaganda showcase, with the Nazi flag flying from every balcony in Berlin. Hitler himself opened the games in the new Olympic Stadium on August 1, to the sound of 100,000 spectators shouting "Sieg heil" as they gave the Nazi salute. A recordsetting 49 teams paraded into the stadium; Germany had the most athletes in the stadium, with the United States bringing the secondlargest team. Interestingly, the medal count finished in that order as well: Germany won the most gold medals and the most overall medals, and the U.S. finished second in both medal categories. To complete the spectacle, the last of over 3,000 runners who carried an Olympic flame from Greece arrived to light the torch in Berlin. This Nazi innovation of having the last runner light the flame was intended to link ancient Greece with the present "Aryan" athlete.
The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity
The American team experienced both triumph and selfembarrassment. Jesse Owens, the star of the American track and field team, had already won three gold medals when the coaches called a meeting just before the relay. Owens was not scheduled to participate in that event, but two Jewish Americans had qualified and were anxious to go. One of them, Marty Glickman, described what happened at the team meeting:
"The event I was supposed to run, the 400meter relay, was one of the last events in the track and field program. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial heats, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach. Robertson announced to the 7 of us that he had heard very strong rumors that the Germans were saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400meter relay. Consequently, Sam Stoller and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. We were shocked. Sam was completely stunned. He didn't say a word in the meeting. I was a brash 18yearold kid and I said 'Coach, you can't hide worldclass sprinters.' At which point, Jesse spoke up and said 'Coach, I've won my 3 gold medals [the 100, the 200, and the long jump]. I'm tired. I've had it. Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it,' said Jesse. And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said 'You'll do as you're told.'" (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936)
American coaches had caved in to the Nazi agenda. There were never any secret German runners; in reality, the American coaches had decided that winning with Jewish runners would upset the Nazis more than winning another race with Jesse Owens. Owens went home with four gold medals, while Marty Glickman never got to participate in another Olympics due to the coming war. The United States celebrated the medal victories of Owens, but this great track and field star returned to a segregated America where he could not freely choose a restaurant or hotel for his postOlympic celebration.
Despite the mixed legacy of these games, the IOC was optimistic that 1940 would see an improvement. The games were planned for Tokyo, but Japan withdrew from hosting because of its military activity in China. Immediately the 1940 Olympics were rescheduled for Helsinki, Finland, but again the games were canceled when war started in nearby Poland in 1939. With the war still in progress, there was no possibility of holding the games in 1944, so the next Olympics were finally staged in London in 1948.
During the war, the Nazis killed more than 40 Jewish Olympic athletes as they occupied European countries.
About the Author
Harold J. Goldberg is the David E. Underdown Distinguished Professor of History at Sewanee: The University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee. His published works include Daily Life in NaziOccupied Europe (Greenwood, 2019), Competing Voices from World War II in Europe: Fighting Words (Greenwood, 2010), and DDay in the Pacific: The Battle of Saipan (Indiana University Press, 2007). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229716
Quote
Author: American Committee on Fair Play in Sports Description: This quote expresses the opinion of the American Committee on Fair Play in Sports on the political implications of holding the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Date: November 15, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The American Committee on Fair Play in Sports was assembled in the fall of 1935 to oppose U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympic Games. The committee produced publications and public service announcements intended to educate the public on the totalitarian Nazi government and its policies of racism and anti Semitism. Consider the ideals of the Olympic Games and the extent to which Germany undermined the ideals of democratic competition and sportsmanship.
American Committee on Fair Play in Sports: quote on the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Sport is prostituted when sport loses its independent and democratic character and becomes a political institution … Nazi Germany is endeavouring to use the Eleventh Olympiad to serve the necessities and interests of the Nazi Regime rather than the Olympic ideals.
–American Committee on Fair Play in Sports (November 15, 1935). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229811
Reference
Author: ABCCLIO Description: This reference article discusses goldmedalist sprinter Jesse Owens's participation in the 1936 Olympic Games, including his attitude toward Adolf Hitler as he readied for one of his races.
Context and Things to Consider
African American sprinter Owens became the first athlete in the history of the modern Olympic Games to win four gold medals in a single year. Owens's feat was celebrated by opponents of Hitler's regime as an embarrassing rebuke of Hitler's theories of Aryan racial supremacy. Consider the mindset of Owens as he readied for the 100meter finals heat and the laserfocus required of Olympic athletes. What does Owens's comment suggest about his views on Hitler? Evaluate Owens's comment in relation to the other sources. How does it illustrate the desire to reflect the ideals of the Olympic Games?
Jesse Owens: "Why Worry about Hitler?" (1936)
Jesse Owens was an African American track and field athlete. During the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, he became a national hero for defeating Adolf Hitler's Aryan athletes in a series of athletic contests.
In 1936, just a few years after Hitler rose to power in Germany, the Summer Olympic Games were held in Berlin, the nation's capital. Hitler believed in an Aryan "master race," an allegedly pure Germanic/Nordic race of people who were, according to Hitler, racially, physically, and intellectually above "lesser" peoples. The Aryan ideal was a Nordic type—tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.
Owens became the star of the 1936 Games, winning a total of four gold medals, including a world recordtying performance in the 100meter dash. Reflecting on this race, Owens discussed its personal significance and his state of focus despite the political implications of competing in Nazi Germany:
When I lined up in my lane for the finals of the 100 meters . . . I thought of all the years of practice and competition, of all who had believed in me, and of my state and university [Ohio, and the Ohio State University.]
I saw the finish line, and knew that 10 seconds would climax the work of eight years. One mistake could ruin those eight years. So, why worry about Hitler?
Hitler did not approve of Black athletes participating in the Games. By 1936, his views on the superiority of the Aryan race were known around the world, though Germany made an effort to obscure its antiSemitic policies as host of the Games. As someone who did not fit Hitler's ideal, Owens's victory in the 1936 Olympics was widely considered to be a refutation of the dictator's racist worldview and an embarrassment for the Nazi regime.
Mark Strong https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230575
COPYRIGHT 2021 ABCCLIO, LLC https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337 U.S. Participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympics Activity
Inquiry Question What were the arguments for and against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics?
The U.S. decision to take part in the 1936 Olympics, which took place in Berlin at the time of Nazi leadership, was a controversial issue that divided participating athletes, administrative organizations, and the American public itself, especially since the country was dealing with its own problems of racism during the era of Jim Crow laws. Use information collected from the provided sources and analyze your findings to explain the arguments presented by both sides: those who felt the U.S. should compete in the games, and those who felt the nation should boycott.
Clarifying Questions
What was the status of civil rights in Germany in the mid1930s, and how did it compare to the situation in the United States? What were the main arguments for participating in the games? What were the main arguments against participating in the games? How did the 1936 Berlin Olympics influence the global perception of Nazi Germany?
Vocabulary
boycott de facto segregation de jure segregation Jim Crow Nazi Party propaganda
Background Information
1936 Summer Olympic Games, Berlin
The 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin, Germany, marked a pivotal moment in the history of the international games. German chancellor Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and the institution of racist and xenophobic policies by the Nazi Party, led many to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
Hitler's Rise to Power
In their choice of Berlin, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had wanted to stress Germany's return to the international sporting world after World War I. When the Olympics were held in 1936, however, it was quite a different Germany and quite a different Berlin from those to whom the IOC had awarded the games in 1931. The rise to prominence of the Nazi Party in the 1930s elevated the party's leader, Adolf Hitler, as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Hitler's seizure of absolute power in 1934 ushered in a totalitarian regime in Germany that ruthlessly suppressed the civil rights of minorities, particularly German Jews.
Organizing the Games
The overwhelming problem for the IOC and for the United States was to get a guarantee that Jewish athletes would not be excluded from the games. At the IOC meeting in Vienna in June 1933, president of the Olympic organizing committee Theodor Lewald was able to give an assurance with the approval of the German government that "all laws relating to the Olympic Games will be respected. German Jews will not as a matter of principle be excluded from German teams in the XI Olympiad."
This guarantee convinced the president of the Olympic Committee, Henri BailletLatour, after a visit to Berlin in November 1935, when he had an audience with Hitler. After that, the attitude of the Olympic Committee was unchanged. There was no wavering, and there was total support for the games in Berlin. From that point onward, both Baillet Latour and Avery Brundage attacked all opponents of the games as being lackeys of Communism. In 1936, Avery Brundage took a place on the IOC at the expense of the American E. L. Jahncke, who had been unremittingly critical of the games in Berlin.
The first thing the Hitler state did was to place its resources wholeheartedly behind the organization committee. A close cooperative relationship developed between Reich Director of Sport Hans von Tschammer und Osten and the organization committee—a collaboration that would be expanded to encompass work on the winter games in GarmischPartenkirchen, which the IOC had no objections about awarding to Germany in the spring of 1933, four months after Hitler came to power. Leading the organization of the latter was Karl Ritter von Halt, who had swiftly joined the Nazi Party in order to assist his career as a banker. All these people combined to convince the outside world that the games in Berlin and GarmischPartenkirchen would take place without discrimination against Jews or other nonAryan races.
Nazi Propaganda and Misdirection
The Nazis reasoned that if the whole world was being invited to Germany as a guest, then the country had to be seen in its most favorable light. Despite the treatment of Jews in Germany, Jews from outside were welcome. The German press was also instructed not to say anything negative about blacks—or only if they could do so by quoting newspapers from America's southern states. Furthermore, at the winter games and the summer games, the German press was forbidden from suggesting that Jews were inferior. Abusive antiSemitic posters were removed, and the SS was given the task of ensuring that these temporary prohibitions were observed.
To underline Nazi goodwill, two German halfJews were allowed to take part in thePage 3 of 24 games: the icehockey player Rudi Ball in the winter games, and the fencer Helene Mayer in the summer games. Both were 50% Jewish according to Nazi definitions, and as such were acceptable. On the other hand, a potential medalist for Germany, Gretel Bergmann, who was a highjumper and fully Jewish, was not allowed to take part.
With the assistance of the Ministry of Propaganda, the Nazis set a largescale campaign in motion to bring the world to Berlin. Bulletins in a number of languages were sent out abroad; German travel agents abroad advertised the Olympic Games in Berlin as the best place to take a summer holiday in 1936; and 156,000 Olympic posters in 19 languages were distributed.
With unlimited funds at their disposal, the organization committee could construct a completely new stadium for the games in Berlin. The style was neoclassical and there was plenty of space for a range of activities, including the socalled Maifeld, which was an exhibition and practice area situated between the stadium's marathon gate and the Olympic novelty, a bell tower with the great bell that summoned the youth of the world to Berlin—"Ich rufe die Jugend der Welt" (I call the youth of the world) was engraved on the castiron bell. The bell tower's foundation consisted of the great Langemarckhalle, originally suggested by Organizing Committee secretary general Carl Diem. The hall was envisoned as a temple commemorating the youth of Germany that had fallen in World War I at Langemarck in Flanders.
The Olympic stadium in Berlin became the site of what were the most successful games of all so far. They were directly transmitted by radio for the first time to countless countries, and in selected cinemas in Berlin it was even possible to see direct television transmission from the games. It was, however, Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia that would stand for posterity as the document of the success of the games. The film was given its premiere on Hitler's birthday in 1938 and from the very first was a roaring success both at home and abroad. It won a number of prizes and at the Venice Film Festival in 1938 was grand prize winner ahead of, for example, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was only in the United States that its success was more muted, since a greater proportion of the public were critical of developments in Germany.
The Games
The games lasted from August 1–16 and lived up to the high expectations in every respect. Athletes from 49 nations competed, 3,738 men and 328 women, and the stadium was sold out for all events, with 105,000 spectators attending every day. The crowning moment of the introductory procession in Berlin was the arrival of the torch bearer into the Olympic stadium. The new German Reich created a perfect staging for sport as an offshoot of ancient Greece. Everything went according to plan, and at the processional entry a number of countries chose to make the Nazi salute when they passed the Fuhrer's box; others stretched out their hands more horizontally and said afterward that it was the Olympic greeting.
The greatest athlete of the games was the African American Jesse Owens, who won five gold medals. Owens won the 100 and 200meter races. He also won the long jump and was in the 4x100 relay, which set a new record of 39.8 seconds, which was the first time ever under 40 seconds and a record that stood for 20 years. Owens's performance was seen by many as a refutation of Hitler's racist theories of Aryan racial superiority and remains the most memorable performance of the games. Basketball, canoeing, and field handball were on the program for the first time, and it caused a sensation when Norway beat Germany in soccer and achieved a bronze. As expected, despite American dominance, Germany ran away with the most medals in athletics.
Reference
Author: Historian and Holocaust scholar Paul R. Bartrop Description: This essay outlines the arguments for and against the international community's participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, hosted during the third year of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin began in the early years of Hitler's regime, which saw laws severely restricting the citizenship and civil rights of Jews known as the Nuremberg Race Laws (1935). Consider the ways in which Germany constructed its image during the Olympic Games. How did that image differ from its image prior to the Olympics? Pay close attention to the arguments for and against a boycott of the 1936 Olympics outlined in the sections titled "Debating Whether to Boycott" and "U.S. Olympic Team." Why did most African American newspapers support participation in the games?
1936 Berlin Olympics: Boycott Debates
The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were highly controversial at the time. From the very start they were marked by racism, with the official Nazi Party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, declaring that Jews and people of African descent, regardless of their country of origin, should not be allowed to participate. Following Nazi demands, the German Olympic Committee denied Jews all opportunity of representing Germany. These measures led many in the international community to call for a boycott of the 1936 games.
Germany Furnishes its Image
When the possibility of an international boycott was threatened, Germany responded with a superficial relaxing of the rules: now, one athlete with a Jewish background was allowed to compete for Germany. Helene Mayer, who had a Jewish father, was a world champion fencer who had already won a gold medal at the 1928 Amsterdam Games. With an eye to the prospect of her winning another gold medal for Germany, she became the token Jew permitted to compete. As it turned out, she won silver in the individual foil event.
The prospect of other Jewish athletes competing for Germany was denied, however. The fourtime world record holder and 10time German national champion in shot put and discus throw, Lilli Henoch, was excluded; she was later deported and murdered in the Riga ghetto in 1942. Gretel Bergmann, an internationally recognized champion high jumper, was replaced on the German team by Dora Ratjen, who was later revealed to be a male who had been raised as a girl.
In order to reassure foreign opinion, Berlin was purged of all traces of Nazi antiSemitism. Local party authorities removed street signs bearing such slogans as "Jews not wanted" from Berlin's main tourist areas. At the same time, all vagrants and Roma were physically moved to a specially constructed "holding camp" outside the city at Marzahn.
Debating Whether to Boycott
In view of Germany's racist domestic policies, there was considerable debate among the international community over whether or not to boycott the games. In some countries, notably Britain, France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands, discussion took place over whether the games should be relocated. Meanwhile, exiled political opponents of the Nazis kept up the pressure for a boycott. These initiatives did not amount to anything definite; opponents of a boycott argued that the games had been awarded to Berlin in 1931 and that it would be wrong to punish the city simply because of a change of government.
Individual Jewish athletes from a number of countries, on the other hand, elected to take matters into their own hands and refused to attend. In this regard, brave athletes such as the South African Sid Kiel and Americans Milton Green and Norman Cahners should be mentioned.
U.S. Olympic Team
As one of the world's leading sporting nations, the position of the United States was crucial. In September 1934, the United States Olympic Committee accepted a German invitation to visit on a factfinding mission. After interviewing German Jews who had been carefully selected by the Nazi regime, U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage concluded that he had not found any discrimination against the Jewish population of Germany. He then became a major supporter of the games being held in Berlin, famously arguing that "politics has no place in sport." By 1935, he had convinced the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States that an American team should be sent to Berlin. The American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee supported a boycott, but they had no say in what was effectively an institutional project by the American Olympic Committee.
Most African American newspapers, on the other hand, supported participation. They argued that this was an opportunity for Nazi racial theories to be challenged and, hopefully, defeated. And to some degree, they were right; the iconic Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events, and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin.
On the day of the men's 4 x 100 relay, the Jewish American sprinters Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman were sidelined from the team. While this gave Owens the opportunity to win his fourth and final gold medal, historians have speculated that the removal of Stoller and Glickman was deliberately antiSemitic and intended to appease Hitler.
Legacy of the 1936 Games
Ultimately, Germany was the most successful country at the games, winning 33 gold medals and 89 medals overall. The United States came second in the medal tally, with 24 gold and 56 overall.
The Berlin Olympics torch relay from Mount Olympus in Greece was the first of its kind, and the games were the first to have live television coverage. Despite these advances, they were also to be the final Olympic Games for 12 years owing to World War II.
Hitler's antihuman ideologies and his quest for supreme domination and racial supremacy were the biggest challenge to the Olympic ideal until 1972—when terrorism and the murder of Jewish athletes at the Munich Games threatened the Olympic ideal once more. The president of the International Olympic Committee then was the same Avery Brundage who so dominated the American team in 1936.
Paul R. Bartrop https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229806
Reference
Author: Historian Natalie Ring Description: This essay defines and illustrates the Jim Crow era of racial segregation and discrimination in the American South.
Context and Things to Consider
What is meant by the term "Jim Crow"? How did Jim Crow laws prevent the social advancement of African Americans from the 1880s to 1960s? What is meant by de jure segregation? What is meant by de facto segregation? Consider race relations in the United States during the 1930s and the extent to which there was a contradiction between Americans' attitudes toward race relations at home and their attitudes related to the 1936 Olympics.
Segregation and Jim Crow
The term "Jim Crow" refers to the system of racial segregation and oppression that existed primarily in the South from 1877 to the mid1960s. Segregation existed in some parts of the North, yet by the turn of the century it had become a distinctly Southern phenomenon. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court declared that "separate but equal" was constitutional, and this provided the legal backbone for segregation until it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In reality, "separate but equal" was never really equal. Racial segregation violated the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, but the federal government continued to sanction the state laws and practices of Jim Crow until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Jim Crow era marked the ascendancy of white supremacy and not only consisted of the social separation of the races, but more broadly included lynching and mob violence, the manipulation of the justice system, inequality in education, economic subjugation, and the elimination of Black suffrage.
Origins of "Jim Crow"
The term Jim Crow is derived from the name of a character in a minstrel song performed by Thomas Rice in the 1830s. Blackface minstrelsy was a form of popular entertainment in which white actors blackened their face with cork and imitated what they considered to be authentic African American dialect, dance, and song. These theatrical performances frequently ridiculed African Americans and exaggerated alleged Black characteristics.
Rice named his act "Jump Jim Crow" and claimed to have based it on a dance he saw performed by an aged crippled slave in Louisville, Kentucky, owned by a Mr. Crow. Wearing ragged clothing representative of a field hand, Rice sang and danced to lyrics that included the stanza "Weel about and turn about / And do jis so, / Eb'ry time I weel about / And jump Jim Crow." The routine was immensely popular during the antebellum period, and the figure of Jim Crow became a recognizable and enduring icon in American popular culture. In the 1840s, abolitionists used the phrase Jim Crow to describe segregated railroad cars. By the end of the 19th century, the term came to signify the social separation of the races.
De Jure Segregation
Two forms of Jim Crow existed in the South: de jure and de facto. De jure segregation referred to the separation of the races as mandated specifically by law, and de facto segregation occurred by custom or tradition. In the 1880s, such laws as the segregation of street cars appeared sporadically across the South. Between 1890 and 1915, Southern states enacted an array of statutes that led to a more rigid and universal framework for the social separation of the races.
This explosion of de jure segregation reflected Southern whites' growing unease about a younger, more assertive generation of African Americans who demanded respect and recognition of their rights. In addition, the intent of widespread codification was to solidify custom and to eliminate uncertainty about the social status of blacks and whites. Signs labeled "For White" and "For Colored" dominated the Southern landscape, and Jim Crow regulated social contact in such places as restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, parks, schools, libraries, hospitals, and waiting rooms. In many cases, social separation often meant total exclusion. State legislatures also enacted antimiscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriage, and passed laws or rewrote the state constitution to make voter registration difficult, if not impossible.
De Facto Segregation
Although Southern states passed an elaborate network of laws, de facto practices of segregation endured. Patterns of de facto segregation varied depending on the location, the traditions of a community, or even the whim of a white person.
In most places, whites and blacks were expected to abide by an unspoken racial etiquette. For example, blacks could not enter a white home through the front door, address a white person by their first name, or refuse to give way to a white person on a sidewalk. Courtrooms often swore in black witnesses with separate bibles, and in many stores, blacks could not be served until white customers were finished. Whites did make exceptions for black domestic workers, but only because a black servant tending to white children in a space marked as white still clearly retained a position of inferiority. For many African Americans, Jim Crow caused incredible apprehension about the repercussions of crossing the color line. Any action taken by a black man or woman that whites perceived to be impudent or disrespectful could lead to swift and violent retaliation.
The Civil Rights Movement
After World War II, the edifice of Jim Crow began to break down. Black soldiers questioned the logic of having to fight for democracy abroad while returning home to face continued racial inequality. Protest on the grassroots level as well that initiated by institutions and celebrated leaders spread in the 1950s and early 1960s. The growing civil rights movement ultimately pressured the federal government to take action.
In 1964, the U.S. Congress answered President Lyndon B. Johnson's call to support racial equality and end Jim Crow. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade discrimination in public places, provided funding for assistance to further desegregate schools, created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and gave the attorney general more authority to prosecute civil rights violations involving voting, the use of public facilities, government, and education. It was the most extensive piece of federal legislation in support of civil rights ever ratified by Congress. While racial discrimination and oppression did not entirely disappear following passage of the Civil Rights Act, it truly marked the end of the widespread legal and social system of Jim Crow.
Natalie J. Ring https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 1903177
Image
Photographer: Unknown Description: This photograph shows a public notice on the streets of New York City announcing a meeting to advocate for a U.S. boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Date: December 3, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The location of the Olympic Games is chosen several years in advance. Germany was selected as the host country for the 1936 Olympics in 1932, shortly before the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Opposition to Hitler's regime mounted, and by the fall of 1935—around the time this photograph was taken—groups in the United States had organized for the express purpose of enacting a boycott of the games. Use the magnifying glass to zoom in on the posters in this image. Think about how the word "summons" contributes to the argument against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics. The poster suggests that boycotting the Olympic Games will help "Preserve the Olympic Ideal." What sort of characteristics does the "Olympic ideal" represent?
Notice announcing public meeting on 1936 Olympic Games boycott
A pedestrian in New York City reads a notice announcing a public meeting, scheduled for December 3, 1935, to urge Americans to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The racist and xenophobic policies of German chancellor Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led many countries to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration] https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230486
Commentary
Author: Historian Harold J. Goldberg Description: This commentary presents a historical interpretation of the 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin and argues that the games were used as a propaganda mechanism for the Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
Consider the notion of the "Olympic spirit" and the "spirit of the games." Did the 1936 undermine those values? Why or why not? Propaganda refers to information that is spread to influence public opinion regarding a specific cause or ideology. For example, a government may spread propaganda during war time to win support for the war or boost morale. Propaganda is often biased and may include disinformation or appeals to emotion rather than reason. How does the author build the case that Germany "turned the games into a propaganda showcase?" Pay close attention to the events described in the section titled "The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity." Why does the author believe the Jewish American athletes were pulled from the 4 X 100 relay team?
The 1936 Olympics were a Nazi Propaganda Showcase
In the early 1930s, enthusiasm for the Olympic Games in Europe was at a historic high. The modern Olympic Games had been held every four years since 1896, except in 1916, when they were scheduled for Berlin and canceled due to World War I. In 1932, the next Olympic Games were awarded to the Weimar Republic to celebrate Germany's new democracy, but in 1933 the republic gave way to Nazi dictatorship with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. Just as the war they started in 1939 destroyed cities, towns, villages, and people, the Nazis also ruined the Olympics held in Berlin in 1936.
A Brief History of Olympic Conflicts
The philosophy of the Olympics seeks to transcend politics and nationalism, as the world comes together to admire pure athletic skill, without concern for race, religion, or national origin. In fact, the games have frequently failed to live up to their ideals. Geopolitical crises and controversies have disrupted the games on multiple occasions, including the cancelation of the games in 1940 and 1944 due to World War II, the terrorist attack and massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972, and the U.S. boycott of the games hosted in Moscow in 1980. Among all of these flawed contests, the 1936 Olympics are still considered the most notorious for violating the spirit of the games.
Berlin, 1936: Propaganda and Discrimination
Visitors to Germany after Hitler consolidated power could not fail to see Berlin bedecked with swastika flags or hear the constant drone of Nazi propaganda on the radio. The Nazi racist agenda was clear, leading Olympic officials to debate a change of venue to another country. The fear was that the games would be spoiled by a Nazi ban on Jewish athletes and a simultaneous propaganda barrage glorifying the Nazi Party. Representatives of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) visited Germany to seek assurances that Nazi propaganda would not dominate the city and that German racial policy would not prevent athletes from participating. IOC officials were greeted by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who saw the games as a propaganda machine for the Nazis and had no reservations about lying and affirming that the games would be open to all. The IOC believed Goebbels and allowed the games to proceed in Berlin.
The result was exactly what people had feared. Nazi officials broke their pledge and refused to allow Jewish athletes to participate. Already in 1933, the German Boxing Association had expelled Erich Seelig, their light heavyweight champion, due to Jewish heritage. For the same reason, Germany's No. 1 tennis player was cut from its Davis Cup team. Likewise, Gretel Bergmann, a strong contender for a medal in the high jump, was put on the German team and then, with less than two weeks to go, was not allowed to compete. The Nazis disguised this discrimination by waiting until the American team was already on its way to Germany before they dropped her because she was Jewish. As she was the favorite for a medal, this treatment indicated that initial fears over keeping the games in Berlin were justified.
Germany turned the games into a Nazi propaganda showcase, with the Nazi flag flying from every balcony in Berlin. Hitler himself opened the games in the new Olympic Stadium on August 1, to the sound of 100,000 spectators shouting "Sieg heil" as they gave the Nazi salute. A recordsetting 49 teams paraded into the stadium; Germany had the most athletes in the stadium, with the United States bringing the secondlargest team. Interestingly, the medal count finished in that order as well: Germany won the most gold medals and the most overall medals, and the U.S. finished second in both medal categories. To complete the spectacle, the last of over 3,000 runners who carried an Olympic flame from Greece arrived to light the torch in Berlin. This Nazi innovation of having the last runner light the flame was intended to link ancient Greece with the present "Aryan" athlete.
The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity
The American team experienced both triumph and selfembarrassment. Jesse Owens, the star of the American track and field team, had already won three gold medals when the coaches called a meeting just before the relay. Owens was not scheduled to participate in that event, but two Jewish Americans had qualified and were anxious to go. One of them, Marty Glickman, described what happened at the team meeting:
"The event I was supposed to run, the 400meter relay, was one of the last events in the track and field program. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial heats, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach. Robertson announced to the 7 of us that he had heard very strong rumors that the Germans were saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400meter relay. Consequently, Sam Stoller and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. We were shocked. Sam was completely stunned. He didn't say a word in the meeting. I was a brash 18yearold kid and I said 'Coach, you can't hide worldclass sprinters.' At which point, Jesse spoke up and said 'Coach, I've won my 3 gold medals [the 100, the 200, and the long jump]. I'm tired. I've had it. Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it,' said Jesse. And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said 'You'll do as you're told.'" (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936)
American coaches had caved in to the Nazi agenda. There were never any secret German runners; in reality, the American coaches had decided that winning with Jewish runners would upset the Nazis more than winning another race with Jesse Owens. Owens went home with four gold medals, while Marty Glickman never got to participate in another Olympics due to the coming war. The United States celebrated the medal victories of Owens, but this great track and field star returned to a segregated America where he could not freely choose a restaurant or hotel for his postOlympic celebration.
Despite the mixed legacy of these games, the IOC was optimistic that 1940 would see an improvement. The games were planned for Tokyo, but Japan withdrew from hosting because of its military activity in China. Immediately the 1940 Olympics were rescheduled for Helsinki, Finland, but again the games were canceled when war started in nearby Poland in 1939. With the war still in progress, there was no possibility of holding the games in 1944, so the next Olympics were finally staged in London in 1948.
During the war, the Nazis killed more than 40 Jewish Olympic athletes as they occupied European countries.
About the Author
Harold J. Goldberg is the David E. Underdown Distinguished Professor of History at Sewanee: The University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee. His published works include Daily Life in NaziOccupied Europe (Greenwood, 2019), Competing Voices from World War II in Europe: Fighting Words (Greenwood, 2010), and DDay in the Pacific: The Battle of Saipan (Indiana University Press, 2007). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229716
Quote
Author: American Committee on Fair Play in Sports Description: This quote expresses the opinion of the American Committee on Fair Play in Sports on the political implications of holding the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Date: November 15, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The American Committee on Fair Play in Sports was assembled in the fall of 1935 to oppose U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympic Games. The committee produced publications and public service announcements intended to educate the public on the totalitarian Nazi government and its policies of racism and anti Semitism. Consider the ideals of the Olympic Games and the extent to which Germany undermined the ideals of democratic competition and sportsmanship.
American Committee on Fair Play in Sports: quote on the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Sport is prostituted when sport loses its independent and democratic character and becomes a political institution … Nazi Germany is endeavouring to use the Eleventh Olympiad to serve the necessities and interests of the Nazi Regime rather than the Olympic ideals.
–American Committee on Fair Play in Sports (November 15, 1935). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229811
Reference
Author: ABCCLIO Description: This reference article discusses goldmedalist sprinter Jesse Owens's participation in the 1936 Olympic Games, including his attitude toward Adolf Hitler as he readied for one of his races.
Context and Things to Consider
African American sprinter Owens became the first athlete in the history of the modern Olympic Games to win four gold medals in a single year. Owens's feat was celebrated by opponents of Hitler's regime as an embarrassing rebuke of Hitler's theories of Aryan racial supremacy. Consider the mindset of Owens as he readied for the 100meter finals heat and the laserfocus required of Olympic athletes. What does Owens's comment suggest about his views on Hitler? Evaluate Owens's comment in relation to the other sources. How does it illustrate the desire to reflect the ideals of the Olympic Games?
Jesse Owens: "Why Worry about Hitler?" (1936)
Jesse Owens was an African American track and field athlete. During the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, he became a national hero for defeating Adolf Hitler's Aryan athletes in a series of athletic contests.
In 1936, just a few years after Hitler rose to power in Germany, the Summer Olympic Games were held in Berlin, the nation's capital. Hitler believed in an Aryan "master race," an allegedly pure Germanic/Nordic race of people who were, according to Hitler, racially, physically, and intellectually above "lesser" peoples. The Aryan ideal was a Nordic type—tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.
Owens became the star of the 1936 Games, winning a total of four gold medals, including a world recordtying performance in the 100meter dash. Reflecting on this race, Owens discussed its personal significance and his state of focus despite the political implications of competing in Nazi Germany:
When I lined up in my lane for the finals of the 100 meters . . . I thought of all the years of practice and competition, of all who had believed in me, and of my state and university [Ohio, and the Ohio State University.]
I saw the finish line, and knew that 10 seconds would climax the work of eight years. One mistake could ruin those eight years. So, why worry about Hitler?
Hitler did not approve of Black athletes participating in the Games. By 1936, his views on the superiority of the Aryan race were known around the world, though Germany made an effort to obscure its antiSemitic policies as host of the Games. As someone who did not fit Hitler's ideal, Owens's victory in the 1936 Olympics was widely considered to be a refutation of the dictator's racist worldview and an embarrassment for the Nazi regime.
Mark Strong https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230575
COPYRIGHT 2021 ABCCLIO, LLC https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337 U.S. Participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympics Activity
Inquiry Question What were the arguments for and against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics?
The U.S. decision to take part in the 1936 Olympics, which took place in Berlin at the time of Nazi leadership, was a controversial issue that divided participating athletes, administrative organizations, and the American public itself, especially since the country was dealing with its own problems of racism during the era of Jim Crow laws. Use information collected from the provided sources and analyze your findings to explain the arguments presented by both sides: those who felt the U.S. should compete in the games, and those who felt the nation should boycott.
Clarifying Questions
What was the status of civil rights in Germany in the mid1930s, and how did it compare to the situation in the United States? What were the main arguments for participating in the games? What were the main arguments against participating in the games? How did the 1936 Berlin Olympics influence the global perception of Nazi Germany?
Vocabulary
boycott de facto segregation de jure segregation Jim Crow Nazi Party propaganda
Background Information
1936 Summer Olympic Games, Berlin
The 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin, Germany, marked a pivotal moment in the history of the international games. German chancellor Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and the institution of racist and xenophobic policies by the Nazi Party, led many to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
Hitler's Rise to Power
In their choice of Berlin, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had wanted to stress Germany's return to the international sporting world after World War I. When the Olympics were held in 1936, however, it was quite a different Germany and quite a different Berlin from those to whom the IOC had awarded the games in 1931. The rise to prominence of the Nazi Party in the 1930s elevated the party's leader, Adolf Hitler, as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Hitler's seizure of absolute power in 1934 ushered in a totalitarian regime in Germany that ruthlessly suppressed the civil rights of minorities, particularly German Jews.
Organizing the Games
The overwhelming problem for the IOC and for the United States was to get a guarantee that Jewish athletes would not be excluded from the games. At the IOC meeting in Vienna in June 1933, president of the Olympic organizing committee Theodor Lewald was able to give an assurance with the approval of the German government that "all laws relating to the Olympic Games will be respected. German Jews will not as a matter of principle be excluded from German teams in the XI Olympiad."
This guarantee convinced the president of the Olympic Committee, Henri BailletLatour, after a visit to Berlin in November 1935, when he had an audience with Hitler. After that, the attitude of the Olympic Committee was unchanged. There was no wavering, and there was total support for the games in Berlin. From that point onward, both Baillet Latour and Avery Brundage attacked all opponents of the games as being lackeys of Communism. In 1936, Avery Brundage took a place on the IOC at the expense of the American E. L. Jahncke, who had been unremittingly critical of the games in Berlin.
The first thing the Hitler state did was to place its resources wholeheartedly behind the organization committee. A close cooperative relationship developed between Reich Director of Sport Hans von Tschammer und Osten and the organization committee—a collaboration that would be expanded to encompass work on the winter games in GarmischPartenkirchen, which the IOC had no objections about awarding to Germany in the spring of 1933, four months after Hitler came to power. Leading the organization of the latter was Karl Ritter von Halt, who had swiftly joined the Nazi Party in order to assist his career as a banker. All these people combined to convince the outside world that the games in Berlin and GarmischPartenkirchen would take place without discrimination against Jews or other nonAryan races.
Nazi Propaganda and Misdirection
The Nazis reasoned that if the whole world was being invited to Germany as a guest, then the country had to be seen in its most favorable light. Despite the treatment of Jews in Germany, Jews from outside were welcome. The German press was also instructed not to say anything negative about blacks—or only if they could do so by quoting newspapers from America's southern states. Furthermore, at the winter games and the summer games, the German press was forbidden from suggesting that Jews were inferior. Abusive antiSemitic posters were removed, and the SS was given the task of ensuring that these temporary prohibitions were observed.
To underline Nazi goodwill, two German halfJews were allowed to take part in the games: the icehockey player Rudi Ball in the winter games, and the fencer Helene Mayer in the summer games. Both were 50% Jewish according to Nazi definitions, and as such were acceptable. On the other hand, a potential medalist for Germany, Gretel Bergmann, who was a highjumper and fully Jewish, was not allowed to take part.
With the assistance of the Ministry of Propaganda, the Nazis set a largescale campaign in motion to bring the world to Berlin. Bulletins in a number of languages were sent out abroad; German travel agents abroad advertised the Olympic Games in Berlin as the best place to take a summer holiday in 1936; and 156,000 Olympic posters in 19 languages were distributed.
With unlimited funds at their disposal, the organization committee could construct a completely new stadium for the games in Berlin. The style was neoclassical and there was plenty of space for a range of activities, including the socalled Maifeld, which was an exhibition and practice area situated between the stadium's marathon gate and the Olympic novelty, a bell tower with the great bell that summoned the youth of the world to Berlin—"Ich rufe die Jugend der Welt" (I call the youth of the world) was engraved on the castiron bell. The bell tower's foundation consisted of the great Langemarckhalle, originally suggested by Organizing Committee secretary general Carl Diem. The hall was envisoned as a temple commemorating the youth of Germany that had fallen in World War I at Langemarck in Flanders.
The Olympic stadium in Berlin became the site of what were the most successful games of all so far. They were directly transmitted by radio for the first time to countless countries, and in selected cinemas in Berlin it was even possible to see direct television transmission from the games. It was, however, Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia that would stand for posterity as the document of the success of the games. The film was given its premiere on Hitler's birthday in 1938 and from the very first was a roaring success both at home and abroad. It won a number of prizes and at the Venice Film Festival in 1938 was grand prize winner ahead of, for example, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Page 4 of 24 Dwarfs. It was only in the United States that its success was more muted, since a greater proportion of the public were critical of developments in Germany.
The Games
The games lasted from August 1–16 and lived up to the high expectations in every respect. Athletes from 49 nations competed, 3,738 men and 328 women, and the stadium was sold out for all events, with 105,000 spectators attending every day. The crowning moment of the introductory procession in Berlin was the arrival of the torch bearer into the Olympic stadium. The new German Reich created a perfect staging for sport as an offshoot of ancient Greece. Everything went according to plan, and at the processional entry a number of countries chose to make the Nazi salute when they passed the Fuhrer's box; others stretched out their hands more horizontally and said afterward that it was the Olympic greeting.
The greatest athlete of the games was the African American Jesse Owens, who won five gold medals. Owens won the 100 and 200meter races. He also won the long jump and was in the 4x100 relay, which set a new record of 39.8 seconds, which was the first time ever under 40 seconds and a record that stood for 20 years. Owens's performance was seen by many as a refutation of Hitler's racist theories of Aryan racial superiority and remains the most memorable performance of the games. Basketball, canoeing, and field handball were on the program for the first time, and it caused a sensation when Norway beat Germany in soccer and achieved a bronze. As expected, despite American dominance, Germany ran away with the most medals in athletics.
Reference
Author: Historian and Holocaust scholar Paul R. Bartrop Description: This essay outlines the arguments for and against the international community's participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, hosted during the third year of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin began in the early years of Hitler's regime, which saw laws severely restricting the citizenship and civil rights of Jews known as the Nuremberg Race Laws (1935). Consider the ways in which Germany constructed its image during the Olympic Games. How did that image differ from its image prior to the Olympics? Pay close attention to the arguments for and against a boycott of the 1936 Olympics outlined in the sections titled "Debating Whether to Boycott" and "U.S. Olympic Team." Why did most African American newspapers support participation in the games?
1936 Berlin Olympics: Boycott Debates
The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were highly controversial at the time. From the very start they were marked by racism, with the official Nazi Party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, declaring that Jews and people of African descent, regardless of their country of origin, should not be allowed to participate. Following Nazi demands, the German Olympic Committee denied Jews all opportunity of representing Germany. These measures led many in the international community to call for a boycott of the 1936 games.
Germany Furnishes its Image
When the possibility of an international boycott was threatened, Germany responded with a superficial relaxing of the rules: now, one athlete with a Jewish background was allowed to compete for Germany. Helene Mayer, who had a Jewish father, was a world champion fencer who had already won a gold medal at the 1928 Amsterdam Games. With an eye to the prospect of her winning another gold medal for Germany, she became the token Jew permitted to compete. As it turned out, she won silver in the individual foil event.
The prospect of other Jewish athletes competing for Germany was denied, however. The fourtime world record holder and 10time German national champion in shot put and discus throw, Lilli Henoch, was excluded; she was later deported and murdered in the Riga ghetto in 1942. Gretel Bergmann, an internationally recognized champion high jumper, was replaced on the German team by Dora Ratjen, who was later revealed to be a male who had been raised as a girl.
In order to reassure foreign opinion, Berlin was purged of all traces of Nazi antiSemitism. Local party authorities removed street signs bearing such slogans as "Jews not wanted" from Berlin's main tourist areas. At the same time, all vagrants and Roma were physically moved to a specially constructed "holding camp" outside the city at Marzahn.
Debating Whether to Boycott
In view of Germany's racist domestic policies, there was considerable debate among the international community over whether or not to boycott the games. In some countries, notably Britain, France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands, discussion took place over whether the games should be relocated. Meanwhile, exiled political opponents of the Nazis kept up the pressure for a boycott. These initiatives did not amount to anything definite; opponents of a boycott argued that the games had been awarded to Berlin in 1931 and that it would be wrong to punish the city simply because of a change of government.
Individual Jewish athletes from a number of countries, on the other hand, elected to take matters into their own hands and refused to attend. In this regard, brave athletes such as the South African Sid Kiel and Americans Milton Green and Norman Cahners should be mentioned.
U.S. Olympic Team
As one of the world's leading sporting nations, the position of the United States was crucial. In September 1934, the United States Olympic Committee accepted a German invitation to visit on a factfinding mission. After interviewing German Jews who had been carefully selected by the Nazi regime, U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage concluded that he had not found any discrimination against the Jewish population of Germany. He then became a major supporter of the games being held in Berlin, famously arguing that "politics has no place in sport." By 1935, he had convinced the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States that an American team should be sent to Berlin. The American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee supported a boycott, but they had no say in what was effectively an institutional project by the American Olympic Committee.
Most African American newspapers, on the other hand, supported participation. They argued that this was an opportunity for Nazi racial theories to be challenged and, hopefully, defeated. And to some degree, they were right; the iconic Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events, and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin.
On the day of the men's 4 x 100 relay, the Jewish American sprinters Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman were sidelined from the team. While this gave Owens the opportunity to win his fourth and final gold medal, historians have speculated that the removal of Stoller and Glickman was deliberately antiSemitic and intended to appease Hitler.
Legacy of the 1936 Games
Ultimately, Germany was the most successful country at the games, winning 33 gold medals and 89 medals overall. The United States came second in the medal tally, with 24 gold and 56 overall.
The Berlin Olympics torch relay from Mount Olympus in Greece was the first of its kind, and the games were the first to have live television coverage. Despite these advances, they were also to be the final Olympic Games for 12 years owing to World War II.
Hitler's antihuman ideologies and his quest for supreme domination and racial supremacy were the biggest challenge to the Olympic ideal until 1972—when terrorism and the murder of Jewish athletes at the Munich Games threatened the Olympic ideal once more. The president of the International Olympic Committee then was the same Avery Brundage who so dominated the American team in 1936.
Paul R. Bartrop https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229806
Reference
Author: Historian Natalie Ring Description: This essay defines and illustrates the Jim Crow era of racial segregation and discrimination in the American South.
Context and Things to Consider
What is meant by the term "Jim Crow"? How did Jim Crow laws prevent the social advancement of African Americans from the 1880s to 1960s? What is meant by de jure segregation? What is meant by de facto segregation? Consider race relations in the United States during the 1930s and the extent to which there was a contradiction between Americans' attitudes toward race relations at home and their attitudes related to the 1936 Olympics.
Segregation and Jim Crow
The term "Jim Crow" refers to the system of racial segregation and oppression that existed primarily in the South from 1877 to the mid1960s. Segregation existed in some parts of the North, yet by the turn of the century it had become a distinctly Southern phenomenon. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court declared that "separate but equal" was constitutional, and this provided the legal backbone for segregation until it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In reality, "separate but equal" was never really equal. Racial segregation violated the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, but the federal government continued to sanction the state laws and practices of Jim Crow until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Jim Crow era marked the ascendancy of white supremacy and not only consisted of the social separation of the races, but more broadly included lynching and mob violence, the manipulation of the justice system, inequality in education, economic subjugation, and the elimination of Black suffrage.
Origins of "Jim Crow"
The term Jim Crow is derived from the name of a character in a minstrel song performed by Thomas Rice in the 1830s. Blackface minstrelsy was a form of popular entertainment in which white actors blackened their face with cork and imitated what they considered to be authentic African American dialect, dance, and song. These theatrical performances frequently ridiculed African Americans and exaggerated alleged Black characteristics.
Rice named his act "Jump Jim Crow" and claimed to have based it on a dance he saw performed by an aged crippled slave in Louisville, Kentucky, owned by a Mr. Crow. Wearing ragged clothing representative of a field hand, Rice sang and danced to lyrics that included the stanza "Weel about and turn about / And do jis so, / Eb'ry time I weel about / And jump Jim Crow." The routine was immensely popular during the antebellum period, and the figure of Jim Crow became a recognizable and enduring icon in American popular culture. In the 1840s, abolitionists used the phrase Jim Crow to describe segregated railroad cars. By the end of the 19th century, the term came to signify the social separation of the races.
De Jure Segregation
Two forms of Jim Crow existed in the South: de jure and de facto. De jure segregation referred to the separation of the races as mandated specifically by law, and de facto segregation occurred by custom or tradition. In the 1880s, such laws as the segregation of street cars appeared sporadically across the South. Between 1890 and 1915, Southern states enacted an array of statutes that led to a more rigid and universal framework for the social separation of the races.
This explosion of de jure segregation reflected Southern whites' growing unease about a younger, more assertive generation of African Americans who demanded respect and recognition of their rights. In addition, the intent of widespread codification was to solidify custom and to eliminate uncertainty about the social status of blacks and whites. Signs labeled "For White" and "For Colored" dominated the Southern landscape, and Jim Crow regulated social contact in such places as restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, parks, schools, libraries, hospitals, and waiting rooms. In many cases, social separation often meant total exclusion. State legislatures also enacted antimiscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriage, and passed laws or rewrote the state constitution to make voter registration difficult, if not impossible.
De Facto Segregation
Although Southern states passed an elaborate network of laws, de facto practices of segregation endured. Patterns of de facto segregation varied depending on the location, the traditions of a community, or even the whim of a white person.
In most places, whites and blacks were expected to abide by an unspoken racial etiquette. For example, blacks could not enter a white home through the front door, address a white person by their first name, or refuse to give way to a white person on a sidewalk. Courtrooms often swore in black witnesses with separate bibles, and in many stores, blacks could not be served until white customers were finished. Whites did make exceptions for black domestic workers, but only because a black servant tending to white children in a space marked as white still clearly retained a position of inferiority. For many African Americans, Jim Crow caused incredible apprehension about the repercussions of crossing the color line. Any action taken by a black man or woman that whites perceived to be impudent or disrespectful could lead to swift and violent retaliation.
The Civil Rights Movement
After World War II, the edifice of Jim Crow began to break down. Black soldiers questioned the logic of having to fight for democracy abroad while returning home to face continued racial inequality. Protest on the grassroots level as well that initiated by institutions and celebrated leaders spread in the 1950s and early 1960s. The growing civil rights movement ultimately pressured the federal government to take action.
In 1964, the U.S. Congress answered President Lyndon B. Johnson's call to support racial equality and end Jim Crow. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade discrimination in public places, provided funding for assistance to further desegregate schools, created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and gave the attorney general more authority to prosecute civil rights violations involving voting, the use of public facilities, government, and education. It was the most extensive piece of federal legislation in support of civil rights ever ratified by Congress. While racial discrimination and oppression did not entirely disappear following passage of the Civil Rights Act, it truly marked the end of the widespread legal and social system of Jim Crow.
Natalie J. Ring https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 1903177
Image
Photographer: Unknown Description: This photograph shows a public notice on the streets of New York City announcing a meeting to advocate for a U.S. boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Date: December 3, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The location of the Olympic Games is chosen several years in advance. Germany was selected as the host country for the 1936 Olympics in 1932, shortly before the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Opposition to Hitler's regime mounted, and by the fall of 1935—around the time this photograph was taken—groups in the United States had organized for the express purpose of enacting a boycott of the games. Use the magnifying glass to zoom in on the posters in this image. Think about how the word "summons" contributes to the argument against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics. The poster suggests that boycotting the Olympic Games will help "Preserve the Olympic Ideal." What sort of characteristics does the "Olympic ideal" represent?
Notice announcing public meeting on 1936 Olympic Games boycott
A pedestrian in New York City reads a notice announcing a public meeting, scheduled for December 3, 1935, to urge Americans to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The racist and xenophobic policies of German chancellor Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led many countries to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration] https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230486
Commentary
Author: Historian Harold J. Goldberg Description: This commentary presents a historical interpretation of the 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin and argues that the games were used as a propaganda mechanism for the Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
Consider the notion of the "Olympic spirit" and the "spirit of the games." Did the 1936 undermine those values? Why or why not? Propaganda refers to information that is spread to influence public opinion regarding a specific cause or ideology. For example, a government may spread propaganda during war time to win support for the war or boost morale. Propaganda is often biased and may include disinformation or appeals to emotion rather than reason. How does the author build the case that Germany "turned the games into a propaganda showcase?" Pay close attention to the events described in the section titled "The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity." Why does the author believe the Jewish American athletes were pulled from the 4 X 100 relay team?
The 1936 Olympics were a Nazi Propaganda Showcase
In the early 1930s, enthusiasm for the Olympic Games in Europe was at a historic high. The modern Olympic Games had been held every four years since 1896, except in 1916, when they were scheduled for Berlin and canceled due to World War I. In 1932, the next Olympic Games were awarded to the Weimar Republic to celebrate Germany's new democracy, but in 1933 the republic gave way to Nazi dictatorship with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. Just as the war they started in 1939 destroyed cities, towns, villages, and people, the Nazis also ruined the Olympics held in Berlin in 1936.
A Brief History of Olympic Conflicts
The philosophy of the Olympics seeks to transcend politics and nationalism, as the world comes together to admire pure athletic skill, without concern for race, religion, or national origin. In fact, the games have frequently failed to live up to their ideals. Geopolitical crises and controversies have disrupted the games on multiple occasions, including the cancelation of the games in 1940 and 1944 due to World War II, the terrorist attack and massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972, and the U.S. boycott of the games hosted in Moscow in 1980. Among all of these flawed contests, the 1936 Olympics are still considered the most notorious for violating the spirit of the games.
Berlin, 1936: Propaganda and Discrimination
Visitors to Germany after Hitler consolidated power could not fail to see Berlin bedecked with swastika flags or hear the constant drone of Nazi propaganda on the radio. The Nazi racist agenda was clear, leading Olympic officials to debate a change of venue to another country. The fear was that the games would be spoiled by a Nazi ban on Jewish athletes and a simultaneous propaganda barrage glorifying the Nazi Party. Representatives of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) visited Germany to seek assurances that Nazi propaganda would not dominate the city and that German racial policy would not prevent athletes from participating. IOC officials were greeted by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who saw the games as a propaganda machine for the Nazis and had no reservations about lying and affirming that the games would be open to all. The IOC believed Goebbels and allowed the games to proceed in Berlin.
The result was exactly what people had feared. Nazi officials broke their pledge and refused to allow Jewish athletes to participate. Already in 1933, the German Boxing Association had expelled Erich Seelig, their light heavyweight champion, due to Jewish heritage. For the same reason, Germany's No. 1 tennis player was cut from its Davis Cup team. Likewise, Gretel Bergmann, a strong contender for a medal in the high jump, was put on the German team and then, with less than two weeks to go, was not allowed to compete. The Nazis disguised this discrimination by waiting until the American team was already on its way to Germany before they dropped her because she was Jewish. As she was the favorite for a medal, this treatment indicated that initial fears over keeping the games in Berlin were justified.
Germany turned the games into a Nazi propaganda showcase, with the Nazi flag flying from every balcony in Berlin. Hitler himself opened the games in the new Olympic Stadium on August 1, to the sound of 100,000 spectators shouting "Sieg heil" as they gave the Nazi salute. A recordsetting 49 teams paraded into the stadium; Germany had the most athletes in the stadium, with the United States bringing the secondlargest team. Interestingly, the medal count finished in that order as well: Germany won the most gold medals and the most overall medals, and the U.S. finished second in both medal categories. To complete the spectacle, the last of over 3,000 runners who carried an Olympic flame from Greece arrived to light the torch in Berlin. This Nazi innovation of having the last runner light the flame was intended to link ancient Greece with the present "Aryan" athlete.
The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity
The American team experienced both triumph and selfembarrassment. Jesse Owens, the star of the American track and field team, had already won three gold medals when the coaches called a meeting just before the relay. Owens was not scheduled to participate in that event, but two Jewish Americans had qualified and were anxious to go. One of them, Marty Glickman, described what happened at the team meeting:
"The event I was supposed to run, the 400meter relay, was one of the last events in the track and field program. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial heats, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach. Robertson announced to the 7 of us that he had heard very strong rumors that the Germans were saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400meter relay. Consequently, Sam Stoller and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. We were shocked. Sam was completely stunned. He didn't say a word in the meeting. I was a brash 18yearold kid and I said 'Coach, you can't hide worldclass sprinters.' At which point, Jesse spoke up and said 'Coach, I've won my 3 gold medals [the 100, the 200, and the long jump]. I'm tired. I've had it. Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it,' said Jesse. And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said 'You'll do as you're told.'" (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936)
American coaches had caved in to the Nazi agenda. There were never any secret German runners; in reality, the American coaches had decided that winning with Jewish runners would upset the Nazis more than winning another race with Jesse Owens. Owens went home with four gold medals, while Marty Glickman never got to participate in another Olympics due to the coming war. The United States celebrated the medal victories of Owens, but this great track and field star returned to a segregated America where he could not freely choose a restaurant or hotel for his postOlympic celebration.
Despite the mixed legacy of these games, the IOC was optimistic that 1940 would see an improvement. The games were planned for Tokyo, but Japan withdrew from hosting because of its military activity in China. Immediately the 1940 Olympics were rescheduled for Helsinki, Finland, but again the games were canceled when war started in nearby Poland in 1939. With the war still in progress, there was no possibility of holding the games in 1944, so the next Olympics were finally staged in London in 1948.
During the war, the Nazis killed more than 40 Jewish Olympic athletes as they occupied European countries.
About the Author
Harold J. Goldberg is the David E. Underdown Distinguished Professor of History at Sewanee: The University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee. His published works include Daily Life in NaziOccupied Europe (Greenwood, 2019), Competing Voices from World War II in Europe: Fighting Words (Greenwood, 2010), and DDay in the Pacific: The Battle of Saipan (Indiana University Press, 2007). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229716
Quote
Author: American Committee on Fair Play in Sports Description: This quote expresses the opinion of the American Committee on Fair Play in Sports on the political implications of holding the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Date: November 15, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The American Committee on Fair Play in Sports was assembled in the fall of 1935 to oppose U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympic Games. The committee produced publications and public service announcements intended to educate the public on the totalitarian Nazi government and its policies of racism and anti Semitism. Consider the ideals of the Olympic Games and the extent to which Germany undermined the ideals of democratic competition and sportsmanship.
American Committee on Fair Play in Sports: quote on the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Sport is prostituted when sport loses its independent and democratic character and becomes a political institution … Nazi Germany is endeavouring to use the Eleventh Olympiad to serve the necessities and interests of the Nazi Regime rather than the Olympic ideals.
–American Committee on Fair Play in Sports (November 15, 1935). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229811
Reference
Author: ABCCLIO Description: This reference article discusses goldmedalist sprinter Jesse Owens's participation in the 1936 Olympic Games, including his attitude toward Adolf Hitler as he readied for one of his races.
Context and Things to Consider
African American sprinter Owens became the first athlete in the history of the modern Olympic Games to win four gold medals in a single year. Owens's feat was celebrated by opponents of Hitler's regime as an embarrassing rebuke of Hitler's theories of Aryan racial supremacy. Consider the mindset of Owens as he readied for the 100meter finals heat and the laserfocus required of Olympic athletes. What does Owens's comment suggest about his views on Hitler? Evaluate Owens's comment in relation to the other sources. How does it illustrate the desire to reflect the ideals of the Olympic Games?
Jesse Owens: "Why Worry about Hitler?" (1936)
Jesse Owens was an African American track and field athlete. During the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, he became a national hero for defeating Adolf Hitler's Aryan athletes in a series of athletic contests.
In 1936, just a few years after Hitler rose to power in Germany, the Summer Olympic Games were held in Berlin, the nation's capital. Hitler believed in an Aryan "master race," an allegedly pure Germanic/Nordic race of people who were, according to Hitler, racially, physically, and intellectually above "lesser" peoples. The Aryan ideal was a Nordic type—tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.
Owens became the star of the 1936 Games, winning a total of four gold medals, including a world recordtying performance in the 100meter dash. Reflecting on this race, Owens discussed its personal significance and his state of focus despite the political implications of competing in Nazi Germany:
When I lined up in my lane for the finals of the 100 meters . . . I thought of all the years of practice and competition, of all who had believed in me, and of my state and university [Ohio, and the Ohio State University.]
I saw the finish line, and knew that 10 seconds would climax the work of eight years. One mistake could ruin those eight years. So, why worry about Hitler?
Hitler did not approve of Black athletes participating in the Games. By 1936, his views on the superiority of the Aryan race were known around the world, though Germany made an effort to obscure its antiSemitic policies as host of the Games. As someone who did not fit Hitler's ideal, Owens's victory in the 1936 Olympics was widely considered to be a refutation of the dictator's racist worldview and an embarrassment for the Nazi regime.
Mark Strong https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230575
COPYRIGHT 2021 ABCCLIO, LLC https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337 U.S. Participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympics Activity
Inquiry Question What were the arguments for and against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics?
The U.S. decision to take part in the 1936 Olympics, which took place in Berlin at the time of Nazi leadership, was a controversial issue that divided participating athletes, administrative organizations, and the American public itself, especially since the country was dealing with its own problems of racism during the era of Jim Crow laws. Use information collected from the provided sources and analyze your findings to explain the arguments presented by both sides: those who felt the U.S. should compete in the games, and those who felt the nation should boycott.
Clarifying Questions
What was the status of civil rights in Germany in the mid1930s, and how did it compare to the situation in the United States? What were the main arguments for participating in the games? What were the main arguments against participating in the games? How did the 1936 Berlin Olympics influence the global perception of Nazi Germany?
Vocabulary
boycott de facto segregation de jure segregation Jim Crow Nazi Party propaganda
Background Information
1936 Summer Olympic Games, Berlin
The 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin, Germany, marked a pivotal moment in the history of the international games. German chancellor Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and the institution of racist and xenophobic policies by the Nazi Party, led many to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
Hitler's Rise to Power
In their choice of Berlin, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had wanted to stress Germany's return to the international sporting world after World War I. When the Olympics were held in 1936, however, it was quite a different Germany and quite a different Berlin from those to whom the IOC had awarded the games in 1931. The rise to prominence of the Nazi Party in the 1930s elevated the party's leader, Adolf Hitler, as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Hitler's seizure of absolute power in 1934 ushered in a totalitarian regime in Germany that ruthlessly suppressed the civil rights of minorities, particularly German Jews.
Organizing the Games
The overwhelming problem for the IOC and for the United States was to get a guarantee that Jewish athletes would not be excluded from the games. At the IOC meeting in Vienna in June 1933, president of the Olympic organizing committee Theodor Lewald was able to give an assurance with the approval of the German government that "all laws relating to the Olympic Games will be respected. German Jews will not as a matter of principle be excluded from German teams in the XI Olympiad."
This guarantee convinced the president of the Olympic Committee, Henri BailletLatour, after a visit to Berlin in November 1935, when he had an audience with Hitler. After that, the attitude of the Olympic Committee was unchanged. There was no wavering, and there was total support for the games in Berlin. From that point onward, both Baillet Latour and Avery Brundage attacked all opponents of the games as being lackeys of Communism. In 1936, Avery Brundage took a place on the IOC at the expense of the American E. L. Jahncke, who had been unremittingly critical of the games in Berlin.
The first thing the Hitler state did was to place its resources wholeheartedly behind the organization committee. A close cooperative relationship developed between Reich Director of Sport Hans von Tschammer und Osten and the organization committee—a collaboration that would be expanded to encompass work on the winter games in GarmischPartenkirchen, which the IOC had no objections about awarding to Germany in the spring of 1933, four months after Hitler came to power. Leading the organization of the latter was Karl Ritter von Halt, who had swiftly joined the Nazi Party in order to assist his career as a banker. All these people combined to convince the outside world that the games in Berlin and GarmischPartenkirchen would take place without discrimination against Jews or other nonAryan races.
Nazi Propaganda and Misdirection
The Nazis reasoned that if the whole world was being invited to Germany as a guest, then the country had to be seen in its most favorable light. Despite the treatment of Jews in Germany, Jews from outside were welcome. The German press was also instructed not to say anything negative about blacks—or only if they could do so by quoting newspapers from America's southern states. Furthermore, at the winter games and the summer games, the German press was forbidden from suggesting that Jews were inferior. Abusive antiSemitic posters were removed, and the SS was given the task of ensuring that these temporary prohibitions were observed.
To underline Nazi goodwill, two German halfJews were allowed to take part in the games: the icehockey player Rudi Ball in the winter games, and the fencer Helene Mayer in the summer games. Both were 50% Jewish according to Nazi definitions, and as such were acceptable. On the other hand, a potential medalist for Germany, Gretel Bergmann, who was a highjumper and fully Jewish, was not allowed to take part.
With the assistance of the Ministry of Propaganda, the Nazis set a largescale campaign in motion to bring the world to Berlin. Bulletins in a number of languages were sent out abroad; German travel agents abroad advertised the Olympic Games in Berlin as the best place to take a summer holiday in 1936; and 156,000 Olympic posters in 19 languages were distributed.
With unlimited funds at their disposal, the organization committee could construct a completely new stadium for the games in Berlin. The style was neoclassical and there was plenty of space for a range of activities, including the socalled Maifeld, which was an exhibition and practice area situated between the stadium's marathon gate and the Olympic novelty, a bell tower with the great bell that summoned the youth of the world to Berlin—"Ich rufe die Jugend der Welt" (I call the youth of the world) was engraved on the castiron bell. The bell tower's foundation consisted of the great Langemarckhalle, originally suggested by Organizing Committee secretary general Carl Diem. The hall was envisoned as a temple commemorating the youth of Germany that had fallen in World War I at Langemarck in Flanders.
The Olympic stadium in Berlin became the site of what were the most successful games of all so far. They were directly transmitted by radio for the first time to countless countries, and in selected cinemas in Berlin it was even possible to see direct television transmission from the games. It was, however, Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia that would stand for posterity as the document of the success of the games. The film was given its premiere on Hitler's birthday in 1938 and from the very first was a roaring success both at home and abroad. It won a number of prizes and at the Venice Film Festival in 1938 was grand prize winner ahead of, for example, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was only in the United States that its success was more muted, since a greater proportion of the public were critical of developments in Germany.
The Games
The games lasted from August 1–16 and lived up to the high expectations in every respect. Athletes from 49 nations competed, 3,738 men and 328 women, and the stadium was sold out for all events, with 105,000 spectators attending every day. The crowning moment of the introductory procession in Berlin was the arrival of the torch bearer into the Olympic stadium. The new German Reich created a perfect staging for sport as an offshoot of ancient Greece. Everything went according to plan, and at the processional entry a number of countries chose to make the Nazi salute when they passed the Fuhrer's box; others stretched out their hands more horizontally and said afterward that it was the Olympic greeting.
The greatest athlete of the games was the African American Jesse Owens, who won five gold medals. Owens won the 100 and 200meter races. He also won the long jump and was in the 4x100 relay, which set a new record of 39.8 seconds, which was the first time ever under 40 seconds and a record that stood for 20 years. Owens's performance was seen by many as a refutation of Hitler's racist theories of Aryan racial superiority and remains the most memorable performance of the games. Basketball, canoeing, and field handball were on the program for the first time, and it caused a sensation when Norway beat Germany in soccer and achieved a bronze. As expected, despite American dominance, Germany ran away with the most medals in athletics.
Reference
Author: Historian and Holocaust scholar Paul R. Bartrop Description: This essay outlines the arguments for and against the international community's participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, hosted during the third Page 5 of 24 year of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin began in the early years of Hitler's regime, which saw laws severely restricting the citizenship and civil rights of Jews known as the Nuremberg Race Laws (1935). Consider the ways in which Germany constructed its image during the Olympic Games. How did that image differ from its image prior to the Olympics? Pay close attention to the arguments for and against a boycott of the 1936 Olympics outlined in the sections titled "Debating Whether to Boycott" and "U.S. Olympic Team." Why did most African American newspapers support participation in the games?
1936 Berlin Olympics: Boycott Debates
The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were highly controversial at the time. From the very start they were marked by racism, with the official Nazi Party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, declaring that Jews and people of African descent, regardless of their country of origin, should not be allowed to participate. Following Nazi demands, the German Olympic Committee denied Jews all opportunity of representing Germany. These measures led many in the international community to call for a boycott of the 1936 games.
Germany Furnishes its Image
When the possibility of an international boycott was threatened, Germany responded with a superficial relaxing of the rules: now, one athlete with a Jewish background was allowed to compete for Germany. Helene Mayer, who had a Jewish father, was a world champion fencer who had already won a gold medal at the 1928 Amsterdam Games. With an eye to the prospect of her winning another gold medal for Germany, she became the token Jew permitted to compete. As it turned out, she won silver in the individual foil event.
The prospect of other Jewish athletes competing for Germany was denied, however. The fourtime world record holder and 10time German national champion in shot put and discus throw, Lilli Henoch, was excluded; she was later deported and murdered in the Riga ghetto in 1942. Gretel Bergmann, an internationally recognized champion high jumper, was replaced on the German team by Dora Ratjen, who was later revealed to be a male who had been raised as a girl.
In order to reassure foreign opinion, Berlin was purged of all traces of Nazi antiSemitism. Local party authorities removed street signs bearing such slogans as "Jews not wanted" from Berlin's main tourist areas. At the same time, all vagrants and Roma were physically moved to a specially constructed "holding camp" outside the city at Marzahn.
Debating Whether to Boycott
In view of Germany's racist domestic policies, there was considerable debate among the international community over whether or not to boycott the games. In some countries, notably Britain, France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands, discussion took place over whether the games should be relocated. Meanwhile, exiled political opponents of the Nazis kept up the pressure for a boycott. These initiatives did not amount to anything definite; opponents of a boycott argued that the games had been awarded to Berlin in 1931 and that it would be wrong to punish the city simply because of a change of government.
Individual Jewish athletes from a number of countries, on the other hand, elected to take matters into their own hands and refused to attend. In this regard, brave athletes such as the South African Sid Kiel and Americans Milton Green and Norman Cahners should be mentioned.
U.S. Olympic Team
As one of the world's leading sporting nations, the position of the United States was crucial. In September 1934, the United States Olympic Committee accepted a German invitation to visit on a factfinding mission. After interviewing German Jews who had been carefully selected by the Nazi regime, U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage concluded that he had not found any discrimination against the Jewish population of Germany. He then became a major supporter of the games being held in Berlin, famously arguing that "politics has no place in sport." By 1935, he had convinced the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States that an American team should be sent to Berlin. The American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee supported a boycott, but they had no say in what was effectively an institutional project by the American Olympic Committee.
Most African American newspapers, on the other hand, supported participation. They argued that this was an opportunity for Nazi racial theories to be challenged and, hopefully, defeated. And to some degree, they were right; the iconic Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events, and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin.
On the day of the men's 4 x 100 relay, the Jewish American sprinters Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman were sidelined from the team. While this gave Owens the opportunity to win his fourth and final gold medal, historians have speculated that the removal of Stoller and Glickman was deliberately antiSemitic and intended to appease Hitler.
Legacy of the 1936 Games
Ultimately, Germany was the most successful country at the games, winning 33 gold medals and 89 medals overall. The United States came second in the medal tally, with 24 gold and 56 overall.
The Berlin Olympics torch relay from Mount Olympus in Greece was the first of its kind, and the games were the first to have live television coverage. Despite these advances, they were also to be the final Olympic Games for 12 years owing to World War II.
Hitler's antihuman ideologies and his quest for supreme domination and racial supremacy were the biggest challenge to the Olympic ideal until 1972—when terrorism and the murder of Jewish athletes at the Munich Games threatened the Olympic ideal once more. The president of the International Olympic Committee then was the same Avery Brundage who so dominated the American team in 1936.
Paul R. Bartrop https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229806
Reference
Author: Historian Natalie Ring Description: This essay defines and illustrates the Jim Crow era of racial segregation and discrimination in the American South.
Context and Things to Consider
What is meant by the term "Jim Crow"? How did Jim Crow laws prevent the social advancement of African Americans from the 1880s to 1960s? What is meant by de jure segregation? What is meant by de facto segregation? Consider race relations in the United States during the 1930s and the extent to which there was a contradiction between Americans' attitudes toward race relations at home and their attitudes related to the 1936 Olympics.
Segregation and Jim Crow
The term "Jim Crow" refers to the system of racial segregation and oppression that existed primarily in the South from 1877 to the mid1960s. Segregation existed in some parts of the North, yet by the turn of the century it had become a distinctly Southern phenomenon. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court declared that "separate but equal" was constitutional, and this provided the legal backbone for segregation until it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In reality, "separate but equal" was never really equal. Racial segregation violated the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, but the federal government continued to sanction the state laws and practices of Jim Crow until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Jim Crow era marked the ascendancy of white supremacy and not only consisted of the social separation of the races, but more broadly included lynching and mob violence, the manipulation of the justice system, inequality in education, economic subjugation, and the elimination of Black suffrage.
Origins of "Jim Crow"
The term Jim Crow is derived from the name of a character in a minstrel song performed by Thomas Rice in the 1830s. Blackface minstrelsy was a form of popular entertainment in which white actors blackened their face with cork and imitated what they considered to be authentic African American dialect, dance, and song. These theatrical performances frequently ridiculed African Americans and exaggerated alleged Black characteristics.
Rice named his act "Jump Jim Crow" and claimed to have based it on a dance he saw performed by an aged crippled slave in Louisville, Kentucky, owned by a Mr. Crow. Wearing ragged clothing representative of a field hand, Rice sang and danced to lyrics that included the stanza "Weel about and turn about / And do jis so, / Eb'ry time I weel about / And jump Jim Crow." The routine was immensely popular during the antebellum period, and the figure of Jim Crow became a recognizable and enduring icon in American popular culture. In the 1840s, abolitionists used the phrase Jim Crow to describe segregated railroad cars. By the end of the 19th century, the term came to signify the social separation of the races.
De Jure Segregation
Two forms of Jim Crow existed in the South: de jure and de facto. De jure segregation referred to the separation of the races as mandated specifically by law, and de facto segregation occurred by custom or tradition. In the 1880s, such laws as the segregation of street cars appeared sporadically across the South. Between 1890 and 1915, Southern states enacted an array of statutes that led to a more rigid and universal framework for the social separation of the races.
This explosion of de jure segregation reflected Southern whites' growing unease about a younger, more assertive generation of African Americans who demanded respect and recognition of their rights. In addition, the intent of widespread codification was to solidify custom and to eliminate uncertainty about the social status of blacks and whites. Signs labeled "For White" and "For Colored" dominated the Southern landscape, and Jim Crow regulated social contact in such places as restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, parks, schools, libraries, hospitals, and waiting rooms. In many cases, social separation often meant total exclusion. State legislatures also enacted antimiscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriage, and passed laws or rewrote the state constitution to make voter registration difficult, if not impossible.
De Facto Segregation
Although Southern states passed an elaborate network of laws, de facto practices of segregation endured. Patterns of de facto segregation varied depending on the location, the traditions of a community, or even the whim of a white person.
In most places, whites and blacks were expected to abide by an unspoken racial etiquette. For example, blacks could not enter a white home through the front door, address a white person by their first name, or refuse to give way to a white person on a sidewalk. Courtrooms often swore in black witnesses with separate bibles, and in many stores, blacks could not be served until white customers were finished. Whites did make exceptions for black domestic workers, but only because a black servant tending to white children in a space marked as white still clearly retained a position of inferiority. For many African Americans, Jim Crow caused incredible apprehension about the repercussions of crossing the color line. Any action taken by a black man or woman that whites perceived to be impudent or disrespectful could lead to swift and violent retaliation.
The Civil Rights Movement
After World War II, the edifice of Jim Crow began to break down. Black soldiers questioned the logic of having to fight for democracy abroad while returning home to face continued racial inequality. Protest on the grassroots level as well that initiated by institutions and celebrated leaders spread in the 1950s and early 1960s. The growing civil rights movement ultimately pressured the federal government to take action.
In 1964, the U.S. Congress answered President Lyndon B. Johnson's call to support racial equality and end Jim Crow. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade discrimination in public places, provided funding for assistance to further desegregate schools, created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and gave the attorney general more authority to prosecute civil rights violations involving voting, the use of public facilities, government, and education. It was the most extensive piece of federal legislation in support of civil rights ever ratified by Congress. While racial discrimination and oppression did not entirely disappear following passage of the Civil Rights Act, it truly marked the end of the widespread legal and social system of Jim Crow.
Natalie J. Ring https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 1903177
Image
Photographer: Unknown Description: This photograph shows a public notice on the streets of New York City announcing a meeting to advocate for a U.S. boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Date: December 3, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The location of the Olympic Games is chosen several years in advance. Germany was selected as the host country for the 1936 Olympics in 1932, shortly before the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Opposition to Hitler's regime mounted, and by the fall of 1935—around the time this photograph was taken—groups in the United States had organized for the express purpose of enacting a boycott of the games. Use the magnifying glass to zoom in on the posters in this image. Think about how the word "summons" contributes to the argument against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics. The poster suggests that boycotting the Olympic Games will help "Preserve the Olympic Ideal." What sort of characteristics does the "Olympic ideal" represent?
Notice announcing public meeting on 1936 Olympic Games boycott
A pedestrian in New York City reads a notice announcing a public meeting, scheduled for December 3, 1935, to urge Americans to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The racist and xenophobic policies of German chancellor Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led many countries to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration] https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230486
Commentary
Author: Historian Harold J. Goldberg Description: This commentary presents a historical interpretation of the 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin and argues that the games were used as a propaganda mechanism for the Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
Consider the notion of the "Olympic spirit" and the "spirit of the games." Did the 1936 undermine those values? Why or why not? Propaganda refers to information that is spread to influence public opinion regarding a specific cause or ideology. For example, a government may spread propaganda during war time to win support for the war or boost morale. Propaganda is often biased and may include disinformation or appeals to emotion rather than reason. How does the author build the case that Germany "turned the games into a propaganda showcase?" Pay close attention to the events described in the section titled "The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity." Why does the author believe the Jewish American athletes were pulled from the 4 X 100 relay team?
The 1936 Olympics were a Nazi Propaganda Showcase
In the early 1930s, enthusiasm for the Olympic Games in Europe was at a historic high. The modern Olympic Games had been held every four years since 1896, except in 1916, when they were scheduled for Berlin and canceled due to World War I. In 1932, the next Olympic Games were awarded to the Weimar Republic to celebrate Germany's new democracy, but in 1933 the republic gave way to Nazi dictatorship with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. Just as the war they started in 1939 destroyed cities, towns, villages, and people, the Nazis also ruined the Olympics held in Berlin in 1936.
A Brief History of Olympic Conflicts
The philosophy of the Olympics seeks to transcend politics and nationalism, as the world comes together to admire pure athletic skill, without concern for race, religion, or national origin. In fact, the games have frequently failed to live up to their ideals. Geopolitical crises and controversies have disrupted the games on multiple occasions, including the cancelation of the games in 1940 and 1944 due to World War II, the terrorist attack and massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972, and the U.S. boycott of the games hosted in Moscow in 1980. Among all of these flawed contests, the 1936 Olympics are still considered the most notorious for violating the spirit of the games.
Berlin, 1936: Propaganda and Discrimination
Visitors to Germany after Hitler consolidated power could not fail to see Berlin bedecked with swastika flags or hear the constant drone of Nazi propaganda on the radio. The Nazi racist agenda was clear, leading Olympic officials to debate a change of venue to another country. The fear was that the games would be spoiled by a Nazi ban on Jewish athletes and a simultaneous propaganda barrage glorifying the Nazi Party. Representatives of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) visited Germany to seek assurances that Nazi propaganda would not dominate the city and that German racial policy would not prevent athletes from participating. IOC officials were greeted by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who saw the games as a propaganda machine for the Nazis and had no reservations about lying and affirming that the games would be open to all. The IOC believed Goebbels and allowed the games to proceed in Berlin.
The result was exactly what people had feared. Nazi officials broke their pledge and refused to allow Jewish athletes to participate. Already in 1933, the German Boxing Association had expelled Erich Seelig, their light heavyweight champion, due to Jewish heritage. For the same reason, Germany's No. 1 tennis player was cut from its Davis Cup team. Likewise, Gretel Bergmann, a strong contender for a medal in the high jump, was put on the German team and then, with less than two weeks to go, was not allowed to compete. The Nazis disguised this discrimination by waiting until the American team was already on its way to Germany before they dropped her because she was Jewish. As she was the favorite for a medal, this treatment indicated that initial fears over keeping the games in Berlin were justified.
Germany turned the games into a Nazi propaganda showcase, with the Nazi flag flying from every balcony in Berlin. Hitler himself opened the games in the new Olympic Stadium on August 1, to the sound of 100,000 spectators shouting "Sieg heil" as they gave the Nazi salute. A recordsetting 49 teams paraded into the stadium; Germany had the most athletes in the stadium, with the United States bringing the secondlargest team. Interestingly, the medal count finished in that order as well: Germany won the most gold medals and the most overall medals, and the U.S. finished second in both medal categories. To complete the spectacle, the last of over 3,000 runners who carried an Olympic flame from Greece arrived to light the torch in Berlin. This Nazi innovation of having the last runner light the flame was intended to link ancient Greece with the present "Aryan" athlete.
The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity
The American team experienced both triumph and selfembarrassment. Jesse Owens, the star of the American track and field team, had already won three gold medals when the coaches called a meeting just before the relay. Owens was not scheduled to participate in that event, but two Jewish Americans had qualified and were anxious to go. One of them, Marty Glickman, described what happened at the team meeting:
"The event I was supposed to run, the 400meter relay, was one of the last events in the track and field program. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial heats, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach. Robertson announced to the 7 of us that he had heard very strong rumors that the Germans were saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400meter relay. Consequently, Sam Stoller and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. We were shocked. Sam was completely stunned. He didn't say a word in the meeting. I was a brash 18yearold kid and I said 'Coach, you can't hide worldclass sprinters.' At which point, Jesse spoke up and said 'Coach, I've won my 3 gold medals [the 100, the 200, and the long jump]. I'm tired. I've had it. Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it,' said Jesse. And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said 'You'll do as you're told.'" (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936)
American coaches had caved in to the Nazi agenda. There were never any secret German runners; in reality, the American coaches had decided that winning with Jewish runners would upset the Nazis more than winning another race with Jesse Owens. Owens went home with four gold medals, while Marty Glickman never got to participate in another Olympics due to the coming war. The United States celebrated the medal victories of Owens, but this great track and field star returned to a segregated America where he could not freely choose a restaurant or hotel for his postOlympic celebration.
Despite the mixed legacy of these games, the IOC was optimistic that 1940 would see an improvement. The games were planned for Tokyo, but Japan withdrew from hosting because of its military activity in China. Immediately the 1940 Olympics were rescheduled for Helsinki, Finland, but again the games were canceled when war started in nearby Poland in 1939. With the war still in progress, there was no possibility of holding the games in 1944, so the next Olympics were finally staged in London in 1948.
During the war, the Nazis killed more than 40 Jewish Olympic athletes as they occupied European countries.
About the Author
Harold J. Goldberg is the David E. Underdown Distinguished Professor of History at Sewanee: The University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee. His published works include Daily Life in NaziOccupied Europe (Greenwood, 2019), Competing Voices from World War II in Europe: Fighting Words (Greenwood, 2010), and DDay in the Pacific: The Battle of Saipan (Indiana University Press, 2007). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229716
Quote
Author: American Committee on Fair Play in Sports Description: This quote expresses the opinion of the American Committee on Fair Play in Sports on the political implications of holding the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Date: November 15, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The American Committee on Fair Play in Sports was assembled in the fall of 1935 to oppose U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympic Games. The committee produced publications and public service announcements intended to educate the public on the totalitarian Nazi government and its policies of racism and anti Semitism. Consider the ideals of the Olympic Games and the extent to which Germany undermined the ideals of democratic competition and sportsmanship.
American Committee on Fair Play in Sports: quote on the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Sport is prostituted when sport loses its independent and democratic character and becomes a political institution … Nazi Germany is endeavouring to use the Eleventh Olympiad to serve the necessities and interests of the Nazi Regime rather than the Olympic ideals.
–American Committee on Fair Play in Sports (November 15, 1935). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229811
Reference
Author: ABCCLIO Description: This reference article discusses goldmedalist sprinter Jesse Owens's participation in the 1936 Olympic Games, including his attitude toward Adolf Hitler as he readied for one of his races.
Context and Things to Consider
African American sprinter Owens became the first athlete in the history of the modern Olympic Games to win four gold medals in a single year. Owens's feat was celebrated by opponents of Hitler's regime as an embarrassing rebuke of Hitler's theories of Aryan racial supremacy. Consider the mindset of Owens as he readied for the 100meter finals heat and the laserfocus required of Olympic athletes. What does Owens's comment suggest about his views on Hitler? Evaluate Owens's comment in relation to the other sources. How does it illustrate the desire to reflect the ideals of the Olympic Games?
Jesse Owens: "Why Worry about Hitler?" (1936)
Jesse Owens was an African American track and field athlete. During the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, he became a national hero for defeating Adolf Hitler's Aryan athletes in a series of athletic contests.
In 1936, just a few years after Hitler rose to power in Germany, the Summer Olympic Games were held in Berlin, the nation's capital. Hitler believed in an Aryan "master race," an allegedly pure Germanic/Nordic race of people who were, according to Hitler, racially, physically, and intellectually above "lesser" peoples. The Aryan ideal was a Nordic type—tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.
Owens became the star of the 1936 Games, winning a total of four gold medals, including a world recordtying performance in the 100meter dash. Reflecting on this race, Owens discussed its personal significance and his state of focus despite the political implications of competing in Nazi Germany:
When I lined up in my lane for the finals of the 100 meters . . . I thought of all the years of practice and competition, of all who had believed in me, and of my state and university [Ohio, and the Ohio State University.]
I saw the finish line, and knew that 10 seconds would climax the work of eight years. One mistake could ruin those eight years. So, why worry about Hitler?
Hitler did not approve of Black athletes participating in the Games. By 1936, his views on the superiority of the Aryan race were known around the world, though Germany made an effort to obscure its antiSemitic policies as host of the Games. As someone who did not fit Hitler's ideal, Owens's victory in the 1936 Olympics was widely considered to be a refutation of the dictator's racist worldview and an embarrassment for the Nazi regime.
Mark Strong https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230575
COPYRIGHT 2021 ABCCLIO, LLC https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337 U.S. Participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympics Activity
Inquiry Question What were the arguments for and against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics?
The U.S. decision to take part in the 1936 Olympics, which took place in Berlin at the time of Nazi leadership, was a controversial issue that divided participating athletes, administrative organizations, and the American public itself, especially since the country was dealing with its own problems of racism during the era of Jim Crow laws. Use information collected from the provided sources and analyze your findings to explain the arguments presented by both sides: those who felt the U.S. should compete in the games, and those who felt the nation should boycott.
Clarifying Questions
What was the status of civil rights in Germany in the mid1930s, and how did it compare to the situation in the United States? What were the main arguments for participating in the games? What were the main arguments against participating in the games? How did the 1936 Berlin Olympics influence the global perception of Nazi Germany?
Vocabulary
boycott de facto segregation de jure segregation Jim Crow Nazi Party propaganda
Background Information
1936 Summer Olympic Games, Berlin
The 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin, Germany, marked a pivotal moment in the history of the international games. German chancellor Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and the institution of racist and xenophobic policies by the Nazi Party, led many to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
Hitler's Rise to Power
In their choice of Berlin, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had wanted to stress Germany's return to the international sporting world after World War I. When the Olympics were held in 1936, however, it was quite a different Germany and quite a different Berlin from those to whom the IOC had awarded the games in 1931. The rise to prominence of the Nazi Party in the 1930s elevated the party's leader, Adolf Hitler, as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Hitler's seizure of absolute power in 1934 ushered in a totalitarian regime in Germany that ruthlessly suppressed the civil rights of minorities, particularly German Jews.
Organizing the Games
The overwhelming problem for the IOC and for the United States was to get a guarantee that Jewish athletes would not be excluded from the games. At the IOC meeting in Vienna in June 1933, president of the Olympic organizing committee Theodor Lewald was able to give an assurance with the approval of the German government that "all laws relating to the Olympic Games will be respected. German Jews will not as a matter of principle be excluded from German teams in the XI Olympiad."
This guarantee convinced the president of the Olympic Committee, Henri BailletLatour, after a visit to Berlin in November 1935, when he had an audience with Hitler. After that, the attitude of the Olympic Committee was unchanged. There was no wavering, and there was total support for the games in Berlin. From that point onward, both Baillet Latour and Avery Brundage attacked all opponents of the games as being lackeys of Communism. In 1936, Avery Brundage took a place on the IOC at the expense of the American E. L. Jahncke, who had been unremittingly critical of the games in Berlin.
The first thing the Hitler state did was to place its resources wholeheartedly behind the organization committee. A close cooperative relationship developed between Reich Director of Sport Hans von Tschammer und Osten and the organization committee—a collaboration that would be expanded to encompass work on the winter games in GarmischPartenkirchen, which the IOC had no objections about awarding to Germany in the spring of 1933, four months after Hitler came to power. Leading the organization of the latter was Karl Ritter von Halt, who had swiftly joined the Nazi Party in order to assist his career as a banker. All these people combined to convince the outside world that the games in Berlin and GarmischPartenkirchen would take place without discrimination against Jews or other nonAryan races.
Nazi Propaganda and Misdirection
The Nazis reasoned that if the whole world was being invited to Germany as a guest, then the country had to be seen in its most favorable light. Despite the treatment of Jews in Germany, Jews from outside were welcome. The German press was also instructed not to say anything negative about blacks—or only if they could do so by quoting newspapers from America's southern states. Furthermore, at the winter games and the summer games, the German press was forbidden from suggesting that Jews were inferior. Abusive antiSemitic posters were removed, and the SS was given the task of ensuring that these temporary prohibitions were observed.
To underline Nazi goodwill, two German halfJews were allowed to take part in the games: the icehockey player Rudi Ball in the winter games, and the fencer Helene Mayer in the summer games. Both were 50% Jewish according to Nazi definitions, and as such were acceptable. On the other hand, a potential medalist for Germany, Gretel Bergmann, who was a highjumper and fully Jewish, was not allowed to take part.
With the assistance of the Ministry of Propaganda, the Nazis set a largescale campaign in motion to bring the world to Berlin. Bulletins in a number of languages were sent out abroad; German travel agents abroad advertised the Olympic Games in Berlin as the best place to take a summer holiday in 1936; and 156,000 Olympic posters in 19 languages were distributed.
With unlimited funds at their disposal, the organization committee could construct a completely new stadium for the games in Berlin. The style was neoclassical and there was plenty of space for a range of activities, including the socalled Maifeld, which was an exhibition and practice area situated between the stadium's marathon gate and the Olympic novelty, a bell tower with the great bell that summoned the youth of the world to Berlin—"Ich rufe die Jugend der Welt" (I call the youth of the world) was engraved on the castiron bell. The bell tower's foundation consisted of the great Langemarckhalle, originally suggested by Organizing Committee secretary general Carl Diem. The hall was envisoned as a temple commemorating the youth of Germany that had fallen in World War I at Langemarck in Flanders.
The Olympic stadium in Berlin became the site of what were the most successful games of all so far. They were directly transmitted by radio for the first time to countless countries, and in selected cinemas in Berlin it was even possible to see direct television transmission from the games. It was, however, Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia that would stand for posterity as the document of the success of the games. The film was given its premiere on Hitler's birthday in 1938 and from the very first was a roaring success both at home and abroad. It won a number of prizes and at the Venice Film Festival in 1938 was grand prize winner ahead of, for example, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was only in the United States that its success was more muted, since a greater proportion of the public were critical of developments in Germany.
The Games
The games lasted from August 1–16 and lived up to the high expectations in every respect. Athletes from 49 nations competed, 3,738 men and 328 women, and the stadium was sold out for all events, with 105,000 spectators attending every day. The crowning moment of the introductory procession in Berlin was the arrival of the torch bearer into the Olympic stadium. The new German Reich created a perfect staging for sport as an offshoot of ancient Greece. Everything went according to plan, and at the processional entry a number of countries chose to make the Nazi salute when they passed the Fuhrer's box; others stretched out their hands more horizontally and said afterward that it was the Olympic greeting.
The greatest athlete of the games was the African American Jesse Owens, who won five gold medals. Owens won the 100 and 200meter races. He also won the long jump and was in the 4x100 relay, which set a new record of 39.8 seconds, which was the first time ever under 40 seconds and a record that stood for 20 years. Owens's performance was seen by many as a refutation of Hitler's racist theories of Aryan racial superiority and remains the most memorable performance of the games. Basketball, canoeing, and field handball were on the program for the first time, and it caused a sensation when Norway beat Germany in soccer and achieved a bronze. As expected, despite American dominance, Germany ran away with the most medals in athletics.
Reference
Author: Historian and Holocaust scholar Paul R. Bartrop Description: This essay outlines the arguments for and against the international community's participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, hosted during the third year of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin began in the early years of Hitler's regime, which saw laws severely restricting the citizenship and civil rights of Jews known as the Nuremberg Race Laws (1935). Consider the ways in which Germany constructed its image during the Olympic Games. How did that image differ from its image prior to the Olympics? Pay close attention to the arguments for and against a boycott of the 1936 Olympics outlined in the sections titled "Debating Whether to Boycott" and "U.S. Olympic Team." Why did most African American newspapers support participation in the games?
1936 Berlin Olympics: Boycott Debates
The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were highly controversial at the time. From the very start they were marked by racism, with the official Nazi Party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, declaring that Jews and people of African descent, regardless of their country of origin, should not be allowed to participate. Following Nazi demands, the German Olympic Committee denied Jews all opportunity of representing Germany. These measures led many in the international community to call for a boycott of the 1936 games.
Germany Furnishes its Image
When the possibility of an international boycott was threatened, Germany responded with a superficial relaxing of the rules: now, one athlete with a Jewish background was allowed toPage 6 of 24 compete for Germany. Helene Mayer, who had a Jewish father, was a world champion fencer who had already won a gold medal at the 1928 Amsterdam Games. With an eye to the prospect of her winning another gold medal for Germany, she became the token Jew permitted to compete. As it turned out, she won silver in the individual foil event.
The prospect of other Jewish athletes competing for Germany was denied, however. The fourtime world record holder and 10time German national champion in shot put and discus throw, Lilli Henoch, was excluded; she was later deported and murdered in the Riga ghetto in 1942. Gretel Bergmann, an internationally recognized champion high jumper, was replaced on the German team by Dora Ratjen, who was later revealed to be a male who had been raised as a girl.
In order to reassure foreign opinion, Berlin was purged of all traces of Nazi antiSemitism. Local party authorities removed street signs bearing such slogans as "Jews not wanted" from Berlin's main tourist areas. At the same time, all vagrants and Roma were physically moved to a specially constructed "holding camp" outside the city at Marzahn.
Debating Whether to Boycott
In view of Germany's racist domestic policies, there was considerable debate among the international community over whether or not to boycott the games. In some countries, notably Britain, France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands, discussion took place over whether the games should be relocated. Meanwhile, exiled political opponents of the Nazis kept up the pressure for a boycott. These initiatives did not amount to anything definite; opponents of a boycott argued that the games had been awarded to Berlin in 1931 and that it would be wrong to punish the city simply because of a change of government.
Individual Jewish athletes from a number of countries, on the other hand, elected to take matters into their own hands and refused to attend. In this regard, brave athletes such as the South African Sid Kiel and Americans Milton Green and Norman Cahners should be mentioned.
U.S. Olympic Team
As one of the world's leading sporting nations, the position of the United States was crucial. In September 1934, the United States Olympic Committee accepted a German invitation to visit on a factfinding mission. After interviewing German Jews who had been carefully selected by the Nazi regime, U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage concluded that he had not found any discrimination against the Jewish population of Germany. He then became a major supporter of the games being held in Berlin, famously arguing that "politics has no place in sport." By 1935, he had convinced the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States that an American team should be sent to Berlin. The American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee supported a boycott, but they had no say in what was effectively an institutional project by the American Olympic Committee.
Most African American newspapers, on the other hand, supported participation. They argued that this was an opportunity for Nazi racial theories to be challenged and, hopefully, defeated. And to some degree, they were right; the iconic Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events, and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin.
On the day of the men's 4 x 100 relay, the Jewish American sprinters Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman were sidelined from the team. While this gave Owens the opportunity to win his fourth and final gold medal, historians have speculated that the removal of Stoller and Glickman was deliberately antiSemitic and intended to appease Hitler.
Legacy of the 1936 Games
Ultimately, Germany was the most successful country at the games, winning 33 gold medals and 89 medals overall. The United States came second in the medal tally, with 24 gold and 56 overall.
The Berlin Olympics torch relay from Mount Olympus in Greece was the first of its kind, and the games were the first to have live television coverage. Despite these advances, they were also to be the final Olympic Games for 12 years owing to World War II.
Hitler's antihuman ideologies and his quest for supreme domination and racial supremacy were the biggest challenge to the Olympic ideal until 1972—when terrorism and the murder of Jewish athletes at the Munich Games threatened the Olympic ideal once more. The president of the International Olympic Committee then was the same Avery Brundage who so dominated the American team in 1936.
Paul R. Bartrop https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229806
Reference
Author: Historian Natalie Ring Description: This essay defines and illustrates the Jim Crow era of racial segregation and discrimination in the American South.
Context and Things to Consider
What is meant by the term "Jim Crow"? How did Jim Crow laws prevent the social advancement of African Americans from the 1880s to 1960s? What is meant by de jure segregation? What is meant by de facto segregation? Consider race relations in the United States during the 1930s and the extent to which there was a contradiction between Americans' attitudes toward race relations at home and their attitudes related to the 1936 Olympics.
Segregation and Jim Crow
The term "Jim Crow" refers to the system of racial segregation and oppression that existed primarily in the South from 1877 to the mid1960s. Segregation existed in some parts of the North, yet by the turn of the century it had become a distinctly Southern phenomenon. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court declared that "separate but equal" was constitutional, and this provided the legal backbone for segregation until it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In reality, "separate but equal" was never really equal. Racial segregation violated the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, but the federal government continued to sanction the state laws and practices of Jim Crow until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Jim Crow era marked the ascendancy of white supremacy and not only consisted of the social separation of the races, but more broadly included lynching and mob violence, the manipulation of the justice system, inequality in education, economic subjugation, and the elimination of Black suffrage.
Origins of "Jim Crow"
The term Jim Crow is derived from the name of a character in a minstrel song performed by Thomas Rice in the 1830s. Blackface minstrelsy was a form of popular entertainment in which white actors blackened their face with cork and imitated what they considered to be authentic African American dialect, dance, and song. These theatrical performances frequently ridiculed African Americans and exaggerated alleged Black characteristics.
Rice named his act "Jump Jim Crow" and claimed to have based it on a dance he saw performed by an aged crippled slave in Louisville, Kentucky, owned by a Mr. Crow. Wearing ragged clothing representative of a field hand, Rice sang and danced to lyrics that included the stanza "Weel about and turn about / And do jis so, / Eb'ry time I weel about / And jump Jim Crow." The routine was immensely popular during the antebellum period, and the figure of Jim Crow became a recognizable and enduring icon in American popular culture. In the 1840s, abolitionists used the phrase Jim Crow to describe segregated railroad cars. By the end of the 19th century, the term came to signify the social separation of the races.
De Jure Segregation
Two forms of Jim Crow existed in the South: de jure and de facto. De jure segregation referred to the separation of the races as mandated specifically by law, and de facto segregation occurred by custom or tradition. In the 1880s, such laws as the segregation of street cars appeared sporadically across the South. Between 1890 and 1915, Southern states enacted an array of statutes that led to a more rigid and universal framework for the social separation of the races.
This explosion of de jure segregation reflected Southern whites' growing unease about a younger, more assertive generation of African Americans who demanded respect and recognition of their rights. In addition, the intent of widespread codification was to solidify custom and to eliminate uncertainty about the social status of blacks and whites. Signs labeled "For White" and "For Colored" dominated the Southern landscape, and Jim Crow regulated social contact in such places as restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, parks, schools, libraries, hospitals, and waiting rooms. In many cases, social separation often meant total exclusion. State legislatures also enacted antimiscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriage, and passed laws or rewrote the state constitution to make voter registration difficult, if not impossible.
De Facto Segregation
Although Southern states passed an elaborate network of laws, de facto practices of segregation endured. Patterns of de facto segregation varied depending on the location, the traditions of a community, or even the whim of a white person.
In most places, whites and blacks were expected to abide by an unspoken racial etiquette. For example, blacks could not enter a white home through the front door, address a white person by their first name, or refuse to give way to a white person on a sidewalk. Courtrooms often swore in black witnesses with separate bibles, and in many stores, blacks could not be served until white customers were finished. Whites did make exceptions for black domestic workers, but only because a black servant tending to white children in a space marked as white still clearly retained a position of inferiority. For many African Americans, Jim Crow caused incredible apprehension about the repercussions of crossing the color line. Any action taken by a black man or woman that whites perceived to be impudent or disrespectful could lead to swift and violent retaliation.
The Civil Rights Movement
After World War II, the edifice of Jim Crow began to break down. Black soldiers questioned the logic of having to fight for democracy abroad while returning home to face continued racial inequality. Protest on the grassroots level as well that initiated by institutions and celebrated leaders spread in the 1950s and early 1960s. The growing civil rights movement ultimately pressured the federal government to take action.
In 1964, the U.S. Congress answered President Lyndon B. Johnson's call to support racial equality and end Jim Crow. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade discrimination in public places, provided funding for assistance to further desegregate schools, created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and gave the attorney general more authority to prosecute civil rights violations involving voting, the use of public facilities, government, and education. It was the most extensive piece of federal legislation in support of civil rights ever ratified by Congress. While racial discrimination and oppression did not entirely disappear following passage of the Civil Rights Act, it truly marked the end of the widespread legal and social system of Jim Crow.
Natalie J. Ring https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 1903177
Image
Photographer: Unknown Description: This photograph shows a public notice on the streets of New York City announcing a meeting to advocate for a U.S. boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Date: December 3, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The location of the Olympic Games is chosen several years in advance. Germany was selected as the host country for the 1936 Olympics in 1932, shortly before the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Opposition to Hitler's regime mounted, and by the fall of 1935—around the time this photograph was taken—groups in the United States had organized for the express purpose of enacting a boycott of the games. Use the magnifying glass to zoom in on the posters in this image. Think about how the word "summons" contributes to the argument against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics. The poster suggests that boycotting the Olympic Games will help "Preserve the Olympic Ideal." What sort of characteristics does the "Olympic ideal" represent?
Notice announcing public meeting on 1936 Olympic Games boycott
A pedestrian in New York City reads a notice announcing a public meeting, scheduled for December 3, 1935, to urge Americans to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The racist and xenophobic policies of German chancellor Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led many countries to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration] https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230486
Commentary
Author: Historian Harold J. Goldberg Description: This commentary presents a historical interpretation of the 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin and argues that the games were used as a propaganda mechanism for the Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
Consider the notion of the "Olympic spirit" and the "spirit of the games." Did the 1936 undermine those values? Why or why not? Propaganda refers to information that is spread to influence public opinion regarding a specific cause or ideology. For example, a government may spread propaganda during war time to win support for the war or boost morale. Propaganda is often biased and may include disinformation or appeals to emotion rather than reason. How does the author build the case that Germany "turned the games into a propaganda showcase?" Pay close attention to the events described in the section titled "The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity." Why does the author believe the Jewish American athletes were pulled from the 4 X 100 relay team?
The 1936 Olympics were a Nazi Propaganda Showcase
In the early 1930s, enthusiasm for the Olympic Games in Europe was at a historic high. The modern Olympic Games had been held every four years since 1896, except in 1916, when they were scheduled for Berlin and canceled due to World War I. In 1932, the next Olympic Games were awarded to the Weimar Republic to celebrate Germany's new democracy, but in 1933 the republic gave way to Nazi dictatorship with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. Just as the war they started in 1939 destroyed cities, towns, villages, and people, the Nazis also ruined the Olympics held in Berlin in 1936.
A Brief History of Olympic Conflicts
The philosophy of the Olympics seeks to transcend politics and nationalism, as the world comes together to admire pure athletic skill, without concern for race, religion, or national origin. In fact, the games have frequently failed to live up to their ideals. Geopolitical crises and controversies have disrupted the games on multiple occasions, including the cancelation of the games in 1940 and 1944 due to World War II, the terrorist attack and massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972, and the U.S. boycott of the games hosted in Moscow in 1980. Among all of these flawed contests, the 1936 Olympics are still considered the most notorious for violating the spirit of the games.
Berlin, 1936: Propaganda and Discrimination
Visitors to Germany after Hitler consolidated power could not fail to see Berlin bedecked with swastika flags or hear the constant drone of Nazi propaganda on the radio. The Nazi racist agenda was clear, leading Olympic officials to debate a change of venue to another country. The fear was that the games would be spoiled by a Nazi ban on Jewish athletes and a simultaneous propaganda barrage glorifying the Nazi Party. Representatives of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) visited Germany to seek assurances that Nazi propaganda would not dominate the city and that German racial policy would not prevent athletes from participating. IOC officials were greeted by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who saw the games as a propaganda machine for the Nazis and had no reservations about lying and affirming that the games would be open to all. The IOC believed Goebbels and allowed the games to proceed in Berlin.
The result was exactly what people had feared. Nazi officials broke their pledge and refused to allow Jewish athletes to participate. Already in 1933, the German Boxing Association had expelled Erich Seelig, their light heavyweight champion, due to Jewish heritage. For the same reason, Germany's No. 1 tennis player was cut from its Davis Cup team. Likewise, Gretel Bergmann, a strong contender for a medal in the high jump, was put on the German team and then, with less than two weeks to go, was not allowed to compete. The Nazis disguised this discrimination by waiting until the American team was already on its way to Germany before they dropped her because she was Jewish. As she was the favorite for a medal, this treatment indicated that initial fears over keeping the games in Berlin were justified.
Germany turned the games into a Nazi propaganda showcase, with the Nazi flag flying from every balcony in Berlin. Hitler himself opened the games in the new Olympic Stadium on August 1, to the sound of 100,000 spectators shouting "Sieg heil" as they gave the Nazi salute. A recordsetting 49 teams paraded into the stadium; Germany had the most athletes in the stadium, with the United States bringing the secondlargest team. Interestingly, the medal count finished in that order as well: Germany won the most gold medals and the most overall medals, and the U.S. finished second in both medal categories. To complete the spectacle, the last of over 3,000 runners who carried an Olympic flame from Greece arrived to light the torch in Berlin. This Nazi innovation of having the last runner light the flame was intended to link ancient Greece with the present "Aryan" athlete.
The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity
The American team experienced both triumph and selfembarrassment. Jesse Owens, the star of the American track and field team, had already won three gold medals when the coaches called a meeting just before the relay. Owens was not scheduled to participate in that event, but two Jewish Americans had qualified and were anxious to go. One of them, Marty Glickman, described what happened at the team meeting:
"The event I was supposed to run, the 400meter relay, was one of the last events in the track and field program. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial heats, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach. Robertson announced to the 7 of us that he had heard very strong rumors that the Germans were saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400meter relay. Consequently, Sam Stoller and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. We were shocked. Sam was completely stunned. He didn't say a word in the meeting. I was a brash 18yearold kid and I said 'Coach, you can't hide worldclass sprinters.' At which point, Jesse spoke up and said 'Coach, I've won my 3 gold medals [the 100, the 200, and the long jump]. I'm tired. I've had it. Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it,' said Jesse. And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said 'You'll do as you're told.'" (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936)
American coaches had caved in to the Nazi agenda. There were never any secret German runners; in reality, the American coaches had decided that winning with Jewish runners would upset the Nazis more than winning another race with Jesse Owens. Owens went home with four gold medals, while Marty Glickman never got to participate in another Olympics due to the coming war. The United States celebrated the medal victories of Owens, but this great track and field star returned to a segregated America where he could not freely choose a restaurant or hotel for his postOlympic celebration.
Despite the mixed legacy of these games, the IOC was optimistic that 1940 would see an improvement. The games were planned for Tokyo, but Japan withdrew from hosting because of its military activity in China. Immediately the 1940 Olympics were rescheduled for Helsinki, Finland, but again the games were canceled when war started in nearby Poland in 1939. With the war still in progress, there was no possibility of holding the games in 1944, so the next Olympics were finally staged in London in 1948.
During the war, the Nazis killed more than 40 Jewish Olympic athletes as they occupied European countries.
About the Author
Harold J. Goldberg is the David E. Underdown Distinguished Professor of History at Sewanee: The University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee. His published works include Daily Life in NaziOccupied Europe (Greenwood, 2019), Competing Voices from World War II in Europe: Fighting Words (Greenwood, 2010), and DDay in the Pacific: The Battle of Saipan (Indiana University Press, 2007). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229716
Quote
Author: American Committee on Fair Play in Sports Description: This quote expresses the opinion of the American Committee on Fair Play in Sports on the political implications of holding the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Date: November 15, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The American Committee on Fair Play in Sports was assembled in the fall of 1935 to oppose U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympic Games. The committee produced publications and public service announcements intended to educate the public on the totalitarian Nazi government and its policies of racism and anti Semitism. Consider the ideals of the Olympic Games and the extent to which Germany undermined the ideals of democratic competition and sportsmanship.
American Committee on Fair Play in Sports: quote on the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Sport is prostituted when sport loses its independent and democratic character and becomes a political institution … Nazi Germany is endeavouring to use the Eleventh Olympiad to serve the necessities and interests of the Nazi Regime rather than the Olympic ideals.
–American Committee on Fair Play in Sports (November 15, 1935). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229811
Reference
Author: ABCCLIO Description: This reference article discusses goldmedalist sprinter Jesse Owens's participation in the 1936 Olympic Games, including his attitude toward Adolf Hitler as he readied for one of his races.
Context and Things to Consider
African American sprinter Owens became the first athlete in the history of the modern Olympic Games to win four gold medals in a single year. Owens's feat was celebrated by opponents of Hitler's regime as an embarrassing rebuke of Hitler's theories of Aryan racial supremacy. Consider the mindset of Owens as he readied for the 100meter finals heat and the laserfocus required of Olympic athletes. What does Owens's comment suggest about his views on Hitler? Evaluate Owens's comment in relation to the other sources. How does it illustrate the desire to reflect the ideals of the Olympic Games?
Jesse Owens: "Why Worry about Hitler?" (1936)
Jesse Owens was an African American track and field athlete. During the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, he became a national hero for defeating Adolf Hitler's Aryan athletes in a series of athletic contests.
In 1936, just a few years after Hitler rose to power in Germany, the Summer Olympic Games were held in Berlin, the nation's capital. Hitler believed in an Aryan "master race," an allegedly pure Germanic/Nordic race of people who were, according to Hitler, racially, physically, and intellectually above "lesser" peoples. The Aryan ideal was a Nordic type—tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.
Owens became the star of the 1936 Games, winning a total of four gold medals, including a world recordtying performance in the 100meter dash. Reflecting on this race, Owens discussed its personal significance and his state of focus despite the political implications of competing in Nazi Germany:
When I lined up in my lane for the finals of the 100 meters . . . I thought of all the years of practice and competition, of all who had believed in me, and of my state and university [Ohio, and the Ohio State University.]
I saw the finish line, and knew that 10 seconds would climax the work of eight years. One mistake could ruin those eight years. So, why worry about Hitler?
Hitler did not approve of Black athletes participating in the Games. By 1936, his views on the superiority of the Aryan race were known around the world, though Germany made an effort to obscure its antiSemitic policies as host of the Games. As someone who did not fit Hitler's ideal, Owens's victory in the 1936 Olympics was widely considered to be a refutation of the dictator's racist worldview and an embarrassment for the Nazi regime.
Mark Strong https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230575
COPYRIGHT 2021 ABCCLIO, LLC https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337 U.S. Participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympics Activity
Inquiry Question What were the arguments for and against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics?
The U.S. decision to take part in the 1936 Olympics, which took place in Berlin at the time of Nazi leadership, was a controversial issue that divided participating athletes, administrative organizations, and the American public itself, especially since the country was dealing with its own problems of racism during the era of Jim Crow laws. Use information collected from the provided sources and analyze your findings to explain the arguments presented by both sides: those who felt the U.S. should compete in the games, and those who felt the nation should boycott.
Clarifying Questions
What was the status of civil rights in Germany in the mid1930s, and how did it compare to the situation in the United States? What were the main arguments for participating in the games? What were the main arguments against participating in the games? How did the 1936 Berlin Olympics influence the global perception of Nazi Germany?
Vocabulary
boycott de facto segregation de jure segregation Jim Crow Nazi Party propaganda
Background Information
1936 Summer Olympic Games, Berlin
The 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin, Germany, marked a pivotal moment in the history of the international games. German chancellor Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and the institution of racist and xenophobic policies by the Nazi Party, led many to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
Hitler's Rise to Power
In their choice of Berlin, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had wanted to stress Germany's return to the international sporting world after World War I. When the Olympics were held in 1936, however, it was quite a different Germany and quite a different Berlin from those to whom the IOC had awarded the games in 1931. The rise to prominence of the Nazi Party in the 1930s elevated the party's leader, Adolf Hitler, as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Hitler's seizure of absolute power in 1934 ushered in a totalitarian regime in Germany that ruthlessly suppressed the civil rights of minorities, particularly German Jews.
Organizing the Games
The overwhelming problem for the IOC and for the United States was to get a guarantee that Jewish athletes would not be excluded from the games. At the IOC meeting in Vienna in June 1933, president of the Olympic organizing committee Theodor Lewald was able to give an assurance with the approval of the German government that "all laws relating to the Olympic Games will be respected. German Jews will not as a matter of principle be excluded from German teams in the XI Olympiad."
This guarantee convinced the president of the Olympic Committee, Henri BailletLatour, after a visit to Berlin in November 1935, when he had an audience with Hitler. After that, the attitude of the Olympic Committee was unchanged. There was no wavering, and there was total support for the games in Berlin. From that point onward, both Baillet Latour and Avery Brundage attacked all opponents of the games as being lackeys of Communism. In 1936, Avery Brundage took a place on the IOC at the expense of the American E. L. Jahncke, who had been unremittingly critical of the games in Berlin.
The first thing the Hitler state did was to place its resources wholeheartedly behind the organization committee. A close cooperative relationship developed between Reich Director of Sport Hans von Tschammer und Osten and the organization committee—a collaboration that would be expanded to encompass work on the winter games in GarmischPartenkirchen, which the IOC had no objections about awarding to Germany in the spring of 1933, four months after Hitler came to power. Leading the organization of the latter was Karl Ritter von Halt, who had swiftly joined the Nazi Party in order to assist his career as a banker. All these people combined to convince the outside world that the games in Berlin and GarmischPartenkirchen would take place without discrimination against Jews or other nonAryan races.
Nazi Propaganda and Misdirection
The Nazis reasoned that if the whole world was being invited to Germany as a guest, then the country had to be seen in its most favorable light. Despite the treatment of Jews in Germany, Jews from outside were welcome. The German press was also instructed not to say anything negative about blacks—or only if they could do so by quoting newspapers from America's southern states. Furthermore, at the winter games and the summer games, the German press was forbidden from suggesting that Jews were inferior. Abusive antiSemitic posters were removed, and the SS was given the task of ensuring that these temporary prohibitions were observed.
To underline Nazi goodwill, two German halfJews were allowed to take part in the games: the icehockey player Rudi Ball in the winter games, and the fencer Helene Mayer in the summer games. Both were 50% Jewish according to Nazi definitions, and as such were acceptable. On the other hand, a potential medalist for Germany, Gretel Bergmann, who was a highjumper and fully Jewish, was not allowed to take part.
With the assistance of the Ministry of Propaganda, the Nazis set a largescale campaign in motion to bring the world to Berlin. Bulletins in a number of languages were sent out abroad; German travel agents abroad advertised the Olympic Games in Berlin as the best place to take a summer holiday in 1936; and 156,000 Olympic posters in 19 languages were distributed.
With unlimited funds at their disposal, the organization committee could construct a completely new stadium for the games in Berlin. The style was neoclassical and there was plenty of space for a range of activities, including the socalled Maifeld, which was an exhibition and practice area situated between the stadium's marathon gate and the Olympic novelty, a bell tower with the great bell that summoned the youth of the world to Berlin—"Ich rufe die Jugend der Welt" (I call the youth of the world) was engraved on the castiron bell. The bell tower's foundation consisted of the great Langemarckhalle, originally suggested by Organizing Committee secretary general Carl Diem. The hall was envisoned as a temple commemorating the youth of Germany that had fallen in World War I at Langemarck in Flanders.
The Olympic stadium in Berlin became the site of what were the most successful games of all so far. They were directly transmitted by radio for the first time to countless countries, and in selected cinemas in Berlin it was even possible to see direct television transmission from the games. It was, however, Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia that would stand for posterity as the document of the success of the games. The film was given its premiere on Hitler's birthday in 1938 and from the very first was a roaring success both at home and abroad. It won a number of prizes and at the Venice Film Festival in 1938 was grand prize winner ahead of, for example, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was only in the United States that its success was more muted, since a greater proportion of the public were critical of developments in Germany.
The Games
The games lasted from August 1–16 and lived up to the high expectations in every respect. Athletes from 49 nations competed, 3,738 men and 328 women, and the stadium was sold out for all events, with 105,000 spectators attending every day. The crowning moment of the introductory procession in Berlin was the arrival of the torch bearer into the Olympic stadium. The new German Reich created a perfect staging for sport as an offshoot of ancient Greece. Everything went according to plan, and at the processional entry a number of countries chose to make the Nazi salute when they passed the Fuhrer's box; others stretched out their hands more horizontally and said afterward that it was the Olympic greeting.
The greatest athlete of the games was the African American Jesse Owens, who won five gold medals. Owens won the 100 and 200meter races. He also won the long jump and was in the 4x100 relay, which set a new record of 39.8 seconds, which was the first time ever under 40 seconds and a record that stood for 20 years. Owens's performance was seen by many as a refutation of Hitler's racist theories of Aryan racial superiority and remains the most memorable performance of the games. Basketball, canoeing, and field handball were on the program for the first time, and it caused a sensation when Norway beat Germany in soccer and achieved a bronze. As expected, despite American dominance, Germany ran away with the most medals in athletics.
Reference
Author: Historian and Holocaust scholar Paul R. Bartrop Description: This essay outlines the arguments for and against the international community's participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, hosted during the third year of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin began in the early years of Hitler's regime, which saw laws severely restricting the citizenship and civil rights of Jews known as the Nuremberg Race Laws (1935). Consider the ways in which Germany constructed its image during the Olympic Games. How did that image differ from its image prior to the Olympics? Pay close attention to the arguments for and against a boycott of the 1936 Olympics outlined in the sections titled "Debating Whether to Boycott" and "U.S. Olympic Team." Why did most African American newspapers support participation in the games?
1936 Berlin Olympics: Boycott Debates
The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were highly controversial at the time. From the very start they were marked by racism, with the official Nazi Party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, declaring that Jews and people of African descent, regardless of their country of origin, should not be allowed to participate. Following Nazi demands, the German Olympic Committee denied Jews all opportunity of representing Germany. These measures led many in the international community to call for a boycott of the 1936 games.
Germany Furnishes its Image
When the possibility of an international boycott was threatened, Germany responded with a superficial relaxing of the rules: now, one athlete with a Jewish background was allowed to compete for Germany. Helene Mayer, who had a Jewish father, was a world champion fencer who had already won a gold medal at the 1928 Amsterdam Games. With an eye to the prospect of her winning another gold medal for Germany, she became the token Jew permitted to compete. As it turned out, she won silver in the individual foil event.
The prospect of other Jewish athletes competing for Germany was denied, however. The fourtime world record holder and 10time German national champion in shot put and discus throw, Lilli Henoch, was excluded; she was later deported and murdered in the Riga ghetto in 1942. Gretel Bergmann, an internationally recognized champion high jumper, was replaced on the German team by Dora Ratjen, who was later revealed to be a male who had been raised as a girl.
In order to reassure foreign opinion, Berlin was purged of all traces of Nazi antiSemitism. Local party authorities removed street signs bearing such slogans as "Jews not wanted" from Berlin's main tourist areas. At the same time, all vagrants and Roma were physically moved to a specially constructed "holding camp" outside the city at Marzahn.
Debating Whether to Boycott
In view of Germany's racist domestic policies, there was considerable debate among the international community over whether or not to boycott the games. In some countries, notably Britain, France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands, discussion took place over whether the games should be relocated. Meanwhile, exiled political opponents of the Nazis kept up the pressure for a boycott. These initiatives did not amount to anything definite; opponents of a boycott argued that the games had been awarded to Berlin in 1931 and that it would be wrong to punish the city simply because of a change of government.
Individual Jewish athletes from a number of countries, on the other hand, elected to take matters into their own hands and refused to attend. In this regard, brave athletes such as the South African Sid Kiel and Americans Milton Green and Norman Cahners should be mentioned. Page 7 of 24 U.S. Olympic Team
As one of the world's leading sporting nations, the position of the United States was crucial. In September 1934, the United States Olympic Committee accepted a German invitation to visit on a factfinding mission. After interviewing German Jews who had been carefully selected by the Nazi regime, U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage concluded that he had not found any discrimination against the Jewish population of Germany. He then became a major supporter of the games being held in Berlin, famously arguing that "politics has no place in sport." By 1935, he had convinced the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States that an American team should be sent to Berlin. The American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee supported a boycott, but they had no say in what was effectively an institutional project by the American Olympic Committee.
Most African American newspapers, on the other hand, supported participation. They argued that this was an opportunity for Nazi racial theories to be challenged and, hopefully, defeated. And to some degree, they were right; the iconic Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events, and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin.
On the day of the men's 4 x 100 relay, the Jewish American sprinters Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman were sidelined from the team. While this gave Owens the opportunity to win his fourth and final gold medal, historians have speculated that the removal of Stoller and Glickman was deliberately antiSemitic and intended to appease Hitler.
Legacy of the 1936 Games
Ultimately, Germany was the most successful country at the games, winning 33 gold medals and 89 medals overall. The United States came second in the medal tally, with 24 gold and 56 overall.
The Berlin Olympics torch relay from Mount Olympus in Greece was the first of its kind, and the games were the first to have live television coverage. Despite these advances, they were also to be the final Olympic Games for 12 years owing to World War II.
Hitler's antihuman ideologies and his quest for supreme domination and racial supremacy were the biggest challenge to the Olympic ideal until 1972—when terrorism and the murder of Jewish athletes at the Munich Games threatened the Olympic ideal once more. The president of the International Olympic Committee then was the same Avery Brundage who so dominated the American team in 1936.
Paul R. Bartrop https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229806
Reference
Author: Historian Natalie Ring Description: This essay defines and illustrates the Jim Crow era of racial segregation and discrimination in the American South.
Context and Things to Consider
What is meant by the term "Jim Crow"? How did Jim Crow laws prevent the social advancement of African Americans from the 1880s to 1960s? What is meant by de jure segregation? What is meant by de facto segregation? Consider race relations in the United States during the 1930s and the extent to which there was a contradiction between Americans' attitudes toward race relations at home and their attitudes related to the 1936 Olympics.
Segregation and Jim Crow
The term "Jim Crow" refers to the system of racial segregation and oppression that existed primarily in the South from 1877 to the mid1960s. Segregation existed in some parts of the North, yet by the turn of the century it had become a distinctly Southern phenomenon. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court declared that "separate but equal" was constitutional, and this provided the legal backbone for segregation until it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In reality, "separate but equal" was never really equal. Racial segregation violated the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, but the federal government continued to sanction the state laws and practices of Jim Crow until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Jim Crow era marked the ascendancy of white supremacy and not only consisted of the social separation of the races, but more broadly included lynching and mob violence, the manipulation of the justice system, inequality in education, economic subjugation, and the elimination of Black suffrage.
Origins of "Jim Crow"
The term Jim Crow is derived from the name of a character in a minstrel song performed by Thomas Rice in the 1830s. Blackface minstrelsy was a form of popular entertainment in which white actors blackened their face with cork and imitated what they considered to be authentic African American dialect, dance, and song. These theatrical performances frequently ridiculed African Americans and exaggerated alleged Black characteristics.
Rice named his act "Jump Jim Crow" and claimed to have based it on a dance he saw performed by an aged crippled slave in Louisville, Kentucky, owned by a Mr. Crow. Wearing ragged clothing representative of a field hand, Rice sang and danced to lyrics that included the stanza "Weel about and turn about / And do jis so, / Eb'ry time I weel about / And jump Jim Crow." The routine was immensely popular during the antebellum period, and the figure of Jim Crow became a recognizable and enduring icon in American popular culture. In the 1840s, abolitionists used the phrase Jim Crow to describe segregated railroad cars. By the end of the 19th century, the term came to signify the social separation of the races.
De Jure Segregation
Two forms of Jim Crow existed in the South: de jure and de facto. De jure segregation referred to the separation of the races as mandated specifically by law, and de facto segregation occurred by custom or tradition. In the 1880s, such laws as the segregation of street cars appeared sporadically across the South. Between 1890 and 1915, Southern states enacted an array of statutes that led to a more rigid and universal framework for the social separation of the races.
This explosion of de jure segregation reflected Southern whites' growing unease about a younger, more assertive generation of African Americans who demanded respect and recognition of their rights. In addition, the intent of widespread codification was to solidify custom and to eliminate uncertainty about the social status of blacks and whites. Signs labeled "For White" and "For Colored" dominated the Southern landscape, and Jim Crow regulated social contact in such places as restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, parks, schools, libraries, hospitals, and waiting rooms. In many cases, social separation often meant total exclusion. State legislatures also enacted antimiscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriage, and passed laws or rewrote the state constitution to make voter registration difficult, if not impossible.
De Facto Segregation
Although Southern states passed an elaborate network of laws, de facto practices of segregation endured. Patterns of de facto segregation varied depending on the location, the traditions of a community, or even the whim of a white person.
In most places, whites and blacks were expected to abide by an unspoken racial etiquette. For example, blacks could not enter a white home through the front door, address a white person by their first name, or refuse to give way to a white person on a sidewalk. Courtrooms often swore in black witnesses with separate bibles, and in many stores, blacks could not be served until white customers were finished. Whites did make exceptions for black domestic workers, but only because a black servant tending to white children in a space marked as white still clearly retained a position of inferiority. For many African Americans, Jim Crow caused incredible apprehension about the repercussions of crossing the color line. Any action taken by a black man or woman that whites perceived to be impudent or disrespectful could lead to swift and violent retaliation.
The Civil Rights Movement
After World War II, the edifice of Jim Crow began to break down. Black soldiers questioned the logic of having to fight for democracy abroad while returning home to face continued racial inequality. Protest on the grassroots level as well that initiated by institutions and celebrated leaders spread in the 1950s and early 1960s. The growing civil rights movement ultimately pressured the federal government to take action.
In 1964, the U.S. Congress answered President Lyndon B. Johnson's call to support racial equality and end Jim Crow. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade discrimination in public places, provided funding for assistance to further desegregate schools, created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and gave the attorney general more authority to prosecute civil rights violations involving voting, the use of public facilities, government, and education. It was the most extensive piece of federal legislation in support of civil rights ever ratified by Congress. While racial discrimination and oppression did not entirely disappear following passage of the Civil Rights Act, it truly marked the end of the widespread legal and social system of Jim Crow.
Natalie J. Ring https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 1903177
Image
Photographer: Unknown Description: This photograph shows a public notice on the streets of New York City announcing a meeting to advocate for a U.S. boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Date: December 3, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The location of the Olympic Games is chosen several years in advance. Germany was selected as the host country for the 1936 Olympics in 1932, shortly before the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Opposition to Hitler's regime mounted, and by the fall of 1935—around the time this photograph was taken—groups in the United States had organized for the express purpose of enacting a boycott of the games. Use the magnifying glass to zoom in on the posters in this image. Think about how the word "summons" contributes to the argument against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics. The poster suggests that boycotting the Olympic Games will help "Preserve the Olympic Ideal." What sort of characteristics does the "Olympic ideal" represent?
Notice announcing public meeting on 1936 Olympic Games boycott
A pedestrian in New York City reads a notice announcing a public meeting, scheduled for December 3, 1935, to urge Americans to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The racist and xenophobic policies of German chancellor Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led many countries to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration] https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230486
Commentary
Author: Historian Harold J. Goldberg Description: This commentary presents a historical interpretation of the 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin and argues that the games were used as a propaganda mechanism for the Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
Consider the notion of the "Olympic spirit" and the "spirit of the games." Did the 1936 undermine those values? Why or why not? Propaganda refers to information that is spread to influence public opinion regarding a specific cause or ideology. For example, a government may spread propaganda during war time to win support for the war or boost morale. Propaganda is often biased and may include disinformation or appeals to emotion rather than reason. How does the author build the case that Germany "turned the games into a propaganda showcase?" Pay close attention to the events described in the section titled "The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity." Why does the author believe the Jewish American athletes were pulled from the 4 X 100 relay team?
The 1936 Olympics were a Nazi Propaganda Showcase
In the early 1930s, enthusiasm for the Olympic Games in Europe was at a historic high. The modern Olympic Games had been held every four years since 1896, except in 1916, when they were scheduled for Berlin and canceled due to World War I. In 1932, the next Olympic Games were awarded to the Weimar Republic to celebrate Germany's new democracy, but in 1933 the republic gave way to Nazi dictatorship with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. Just as the war they started in 1939 destroyed cities, towns, villages, and people, the Nazis also ruined the Olympics held in Berlin in 1936.
A Brief History of Olympic Conflicts
The philosophy of the Olympics seeks to transcend politics and nationalism, as the world comes together to admire pure athletic skill, without concern for race, religion, or national origin. In fact, the games have frequently failed to live up to their ideals. Geopolitical crises and controversies have disrupted the games on multiple occasions, including the cancelation of the games in 1940 and 1944 due to World War II, the terrorist attack and massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972, and the U.S. boycott of the games hosted in Moscow in 1980. Among all of these flawed contests, the 1936 Olympics are still considered the most notorious for violating the spirit of the games.
Berlin, 1936: Propaganda and Discrimination
Visitors to Germany after Hitler consolidated power could not fail to see Berlin bedecked with swastika flags or hear the constant drone of Nazi propaganda on the radio. The Nazi racist agenda was clear, leading Olympic officials to debate a change of venue to another country. The fear was that the games would be spoiled by a Nazi ban on Jewish athletes and a simultaneous propaganda barrage glorifying the Nazi Party. Representatives of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) visited Germany to seek assurances that Nazi propaganda would not dominate the city and that German racial policy would not prevent athletes from participating. IOC officials were greeted by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who saw the games as a propaganda machine for the Nazis and had no reservations about lying and affirming that the games would be open to all. The IOC believed Goebbels and allowed the games to proceed in Berlin.
The result was exactly what people had feared. Nazi officials broke their pledge and refused to allow Jewish athletes to participate. Already in 1933, the German Boxing Association had expelled Erich Seelig, their light heavyweight champion, due to Jewish heritage. For the same reason, Germany's No. 1 tennis player was cut from its Davis Cup team. Likewise, Gretel Bergmann, a strong contender for a medal in the high jump, was put on the German team and then, with less than two weeks to go, was not allowed to compete. The Nazis disguised this discrimination by waiting until the American team was already on its way to Germany before they dropped her because she was Jewish. As she was the favorite for a medal, this treatment indicated that initial fears over keeping the games in Berlin were justified.
Germany turned the games into a Nazi propaganda showcase, with the Nazi flag flying from every balcony in Berlin. Hitler himself opened the games in the new Olympic Stadium on August 1, to the sound of 100,000 spectators shouting "Sieg heil" as they gave the Nazi salute. A recordsetting 49 teams paraded into the stadium; Germany had the most athletes in the stadium, with the United States bringing the secondlargest team. Interestingly, the medal count finished in that order as well: Germany won the most gold medals and the most overall medals, and the U.S. finished second in both medal categories. To complete the spectacle, the last of over 3,000 runners who carried an Olympic flame from Greece arrived to light the torch in Berlin. This Nazi innovation of having the last runner light the flame was intended to link ancient Greece with the present "Aryan" athlete.
The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity
The American team experienced both triumph and selfembarrassment. Jesse Owens, the star of the American track and field team, had already won three gold medals when the coaches called a meeting just before the relay. Owens was not scheduled to participate in that event, but two Jewish Americans had qualified and were anxious to go. One of them, Marty Glickman, described what happened at the team meeting:
"The event I was supposed to run, the 400meter relay, was one of the last events in the track and field program. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial heats, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach. Robertson announced to the 7 of us that he had heard very strong rumors that the Germans were saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400meter relay. Consequently, Sam Stoller and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. We were shocked. Sam was completely stunned. He didn't say a word in the meeting. I was a brash 18yearold kid and I said 'Coach, you can't hide worldclass sprinters.' At which point, Jesse spoke up and said 'Coach, I've won my 3 gold medals [the 100, the 200, and the long jump]. I'm tired. I've had it. Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it,' said Jesse. And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said 'You'll do as you're told.'" (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936)
American coaches had caved in to the Nazi agenda. There were never any secret German runners; in reality, the American coaches had decided that winning with Jewish runners would upset the Nazis more than winning another race with Jesse Owens. Owens went home with four gold medals, while Marty Glickman never got to participate in another Olympics due to the coming war. The United States celebrated the medal victories of Owens, but this great track and field star returned to a segregated America where he could not freely choose a restaurant or hotel for his postOlympic celebration.
Despite the mixed legacy of these games, the IOC was optimistic that 1940 would see an improvement. The games were planned for Tokyo, but Japan withdrew from hosting because of its military activity in China. Immediately the 1940 Olympics were rescheduled for Helsinki, Finland, but again the games were canceled when war started in nearby Poland in 1939. With the war still in progress, there was no possibility of holding the games in 1944, so the next Olympics were finally staged in London in 1948.
During the war, the Nazis killed more than 40 Jewish Olympic athletes as they occupied European countries.
About the Author
Harold J. Goldberg is the David E. Underdown Distinguished Professor of History at Sewanee: The University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee. His published works include Daily Life in NaziOccupied Europe (Greenwood, 2019), Competing Voices from World War II in Europe: Fighting Words (Greenwood, 2010), and DDay in the Pacific: The Battle of Saipan (Indiana University Press, 2007). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229716
Quote
Author: American Committee on Fair Play in Sports Description: This quote expresses the opinion of the American Committee on Fair Play in Sports on the political implications of holding the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Date: November 15, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The American Committee on Fair Play in Sports was assembled in the fall of 1935 to oppose U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympic Games. The committee produced publications and public service announcements intended to educate the public on the totalitarian Nazi government and its policies of racism and anti Semitism. Consider the ideals of the Olympic Games and the extent to which Germany undermined the ideals of democratic competition and sportsmanship.
American Committee on Fair Play in Sports: quote on the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Sport is prostituted when sport loses its independent and democratic character and becomes a political institution … Nazi Germany is endeavouring to use the Eleventh Olympiad to serve the necessities and interests of the Nazi Regime rather than the Olympic ideals.
–American Committee on Fair Play in Sports (November 15, 1935). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229811
Reference
Author: ABCCLIO Description: This reference article discusses goldmedalist sprinter Jesse Owens's participation in the 1936 Olympic Games, including his attitude toward Adolf Hitler as he readied for one of his races.
Context and Things to Consider
African American sprinter Owens became the first athlete in the history of the modern Olympic Games to win four gold medals in a single year. Owens's feat was celebrated by opponents of Hitler's regime as an embarrassing rebuke of Hitler's theories of Aryan racial supremacy. Consider the mindset of Owens as he readied for the 100meter finals heat and the laserfocus required of Olympic athletes. What does Owens's comment suggest about his views on Hitler? Evaluate Owens's comment in relation to the other sources. How does it illustrate the desire to reflect the ideals of the Olympic Games?
Jesse Owens: "Why Worry about Hitler?" (1936)
Jesse Owens was an African American track and field athlete. During the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, he became a national hero for defeating Adolf Hitler's Aryan athletes in a series of athletic contests.
In 1936, just a few years after Hitler rose to power in Germany, the Summer Olympic Games were held in Berlin, the nation's capital. Hitler believed in an Aryan "master race," an allegedly pure Germanic/Nordic race of people who were, according to Hitler, racially, physically, and intellectually above "lesser" peoples. The Aryan ideal was a Nordic type—tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.
Owens became the star of the 1936 Games, winning a total of four gold medals, including a world recordtying performance in the 100meter dash. Reflecting on this race, Owens discussed its personal significance and his state of focus despite the political implications of competing in Nazi Germany:
When I lined up in my lane for the finals of the 100 meters . . . I thought of all the years of practice and competition, of all who had believed in me, and of my state and university [Ohio, and the Ohio State University.]
I saw the finish line, and knew that 10 seconds would climax the work of eight years. One mistake could ruin those eight years. So, why worry about Hitler?
Hitler did not approve of Black athletes participating in the Games. By 1936, his views on the superiority of the Aryan race were known around the world, though Germany made an effort to obscure its antiSemitic policies as host of the Games. As someone who did not fit Hitler's ideal, Owens's victory in the 1936 Olympics was widely considered to be a refutation of the dictator's racist worldview and an embarrassment for the Nazi regime.
Mark Strong https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230575
COPYRIGHT 2021 ABCCLIO, LLC https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337 U.S. Participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympics Activity
Inquiry Question What were the arguments for and against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics?
The U.S. decision to take part in the 1936 Olympics, which took place in Berlin at the time of Nazi leadership, was a controversial issue that divided participating athletes, administrative organizations, and the American public itself, especially since the country was dealing with its own problems of racism during the era of Jim Crow laws. Use information collected from the provided sources and analyze your findings to explain the arguments presented by both sides: those who felt the U.S. should compete in the games, and those who felt the nation should boycott.
Clarifying Questions
What was the status of civil rights in Germany in the mid1930s, and how did it compare to the situation in the United States? What were the main arguments for participating in the games? What were the main arguments against participating in the games? How did the 1936 Berlin Olympics influence the global perception of Nazi Germany?
Vocabulary
boycott de facto segregation de jure segregation Jim Crow Nazi Party propaganda
Background Information
1936 Summer Olympic Games, Berlin
The 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin, Germany, marked a pivotal moment in the history of the international games. German chancellor Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and the institution of racist and xenophobic policies by the Nazi Party, led many to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
Hitler's Rise to Power
In their choice of Berlin, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had wanted to stress Germany's return to the international sporting world after World War I. When the Olympics were held in 1936, however, it was quite a different Germany and quite a different Berlin from those to whom the IOC had awarded the games in 1931. The rise to prominence of the Nazi Party in the 1930s elevated the party's leader, Adolf Hitler, as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Hitler's seizure of absolute power in 1934 ushered in a totalitarian regime in Germany that ruthlessly suppressed the civil rights of minorities, particularly German Jews.
Organizing the Games
The overwhelming problem for the IOC and for the United States was to get a guarantee that Jewish athletes would not be excluded from the games. At the IOC meeting in Vienna in June 1933, president of the Olympic organizing committee Theodor Lewald was able to give an assurance with the approval of the German government that "all laws relating to the Olympic Games will be respected. German Jews will not as a matter of principle be excluded from German teams in the XI Olympiad."
This guarantee convinced the president of the Olympic Committee, Henri BailletLatour, after a visit to Berlin in November 1935, when he had an audience with Hitler. After that, the attitude of the Olympic Committee was unchanged. There was no wavering, and there was total support for the games in Berlin. From that point onward, both Baillet Latour and Avery Brundage attacked all opponents of the games as being lackeys of Communism. In 1936, Avery Brundage took a place on the IOC at the expense of the American E. L. Jahncke, who had been unremittingly critical of the games in Berlin.
The first thing the Hitler state did was to place its resources wholeheartedly behind the organization committee. A close cooperative relationship developed between Reich Director of Sport Hans von Tschammer und Osten and the organization committee—a collaboration that would be expanded to encompass work on the winter games in GarmischPartenkirchen, which the IOC had no objections about awarding to Germany in the spring of 1933, four months after Hitler came to power. Leading the organization of the latter was Karl Ritter von Halt, who had swiftly joined the Nazi Party in order to assist his career as a banker. All these people combined to convince the outside world that the games in Berlin and GarmischPartenkirchen would take place without discrimination against Jews or other nonAryan races.
Nazi Propaganda and Misdirection
The Nazis reasoned that if the whole world was being invited to Germany as a guest, then the country had to be seen in its most favorable light. Despite the treatment of Jews in Germany, Jews from outside were welcome. The German press was also instructed not to say anything negative about blacks—or only if they could do so by quoting newspapers from America's southern states. Furthermore, at the winter games and the summer games, the German press was forbidden from suggesting that Jews were inferior. Abusive antiSemitic posters were removed, and the SS was given the task of ensuring that these temporary prohibitions were observed.
To underline Nazi goodwill, two German halfJews were allowed to take part in the games: the icehockey player Rudi Ball in the winter games, and the fencer Helene Mayer in the summer games. Both were 50% Jewish according to Nazi definitions, and as such were acceptable. On the other hand, a potential medalist for Germany, Gretel Bergmann, who was a highjumper and fully Jewish, was not allowed to take part.
With the assistance of the Ministry of Propaganda, the Nazis set a largescale campaign in motion to bring the world to Berlin. Bulletins in a number of languages were sent out abroad; German travel agents abroad advertised the Olympic Games in Berlin as the best place to take a summer holiday in 1936; and 156,000 Olympic posters in 19 languages were distributed.
With unlimited funds at their disposal, the organization committee could construct a completely new stadium for the games in Berlin. The style was neoclassical and there was plenty of space for a range of activities, including the socalled Maifeld, which was an exhibition and practice area situated between the stadium's marathon gate and the Olympic novelty, a bell tower with the great bell that summoned the youth of the world to Berlin—"Ich rufe die Jugend der Welt" (I call the youth of the world) was engraved on the castiron bell. The bell tower's foundation consisted of the great Langemarckhalle, originally suggested by Organizing Committee secretary general Carl Diem. The hall was envisoned as a temple commemorating the youth of Germany that had fallen in World War I at Langemarck in Flanders.
The Olympic stadium in Berlin became the site of what were the most successful games of all so far. They were directly transmitted by radio for the first time to countless countries, and in selected cinemas in Berlin it was even possible to see direct television transmission from the games. It was, however, Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia that would stand for posterity as the document of the success of the games. The film was given its premiere on Hitler's birthday in 1938 and from the very first was a roaring success both at home and abroad. It won a number of prizes and at the Venice Film Festival in 1938 was grand prize winner ahead of, for example, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was only in the United States that its success was more muted, since a greater proportion of the public were critical of developments in Germany.
The Games
The games lasted from August 1–16 and lived up to the high expectations in every respect. Athletes from 49 nations competed, 3,738 men and 328 women, and the stadium was sold out for all events, with 105,000 spectators attending every day. The crowning moment of the introductory procession in Berlin was the arrival of the torch bearer into the Olympic stadium. The new German Reich created a perfect staging for sport as an offshoot of ancient Greece. Everything went according to plan, and at the processional entry a number of countries chose to make the Nazi salute when they passed the Fuhrer's box; others stretched out their hands more horizontally and said afterward that it was the Olympic greeting.
The greatest athlete of the games was the African American Jesse Owens, who won five gold medals. Owens won the 100 and 200meter races. He also won the long jump and was in the 4x100 relay, which set a new record of 39.8 seconds, which was the first time ever under 40 seconds and a record that stood for 20 years. Owens's performance was seen by many as a refutation of Hitler's racist theories of Aryan racial superiority and remains the most memorable performance of the games. Basketball, canoeing, and field handball were on the program for the first time, and it caused a sensation when Norway beat Germany in soccer and achieved a bronze. As expected, despite American dominance, Germany ran away with the most medals in athletics.
Reference
Author: Historian and Holocaust scholar Paul R. Bartrop Description: This essay outlines the arguments for and against the international community's participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, hosted during the third year of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin began in the early years of Hitler's regime, which saw laws severely restricting the citizenship and civil rights of Jews known as the Nuremberg Race Laws (1935). Consider the ways in which Germany constructed its image during the Olympic Games. How did that image differ from its image prior to the Olympics? Pay close attention to the arguments for and against a boycott of the 1936 Olympics outlined in the sections titled "Debating Whether to Boycott" and "U.S. Olympic Team." Why did most African American newspapers support participation in the games?
1936 Berlin Olympics: Boycott Debates
The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were highly controversial at the time. From the very start they were marked by racism, with the official Nazi Party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, declaring that Jews and people of African descent, regardless of their country of origin, should not be allowed to participate. Following Nazi demands, the German Olympic Committee denied Jews all opportunity of representing Germany. These measures led many in the international community to call for a boycott of the 1936 games.
Germany Furnishes its Image
When the possibility of an international boycott was threatened, Germany responded with a superficial relaxing of the rules: now, one athlete with a Jewish background was allowed to compete for Germany. Helene Mayer, who had a Jewish father, was a world champion fencer who had already won a gold medal at the 1928 Amsterdam Games. With an eye to the prospect of her winning another gold medal for Germany, she became the token Jew permitted to compete. As it turned out, she won silver in the individual foil event.
The prospect of other Jewish athletes competing for Germany was denied, however. The fourtime world record holder and 10time German national champion in shot put and discus throw, Lilli Henoch, was excluded; she was later deported and murdered in the Riga ghetto in 1942. Gretel Bergmann, an internationally recognized champion high jumper, was replaced on the German team by Dora Ratjen, who was later revealed to be a male who had been raised as a girl.
In order to reassure foreign opinion, Berlin was purged of all traces of Nazi antiSemitism. Local party authorities removed street signs bearing such slogans as "Jews not wanted" from Berlin's main tourist areas. At the same time, all vagrants and Roma were physically moved to a specially constructed "holding camp" outside the city at Marzahn.
Debating Whether to Boycott
In view of Germany's racist domestic policies, there was considerable debate among the international community over whether or not to boycott the games. In some countries, notably Britain, France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands, discussion took place over whether the games should be relocated. Meanwhile, exiled political opponents of the Nazis kept up the pressure for a boycott. These initiatives did not amount to anything definite; opponents of a boycott argued that the games had been awarded to Berlin in 1931 and that it would be wrong to punish the city simply because of a change of government.
Individual Jewish athletes from a number of countries, on the other hand, elected to take matters into their own hands and refused to attend. In this regard, brave athletes such as the South African Sid Kiel and Americans Milton Green and Norman Cahners should be mentioned.
U.S. Olympic Team
As one of the world's leading sporting nations, the position of the United States was crucial. In September 1934, the United States Olympic Committee accepted a German invitation to visit on a factfinding mission. After interviewing German Jews who had been carefully selected by the Nazi regime, U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage concluded that he had not found any discrimination against the Jewish population of Germany. He then became a major supporter of the games being held in Berlin, famously arguing that "politics has no place in sport." By 1935, he had convinced the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States that an American team should be sent to Berlin. The American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee supported a boycott, but they had no say in what was effectively an institutional project by the American Olympic Committee.
Most African American newspapers, on the other hand, supported participation. They argued that this was an opportunity for Nazi racial theories to be challenged and, hopefully, defeated. And to some degree, they were right; the iconic Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events, and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin.
On the day of the men's 4 x 100 relay, the Jewish American sprinters Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman were sidelined from the team. While this gave Owens the opportunity to win his fourth and final gold medal, historians have speculated that the removal of Stoller and Glickman was deliberately antiSemitic and intended to appease Hitler.
Legacy of the 1936 Games
Ultimately, Germany was the most successful country at the games, winning 33 gold medals and 89 medals overall. The United States came second in the medal tally, with 24 gold and 56 overall.
The Berlin Olympics torch relay from Mount Olympus in Greece was the first of its kind, and the games were the first to have live television coverage. Despite these advances, they were Page 8 of 24 also to be the final Olympic Games for 12 years owing to World War II.
Hitler's antihuman ideologies and his quest for supreme domination and racial supremacy were the biggest challenge to the Olympic ideal until 1972—when terrorism and the murder of Jewish athletes at the Munich Games threatened the Olympic ideal once more. The president of the International Olympic Committee then was the same Avery Brundage who so dominated the American team in 1936.
Paul R. Bartrop https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229806
Reference
Author: Historian Natalie Ring Description: This essay defines and illustrates the Jim Crow era of racial segregation and discrimination in the American South.
Context and Things to Consider
What is meant by the term "Jim Crow"? How did Jim Crow laws prevent the social advancement of African Americans from the 1880s to 1960s? What is meant by de jure segregation? What is meant by de facto segregation? Consider race relations in the United States during the 1930s and the extent to which there was a contradiction between Americans' attitudes toward race relations at home and their attitudes related to the 1936 Olympics.
Segregation and Jim Crow
The term "Jim Crow" refers to the system of racial segregation and oppression that existed primarily in the South from 1877 to the mid1960s. Segregation existed in some parts of the North, yet by the turn of the century it had become a distinctly Southern phenomenon. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court declared that "separate but equal" was constitutional, and this provided the legal backbone for segregation until it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In reality, "separate but equal" was never really equal. Racial segregation violated the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, but the federal government continued to sanction the state laws and practices of Jim Crow until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Jim Crow era marked the ascendancy of white supremacy and not only consisted of the social separation of the races, but more broadly included lynching and mob violence, the manipulation of the justice system, inequality in education, economic subjugation, and the elimination of Black suffrage.
Origins of "Jim Crow"
The term Jim Crow is derived from the name of a character in a minstrel song performed by Thomas Rice in the 1830s. Blackface minstrelsy was a form of popular entertainment in which white actors blackened their face with cork and imitated what they considered to be authentic African American dialect, dance, and song. These theatrical performances frequently ridiculed African Americans and exaggerated alleged Black characteristics.
Rice named his act "Jump Jim Crow" and claimed to have based it on a dance he saw performed by an aged crippled slave in Louisville, Kentucky, owned by a Mr. Crow. Wearing ragged clothing representative of a field hand, Rice sang and danced to lyrics that included the stanza "Weel about and turn about / And do jis so, / Eb'ry time I weel about / And jump Jim Crow." The routine was immensely popular during the antebellum period, and the figure of Jim Crow became a recognizable and enduring icon in American popular culture. In the 1840s, abolitionists used the phrase Jim Crow to describe segregated railroad cars. By the end of the 19th century, the term came to signify the social separation of the races.
De Jure Segregation
Two forms of Jim Crow existed in the South: de jure and de facto. De jure segregation referred to the separation of the races as mandated specifically by law, and de facto segregation occurred by custom or tradition. In the 1880s, such laws as the segregation of street cars appeared sporadically across the South. Between 1890 and 1915, Southern states enacted an array of statutes that led to a more rigid and universal framework for the social separation of the races.
This explosion of de jure segregation reflected Southern whites' growing unease about a younger, more assertive generation of African Americans who demanded respect and recognition of their rights. In addition, the intent of widespread codification was to solidify custom and to eliminate uncertainty about the social status of blacks and whites. Signs labeled "For White" and "For Colored" dominated the Southern landscape, and Jim Crow regulated social contact in such places as restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, parks, schools, libraries, hospitals, and waiting rooms. In many cases, social separation often meant total exclusion. State legislatures also enacted antimiscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriage, and passed laws or rewrote the state constitution to make voter registration difficult, if not impossible.
De Facto Segregation
Although Southern states passed an elaborate network of laws, de facto practices of segregation endured. Patterns of de facto segregation varied depending on the location, the traditions of a community, or even the whim of a white person.
In most places, whites and blacks were expected to abide by an unspoken racial etiquette. For example, blacks could not enter a white home through the front door, address a white person by their first name, or refuse to give way to a white person on a sidewalk. Courtrooms often swore in black witnesses with separate bibles, and in many stores, blacks could not be served until white customers were finished. Whites did make exceptions for black domestic workers, but only because a black servant tending to white children in a space marked as white still clearly retained a position of inferiority. For many African Americans, Jim Crow caused incredible apprehension about the repercussions of crossing the color line. Any action taken by a black man or woman that whites perceived to be impudent or disrespectful could lead to swift and violent retaliation.
The Civil Rights Movement
After World War II, the edifice of Jim Crow began to break down. Black soldiers questioned the logic of having to fight for democracy abroad while returning home to face continued racial inequality. Protest on the grassroots level as well that initiated by institutions and celebrated leaders spread in the 1950s and early 1960s. The growing civil rights movement ultimately pressured the federal government to take action.
In 1964, the U.S. Congress answered President Lyndon B. Johnson's call to support racial equality and end Jim Crow. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade discrimination in public places, provided funding for assistance to further desegregate schools, created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and gave the attorney general more authority to prosecute civil rights violations involving voting, the use of public facilities, government, and education. It was the most extensive piece of federal legislation in support of civil rights ever ratified by Congress. While racial discrimination and oppression did not entirely disappear following passage of the Civil Rights Act, it truly marked the end of the widespread legal and social system of Jim Crow.
Natalie J. Ring https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 1903177
Image
Photographer: Unknown Description: This photograph shows a public notice on the streets of New York City announcing a meeting to advocate for a U.S. boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Date: December 3, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The location of the Olympic Games is chosen several years in advance. Germany was selected as the host country for the 1936 Olympics in 1932, shortly before the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Opposition to Hitler's regime mounted, and by the fall of 1935—around the time this photograph was taken—groups in the United States had organized for the express purpose of enacting a boycott of the games. Use the magnifying glass to zoom in on the posters in this image. Think about how the word "summons" contributes to the argument against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics. The poster suggests that boycotting the Olympic Games will help "Preserve the Olympic Ideal." What sort of characteristics does the "Olympic ideal" represent?
Notice announcing public meeting on 1936 Olympic Games boycott
A pedestrian in New York City reads a notice announcing a public meeting, scheduled for December 3, 1935, to urge Americans to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The racist and xenophobic policies of German chancellor Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led many countries to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration] https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230486
Commentary
Author: Historian Harold J. Goldberg Description: This commentary presents a historical interpretation of the 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin and argues that the games were used as a propaganda mechanism for the Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
Consider the notion of the "Olympic spirit" and the "spirit of the games." Did the 1936 undermine those values? Why or why not? Propaganda refers to information that is spread to influence public opinion regarding a specific cause or ideology. For example, a government may spread propaganda during war time to win support for the war or boost morale. Propaganda is often biased and may include disinformation or appeals to emotion rather than reason. How does the author build the case that Germany "turned the games into a propaganda showcase?" Pay close attention to the events described in the section titled "The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity." Why does the author believe the Jewish American athletes were pulled from the 4 X 100 relay team?
The 1936 Olympics were a Nazi Propaganda Showcase
In the early 1930s, enthusiasm for the Olympic Games in Europe was at a historic high. The modern Olympic Games had been held every four years since 1896, except in 1916, when they were scheduled for Berlin and canceled due to World War I. In 1932, the next Olympic Games were awarded to the Weimar Republic to celebrate Germany's new democracy, but in 1933 the republic gave way to Nazi dictatorship with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. Just as the war they started in 1939 destroyed cities, towns, villages, and people, the Nazis also ruined the Olympics held in Berlin in 1936.
A Brief History of Olympic Conflicts
The philosophy of the Olympics seeks to transcend politics and nationalism, as the world comes together to admire pure athletic skill, without concern for race, religion, or national origin. In fact, the games have frequently failed to live up to their ideals. Geopolitical crises and controversies have disrupted the games on multiple occasions, including the cancelation of the games in 1940 and 1944 due to World War II, the terrorist attack and massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972, and the U.S. boycott of the games hosted in Moscow in 1980. Among all of these flawed contests, the 1936 Olympics are still considered the most notorious for violating the spirit of the games.
Berlin, 1936: Propaganda and Discrimination
Visitors to Germany after Hitler consolidated power could not fail to see Berlin bedecked with swastika flags or hear the constant drone of Nazi propaganda on the radio. The Nazi racist agenda was clear, leading Olympic officials to debate a change of venue to another country. The fear was that the games would be spoiled by a Nazi ban on Jewish athletes and a simultaneous propaganda barrage glorifying the Nazi Party. Representatives of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) visited Germany to seek assurances that Nazi propaganda would not dominate the city and that German racial policy would not prevent athletes from participating. IOC officials were greeted by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who saw the games as a propaganda machine for the Nazis and had no reservations about lying and affirming that the games would be open to all. The IOC believed Goebbels and allowed the games to proceed in Berlin.
The result was exactly what people had feared. Nazi officials broke their pledge and refused to allow Jewish athletes to participate. Already in 1933, the German Boxing Association had expelled Erich Seelig, their light heavyweight champion, due to Jewish heritage. For the same reason, Germany's No. 1 tennis player was cut from its Davis Cup team. Likewise, Gretel Bergmann, a strong contender for a medal in the high jump, was put on the German team and then, with less than two weeks to go, was not allowed to compete. The Nazis disguised this discrimination by waiting until the American team was already on its way to Germany before they dropped her because she was Jewish. As she was the favorite for a medal, this treatment indicated that initial fears over keeping the games in Berlin were justified.
Germany turned the games into a Nazi propaganda showcase, with the Nazi flag flying from every balcony in Berlin. Hitler himself opened the games in the new Olympic Stadium on August 1, to the sound of 100,000 spectators shouting "Sieg heil" as they gave the Nazi salute. A recordsetting 49 teams paraded into the stadium; Germany had the most athletes in the stadium, with the United States bringing the secondlargest team. Interestingly, the medal count finished in that order as well: Germany won the most gold medals and the most overall medals, and the U.S. finished second in both medal categories. To complete the spectacle, the last of over 3,000 runners who carried an Olympic flame from Greece arrived to light the torch in Berlin. This Nazi innovation of having the last runner light the flame was intended to link ancient Greece with the present "Aryan" athlete.
The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity
The American team experienced both triumph and selfembarrassment. Jesse Owens, the star of the American track and field team, had already won three gold medals when the coaches called a meeting just before the relay. Owens was not scheduled to participate in that event, but two Jewish Americans had qualified and were anxious to go. One of them, Marty Glickman, described what happened at the team meeting:
"The event I was supposed to run, the 400meter relay, was one of the last events in the track and field program. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial heats, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach. Robertson announced to the 7 of us that he had heard very strong rumors that the Germans were saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400meter relay. Consequently, Sam Stoller and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. We were shocked. Sam was completely stunned. He didn't say a word in the meeting. I was a brash 18yearold kid and I said 'Coach, you can't hide worldclass sprinters.' At which point, Jesse spoke up and said 'Coach, I've won my 3 gold medals [the 100, the 200, and the long jump]. I'm tired. I've had it. Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it,' said Jesse. And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said 'You'll do as you're told.'" (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936)
American coaches had caved in to the Nazi agenda. There were never any secret German runners; in reality, the American coaches had decided that winning with Jewish runners would upset the Nazis more than winning another race with Jesse Owens. Owens went home with four gold medals, while Marty Glickman never got to participate in another Olympics due to the coming war. The United States celebrated the medal victories of Owens, but this great track and field star returned to a segregated America where he could not freely choose a restaurant or hotel for his postOlympic celebration.
Despite the mixed legacy of these games, the IOC was optimistic that 1940 would see an improvement. The games were planned for Tokyo, but Japan withdrew from hosting because of its military activity in China. Immediately the 1940 Olympics were rescheduled for Helsinki, Finland, but again the games were canceled when war started in nearby Poland in 1939. With the war still in progress, there was no possibility of holding the games in 1944, so the next Olympics were finally staged in London in 1948.
During the war, the Nazis killed more than 40 Jewish Olympic athletes as they occupied European countries.
About the Author
Harold J. Goldberg is the David E. Underdown Distinguished Professor of History at Sewanee: The University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee. His published works include Daily Life in NaziOccupied Europe (Greenwood, 2019), Competing Voices from World War II in Europe: Fighting Words (Greenwood, 2010), and DDay in the Pacific: The Battle of Saipan (Indiana University Press, 2007). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229716
Quote
Author: American Committee on Fair Play in Sports Description: This quote expresses the opinion of the American Committee on Fair Play in Sports on the political implications of holding the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Date: November 15, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The American Committee on Fair Play in Sports was assembled in the fall of 1935 to oppose U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympic Games. The committee produced publications and public service announcements intended to educate the public on the totalitarian Nazi government and its policies of racism and anti Semitism. Consider the ideals of the Olympic Games and the extent to which Germany undermined the ideals of democratic competition and sportsmanship.
American Committee on Fair Play in Sports: quote on the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Sport is prostituted when sport loses its independent and democratic character and becomes a political institution … Nazi Germany is endeavouring to use the Eleventh Olympiad to serve the necessities and interests of the Nazi Regime rather than the Olympic ideals.
–American Committee on Fair Play in Sports (November 15, 1935). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229811
Reference
Author: ABCCLIO Description: This reference article discusses goldmedalist sprinter Jesse Owens's participation in the 1936 Olympic Games, including his attitude toward Adolf Hitler as he readied for one of his races.
Context and Things to Consider
African American sprinter Owens became the first athlete in the history of the modern Olympic Games to win four gold medals in a single year. Owens's feat was celebrated by opponents of Hitler's regime as an embarrassing rebuke of Hitler's theories of Aryan racial supremacy. Consider the mindset of Owens as he readied for the 100meter finals heat and the laserfocus required of Olympic athletes. What does Owens's comment suggest about his views on Hitler? Evaluate Owens's comment in relation to the other sources. How does it illustrate the desire to reflect the ideals of the Olympic Games?
Jesse Owens: "Why Worry about Hitler?" (1936)
Jesse Owens was an African American track and field athlete. During the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, he became a national hero for defeating Adolf Hitler's Aryan athletes in a series of athletic contests.
In 1936, just a few years after Hitler rose to power in Germany, the Summer Olympic Games were held in Berlin, the nation's capital. Hitler believed in an Aryan "master race," an allegedly pure Germanic/Nordic race of people who were, according to Hitler, racially, physically, and intellectually above "lesser" peoples. The Aryan ideal was a Nordic type—tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.
Owens became the star of the 1936 Games, winning a total of four gold medals, including a world recordtying performance in the 100meter dash. Reflecting on this race, Owens discussed its personal significance and his state of focus despite the political implications of competing in Nazi Germany:
When I lined up in my lane for the finals of the 100 meters . . . I thought of all the years of practice and competition, of all who had believed in me, and of my state and university [Ohio, and the Ohio State University.]
I saw the finish line, and knew that 10 seconds would climax the work of eight years. One mistake could ruin those eight years. So, why worry about Hitler?
Hitler did not approve of Black athletes participating in the Games. By 1936, his views on the superiority of the Aryan race were known around the world, though Germany made an effort to obscure its antiSemitic policies as host of the Games. As someone who did not fit Hitler's ideal, Owens's victory in the 1936 Olympics was widely considered to be a refutation of the dictator's racist worldview and an embarrassment for the Nazi regime.
Mark Strong https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230575
COPYRIGHT 2021 ABCCLIO, LLC https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337 U.S. Participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympics Activity
Inquiry Question What were the arguments for and against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics?
The U.S. decision to take part in the 1936 Olympics, which took place in Berlin at the time of Nazi leadership, was a controversial issue that divided participating athletes, administrative organizations, and the American public itself, especially since the country was dealing with its own problems of racism during the era of Jim Crow laws. Use information collected from the provided sources and analyze your findings to explain the arguments presented by both sides: those who felt the U.S. should compete in the games, and those who felt the nation should boycott.
Clarifying Questions
What was the status of civil rights in Germany in the mid1930s, and how did it compare to the situation in the United States? What were the main arguments for participating in the games? What were the main arguments against participating in the games? How did the 1936 Berlin Olympics influence the global perception of Nazi Germany?
Vocabulary
boycott de facto segregation de jure segregation Jim Crow Nazi Party propaganda
Background Information
1936 Summer Olympic Games, Berlin
The 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin, Germany, marked a pivotal moment in the history of the international games. German chancellor Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and the institution of racist and xenophobic policies by the Nazi Party, led many to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
Hitler's Rise to Power
In their choice of Berlin, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had wanted to stress Germany's return to the international sporting world after World War I. When the Olympics were held in 1936, however, it was quite a different Germany and quite a different Berlin from those to whom the IOC had awarded the games in 1931. The rise to prominence of the Nazi Party in the 1930s elevated the party's leader, Adolf Hitler, as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Hitler's seizure of absolute power in 1934 ushered in a totalitarian regime in Germany that ruthlessly suppressed the civil rights of minorities, particularly German Jews.
Organizing the Games
The overwhelming problem for the IOC and for the United States was to get a guarantee that Jewish athletes would not be excluded from the games. At the IOC meeting in Vienna in June 1933, president of the Olympic organizing committee Theodor Lewald was able to give an assurance with the approval of the German government that "all laws relating to the Olympic Games will be respected. German Jews will not as a matter of principle be excluded from German teams in the XI Olympiad."
This guarantee convinced the president of the Olympic Committee, Henri BailletLatour, after a visit to Berlin in November 1935, when he had an audience with Hitler. After that, the attitude of the Olympic Committee was unchanged. There was no wavering, and there was total support for the games in Berlin. From that point onward, both Baillet Latour and Avery Brundage attacked all opponents of the games as being lackeys of Communism. In 1936, Avery Brundage took a place on the IOC at the expense of the American E. L. Jahncke, who had been unremittingly critical of the games in Berlin.
The first thing the Hitler state did was to place its resources wholeheartedly behind the organization committee. A close cooperative relationship developed between Reich Director of Sport Hans von Tschammer und Osten and the organization committee—a collaboration that would be expanded to encompass work on the winter games in GarmischPartenkirchen, which the IOC had no objections about awarding to Germany in the spring of 1933, four months after Hitler came to power. Leading the organization of the latter was Karl Ritter von Halt, who had swiftly joined the Nazi Party in order to assist his career as a banker. All these people combined to convince the outside world that the games in Berlin and GarmischPartenkirchen would take place without discrimination against Jews or other nonAryan races.
Nazi Propaganda and Misdirection
The Nazis reasoned that if the whole world was being invited to Germany as a guest, then the country had to be seen in its most favorable light. Despite the treatment of Jews in Germany, Jews from outside were welcome. The German press was also instructed not to say anything negative about blacks—or only if they could do so by quoting newspapers from America's southern states. Furthermore, at the winter games and the summer games, the German press was forbidden from suggesting that Jews were inferior. Abusive antiSemitic posters were removed, and the SS was given the task of ensuring that these temporary prohibitions were observed.
To underline Nazi goodwill, two German halfJews were allowed to take part in the games: the icehockey player Rudi Ball in the winter games, and the fencer Helene Mayer in the summer games. Both were 50% Jewish according to Nazi definitions, and as such were acceptable. On the other hand, a potential medalist for Germany, Gretel Bergmann, who was a highjumper and fully Jewish, was not allowed to take part.
With the assistance of the Ministry of Propaganda, the Nazis set a largescale campaign in motion to bring the world to Berlin. Bulletins in a number of languages were sent out abroad; German travel agents abroad advertised the Olympic Games in Berlin as the best place to take a summer holiday in 1936; and 156,000 Olympic posters in 19 languages were distributed.
With unlimited funds at their disposal, the organization committee could construct a completely new stadium for the games in Berlin. The style was neoclassical and there was plenty of space for a range of activities, including the socalled Maifeld, which was an exhibition and practice area situated between the stadium's marathon gate and the Olympic novelty, a bell tower with the great bell that summoned the youth of the world to Berlin—"Ich rufe die Jugend der Welt" (I call the youth of the world) was engraved on the castiron bell. The bell tower's foundation consisted of the great Langemarckhalle, originally suggested by Organizing Committee secretary general Carl Diem. The hall was envisoned as a temple commemorating the youth of Germany that had fallen in World War I at Langemarck in Flanders.
The Olympic stadium in Berlin became the site of what were the most successful games of all so far. They were directly transmitted by radio for the first time to countless countries, and in selected cinemas in Berlin it was even possible to see direct television transmission from the games. It was, however, Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia that would stand for posterity as the document of the success of the games. The film was given its premiere on Hitler's birthday in 1938 and from the very first was a roaring success both at home and abroad. It won a number of prizes and at the Venice Film Festival in 1938 was grand prize winner ahead of, for example, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was only in the United States that its success was more muted, since a greater proportion of the public were critical of developments in Germany.
The Games
The games lasted from August 1–16 and lived up to the high expectations in every respect. Athletes from 49 nations competed, 3,738 men and 328 women, and the stadium was sold out for all events, with 105,000 spectators attending every day. The crowning moment of the introductory procession in Berlin was the arrival of the torch bearer into the Olympic stadium. The new German Reich created a perfect staging for sport as an offshoot of ancient Greece. Everything went according to plan, and at the processional entry a number of countries chose to make the Nazi salute when they passed the Fuhrer's box; others stretched out their hands more horizontally and said afterward that it was the Olympic greeting.
The greatest athlete of the games was the African American Jesse Owens, who won five gold medals. Owens won the 100 and 200meter races. He also won the long jump and was in the 4x100 relay, which set a new record of 39.8 seconds, which was the first time ever under 40 seconds and a record that stood for 20 years. Owens's performance was seen by many as a refutation of Hitler's racist theories of Aryan racial superiority and remains the most memorable performance of the games. Basketball, canoeing, and field handball were on the program for the first time, and it caused a sensation when Norway beat Germany in soccer and achieved a bronze. As expected, despite American dominance, Germany ran away with the most medals in athletics.
Reference
Author: Historian and Holocaust scholar Paul R. Bartrop Description: This essay outlines the arguments for and against the international community's participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, hosted during the third year of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin began in the early years of Hitler's regime, which saw laws severely restricting the citizenship and civil rights of Jews known as the Nuremberg Race Laws (1935). Consider the ways in which Germany constructed its image during the Olympic Games. How did that image differ from its image prior to the Olympics? Pay close attention to the arguments for and against a boycott of the 1936 Olympics outlined in the sections titled "Debating Whether to Boycott" and "U.S. Olympic Team." Why did most African American newspapers support participation in the games?
1936 Berlin Olympics: Boycott Debates
The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were highly controversial at the time. From the very start they were marked by racism, with the official Nazi Party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, declaring that Jews and people of African descent, regardless of their country of origin, should not be allowed to participate. Following Nazi demands, the German Olympic Committee denied Jews all opportunity of representing Germany. These measures led many in the international community to call for a boycott of the 1936 games.
Germany Furnishes its Image
When the possibility of an international boycott was threatened, Germany responded with a superficial relaxing of the rules: now, one athlete with a Jewish background was allowed to compete for Germany. Helene Mayer, who had a Jewish father, was a world champion fencer who had already won a gold medal at the 1928 Amsterdam Games. With an eye to the prospect of her winning another gold medal for Germany, she became the token Jew permitted to compete. As it turned out, she won silver in the individual foil event.
The prospect of other Jewish athletes competing for Germany was denied, however. The fourtime world record holder and 10time German national champion in shot put and discus throw, Lilli Henoch, was excluded; she was later deported and murdered in the Riga ghetto in 1942. Gretel Bergmann, an internationally recognized champion high jumper, was replaced on the German team by Dora Ratjen, who was later revealed to be a male who had been raised as a girl.
In order to reassure foreign opinion, Berlin was purged of all traces of Nazi antiSemitism. Local party authorities removed street signs bearing such slogans as "Jews not wanted" from Berlin's main tourist areas. At the same time, all vagrants and Roma were physically moved to a specially constructed "holding camp" outside the city at Marzahn.
Debating Whether to Boycott
In view of Germany's racist domestic policies, there was considerable debate among the international community over whether or not to boycott the games. In some countries, notably Britain, France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands, discussion took place over whether the games should be relocated. Meanwhile, exiled political opponents of the Nazis kept up the pressure for a boycott. These initiatives did not amount to anything definite; opponents of a boycott argued that the games had been awarded to Berlin in 1931 and that it would be wrong to punish the city simply because of a change of government.
Individual Jewish athletes from a number of countries, on the other hand, elected to take matters into their own hands and refused to attend. In this regard, brave athletes such as the South African Sid Kiel and Americans Milton Green and Norman Cahners should be mentioned.
U.S. Olympic Team
As one of the world's leading sporting nations, the position of the United States was crucial. In September 1934, the United States Olympic Committee accepted a German invitation to visit on a factfinding mission. After interviewing German Jews who had been carefully selected by the Nazi regime, U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage concluded that he had not found any discrimination against the Jewish population of Germany. He then became a major supporter of the games being held in Berlin, famously arguing that "politics has no place in sport." By 1935, he had convinced the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States that an American team should be sent to Berlin. The American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee supported a boycott, but they had no say in what was effectively an institutional project by the American Olympic Committee.
Most African American newspapers, on the other hand, supported participation. They argued that this was an opportunity for Nazi racial theories to be challenged and, hopefully, defeated. And to some degree, they were right; the iconic Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events, and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin.
On the day of the men's 4 x 100 relay, the Jewish American sprinters Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman were sidelined from the team. While this gave Owens the opportunity to win his fourth and final gold medal, historians have speculated that the removal of Stoller and Glickman was deliberately antiSemitic and intended to appease Hitler.
Legacy of the 1936 Games
Ultimately, Germany was the most successful country at the games, winning 33 gold medals and 89 medals overall. The United States came second in the medal tally, with 24 gold and 56 overall.
The Berlin Olympics torch relay from Mount Olympus in Greece was the first of its kind, and the games were the first to have live television coverage. Despite these advances, they were also to be the final Olympic Games for 12 years owing to World War II.
Hitler's antihuman ideologies and his quest for supreme domination and racial supremacy were the biggest challenge to the Olympic ideal until 1972—when terrorism and the murder of Jewish athletes at the Munich Games threatened the Olympic ideal once more. The president of the International Olympic Committee then was the same Avery Brundage who so dominated the American team in 1936.
Paul R. Bartrop https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229806
Reference
Author: Historian Natalie Ring Description: This essay defines and illustrates the Jim Crow era of racial segregation and discrimination in the American South.
Context and Things to Consider
What is meant by the term "Jim Crow"? How did Jim Crow laws prevent the social advancement of African Americans from the 1880s to 1960s? What is meant by de jure segregation? What is meant by de facto segregation? Consider race relations in the United States during the 1930s and the extent to which there was a contradiction between Americans' attitudes toward race relations at home and their attitudes related to the 1936 Olympics.
Segregation and Jim Crow
The term "Jim Crow" refers to the system of racial segregation and oppression that existed primarily in the South from 1877 to the mid1960s. Page 9 of 24 Segregation existed in some parts of the North, yet by the turn of the century it had become a distinctly Southern phenomenon. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court declared that "separate but equal" was constitutional, and this provided the legal backbone for segregation until it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In reality, "separate but equal" was never really equal. Racial segregation violated the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, but the federal government continued to sanction the state laws and practices of Jim Crow until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Jim Crow era marked the ascendancy of white supremacy and not only consisted of the social separation of the races, but more broadly included lynching and mob violence, the manipulation of the justice system, inequality in education, economic subjugation, and the elimination of Black suffrage.
Origins of "Jim Crow"
The term Jim Crow is derived from the name of a character in a minstrel song performed by Thomas Rice in the 1830s. Blackface minstrelsy was a form of popular entertainment in which white actors blackened their face with cork and imitated what they considered to be authentic African American dialect, dance, and song. These theatrical performances frequently ridiculed African Americans and exaggerated alleged Black characteristics.
Rice named his act "Jump Jim Crow" and claimed to have based it on a dance he saw performed by an aged crippled slave in Louisville, Kentucky, owned by a Mr. Crow. Wearing ragged clothing representative of a field hand, Rice sang and danced to lyrics that included the stanza "Weel about and turn about / And do jis so, / Eb'ry time I weel about / And jump Jim Crow." The routine was immensely popular during the antebellum period, and the figure of Jim Crow became a recognizable and enduring icon in American popular culture. In the 1840s, abolitionists used the phrase Jim Crow to describe segregated railroad cars. By the end of the 19th century, the term came to signify the social separation of the races.
De Jure Segregation
Two forms of Jim Crow existed in the South: de jure and de facto. De jure segregation referred to the separation of the races as mandated specifically by law, and de facto segregation occurred by custom or tradition. In the 1880s, such laws as the segregation of street cars appeared sporadically across the South. Between 1890 and 1915, Southern states enacted an array of statutes that led to a more rigid and universal framework for the social separation of the races.
This explosion of de jure segregation reflected Southern whites' growing unease about a younger, more assertive generation of African Americans who demanded respect and recognition of their rights. In addition, the intent of widespread codification was to solidify custom and to eliminate uncertainty about the social status of blacks and whites. Signs labeled "For White" and "For Colored" dominated the Southern landscape, and Jim Crow regulated social contact in such places as restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, parks, schools, libraries, hospitals, and waiting rooms. In many cases, social separation often meant total exclusion. State legislatures also enacted antimiscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriage, and passed laws or rewrote the state constitution to make voter registration difficult, if not impossible.
De Facto Segregation
Although Southern states passed an elaborate network of laws, de facto practices of segregation endured. Patterns of de facto segregation varied depending on the location, the traditions of a community, or even the whim of a white person.
In most places, whites and blacks were expected to abide by an unspoken racial etiquette. For example, blacks could not enter a white home through the front door, address a white person by their first name, or refuse to give way to a white person on a sidewalk. Courtrooms often swore in black witnesses with separate bibles, and in many stores, blacks could not be served until white customers were finished. Whites did make exceptions for black domestic workers, but only because a black servant tending to white children in a space marked as white still clearly retained a position of inferiority. For many African Americans, Jim Crow caused incredible apprehension about the repercussions of crossing the color line. Any action taken by a black man or woman that whites perceived to be impudent or disrespectful could lead to swift and violent retaliation.
The Civil Rights Movement
After World War II, the edifice of Jim Crow began to break down. Black soldiers questioned the logic of having to fight for democracy abroad while returning home to face continued racial inequality. Protest on the grassroots level as well that initiated by institutions and celebrated leaders spread in the 1950s and early 1960s. The growing civil rights movement ultimately pressured the federal government to take action.
In 1964, the U.S. Congress answered President Lyndon B. Johnson's call to support racial equality and end Jim Crow. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade discrimination in public places, provided funding for assistance to further desegregate schools, created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and gave the attorney general more authority to prosecute civil rights violations involving voting, the use of public facilities, government, and education. It was the most extensive piece of federal legislation in support of civil rights ever ratified by Congress. While racial discrimination and oppression did not entirely disappear following passage of the Civil Rights Act, it truly marked the end of the widespread legal and social system of Jim Crow.
Natalie J. Ring https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 1903177
Image
Photographer: Unknown Description: This photograph shows a public notice on the streets of New York City announcing a meeting to advocate for a U.S. boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Date: December 3, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The location of the Olympic Games is chosen several years in advance. Germany was selected as the host country for the 1936 Olympics in 1932, shortly before the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Opposition to Hitler's regime mounted, and by the fall of 1935—around the time this photograph was taken—groups in the United States had organized for the express purpose of enacting a boycott of the games. Use the magnifying glass to zoom in on the posters in this image. Think about how the word "summons" contributes to the argument against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics. The poster suggests that boycotting the Olympic Games will help "Preserve the Olympic Ideal." What sort of characteristics does the "Olympic ideal" represent?
Notice announcing public meeting on 1936 Olympic Games boycott
A pedestrian in New York City reads a notice announcing a public meeting, scheduled for December 3, 1935, to urge Americans to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The racist and xenophobic policies of German chancellor Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led many countries to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration] https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230486
Commentary
Author: Historian Harold J. Goldberg Description: This commentary presents a historical interpretation of the 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin and argues that the games were used as a propaganda mechanism for the Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
Consider the notion of the "Olympic spirit" and the "spirit of the games." Did the 1936 undermine those values? Why or why not? Propaganda refers to information that is spread to influence public opinion regarding a specific cause or ideology. For example, a government may spread propaganda during war time to win support for the war or boost morale. Propaganda is often biased and may include disinformation or appeals to emotion rather than reason. How does the author build the case that Germany "turned the games into a propaganda showcase?" Pay close attention to the events described in the section titled "The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity." Why does the author believe the Jewish American athletes were pulled from the 4 X 100 relay team?
The 1936 Olympics were a Nazi Propaganda Showcase
In the early 1930s, enthusiasm for the Olympic Games in Europe was at a historic high. The modern Olympic Games had been held every four years since 1896, except in 1916, when they were scheduled for Berlin and canceled due to World War I. In 1932, the next Olympic Games were awarded to the Weimar Republic to celebrate Germany's new democracy, but in 1933 the republic gave way to Nazi dictatorship with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. Just as the war they started in 1939 destroyed cities, towns, villages, and people, the Nazis also ruined the Olympics held in Berlin in 1936.
A Brief History of Olympic Conflicts
The philosophy of the Olympics seeks to transcend politics and nationalism, as the world comes together to admire pure athletic skill, without concern for race, religion, or national origin. In fact, the games have frequently failed to live up to their ideals. Geopolitical crises and controversies have disrupted the games on multiple occasions, including the cancelation of the games in 1940 and 1944 due to World War II, the terrorist attack and massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972, and the U.S. boycott of the games hosted in Moscow in 1980. Among all of these flawed contests, the 1936 Olympics are still considered the most notorious for violating the spirit of the games.
Berlin, 1936: Propaganda and Discrimination
Visitors to Germany after Hitler consolidated power could not fail to see Berlin bedecked with swastika flags or hear the constant drone of Nazi propaganda on the radio. The Nazi racist agenda was clear, leading Olympic officials to debate a change of venue to another country. The fear was that the games would be spoiled by a Nazi ban on Jewish athletes and a simultaneous propaganda barrage glorifying the Nazi Party. Representatives of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) visited Germany to seek assurances that Nazi propaganda would not dominate the city and that German racial policy would not prevent athletes from participating. IOC officials were greeted by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who saw the games as a propaganda machine for the Nazis and had no reservations about lying and affirming that the games would be open to all. The IOC believed Goebbels and allowed the games to proceed in Berlin.
The result was exactly what people had feared. Nazi officials broke their pledge and refused to allow Jewish athletes to participate. Already in 1933, the German Boxing Association had expelled Erich Seelig, their light heavyweight champion, due to Jewish heritage. For the same reason, Germany's No. 1 tennis player was cut from its Davis Cup team. Likewise, Gretel Bergmann, a strong contender for a medal in the high jump, was put on the German team and then, with less than two weeks to go, was not allowed to compete. The Nazis disguised this discrimination by waiting until the American team was already on its way to Germany before they dropped her because she was Jewish. As she was the favorite for a medal, this treatment indicated that initial fears over keeping the games in Berlin were justified.
Germany turned the games into a Nazi propaganda showcase, with the Nazi flag flying from every balcony in Berlin. Hitler himself opened the games in the new Olympic Stadium on August 1, to the sound of 100,000 spectators shouting "Sieg heil" as they gave the Nazi salute. A recordsetting 49 teams paraded into the stadium; Germany had the most athletes in the stadium, with the United States bringing the secondlargest team. Interestingly, the medal count finished in that order as well: Germany won the most gold medals and the most overall medals, and the U.S. finished second in both medal categories. To complete the spectacle, the last of over 3,000 runners who carried an Olympic flame from Greece arrived to light the torch in Berlin. This Nazi innovation of having the last runner light the flame was intended to link ancient Greece with the present "Aryan" athlete.
The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity
The American team experienced both triumph and selfembarrassment. Jesse Owens, the star of the American track and field team, had already won three gold medals when the coaches called a meeting just before the relay. Owens was not scheduled to participate in that event, but two Jewish Americans had qualified and were anxious to go. One of them, Marty Glickman, described what happened at the team meeting:
"The event I was supposed to run, the 400meter relay, was one of the last events in the track and field program. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial heats, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach. Robertson announced to the 7 of us that he had heard very strong rumors that the Germans were saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400meter relay. Consequently, Sam Stoller and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. We were shocked. Sam was completely stunned. He didn't say a word in the meeting. I was a brash 18yearold kid and I said 'Coach, you can't hide worldclass sprinters.' At which point, Jesse spoke up and said 'Coach, I've won my 3 gold medals [the 100, the 200, and the long jump]. I'm tired. I've had it. Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it,' said Jesse. And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said 'You'll do as you're told.'" (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936)
American coaches had caved in to the Nazi agenda. There were never any secret German runners; in reality, the American coaches had decided that winning with Jewish runners would upset the Nazis more than winning another race with Jesse Owens. Owens went home with four gold medals, while Marty Glickman never got to participate in another Olympics due to the coming war. The United States celebrated the medal victories of Owens, but this great track and field star returned to a segregated America where he could not freely choose a restaurant or hotel for his postOlympic celebration.
Despite the mixed legacy of these games, the IOC was optimistic that 1940 would see an improvement. The games were planned for Tokyo, but Japan withdrew from hosting because of its military activity in China. Immediately the 1940 Olympics were rescheduled for Helsinki, Finland, but again the games were canceled when war started in nearby Poland in 1939. With the war still in progress, there was no possibility of holding the games in 1944, so the next Olympics were finally staged in London in 1948.
During the war, the Nazis killed more than 40 Jewish Olympic athletes as they occupied European countries.
About the Author
Harold J. Goldberg is the David E. Underdown Distinguished Professor of History at Sewanee: The University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee. His published works include Daily Life in NaziOccupied Europe (Greenwood, 2019), Competing Voices from World War II in Europe: Fighting Words (Greenwood, 2010), and DDay in the Pacific: The Battle of Saipan (Indiana University Press, 2007). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229716
Quote
Author: American Committee on Fair Play in Sports Description: This quote expresses the opinion of the American Committee on Fair Play in Sports on the political implications of holding the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Date: November 15, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The American Committee on Fair Play in Sports was assembled in the fall of 1935 to oppose U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympic Games. The committee produced publications and public service announcements intended to educate the public on the totalitarian Nazi government and its policies of racism and anti Semitism. Consider the ideals of the Olympic Games and the extent to which Germany undermined the ideals of democratic competition and sportsmanship.
American Committee on Fair Play in Sports: quote on the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Sport is prostituted when sport loses its independent and democratic character and becomes a political institution … Nazi Germany is endeavouring to use the Eleventh Olympiad to serve the necessities and interests of the Nazi Regime rather than the Olympic ideals.
–American Committee on Fair Play in Sports (November 15, 1935). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229811
Reference
Author: ABCCLIO Description: This reference article discusses goldmedalist sprinter Jesse Owens's participation in the 1936 Olympic Games, including his attitude toward Adolf Hitler as he readied for one of his races.
Context and Things to Consider
African American sprinter Owens became the first athlete in the history of the modern Olympic Games to win four gold medals in a single year. Owens's feat was celebrated by opponents of Hitler's regime as an embarrassing rebuke of Hitler's theories of Aryan racial supremacy. Consider the mindset of Owens as he readied for the 100meter finals heat and the laserfocus required of Olympic athletes. What does Owens's comment suggest about his views on Hitler? Evaluate Owens's comment in relation to the other sources. How does it illustrate the desire to reflect the ideals of the Olympic Games?
Jesse Owens: "Why Worry about Hitler?" (1936)
Jesse Owens was an African American track and field athlete. During the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, he became a national hero for defeating Adolf Hitler's Aryan athletes in a series of athletic contests.
In 1936, just a few years after Hitler rose to power in Germany, the Summer Olympic Games were held in Berlin, the nation's capital. Hitler believed in an Aryan "master race," an allegedly pure Germanic/Nordic race of people who were, according to Hitler, racially, physically, and intellectually above "lesser" peoples. The Aryan ideal was a Nordic type—tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.
Owens became the star of the 1936 Games, winning a total of four gold medals, including a world recordtying performance in the 100meter dash. Reflecting on this race, Owens discussed its personal significance and his state of focus despite the political implications of competing in Nazi Germany:
When I lined up in my lane for the finals of the 100 meters . . . I thought of all the years of practice and competition, of all who had believed in me, and of my state and university [Ohio, and the Ohio State University.]
I saw the finish line, and knew that 10 seconds would climax the work of eight years. One mistake could ruin those eight years. So, why worry about Hitler?
Hitler did not approve of Black athletes participating in the Games. By 1936, his views on the superiority of the Aryan race were known around the world, though Germany made an effort to obscure its antiSemitic policies as host of the Games. As someone who did not fit Hitler's ideal, Owens's victory in the 1936 Olympics was widely considered to be a refutation of the dictator's racist worldview and an embarrassment for the Nazi regime.
Mark Strong https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230575
COPYRIGHT 2021 ABCCLIO, LLC https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337 U.S. Participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympics Activity
Inquiry Question What were the arguments for and against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics?
The U.S. decision to take part in the 1936 Olympics, which took place in Berlin at the time of Nazi leadership, was a controversial issue that divided participating athletes, administrative organizations, and the American public itself, especially since the country was dealing with its own problems of racism during the era of Jim Crow laws. Use information collected from the provided sources and analyze your findings to explain the arguments presented by both sides: those who felt the U.S. should compete in the games, and those who felt the nation should boycott.
Clarifying Questions
What was the status of civil rights in Germany in the mid1930s, and how did it compare to the situation in the United States? What were the main arguments for participating in the games? What were the main arguments against participating in the games? How did the 1936 Berlin Olympics influence the global perception of Nazi Germany?
Vocabulary
boycott de facto segregation de jure segregation Jim Crow Nazi Party propaganda
Background Information
1936 Summer Olympic Games, Berlin
The 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin, Germany, marked a pivotal moment in the history of the international games. German chancellor Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and the institution of racist and xenophobic policies by the Nazi Party, led many to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
Hitler's Rise to Power
In their choice of Berlin, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had wanted to stress Germany's return to the international sporting world after World War I. When the Olympics were held in 1936, however, it was quite a different Germany and quite a different Berlin from those to whom the IOC had awarded the games in 1931. The rise to prominence of the Nazi Party in the 1930s elevated the party's leader, Adolf Hitler, as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Hitler's seizure of absolute power in 1934 ushered in a totalitarian regime in Germany that ruthlessly suppressed the civil rights of minorities, particularly German Jews.
Organizing the Games
The overwhelming problem for the IOC and for the United States was to get a guarantee that Jewish athletes would not be excluded from the games. At the IOC meeting in Vienna in June 1933, president of the Olympic organizing committee Theodor Lewald was able to give an assurance with the approval of the German government that "all laws relating to the Olympic Games will be respected. German Jews will not as a matter of principle be excluded from German teams in the XI Olympiad."
This guarantee convinced the president of the Olympic Committee, Henri BailletLatour, after a visit to Berlin in November 1935, when he had an audience with Hitler. After that, the attitude of the Olympic Committee was unchanged. There was no wavering, and there was total support for the games in Berlin. From that point onward, both Baillet Latour and Avery Brundage attacked all opponents of the games as being lackeys of Communism. In 1936, Avery Brundage took a place on the IOC at the expense of the American E. L. Jahncke, who had been unremittingly critical of the games in Berlin.
The first thing the Hitler state did was to place its resources wholeheartedly behind the organization committee. A close cooperative relationship developed between Reich Director of Sport Hans von Tschammer und Osten and the organization committee—a collaboration that would be expanded to encompass work on the winter games in GarmischPartenkirchen, which the IOC had no objections about awarding to Germany in the spring of 1933, four months after Hitler came to power. Leading the organization of the latter was Karl Ritter von Halt, who had swiftly joined the Nazi Party in order to assist his career as a banker. All these people combined to convince the outside world that the games in Berlin and GarmischPartenkirchen would take place without discrimination against Jews or other nonAryan races.
Nazi Propaganda and Misdirection
The Nazis reasoned that if the whole world was being invited to Germany as a guest, then the country had to be seen in its most favorable light. Despite the treatment of Jews in Germany, Jews from outside were welcome. The German press was also instructed not to say anything negative about blacks—or only if they could do so by quoting newspapers from America's southern states. Furthermore, at the winter games and the summer games, the German press was forbidden from suggesting that Jews were inferior. Abusive antiSemitic posters were removed, and the SS was given the task of ensuring that these temporary prohibitions were observed.
To underline Nazi goodwill, two German halfJews were allowed to take part in the games: the icehockey player Rudi Ball in the winter games, and the fencer Helene Mayer in the summer games. Both were 50% Jewish according to Nazi definitions, and as such were acceptable. On the other hand, a potential medalist for Germany, Gretel Bergmann, who was a highjumper and fully Jewish, was not allowed to take part.
With the assistance of the Ministry of Propaganda, the Nazis set a largescale campaign in motion to bring the world to Berlin. Bulletins in a number of languages were sent out abroad; German travel agents abroad advertised the Olympic Games in Berlin as the best place to take a summer holiday in 1936; and 156,000 Olympic posters in 19 languages were distributed.
With unlimited funds at their disposal, the organization committee could construct a completely new stadium for the games in Berlin. The style was neoclassical and there was plenty of space for a range of activities, including the socalled Maifeld, which was an exhibition and practice area situated between the stadium's marathon gate and the Olympic novelty, a bell tower with the great bell that summoned the youth of the world to Berlin—"Ich rufe die Jugend der Welt" (I call the youth of the world) was engraved on the castiron bell. The bell tower's foundation consisted of the great Langemarckhalle, originally suggested by Organizing Committee secretary general Carl Diem. The hall was envisoned as a temple commemorating the youth of Germany that had fallen in World War I at Langemarck in Flanders.
The Olympic stadium in Berlin became the site of what were the most successful games of all so far. They were directly transmitted by radio for the first time to countless countries, and in selected cinemas in Berlin it was even possible to see direct television transmission from the games. It was, however, Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia that would stand for posterity as the document of the success of the games. The film was given its premiere on Hitler's birthday in 1938 and from the very first was a roaring success both at home and abroad. It won a number of prizes and at the Venice Film Festival in 1938 was grand prize winner ahead of, for example, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was only in the United States that its success was more muted, since a greater proportion of the public were critical of developments in Germany.
The Games
The games lasted from August 1–16 and lived up to the high expectations in every respect. Athletes from 49 nations competed, 3,738 men and 328 women, and the stadium was sold out for all events, with 105,000 spectators attending every day. The crowning moment of the introductory procession in Berlin was the arrival of the torch bearer into the Olympic stadium. The new German Reich created a perfect staging for sport as an offshoot of ancient Greece. Everything went according to plan, and at the processional entry a number of countries chose to make the Nazi salute when they passed the Fuhrer's box; others stretched out their hands more horizontally and said afterward that it was the Olympic greeting.
The greatest athlete of the games was the African American Jesse Owens, who won five gold medals. Owens won the 100 and 200meter races. He also won the long jump and was in the 4x100 relay, which set a new record of 39.8 seconds, which was the first time ever under 40 seconds and a record that stood for 20 years. Owens's performance was seen by many as a refutation of Hitler's racist theories of Aryan racial superiority and remains the most memorable performance of the games. Basketball, canoeing, and field handball were on the program for the first time, and it caused a sensation when Norway beat Germany in soccer and achieved a bronze. As expected, despite American dominance, Germany ran away with the most medals in athletics.
Reference
Author: Historian and Holocaust scholar Paul R. Bartrop Description: This essay outlines the arguments for and against the international community's participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, hosted during the third year of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin began in the early years of Hitler's regime, which saw laws severely restricting the citizenship and civil rights of Jews known as the Nuremberg Race Laws (1935). Consider the ways in which Germany constructed its image during the Olympic Games. How did that image differ from its image prior to the Olympics? Pay close attention to the arguments for and against a boycott of the 1936 Olympics outlined in the sections titled "Debating Whether to Boycott" and "U.S. Olympic Team." Why did most African American newspapers support participation in the games?
1936 Berlin Olympics: Boycott Debates
The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were highly controversial at the time. From the very start they were marked by racism, with the official Nazi Party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, declaring that Jews and people of African descent, regardless of their country of origin, should not be allowed to participate. Following Nazi demands, the German Olympic Committee denied Jews all opportunity of representing Germany. These measures led many in the international community to call for a boycott of the 1936 games.
Germany Furnishes its Image
When the possibility of an international boycott was threatened, Germany responded with a superficial relaxing of the rules: now, one athlete with a Jewish background was allowed to compete for Germany. Helene Mayer, who had a Jewish father, was a world champion fencer who had already won a gold medal at the 1928 Amsterdam Games. With an eye to the prospect of her winning another gold medal for Germany, she became the token Jew permitted to compete. As it turned out, she won silver in the individual foil event.
The prospect of other Jewish athletes competing for Germany was denied, however. The fourtime world record holder and 10time German national champion in shot put and discus throw, Lilli Henoch, was excluded; she was later deported and murdered in the Riga ghetto in 1942. Gretel Bergmann, an internationally recognized champion high jumper, was replaced on the German team by Dora Ratjen, who was later revealed to be a male who had been raised as a girl.
In order to reassure foreign opinion, Berlin was purged of all traces of Nazi antiSemitism. Local party authorities removed street signs bearing such slogans as "Jews not wanted" from Berlin's main tourist areas. At the same time, all vagrants and Roma were physically moved to a specially constructed "holding camp" outside the city at Marzahn.
Debating Whether to Boycott
In view of Germany's racist domestic policies, there was considerable debate among the international community over whether or not to boycott the games. In some countries, notably Britain, France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands, discussion took place over whether the games should be relocated. Meanwhile, exiled political opponents of the Nazis kept up the pressure for a boycott. These initiatives did not amount to anything definite; opponents of a boycott argued that the games had been awarded to Berlin in 1931 and that it would be wrong to punish the city simply because of a change of government.
Individual Jewish athletes from a number of countries, on the other hand, elected to take matters into their own hands and refused to attend. In this regard, brave athletes such as the South African Sid Kiel and Americans Milton Green and Norman Cahners should be mentioned.
U.S. Olympic Team
As one of the world's leading sporting nations, the position of the United States was crucial. In September 1934, the United States Olympic Committee accepted a German invitation to visit on a factfinding mission. After interviewing German Jews who had been carefully selected by the Nazi regime, U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage concluded that he had not found any discrimination against the Jewish population of Germany. He then became a major supporter of the games being held in Berlin, famously arguing that "politics has no place in sport." By 1935, he had convinced the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States that an American team should be sent to Berlin. The American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee supported a boycott, but they had no say in what was effectively an institutional project by the American Olympic Committee.
Most African American newspapers, on the other hand, supported participation. They argued that this was an opportunity for Nazi racial theories to be challenged and, hopefully, defeated. And to some degree, they were right; the iconic Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events, and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin.
On the day of the men's 4 x 100 relay, the Jewish American sprinters Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman were sidelined from the team. While this gave Owens the opportunity to win his fourth and final gold medal, historians have speculated that the removal of Stoller and Glickman was deliberately antiSemitic and intended to appease Hitler.
Legacy of the 1936 Games
Ultimately, Germany was the most successful country at the games, winning 33 gold medals and 89 medals overall. The United States came second in the medal tally, with 24 gold and 56 overall.
The Berlin Olympics torch relay from Mount Olympus in Greece was the first of its kind, and the games were the first to have live television coverage. Despite these advances, they were also to be the final Olympic Games for 12 years owing to World War II.
Hitler's antihuman ideologies and his quest for supreme domination and racial supremacy were the biggest challenge to the Olympic ideal until 1972—when terrorism and the murder of Jewish athletes at the Munich Games threatened the Olympic ideal once more. The president of the International Olympic Committee then was the same Avery Brundage who so dominated the American team in 1936.
Paul R. Bartrop https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229806
Reference
Author: Historian Natalie Ring Description: This essay defines and illustrates the Jim Crow era of racial segregation and discrimination in the American South.
Context and Things to Consider
What is meant by the term "Jim Crow"? How did Jim Crow laws prevent the social advancement of African Americans from the 1880s to 1960s? What is meant by de jure segregation? What is meant by de facto segregation? Consider race relations in the United States during the 1930s and the extent to which there was a contradiction between Americans' attitudes toward race relations at home and their attitudes related to the 1936 Olympics.
Segregation and Jim Crow
The term "Jim Crow" refers to the system of racial segregation and oppression that existed primarily in the South from 1877 to the mid1960s. Segregation existed in some parts of the North, yet by the turn of the century it had become a distinctly Southern phenomenon. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court declared that "separate but equal" was constitutional, and this provided the legal backbone for segregation until it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In reality, "separate but equal" was never really equal. Racial segregation violated the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, but the federal government continued to sanction the state laws and practices of Jim Crow until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Jim Crow era marked the ascendancy of white supremacy and not only consisted of the social separation of the races, but more broadly included lynching and mob violence, the manipulation of the justice system, inequality in education, economic subjugation, and thePage 10 of 24 elimination of Black suffrage.
Origins of "Jim Crow"
The term Jim Crow is derived from the name of a character in a minstrel song performed by Thomas Rice in the 1830s. Blackface minstrelsy was a form of popular entertainment in which white actors blackened their face with cork and imitated what they considered to be authentic African American dialect, dance, and song. These theatrical performances frequently ridiculed African Americans and exaggerated alleged Black characteristics.
Rice named his act "Jump Jim Crow" and claimed to have based it on a dance he saw performed by an aged crippled slave in Louisville, Kentucky, owned by a Mr. Crow. Wearing ragged clothing representative of a field hand, Rice sang and danced to lyrics that included the stanza "Weel about and turn about / And do jis so, / Eb'ry time I weel about / And jump Jim Crow." The routine was immensely popular during the antebellum period, and the figure of Jim Crow became a recognizable and enduring icon in American popular culture. In the 1840s, abolitionists used the phrase Jim Crow to describe segregated railroad cars. By the end of the 19th century, the term came to signify the social separation of the races.
De Jure Segregation
Two forms of Jim Crow existed in the South: de jure and de facto. De jure segregation referred to the separation of the races as mandated specifically by law, and de facto segregation occurred by custom or tradition. In the 1880s, such laws as the segregation of street cars appeared sporadically across the South. Between 1890 and 1915, Southern states enacted an array of statutes that led to a more rigid and universal framework for the social separation of the races.
This explosion of de jure segregation reflected Southern whites' growing unease about a younger, more assertive generation of African Americans who demanded respect and recognition of their rights. In addition, the intent of widespread codification was to solidify custom and to eliminate uncertainty about the social status of blacks and whites. Signs labeled "For White" and "For Colored" dominated the Southern landscape, and Jim Crow regulated social contact in such places as restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, parks, schools, libraries, hospitals, and waiting rooms. In many cases, social separation often meant total exclusion. State legislatures also enacted antimiscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriage, and passed laws or rewrote the state constitution to make voter registration difficult, if not impossible.
De Facto Segregation
Although Southern states passed an elaborate network of laws, de facto practices of segregation endured. Patterns of de facto segregation varied depending on the location, the traditions of a community, or even the whim of a white person.
In most places, whites and blacks were expected to abide by an unspoken racial etiquette. For example, blacks could not enter a white home through the front door, address a white person by their first name, or refuse to give way to a white person on a sidewalk. Courtrooms often swore in black witnesses with separate bibles, and in many stores, blacks could not be served until white customers were finished. Whites did make exceptions for black domestic workers, but only because a black servant tending to white children in a space marked as white still clearly retained a position of inferiority. For many African Americans, Jim Crow caused incredible apprehension about the repercussions of crossing the color line. Any action taken by a black man or woman that whites perceived to be impudent or disrespectful could lead to swift and violent retaliation.
The Civil Rights Movement
After World War II, the edifice of Jim Crow began to break down. Black soldiers questioned the logic of having to fight for democracy abroad while returning home to face continued racial inequality. Protest on the grassroots level as well that initiated by institutions and celebrated leaders spread in the 1950s and early 1960s. The growing civil rights movement ultimately pressured the federal government to take action.
In 1964, the U.S. Congress answered President Lyndon B. Johnson's call to support racial equality and end Jim Crow. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade discrimination in public places, provided funding for assistance to further desegregate schools, created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and gave the attorney general more authority to prosecute civil rights violations involving voting, the use of public facilities, government, and education. It was the most extensive piece of federal legislation in support of civil rights ever ratified by Congress. While racial discrimination and oppression did not entirely disappear following passage of the Civil Rights Act, it truly marked the end of the widespread legal and social system of Jim Crow.
Natalie J. Ring https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 1903177
Image
Photographer: Unknown Description: This photograph shows a public notice on the streets of New York City announcing a meeting to advocate for a U.S. boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Date: December 3, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The location of the Olympic Games is chosen several years in advance. Germany was selected as the host country for the 1936 Olympics in 1932, shortly before the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Opposition to Hitler's regime mounted, and by the fall of 1935—around the time this photograph was taken—groups in the United States had organized for the express purpose of enacting a boycott of the games. Use the magnifying glass to zoom in on the posters in this image. Think about how the word "summons" contributes to the argument against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics. The poster suggests that boycotting the Olympic Games will help "Preserve the Olympic Ideal." What sort of characteristics does the "Olympic ideal" represent?
Notice announcing public meeting on 1936 Olympic Games boycott
A pedestrian in New York City reads a notice announcing a public meeting, scheduled for December 3, 1935, to urge Americans to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The racist and xenophobic policies of German chancellor Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led many countries to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration] https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230486
Commentary
Author: Historian Harold J. Goldberg Description: This commentary presents a historical interpretation of the 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin and argues that the games were used as a propaganda mechanism for the Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
Consider the notion of the "Olympic spirit" and the "spirit of the games." Did the 1936 undermine those values? Why or why not? Propaganda refers to information that is spread to influence public opinion regarding a specific cause or ideology. For example, a government may spread propaganda during war time to win support for the war or boost morale. Propaganda is often biased and may include disinformation or appeals to emotion rather than reason. How does the author build the case that Germany "turned the games into a propaganda showcase?" Pay close attention to the events described in the section titled "The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity." Why does the author believe the Jewish American athletes were pulled from the 4 X 100 relay team?
The 1936 Olympics were a Nazi Propaganda Showcase
In the early 1930s, enthusiasm for the Olympic Games in Europe was at a historic high. The modern Olympic Games had been held every four years since 1896, except in 1916, when they were scheduled for Berlin and canceled due to World War I. In 1932, the next Olympic Games were awarded to the Weimar Republic to celebrate Germany's new democracy, but in 1933 the republic gave way to Nazi dictatorship with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. Just as the war they started in 1939 destroyed cities, towns, villages, and people, the Nazis also ruined the Olympics held in Berlin in 1936.
A Brief History of Olympic Conflicts
The philosophy of the Olympics seeks to transcend politics and nationalism, as the world comes together to admire pure athletic skill, without concern for race, religion, or national origin. In fact, the games have frequently failed to live up to their ideals. Geopolitical crises and controversies have disrupted the games on multiple occasions, including the cancelation of the games in 1940 and 1944 due to World War II, the terrorist attack and massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972, and the U.S. boycott of the games hosted in Moscow in 1980. Among all of these flawed contests, the 1936 Olympics are still considered the most notorious for violating the spirit of the games.
Berlin, 1936: Propaganda and Discrimination
Visitors to Germany after Hitler consolidated power could not fail to see Berlin bedecked with swastika flags or hear the constant drone of Nazi propaganda on the radio. The Nazi racist agenda was clear, leading Olympic officials to debate a change of venue to another country. The fear was that the games would be spoiled by a Nazi ban on Jewish athletes and a simultaneous propaganda barrage glorifying the Nazi Party. Representatives of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) visited Germany to seek assurances that Nazi propaganda would not dominate the city and that German racial policy would not prevent athletes from participating. IOC officials were greeted by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who saw the games as a propaganda machine for the Nazis and had no reservations about lying and affirming that the games would be open to all. The IOC believed Goebbels and allowed the games to proceed in Berlin.
The result was exactly what people had feared. Nazi officials broke their pledge and refused to allow Jewish athletes to participate. Already in 1933, the German Boxing Association had expelled Erich Seelig, their light heavyweight champion, due to Jewish heritage. For the same reason, Germany's No. 1 tennis player was cut from its Davis Cup team. Likewise, Gretel Bergmann, a strong contender for a medal in the high jump, was put on the German team and then, with less than two weeks to go, was not allowed to compete. The Nazis disguised this discrimination by waiting until the American team was already on its way to Germany before they dropped her because she was Jewish. As she was the favorite for a medal, this treatment indicated that initial fears over keeping the games in Berlin were justified.
Germany turned the games into a Nazi propaganda showcase, with the Nazi flag flying from every balcony in Berlin. Hitler himself opened the games in the new Olympic Stadium on August 1, to the sound of 100,000 spectators shouting "Sieg heil" as they gave the Nazi salute. A recordsetting 49 teams paraded into the stadium; Germany had the most athletes in the stadium, with the United States bringing the secondlargest team. Interestingly, the medal count finished in that order as well: Germany won the most gold medals and the most overall medals, and the U.S. finished second in both medal categories. To complete the spectacle, the last of over 3,000 runners who carried an Olympic flame from Greece arrived to light the torch in Berlin. This Nazi innovation of having the last runner light the flame was intended to link ancient Greece with the present "Aryan" athlete.
The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity
The American team experienced both triumph and selfembarrassment. Jesse Owens, the star of the American track and field team, had already won three gold medals when the coaches called a meeting just before the relay. Owens was not scheduled to participate in that event, but two Jewish Americans had qualified and were anxious to go. One of them, Marty Glickman, described what happened at the team meeting:
"The event I was supposed to run, the 400meter relay, was one of the last events in the track and field program. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial heats, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach. Robertson announced to the 7 of us that he had heard very strong rumors that the Germans were saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400meter relay. Consequently, Sam Stoller and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. We were shocked. Sam was completely stunned. He didn't say a word in the meeting. I was a brash 18yearold kid and I said 'Coach, you can't hide worldclass sprinters.' At which point, Jesse spoke up and said 'Coach, I've won my 3 gold medals [the 100, the 200, and the long jump]. I'm tired. I've had it. Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it,' said Jesse. And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said 'You'll do as you're told.'" (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936)
American coaches had caved in to the Nazi agenda. There were never any secret German runners; in reality, the American coaches had decided that winning with Jewish runners would upset the Nazis more than winning another race with Jesse Owens. Owens went home with four gold medals, while Marty Glickman never got to participate in another Olympics due to the coming war. The United States celebrated the medal victories of Owens, but this great track and field star returned to a segregated America where he could not freely choose a restaurant or hotel for his postOlympic celebration.
Despite the mixed legacy of these games, the IOC was optimistic that 1940 would see an improvement. The games were planned for Tokyo, but Japan withdrew from hosting because of its military activity in China. Immediately the 1940 Olympics were rescheduled for Helsinki, Finland, but again the games were canceled when war started in nearby Poland in 1939. With the war still in progress, there was no possibility of holding the games in 1944, so the next Olympics were finally staged in London in 1948.
During the war, the Nazis killed more than 40 Jewish Olympic athletes as they occupied European countries.
About the Author
Harold J. Goldberg is the David E. Underdown Distinguished Professor of History at Sewanee: The University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee. His published works include Daily Life in NaziOccupied Europe (Greenwood, 2019), Competing Voices from World War II in Europe: Fighting Words (Greenwood, 2010), and DDay in the Pacific: The Battle of Saipan (Indiana University Press, 2007). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229716
Quote
Author: American Committee on Fair Play in Sports Description: This quote expresses the opinion of the American Committee on Fair Play in Sports on the political implications of holding the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Date: November 15, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The American Committee on Fair Play in Sports was assembled in the fall of 1935 to oppose U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympic Games. The committee produced publications and public service announcements intended to educate the public on the totalitarian Nazi government and its policies of racism and anti Semitism. Consider the ideals of the Olympic Games and the extent to which Germany undermined the ideals of democratic competition and sportsmanship.
American Committee on Fair Play in Sports: quote on the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Sport is prostituted when sport loses its independent and democratic character and becomes a political institution … Nazi Germany is endeavouring to use the Eleventh Olympiad to serve the necessities and interests of the Nazi Regime rather than the Olympic ideals.
–American Committee on Fair Play in Sports (November 15, 1935). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229811
Reference
Author: ABCCLIO Description: This reference article discusses goldmedalist sprinter Jesse Owens's participation in the 1936 Olympic Games, including his attitude toward Adolf Hitler as he readied for one of his races.
Context and Things to Consider
African American sprinter Owens became the first athlete in the history of the modern Olympic Games to win four gold medals in a single year. Owens's feat was celebrated by opponents of Hitler's regime as an embarrassing rebuke of Hitler's theories of Aryan racial supremacy. Consider the mindset of Owens as he readied for the 100meter finals heat and the laserfocus required of Olympic athletes. What does Owens's comment suggest about his views on Hitler? Evaluate Owens's comment in relation to the other sources. How does it illustrate the desire to reflect the ideals of the Olympic Games?
Jesse Owens: "Why Worry about Hitler?" (1936)
Jesse Owens was an African American track and field athlete. During the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, he became a national hero for defeating Adolf Hitler's Aryan athletes in a series of athletic contests.
In 1936, just a few years after Hitler rose to power in Germany, the Summer Olympic Games were held in Berlin, the nation's capital. Hitler believed in an Aryan "master race," an allegedly pure Germanic/Nordic race of people who were, according to Hitler, racially, physically, and intellectually above "lesser" peoples. The Aryan ideal was a Nordic type—tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.
Owens became the star of the 1936 Games, winning a total of four gold medals, including a world recordtying performance in the 100meter dash. Reflecting on this race, Owens discussed its personal significance and his state of focus despite the political implications of competing in Nazi Germany:
When I lined up in my lane for the finals of the 100 meters . . . I thought of all the years of practice and competition, of all who had believed in me, and of my state and university [Ohio, and the Ohio State University.]
I saw the finish line, and knew that 10 seconds would climax the work of eight years. One mistake could ruin those eight years. So, why worry about Hitler?
Hitler did not approve of Black athletes participating in the Games. By 1936, his views on the superiority of the Aryan race were known around the world, though Germany made an effort to obscure its antiSemitic policies as host of the Games. As someone who did not fit Hitler's ideal, Owens's victory in the 1936 Olympics was widely considered to be a refutation of the dictator's racist worldview and an embarrassment for the Nazi regime.
Mark Strong https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230575
COPYRIGHT 2021 ABCCLIO, LLC https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337 U.S. Participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympics Activity
Inquiry Question What were the arguments for and against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics?
The U.S. decision to take part in the 1936 Olympics, which took place in Berlin at the time of Nazi leadership, was a controversial issue that divided participating athletes, administrative organizations, and the American public itself, especially since the country was dealing with its own problems of racism during the era of Jim Crow laws. Use information collected from the provided sources and analyze your findings to explain the arguments presented by both sides: those who felt the U.S. should compete in the games, and those who felt the nation should boycott.
Clarifying Questions
What was the status of civil rights in Germany in the mid1930s, and how did it compare to the situation in the United States? What were the main arguments for participating in the games? What were the main arguments against participating in the games? How did the 1936 Berlin Olympics influence the global perception of Nazi Germany?
Vocabulary
boycott de facto segregation de jure segregation Jim Crow Nazi Party propaganda
Background Information
1936 Summer Olympic Games, Berlin
The 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin, Germany, marked a pivotal moment in the history of the international games. German chancellor Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and the institution of racist and xenophobic policies by the Nazi Party, led many to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
Hitler's Rise to Power
In their choice of Berlin, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had wanted to stress Germany's return to the international sporting world after World War I. When the Olympics were held in 1936, however, it was quite a different Germany and quite a different Berlin from those to whom the IOC had awarded the games in 1931. The rise to prominence of the Nazi Party in the 1930s elevated the party's leader, Adolf Hitler, as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Hitler's seizure of absolute power in 1934 ushered in a totalitarian regime in Germany that ruthlessly suppressed the civil rights of minorities, particularly German Jews.
Organizing the Games
The overwhelming problem for the IOC and for the United States was to get a guarantee that Jewish athletes would not be excluded from the games. At the IOC meeting in Vienna in June 1933, president of the Olympic organizing committee Theodor Lewald was able to give an assurance with the approval of the German government that "all laws relating to the Olympic Games will be respected. German Jews will not as a matter of principle be excluded from German teams in the XI Olympiad."
This guarantee convinced the president of the Olympic Committee, Henri BailletLatour, after a visit to Berlin in November 1935, when he had an audience with Hitler. After that, the attitude of the Olympic Committee was unchanged. There was no wavering, and there was total support for the games in Berlin. From that point onward, both Baillet Latour and Avery Brundage attacked all opponents of the games as being lackeys of Communism. In 1936, Avery Brundage took a place on the IOC at the expense of the American E. L. Jahncke, who had been unremittingly critical of the games in Berlin.
The first thing the Hitler state did was to place its resources wholeheartedly behind the organization committee. A close cooperative relationship developed between Reich Director of Sport Hans von Tschammer und Osten and the organization committee—a collaboration that would be expanded to encompass work on the winter games in GarmischPartenkirchen, which the IOC had no objections about awarding to Germany in the spring of 1933, four months after Hitler came to power. Leading the organization of the latter was Karl Ritter von Halt, who had swiftly joined the Nazi Party in order to assist his career as a banker. All these people combined to convince the outside world that the games in Berlin and GarmischPartenkirchen would take place without discrimination against Jews or other nonAryan races.
Nazi Propaganda and Misdirection
The Nazis reasoned that if the whole world was being invited to Germany as a guest, then the country had to be seen in its most favorable light. Despite the treatment of Jews in Germany, Jews from outside were welcome. The German press was also instructed not to say anything negative about blacks—or only if they could do so by quoting newspapers from America's southern states. Furthermore, at the winter games and the summer games, the German press was forbidden from suggesting that Jews were inferior. Abusive antiSemitic posters were removed, and the SS was given the task of ensuring that these temporary prohibitions were observed.
To underline Nazi goodwill, two German halfJews were allowed to take part in the games: the icehockey player Rudi Ball in the winter games, and the fencer Helene Mayer in the summer games. Both were 50% Jewish according to Nazi definitions, and as such were acceptable. On the other hand, a potential medalist for Germany, Gretel Bergmann, who was a highjumper and fully Jewish, was not allowed to take part.
With the assistance of the Ministry of Propaganda, the Nazis set a largescale campaign in motion to bring the world to Berlin. Bulletins in a number of languages were sent out abroad; German travel agents abroad advertised the Olympic Games in Berlin as the best place to take a summer holiday in 1936; and 156,000 Olympic posters in 19 languages were distributed.
With unlimited funds at their disposal, the organization committee could construct a completely new stadium for the games in Berlin. The style was neoclassical and there was plenty of space for a range of activities, including the socalled Maifeld, which was an exhibition and practice area situated between the stadium's marathon gate and the Olympic novelty, a bell tower with the great bell that summoned the youth of the world to Berlin—"Ich rufe die Jugend der Welt" (I call the youth of the world) was engraved on the castiron bell. The bell tower's foundation consisted of the great Langemarckhalle, originally suggested by Organizing Committee secretary general Carl Diem. The hall was envisoned as a temple commemorating the youth of Germany that had fallen in World War I at Langemarck in Flanders.
The Olympic stadium in Berlin became the site of what were the most successful games of all so far. They were directly transmitted by radio for the first time to countless countries, and in selected cinemas in Berlin it was even possible to see direct television transmission from the games. It was, however, Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia that would stand for posterity as the document of the success of the games. The film was given its premiere on Hitler's birthday in 1938 and from the very first was a roaring success both at home and abroad. It won a number of prizes and at the Venice Film Festival in 1938 was grand prize winner ahead of, for example, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was only in the United States that its success was more muted, since a greater proportion of the public were critical of developments in Germany.
The Games
The games lasted from August 1–16 and lived up to the high expectations in every respect. Athletes from 49 nations competed, 3,738 men and 328 women, and the stadium was sold out for all events, with 105,000 spectators attending every day. The crowning moment of the introductory procession in Berlin was the arrival of the torch bearer into the Olympic stadium. The new German Reich created a perfect staging for sport as an offshoot of ancient Greece. Everything went according to plan, and at the processional entry a number of countries chose to make the Nazi salute when they passed the Fuhrer's box; others stretched out their hands more horizontally and said afterward that it was the Olympic greeting.
The greatest athlete of the games was the African American Jesse Owens, who won five gold medals. Owens won the 100 and 200meter races. He also won the long jump and was in the 4x100 relay, which set a new record of 39.8 seconds, which was the first time ever under 40 seconds and a record that stood for 20 years. Owens's performance was seen by many as a refutation of Hitler's racist theories of Aryan racial superiority and remains the most memorable performance of the games. Basketball, canoeing, and field handball were on the program for the first time, and it caused a sensation when Norway beat Germany in soccer and achieved a bronze. As expected, despite American dominance, Germany ran away with the most medals in athletics.
Reference
Author: Historian and Holocaust scholar Paul R. Bartrop Description: This essay outlines the arguments for and against the international community's participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, hosted during the third year of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin began in the early years of Hitler's regime, which saw laws severely restricting the citizenship and civil rights of Jews known as the Nuremberg Race Laws (1935). Consider the ways in which Germany constructed its image during the Olympic Games. How did that image differ from its image prior to the Olympics? Pay close attention to the arguments for and against a boycott of the 1936 Olympics outlined in the sections titled "Debating Whether to Boycott" and "U.S. Olympic Team." Why did most African American newspapers support participation in the games?
1936 Berlin Olympics: Boycott Debates
The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were highly controversial at the time. From the very start they were marked by racism, with the official Nazi Party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, declaring that Jews and people of African descent, regardless of their country of origin, should not be allowed to participate. Following Nazi demands, the German Olympic Committee denied Jews all opportunity of representing Germany. These measures led many in the international community to call for a boycott of the 1936 games.
Germany Furnishes its Image
When the possibility of an international boycott was threatened, Germany responded with a superficial relaxing of the rules: now, one athlete with a Jewish background was allowed to compete for Germany. Helene Mayer, who had a Jewish father, was a world champion fencer who had already won a gold medal at the 1928 Amsterdam Games. With an eye to the prospect of her winning another gold medal for Germany, she became the token Jew permitted to compete. As it turned out, she won silver in the individual foil event.
The prospect of other Jewish athletes competing for Germany was denied, however. The fourtime world record holder and 10time German national champion in shot put and discus throw, Lilli Henoch, was excluded; she was later deported and murdered in the Riga ghetto in 1942. Gretel Bergmann, an internationally recognized champion high jumper, was replaced on the German team by Dora Ratjen, who was later revealed to be a male who had been raised as a girl.
In order to reassure foreign opinion, Berlin was purged of all traces of Nazi antiSemitism. Local party authorities removed street signs bearing such slogans as "Jews not wanted" from Berlin's main tourist areas. At the same time, all vagrants and Roma were physically moved to a specially constructed "holding camp" outside the city at Marzahn.
Debating Whether to Boycott
In view of Germany's racist domestic policies, there was considerable debate among the international community over whether or not to boycott the games. In some countries, notably Britain, France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands, discussion took place over whether the games should be relocated. Meanwhile, exiled political opponents of the Nazis kept up the pressure for a boycott. These initiatives did not amount to anything definite; opponents of a boycott argued that the games had been awarded to Berlin in 1931 and that it would be wrong to punish the city simply because of a change of government.
Individual Jewish athletes from a number of countries, on the other hand, elected to take matters into their own hands and refused to attend. In this regard, brave athletes such as the South African Sid Kiel and Americans Milton Green and Norman Cahners should be mentioned.
U.S. Olympic Team
As one of the world's leading sporting nations, the position of the United States was crucial. In September 1934, the United States Olympic Committee accepted a German invitation to visit on a factfinding mission. After interviewing German Jews who had been carefully selected by the Nazi regime, U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage concluded that he had not found any discrimination against the Jewish population of Germany. He then became a major supporter of the games being held in Berlin, famously arguing that "politics has no place in sport." By 1935, he had convinced the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States that an American team should be sent to Berlin. The American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee supported a boycott, but they had no say in what was effectively an institutional project by the American Olympic Committee.
Most African American newspapers, on the other hand, supported participation. They argued that this was an opportunity for Nazi racial theories to be challenged and, hopefully, defeated. And to some degree, they were right; the iconic Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events, and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin.
On the day of the men's 4 x 100 relay, the Jewish American sprinters Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman were sidelined from the team. While this gave Owens the opportunity to win his fourth and final gold medal, historians have speculated that the removal of Stoller and Glickman was deliberately antiSemitic and intended to appease Hitler.
Legacy of the 1936 Games
Ultimately, Germany was the most successful country at the games, winning 33 gold medals and 89 medals overall. The United States came second in the medal tally, with 24 gold and 56 overall.
The Berlin Olympics torch relay from Mount Olympus in Greece was the first of its kind, and the games were the first to have live television coverage. Despite these advances, they were also to be the final Olympic Games for 12 years owing to World War II.
Hitler's antihuman ideologies and his quest for supreme domination and racial supremacy were the biggest challenge to the Olympic ideal until 1972—when terrorism and the murder of Jewish athletes at the Munich Games threatened the Olympic ideal once more. The president of the International Olympic Committee then was the same Avery Brundage who so dominated the American team in 1936.
Paul R. Bartrop https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229806
Reference
Author: Historian Natalie Ring Description: This essay defines and illustrates the Jim Crow era of racial segregation and discrimination in the American South.
Context and Things to Consider
What is meant by the term "Jim Crow"? How did Jim Crow laws prevent the social advancement of African Americans from the 1880s to 1960s? What is meant by de jure segregation? What is meant by de facto segregation? Consider race relations in the United States during the 1930s and the extent to which there was a contradiction between Americans' attitudes toward race relations at home and their attitudes related to the 1936 Olympics.
Segregation and Jim Crow
The term "Jim Crow" refers to the system of racial segregation and oppression that existed primarily in the South from 1877 to the mid1960s. Segregation existed in some parts of the North, yet by the turn of the century it had become a distinctly Southern phenomenon. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court declared that "separate but equal" was constitutional, and this provided the legal backbone for segregation until it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In reality, "separate but equal" was never really equal. Racial segregation violated the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, but the federal government continued to sanction the state laws and practices of Jim Crow until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Jim Crow era marked the ascendancy of white supremacy and not only consisted of the social separation of the races, but more broadly included lynching and mob violence, the manipulation of the justice system, inequality in education, economic subjugation, and the elimination of Black suffrage.
Origins of "Jim Crow"
The term Jim Crow is derived from the name of a character in a minstrel song performed by Thomas Rice in the 1830s. Blackface minstrelsy was a form of popular entertainment in which white actors blackened their face with cork and imitated what they considered to be authentic African American dialect, dance, and song. These theatrical performances frequently ridiculed African Americans and exaggerated alleged Black characteristics.
Rice named his act "Jump Jim Crow" and claimed to have based it on a dance he saw performed by an aged crippled slave in Louisville, Kentucky, owned by a Mr. Crow. Wearing ragged clothing representative of a field hand, Rice sang and danced to lyrics that included the stanza "Weel about and turn about / And do jis so, / Eb'ry time I weel about / And jump Jim Crow." The routine was immensely popular during the antebellum period, and the figure of Jim Crow became a recognizable and enduring icon in American popular culture. In the 1840s, abolitionists used the phrase Jim Crow to describe segregated railroad cars. By the end of the 19th century, the term came to signify the social separation of the races.
De Jure Segregation
Two forms of Jim Crow existed in the South: de jure and de facto. De jure segregation referred to the separation of the races as mandated specifically by law, and de facto segregation occurred by custom or tradition. In the 1880s, such laws as the segregation of street cars appeared sporadically across the South. Between 1890 and 1915, Southern states enacted an array of statutes that led to a more rigid and universal framework for the social separation of the races.
This explosion of de jure segregation reflected Southern whites' growing unease about a younger, more assertive generation of African Americans who demanded respect and recognition of their rights. In addition, the intent of widespread codification was to solidify Page 11 of 24 custom and to eliminate uncertainty about the social status of blacks and whites. Signs labeled "For White" and "For Colored" dominated the Southern landscape, and Jim Crow regulated social contact in such places as restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, parks, schools, libraries, hospitals, and waiting rooms. In many cases, social separation often meant total exclusion. State legislatures also enacted antimiscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriage, and passed laws or rewrote the state constitution to make voter registration difficult, if not impossible.
De Facto Segregation
Although Southern states passed an elaborate network of laws, de facto practices of segregation endured. Patterns of de facto segregation varied depending on the location, the traditions of a community, or even the whim of a white person.
In most places, whites and blacks were expected to abide by an unspoken racial etiquette. For example, blacks could not enter a white home through the front door, address a white person by their first name, or refuse to give way to a white person on a sidewalk. Courtrooms often swore in black witnesses with separate bibles, and in many stores, blacks could not be served until white customers were finished. Whites did make exceptions for black domestic workers, but only because a black servant tending to white children in a space marked as white still clearly retained a position of inferiority. For many African Americans, Jim Crow caused incredible apprehension about the repercussions of crossing the color line. Any action taken by a black man or woman that whites perceived to be impudent or disrespectful could lead to swift and violent retaliation.
The Civil Rights Movement
After World War II, the edifice of Jim Crow began to break down. Black soldiers questioned the logic of having to fight for democracy abroad while returning home to face continued racial inequality. Protest on the grassroots level as well that initiated by institutions and celebrated leaders spread in the 1950s and early 1960s. The growing civil rights movement ultimately pressured the federal government to take action.
In 1964, the U.S. Congress answered President Lyndon B. Johnson's call to support racial equality and end Jim Crow. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade discrimination in public places, provided funding for assistance to further desegregate schools, created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and gave the attorney general more authority to prosecute civil rights violations involving voting, the use of public facilities, government, and education. It was the most extensive piece of federal legislation in support of civil rights ever ratified by Congress. While racial discrimination and oppression did not entirely disappear following passage of the Civil Rights Act, it truly marked the end of the widespread legal and social system of Jim Crow.
Natalie J. Ring https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 1903177
Image
Photographer: Unknown Description: This photograph shows a public notice on the streets of New York City announcing a meeting to advocate for a U.S. boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Date: December 3, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The location of the Olympic Games is chosen several years in advance. Germany was selected as the host country for the 1936 Olympics in 1932, shortly before the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Opposition to Hitler's regime mounted, and by the fall of 1935—around the time this photograph was taken—groups in the United States had organized for the express purpose of enacting a boycott of the games. Use the magnifying glass to zoom in on the posters in this image. Think about how the word "summons" contributes to the argument against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics. The poster suggests that boycotting the Olympic Games will help "Preserve the Olympic Ideal." What sort of characteristics does the "Olympic ideal" represent?
Notice announcing public meeting on 1936 Olympic Games boycott
A pedestrian in New York City reads a notice announcing a public meeting, scheduled for December 3, 1935, to urge Americans to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The racist and xenophobic policies of German chancellor Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led many countries to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration] https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230486
Commentary
Author: Historian Harold J. Goldberg Description: This commentary presents a historical interpretation of the 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin and argues that the games were used as a propaganda mechanism for the Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
Consider the notion of the "Olympic spirit" and the "spirit of the games." Did the 1936 undermine those values? Why or why not? Propaganda refers to information that is spread to influence public opinion regarding a specific cause or ideology. For example, a government may spread propaganda during war time to win support for the war or boost morale. Propaganda is often biased and may include disinformation or appeals to emotion rather than reason. How does the author build the case that Germany "turned the games into a propaganda showcase?" Pay close attention to the events described in the section titled "The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity." Why does the author believe the Jewish American athletes were pulled from the 4 X 100 relay team?
The 1936 Olympics were a Nazi Propaganda Showcase
In the early 1930s, enthusiasm for the Olympic Games in Europe was at a historic high. The modern Olympic Games had been held every four years since 1896, except in 1916, when they were scheduled for Berlin and canceled due to World War I. In 1932, the next Olympic Games were awarded to the Weimar Republic to celebrate Germany's new democracy, but in 1933 the republic gave way to Nazi dictatorship with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. Just as the war they started in 1939 destroyed cities, towns, villages, and people, the Nazis also ruined the Olympics held in Berlin in 1936.
A Brief History of Olympic Conflicts
The philosophy of the Olympics seeks to transcend politics and nationalism, as the world comes together to admire pure athletic skill, without concern for race, religion, or national origin. In fact, the games have frequently failed to live up to their ideals. Geopolitical crises and controversies have disrupted the games on multiple occasions, including the cancelation of the games in 1940 and 1944 due to World War II, the terrorist attack and massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972, and the U.S. boycott of the games hosted in Moscow in 1980. Among all of these flawed contests, the 1936 Olympics are still considered the most notorious for violating the spirit of the games.
Berlin, 1936: Propaganda and Discrimination
Visitors to Germany after Hitler consolidated power could not fail to see Berlin bedecked with swastika flags or hear the constant drone of Nazi propaganda on the radio. The Nazi racist agenda was clear, leading Olympic officials to debate a change of venue to another country. The fear was that the games would be spoiled by a Nazi ban on Jewish athletes and a simultaneous propaganda barrage glorifying the Nazi Party. Representatives of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) visited Germany to seek assurances that Nazi propaganda would not dominate the city and that German racial policy would not prevent athletes from participating. IOC officials were greeted by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who saw the games as a propaganda machine for the Nazis and had no reservations about lying and affirming that the games would be open to all. The IOC believed Goebbels and allowed the games to proceed in Berlin.
The result was exactly what people had feared. Nazi officials broke their pledge and refused to allow Jewish athletes to participate. Already in 1933, the German Boxing Association had expelled Erich Seelig, their light heavyweight champion, due to Jewish heritage. For the same reason, Germany's No. 1 tennis player was cut from its Davis Cup team. Likewise, Gretel Bergmann, a strong contender for a medal in the high jump, was put on the German team and then, with less than two weeks to go, was not allowed to compete. The Nazis disguised this discrimination by waiting until the American team was already on its way to Germany before they dropped her because she was Jewish. As she was the favorite for a medal, this treatment indicated that initial fears over keeping the games in Berlin were justified.
Germany turned the games into a Nazi propaganda showcase, with the Nazi flag flying from every balcony in Berlin. Hitler himself opened the games in the new Olympic Stadium on August 1, to the sound of 100,000 spectators shouting "Sieg heil" as they gave the Nazi salute. A recordsetting 49 teams paraded into the stadium; Germany had the most athletes in the stadium, with the United States bringing the secondlargest team. Interestingly, the medal count finished in that order as well: Germany won the most gold medals and the most overall medals, and the U.S. finished second in both medal categories. To complete the spectacle, the last of over 3,000 runners who carried an Olympic flame from Greece arrived to light the torch in Berlin. This Nazi innovation of having the last runner light the flame was intended to link ancient Greece with the present "Aryan" athlete.
The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity
The American team experienced both triumph and selfembarrassment. Jesse Owens, the star of the American track and field team, had already won three gold medals when the coaches called a meeting just before the relay. Owens was not scheduled to participate in that event, but two Jewish Americans had qualified and were anxious to go. One of them, Marty Glickman, described what happened at the team meeting:
"The event I was supposed to run, the 400meter relay, was one of the last events in the track and field program. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial heats, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach. Robertson announced to the 7 of us that he had heard very strong rumors that the Germans were saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400meter relay. Consequently, Sam Stoller and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. We were shocked. Sam was completely stunned. He didn't say a word in the meeting. I was a brash 18yearold kid and I said 'Coach, you can't hide worldclass sprinters.' At which point, Jesse spoke up and said 'Coach, I've won my 3 gold medals [the 100, the 200, and the long jump]. I'm tired. I've had it. Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it,' said Jesse. And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said 'You'll do as you're told.'" (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936)
American coaches had caved in to the Nazi agenda. There were never any secret German runners; in reality, the American coaches had decided that winning with Jewish runners would upset the Nazis more than winning another race with Jesse Owens. Owens went home with four gold medals, while Marty Glickman never got to participate in another Olympics due to the coming war. The United States celebrated the medal victories of Owens, but this great track and field star returned to a segregated America where he could not freely choose a restaurant or hotel for his postOlympic celebration.
Despite the mixed legacy of these games, the IOC was optimistic that 1940 would see an improvement. The games were planned for Tokyo, but Japan withdrew from hosting because of its military activity in China. Immediately the 1940 Olympics were rescheduled for Helsinki, Finland, but again the games were canceled when war started in nearby Poland in 1939. With the war still in progress, there was no possibility of holding the games in 1944, so the next Olympics were finally staged in London in 1948.
During the war, the Nazis killed more than 40 Jewish Olympic athletes as they occupied European countries.
About the Author
Harold J. Goldberg is the David E. Underdown Distinguished Professor of History at Sewanee: The University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee. His published works include Daily Life in NaziOccupied Europe (Greenwood, 2019), Competing Voices from World War II in Europe: Fighting Words (Greenwood, 2010), and DDay in the Pacific: The Battle of Saipan (Indiana University Press, 2007). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229716
Quote
Author: American Committee on Fair Play in Sports Description: This quote expresses the opinion of the American Committee on Fair Play in Sports on the political implications of holding the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Date: November 15, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The American Committee on Fair Play in Sports was assembled in the fall of 1935 to oppose U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympic Games. The committee produced publications and public service announcements intended to educate the public on the totalitarian Nazi government and its policies of racism and anti Semitism. Consider the ideals of the Olympic Games and the extent to which Germany undermined the ideals of democratic competition and sportsmanship.
American Committee on Fair Play in Sports: quote on the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Sport is prostituted when sport loses its independent and democratic character and becomes a political institution … Nazi Germany is endeavouring to use the Eleventh Olympiad to serve the necessities and interests of the Nazi Regime rather than the Olympic ideals.
–American Committee on Fair Play in Sports (November 15, 1935). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229811
Reference
Author: ABCCLIO Description: This reference article discusses goldmedalist sprinter Jesse Owens's participation in the 1936 Olympic Games, including his attitude toward Adolf Hitler as he readied for one of his races.
Context and Things to Consider
African American sprinter Owens became the first athlete in the history of the modern Olympic Games to win four gold medals in a single year. Owens's feat was celebrated by opponents of Hitler's regime as an embarrassing rebuke of Hitler's theories of Aryan racial supremacy. Consider the mindset of Owens as he readied for the 100meter finals heat and the laserfocus required of Olympic athletes. What does Owens's comment suggest about his views on Hitler? Evaluate Owens's comment in relation to the other sources. How does it illustrate the desire to reflect the ideals of the Olympic Games?
Jesse Owens: "Why Worry about Hitler?" (1936)
Jesse Owens was an African American track and field athlete. During the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, he became a national hero for defeating Adolf Hitler's Aryan athletes in a series of athletic contests.
In 1936, just a few years after Hitler rose to power in Germany, the Summer Olympic Games were held in Berlin, the nation's capital. Hitler believed in an Aryan "master race," an allegedly pure Germanic/Nordic race of people who were, according to Hitler, racially, physically, and intellectually above "lesser" peoples. The Aryan ideal was a Nordic type—tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.
Owens became the star of the 1936 Games, winning a total of four gold medals, including a world recordtying performance in the 100meter dash. Reflecting on this race, Owens discussed its personal significance and his state of focus despite the political implications of competing in Nazi Germany:
When I lined up in my lane for the finals of the 100 meters . . . I thought of all the years of practice and competition, of all who had believed in me, and of my state and university [Ohio, and the Ohio State University.]
I saw the finish line, and knew that 10 seconds would climax the work of eight years. One mistake could ruin those eight years. So, why worry about Hitler?
Hitler did not approve of Black athletes participating in the Games. By 1936, his views on the superiority of the Aryan race were known around the world, though Germany made an effort to obscure its antiSemitic policies as host of the Games. As someone who did not fit Hitler's ideal, Owens's victory in the 1936 Olympics was widely considered to be a refutation of the dictator's racist worldview and an embarrassment for the Nazi regime.
Mark Strong https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230575
COPYRIGHT 2021 ABCCLIO, LLC https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337 U.S. Participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympics Activity
Inquiry Question What were the arguments for and against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics?
The U.S. decision to take part in the 1936 Olympics, which took place in Berlin at the time of Nazi leadership, was a controversial issue that divided participating athletes, administrative organizations, and the American public itself, especially since the country was dealing with its own problems of racism during the era of Jim Crow laws. Use information collected from the provided sources and analyze your findings to explain the arguments presented by both sides: those who felt the U.S. should compete in the games, and those who felt the nation should boycott.
Clarifying Questions
What was the status of civil rights in Germany in the mid1930s, and how did it compare to the situation in the United States? What were the main arguments for participating in the games? What were the main arguments against participating in the games? How did the 1936 Berlin Olympics influence the global perception of Nazi Germany?
Vocabulary
boycott de facto segregation de jure segregation Jim Crow Nazi Party propaganda
Background Information
1936 Summer Olympic Games, Berlin
The 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin, Germany, marked a pivotal moment in the history of the international games. German chancellor Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and the institution of racist and xenophobic policies by the Nazi Party, led many to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
Hitler's Rise to Power
In their choice of Berlin, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had wanted to stress Germany's return to the international sporting world after World War I. When the Olympics were held in 1936, however, it was quite a different Germany and quite a different Berlin from those to whom the IOC had awarded the games in 1931. The rise to prominence of the Nazi Party in the 1930s elevated the party's leader, Adolf Hitler, as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Hitler's seizure of absolute power in 1934 ushered in a totalitarian regime in Germany that ruthlessly suppressed the civil rights of minorities, particularly German Jews.
Organizing the Games
The overwhelming problem for the IOC and for the United States was to get a guarantee that Jewish athletes would not be excluded from the games. At the IOC meeting in Vienna in June 1933, president of the Olympic organizing committee Theodor Lewald was able to give an assurance with the approval of the German government that "all laws relating to the Olympic Games will be respected. German Jews will not as a matter of principle be excluded from German teams in the XI Olympiad."
This guarantee convinced the president of the Olympic Committee, Henri BailletLatour, after a visit to Berlin in November 1935, when he had an audience with Hitler. After that, the attitude of the Olympic Committee was unchanged. There was no wavering, and there was total support for the games in Berlin. From that point onward, both Baillet Latour and Avery Brundage attacked all opponents of the games as being lackeys of Communism. In 1936, Avery Brundage took a place on the IOC at the expense of the American E. L. Jahncke, who had been unremittingly critical of the games in Berlin.
The first thing the Hitler state did was to place its resources wholeheartedly behind the organization committee. A close cooperative relationship developed between Reich Director of Sport Hans von Tschammer und Osten and the organization committee—a collaboration that would be expanded to encompass work on the winter games in GarmischPartenkirchen, which the IOC had no objections about awarding to Germany in the spring of 1933, four months after Hitler came to power. Leading the organization of the latter was Karl Ritter von Halt, who had swiftly joined the Nazi Party in order to assist his career as a banker. All these people combined to convince the outside world that the games in Berlin and GarmischPartenkirchen would take place without discrimination against Jews or other nonAryan races.
Nazi Propaganda and Misdirection
The Nazis reasoned that if the whole world was being invited to Germany as a guest, then the country had to be seen in its most favorable light. Despite the treatment of Jews in Germany, Jews from outside were welcome. The German press was also instructed not to say anything negative about blacks—or only if they could do so by quoting newspapers from America's southern states. Furthermore, at the winter games and the summer games, the German press was forbidden from suggesting that Jews were inferior. Abusive antiSemitic posters were removed, and the SS was given the task of ensuring that these temporary prohibitions were observed.
To underline Nazi goodwill, two German halfJews were allowed to take part in the games: the icehockey player Rudi Ball in the winter games, and the fencer Helene Mayer in the summer games. Both were 50% Jewish according to Nazi definitions, and as such were acceptable. On the other hand, a potential medalist for Germany, Gretel Bergmann, who was a highjumper and fully Jewish, was not allowed to take part.
With the assistance of the Ministry of Propaganda, the Nazis set a largescale campaign in motion to bring the world to Berlin. Bulletins in a number of languages were sent out abroad; German travel agents abroad advertised the Olympic Games in Berlin as the best place to take a summer holiday in 1936; and 156,000 Olympic posters in 19 languages were distributed.
With unlimited funds at their disposal, the organization committee could construct a completely new stadium for the games in Berlin. The style was neoclassical and there was plenty of space for a range of activities, including the socalled Maifeld, which was an exhibition and practice area situated between the stadium's marathon gate and the Olympic novelty, a bell tower with the great bell that summoned the youth of the world to Berlin—"Ich rufe die Jugend der Welt" (I call the youth of the world) was engraved on the castiron bell. The bell tower's foundation consisted of the great Langemarckhalle, originally suggested by Organizing Committee secretary general Carl Diem. The hall was envisoned as a temple commemorating the youth of Germany that had fallen in World War I at Langemarck in Flanders.
The Olympic stadium in Berlin became the site of what were the most successful games of all so far. They were directly transmitted by radio for the first time to countless countries, and in selected cinemas in Berlin it was even possible to see direct television transmission from the games. It was, however, Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia that would stand for posterity as the document of the success of the games. The film was given its premiere on Hitler's birthday in 1938 and from the very first was a roaring success both at home and abroad. It won a number of prizes and at the Venice Film Festival in 1938 was grand prize winner ahead of, for example, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was only in the United States that its success was more muted, since a greater proportion of the public were critical of developments in Germany.
The Games
The games lasted from August 1–16 and lived up to the high expectations in every respect. Athletes from 49 nations competed, 3,738 men and 328 women, and the stadium was sold out for all events, with 105,000 spectators attending every day. The crowning moment of the introductory procession in Berlin was the arrival of the torch bearer into the Olympic stadium. The new German Reich created a perfect staging for sport as an offshoot of ancient Greece. Everything went according to plan, and at the processional entry a number of countries chose to make the Nazi salute when they passed the Fuhrer's box; others stretched out their hands more horizontally and said afterward that it was the Olympic greeting.
The greatest athlete of the games was the African American Jesse Owens, who won five gold medals. Owens won the 100 and 200meter races. He also won the long jump and was in the 4x100 relay, which set a new record of 39.8 seconds, which was the first time ever under 40 seconds and a record that stood for 20 years. Owens's performance was seen by many as a refutation of Hitler's racist theories of Aryan racial superiority and remains the most memorable performance of the games. Basketball, canoeing, and field handball were on the program for the first time, and it caused a sensation when Norway beat Germany in soccer and achieved a bronze. As expected, despite American dominance, Germany ran away with the most medals in athletics.
Reference
Author: Historian and Holocaust scholar Paul R. Bartrop Description: This essay outlines the arguments for and against the international community's participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, hosted during the third year of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin began in the early years of Hitler's regime, which saw laws severely restricting the citizenship and civil rights of Jews known as the Nuremberg Race Laws (1935). Consider the ways in which Germany constructed its image during the Olympic Games. How did that image differ from its image prior to the Olympics? Pay close attention to the arguments for and against a boycott of the 1936 Olympics outlined in the sections titled "Debating Whether to Boycott" and "U.S. Olympic Team." Why did most African American newspapers support participation in the games?
1936 Berlin Olympics: Boycott Debates
The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were highly controversial at the time. From the very start they were marked by racism, with the official Nazi Party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, declaring that Jews and people of African descent, regardless of their country of origin, should not be allowed to participate. Following Nazi demands, the German Olympic Committee denied Jews all opportunity of representing Germany. These measures led many in the international community to call for a boycott of the 1936 games.
Germany Furnishes its Image
When the possibility of an international boycott was threatened, Germany responded with a superficial relaxing of the rules: now, one athlete with a Jewish background was allowed to compete for Germany. Helene Mayer, who had a Jewish father, was a world champion fencer who had already won a gold medal at the 1928 Amsterdam Games. With an eye to the prospect of her winning another gold medal for Germany, she became the token Jew permitted to compete. As it turned out, she won silver in the individual foil event.
The prospect of other Jewish athletes competing for Germany was denied, however. The fourtime world record holder and 10time German national champion in shot put and discus throw, Lilli Henoch, was excluded; she was later deported and murdered in the Riga ghetto in 1942. Gretel Bergmann, an internationally recognized champion high jumper, was replaced on the German team by Dora Ratjen, who was later revealed to be a male who had been raised as a girl.
In order to reassure foreign opinion, Berlin was purged of all traces of Nazi antiSemitism. Local party authorities removed street signs bearing such slogans as "Jews not wanted" from Berlin's main tourist areas. At the same time, all vagrants and Roma were physically moved to a specially constructed "holding camp" outside the city at Marzahn.
Debating Whether to Boycott
In view of Germany's racist domestic policies, there was considerable debate among the international community over whether or not to boycott the games. In some countries, notably Britain, France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands, discussion took place over whether the games should be relocated. Meanwhile, exiled political opponents of the Nazis kept up the pressure for a boycott. These initiatives did not amount to anything definite; opponents of a boycott argued that the games had been awarded to Berlin in 1931 and that it would be wrong to punish the city simply because of a change of government.
Individual Jewish athletes from a number of countries, on the other hand, elected to take matters into their own hands and refused to attend. In this regard, brave athletes such as the South African Sid Kiel and Americans Milton Green and Norman Cahners should be mentioned.
U.S. Olympic Team
As one of the world's leading sporting nations, the position of the United States was crucial. In September 1934, the United States Olympic Committee accepted a German invitation to visit on a factfinding mission. After interviewing German Jews who had been carefully selected by the Nazi regime, U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage concluded that he had not found any discrimination against the Jewish population of Germany. He then became a major supporter of the games being held in Berlin, famously arguing that "politics has no place in sport." By 1935, he had convinced the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States that an American team should be sent to Berlin. The American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee supported a boycott, but they had no say in what was effectively an institutional project by the American Olympic Committee.
Most African American newspapers, on the other hand, supported participation. They argued that this was an opportunity for Nazi racial theories to be challenged and, hopefully, defeated. And to some degree, they were right; the iconic Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events, and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin.
On the day of the men's 4 x 100 relay, the Jewish American sprinters Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman were sidelined from the team. While this gave Owens the opportunity to win his fourth and final gold medal, historians have speculated that the removal of Stoller and Glickman was deliberately antiSemitic and intended to appease Hitler.
Legacy of the 1936 Games
Ultimately, Germany was the most successful country at the games, winning 33 gold medals and 89 medals overall. The United States came second in the medal tally, with 24 gold and 56 overall.
The Berlin Olympics torch relay from Mount Olympus in Greece was the first of its kind, and the games were the first to have live television coverage. Despite these advances, they were also to be the final Olympic Games for 12 years owing to World War II.
Hitler's antihuman ideologies and his quest for supreme domination and racial supremacy were the biggest challenge to the Olympic ideal until 1972—when terrorism and the murder of Jewish athletes at the Munich Games threatened the Olympic ideal once more. The president of the International Olympic Committee then was the same Avery Brundage who so dominated the American team in 1936.
Paul R. Bartrop https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229806
Reference
Author: Historian Natalie Ring Description: This essay defines and illustrates the Jim Crow era of racial segregation and discrimination in the American South.
Context and Things to Consider
What is meant by the term "Jim Crow"? How did Jim Crow laws prevent the social advancement of African Americans from the 1880s to 1960s? What is meant by de jure segregation? What is meant by de facto segregation? Consider race relations in the United States during the 1930s and the extent to which there was a contradiction between Americans' attitudes toward race relations at home and their attitudes related to the 1936 Olympics.
Segregation and Jim Crow
The term "Jim Crow" refers to the system of racial segregation and oppression that existed primarily in the South from 1877 to the mid1960s. Segregation existed in some parts of the North, yet by the turn of the century it had become a distinctly Southern phenomenon. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court declared that "separate but equal" was constitutional, and this provided the legal backbone for segregation until it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In reality, "separate but equal" was never really equal. Racial segregation violated the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, but the federal government continued to sanction the state laws and practices of Jim Crow until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Jim Crow era marked the ascendancy of white supremacy and not only consisted of the social separation of the races, but more broadly included lynching and mob violence, the manipulation of the justice system, inequality in education, economic subjugation, and the elimination of Black suffrage.
Origins of "Jim Crow"
The term Jim Crow is derived from the name of a character in a minstrel song performed by Thomas Rice in the 1830s. Blackface minstrelsy was a form of popular entertainment in which white actors blackened their face with cork and imitated what they considered to be authentic African American dialect, dance, and song. These theatrical performances frequently ridiculed African Americans and exaggerated alleged Black characteristics.
Rice named his act "Jump Jim Crow" and claimed to have based it on a dance he saw performed by an aged crippled slave in Louisville, Kentucky, owned by a Mr. Crow. Wearing ragged clothing representative of a field hand, Rice sang and danced to lyrics that included the stanza "Weel about and turn about / And do jis so, / Eb'ry time I weel about / And jump Jim Crow." The routine was immensely popular during the antebellum period, and the figure of Jim Crow became a recognizable and enduring icon in American popular culture. In the 1840s, abolitionists used the phrase Jim Crow to describe segregated railroad cars. By the end of the 19th century, the term came to signify the social separation of the races.
De Jure Segregation
Two forms of Jim Crow existed in the South: de jure and de facto. De jure segregation referred to the separation of the races as mandated specifically by law, and de facto segregation occurred by custom or tradition. In the 1880s, such laws as the segregation of street cars appeared sporadically across the South. Between 1890 and 1915, Southern states enacted an array of statutes that led to a more rigid and universal framework for the social separation of the races.
This explosion of de jure segregation reflected Southern whites' growing unease about a younger, more assertive generation of African Americans who demanded respect and recognition of their rights. In addition, the intent of widespread codification was to solidify custom and to eliminate uncertainty about the social status of blacks and whites. Signs labeled "For White" and "For Colored" dominated the Southern landscape, and Jim Crow regulated social contact in such places as restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, parks, schools, libraries, hospitals, and waiting rooms. In many cases, social separation often meant total exclusion. State legislatures also enacted antimiscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriage, and passed laws or rewrote the state constitution to make voter registration difficult, if not impossible.
De Facto Segregation
Although Southern states passed an elaborate network of laws, de facto practices of segregation endured. Patterns of de facto segregation varied depending on the location, the traditions of a community, or even the whim of a white person.
In most places, whites and blacks were expected to abide by an unspoken racial etiquette. For example, blacks could not enter a white home through the front door, address a white person by their first name, or refuse to give way to a white person on a sidewalk. Courtrooms often swore in black witnesses with separate bibles, and in many stores, blacks could not be served until white customers were finished. Whites did make exceptions for black domestic workers, but only because a black servant tending to white children in a space marked as white still clearly retained a position of inferiority. For many African Americans, Jim Crow caused incredible apprehension about the repercussions of crossing the color line. Any action taken by a black man or woman that whites perceived to be impudent or disrespectful could lead to swift and violent retaliation.
The Civil Rights Movement
After World War II, the edifice of Jim Crow began to break down. Black soldiers questioned the logic of having to fight for democracy abroad while returning home to face continued racial inequality. Protest on the grassroots level as well that initiated by institutions and celebrated leaders spread in the 1950s and early 1960s. The growing civil rights movement ultimately pressured the federal government to take action. Page 12 of 24
In 1964, the U.S. Congress answered President Lyndon B. Johnson's call to support racial equality and end Jim Crow. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade discrimination in public places, provided funding for assistance to further desegregate schools, created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and gave the attorney general more authority to prosecute civil rights violations involving voting, the use of public facilities, government, and education. It was the most extensive piece of federal legislation in support of civil rights ever ratified by Congress. While racial discrimination and oppression did not entirely disappear following passage of the Civil Rights Act, it truly marked the end of the widespread legal and social system of Jim Crow.
Natalie J. Ring https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 1903177
Image
Photographer: Unknown Description: This photograph shows a public notice on the streets of New York City announcing a meeting to advocate for a U.S. boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Date: December 3, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The location of the Olympic Games is chosen several years in advance. Germany was selected as the host country for the 1936 Olympics in 1932, shortly before the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Opposition to Hitler's regime mounted, and by the fall of 1935—around the time this photograph was taken—groups in the United States had organized for the express purpose of enacting a boycott of the games. Use the magnifying glass to zoom in on the posters in this image. Think about how the word "summons" contributes to the argument against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics. The poster suggests that boycotting the Olympic Games will help "Preserve the Olympic Ideal." What sort of characteristics does the "Olympic ideal" represent?
Notice announcing public meeting on 1936 Olympic Games boycott
A pedestrian in New York City reads a notice announcing a public meeting, scheduled for December 3, 1935, to urge Americans to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The racist and xenophobic policies of German chancellor Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led many countries to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration] https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230486
Commentary
Author: Historian Harold J. Goldberg Description: This commentary presents a historical interpretation of the 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin and argues that the games were used as a propaganda mechanism for the Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
Consider the notion of the "Olympic spirit" and the "spirit of the games." Did the 1936 undermine those values? Why or why not? Propaganda refers to information that is spread to influence public opinion regarding a specific cause or ideology. For example, a government may spread propaganda during war time to win support for the war or boost morale. Propaganda is often biased and may include disinformation or appeals to emotion rather than reason. How does the author build the case that Germany "turned the games into a propaganda showcase?" Pay close attention to the events described in the section titled "The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity." Why does the author believe the Jewish American athletes were pulled from the 4 X 100 relay team?
The 1936 Olympics were a Nazi Propaganda Showcase
In the early 1930s, enthusiasm for the Olympic Games in Europe was at a historic high. The modern Olympic Games had been held every four years since 1896, except in 1916, when they were scheduled for Berlin and canceled due to World War I. In 1932, the next Olympic Games were awarded to the Weimar Republic to celebrate Germany's new democracy, but in 1933 the republic gave way to Nazi dictatorship with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. Just as the war they started in 1939 destroyed cities, towns, villages, and people, the Nazis also ruined the Olympics held in Berlin in 1936.
A Brief History of Olympic Conflicts
The philosophy of the Olympics seeks to transcend politics and nationalism, as the world comes together to admire pure athletic skill, without concern for race, religion, or national origin. In fact, the games have frequently failed to live up to their ideals. Geopolitical crises and controversies have disrupted the games on multiple occasions, including the cancelation of the games in 1940 and 1944 due to World War II, the terrorist attack and massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972, and the U.S. boycott of the games hosted in Moscow in 1980. Among all of these flawed contests, the 1936 Olympics are still considered the most notorious for violating the spirit of the games.
Berlin, 1936: Propaganda and Discrimination
Visitors to Germany after Hitler consolidated power could not fail to see Berlin bedecked with swastika flags or hear the constant drone of Nazi propaganda on the radio. The Nazi racist agenda was clear, leading Olympic officials to debate a change of venue to another country. The fear was that the games would be spoiled by a Nazi ban on Jewish athletes and a simultaneous propaganda barrage glorifying the Nazi Party. Representatives of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) visited Germany to seek assurances that Nazi propaganda would not dominate the city and that German racial policy would not prevent athletes from participating. IOC officials were greeted by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who saw the games as a propaganda machine for the Nazis and had no reservations about lying and affirming that the games would be open to all. The IOC believed Goebbels and allowed the games to proceed in Berlin.
The result was exactly what people had feared. Nazi officials broke their pledge and refused to allow Jewish athletes to participate. Already in 1933, the German Boxing Association had expelled Erich Seelig, their light heavyweight champion, due to Jewish heritage. For the same reason, Germany's No. 1 tennis player was cut from its Davis Cup team. Likewise, Gretel Bergmann, a strong contender for a medal in the high jump, was put on the German team and then, with less than two weeks to go, was not allowed to compete. The Nazis disguised this discrimination by waiting until the American team was already on its way to Germany before they dropped her because she was Jewish. As she was the favorite for a medal, this treatment indicated that initial fears over keeping the games in Berlin were justified.
Germany turned the games into a Nazi propaganda showcase, with the Nazi flag flying from every balcony in Berlin. Hitler himself opened the games in the new Olympic Stadium on August 1, to the sound of 100,000 spectators shouting "Sieg heil" as they gave the Nazi salute. A recordsetting 49 teams paraded into the stadium; Germany had the most athletes in the stadium, with the United States bringing the secondlargest team. Interestingly, the medal count finished in that order as well: Germany won the most gold medals and the most overall medals, and the U.S. finished second in both medal categories. To complete the spectacle, the last of over 3,000 runners who carried an Olympic flame from Greece arrived to light the torch in Berlin. This Nazi innovation of having the last runner light the flame was intended to link ancient Greece with the present "Aryan" athlete.
The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity
The American team experienced both triumph and selfembarrassment. Jesse Owens, the star of the American track and field team, had already won three gold medals when the coaches called a meeting just before the relay. Owens was not scheduled to participate in that event, but two Jewish Americans had qualified and were anxious to go. One of them, Marty Glickman, described what happened at the team meeting:
"The event I was supposed to run, the 400meter relay, was one of the last events in the track and field program. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial heats, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach. Robertson announced to the 7 of us that he had heard very strong rumors that the Germans were saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400meter relay. Consequently, Sam Stoller and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. We were shocked. Sam was completely stunned. He didn't say a word in the meeting. I was a brash 18yearold kid and I said 'Coach, you can't hide worldclass sprinters.' At which point, Jesse spoke up and said 'Coach, I've won my 3 gold medals [the 100, the 200, and the long jump]. I'm tired. I've had it. Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it,' said Jesse. And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said 'You'll do as you're told.'" (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936)
American coaches had caved in to the Nazi agenda. There were never any secret German runners; in reality, the American coaches had decided that winning with Jewish runners would upset the Nazis more than winning another race with Jesse Owens. Owens went home with four gold medals, while Marty Glickman never got to participate in another Olympics due to the coming war. The United States celebrated the medal victories of Owens, but this great track and field star returned to a segregated America where he could not freely choose a restaurant or hotel for his postOlympic celebration.
Despite the mixed legacy of these games, the IOC was optimistic that 1940 would see an improvement. The games were planned for Tokyo, but Japan withdrew from hosting because of its military activity in China. Immediately the 1940 Olympics were rescheduled for Helsinki, Finland, but again the games were canceled when war started in nearby Poland in 1939. With the war still in progress, there was no possibility of holding the games in 1944, so the next Olympics were finally staged in London in 1948.
During the war, the Nazis killed more than 40 Jewish Olympic athletes as they occupied European countries.
About the Author
Harold J. Goldberg is the David E. Underdown Distinguished Professor of History at Sewanee: The University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee. His published works include Daily Life in NaziOccupied Europe (Greenwood, 2019), Competing Voices from World War II in Europe: Fighting Words (Greenwood, 2010), and DDay in the Pacific: The Battle of Saipan (Indiana University Press, 2007). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229716
Quote
Author: American Committee on Fair Play in Sports Description: This quote expresses the opinion of the American Committee on Fair Play in Sports on the political implications of holding the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Date: November 15, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The American Committee on Fair Play in Sports was assembled in the fall of 1935 to oppose U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympic Games. The committee produced publications and public service announcements intended to educate the public on the totalitarian Nazi government and its policies of racism and anti Semitism. Consider the ideals of the Olympic Games and the extent to which Germany undermined the ideals of democratic competition and sportsmanship.
American Committee on Fair Play in Sports: quote on the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Sport is prostituted when sport loses its independent and democratic character and becomes a political institution … Nazi Germany is endeavouring to use the Eleventh Olympiad to serve the necessities and interests of the Nazi Regime rather than the Olympic ideals.
–American Committee on Fair Play in Sports (November 15, 1935). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229811
Reference
Author: ABCCLIO Description: This reference article discusses goldmedalist sprinter Jesse Owens's participation in the 1936 Olympic Games, including his attitude toward Adolf Hitler as he readied for one of his races.
Context and Things to Consider
African American sprinter Owens became the first athlete in the history of the modern Olympic Games to win four gold medals in a single year. Owens's feat was celebrated by opponents of Hitler's regime as an embarrassing rebuke of Hitler's theories of Aryan racial supremacy. Consider the mindset of Owens as he readied for the 100meter finals heat and the laserfocus required of Olympic athletes. What does Owens's comment suggest about his views on Hitler? Evaluate Owens's comment in relation to the other sources. How does it illustrate the desire to reflect the ideals of the Olympic Games?
Jesse Owens: "Why Worry about Hitler?" (1936)
Jesse Owens was an African American track and field athlete. During the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, he became a national hero for defeating Adolf Hitler's Aryan athletes in a series of athletic contests.
In 1936, just a few years after Hitler rose to power in Germany, the Summer Olympic Games were held in Berlin, the nation's capital. Hitler believed in an Aryan "master race," an allegedly pure Germanic/Nordic race of people who were, according to Hitler, racially, physically, and intellectually above "lesser" peoples. The Aryan ideal was a Nordic type—tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.
Owens became the star of the 1936 Games, winning a total of four gold medals, including a world recordtying performance in the 100meter dash. Reflecting on this race, Owens discussed its personal significance and his state of focus despite the political implications of competing in Nazi Germany:
When I lined up in my lane for the finals of the 100 meters . . . I thought of all the years of practice and competition, of all who had believed in me, and of my state and university [Ohio, and the Ohio State University.]
I saw the finish line, and knew that 10 seconds would climax the work of eight years. One mistake could ruin those eight years. So, why worry about Hitler?
Hitler did not approve of Black athletes participating in the Games. By 1936, his views on the superiority of the Aryan race were known around the world, though Germany made an effort to obscure its antiSemitic policies as host of the Games. As someone who did not fit Hitler's ideal, Owens's victory in the 1936 Olympics was widely considered to be a refutation of the dictator's racist worldview and an embarrassment for the Nazi regime.
Mark Strong https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230575
COPYRIGHT 2021 ABCCLIO, LLC https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337 U.S. Participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympics Activity
Inquiry Question What were the arguments for and against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics?
The U.S. decision to take part in the 1936 Olympics, which took place in Berlin at the time of Nazi leadership, was a controversial issue that divided participating athletes, administrative organizations, and the American public itself, especially since the country was dealing with its own problems of racism during the era of Jim Crow laws. Use information collected from the provided sources and analyze your findings to explain the arguments presented by both sides: those who felt the U.S. should compete in the games, and those who felt the nation should boycott.
Clarifying Questions
What was the status of civil rights in Germany in the mid1930s, and how did it compare to the situation in the United States? What were the main arguments for participating in the games? What were the main arguments against participating in the games? How did the 1936 Berlin Olympics influence the global perception of Nazi Germany?
Vocabulary
boycott de facto segregation de jure segregation Jim Crow Nazi Party propaganda
Background Information
1936 Summer Olympic Games, Berlin
The 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin, Germany, marked a pivotal moment in the history of the international games. German chancellor Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and the institution of racist and xenophobic policies by the Nazi Party, led many to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
Hitler's Rise to Power
In their choice of Berlin, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had wanted to stress Germany's return to the international sporting world after World War I. When the Olympics were held in 1936, however, it was quite a different Germany and quite a different Berlin from those to whom the IOC had awarded the games in 1931. The rise to prominence of the Nazi Party in the 1930s elevated the party's leader, Adolf Hitler, as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Hitler's seizure of absolute power in 1934 ushered in a totalitarian regime in Germany that ruthlessly suppressed the civil rights of minorities, particularly German Jews.
Organizing the Games
The overwhelming problem for the IOC and for the United States was to get a guarantee that Jewish athletes would not be excluded from the games. At the IOC meeting in Vienna in June 1933, president of the Olympic organizing committee Theodor Lewald was able to give an assurance with the approval of the German government that "all laws relating to the Olympic Games will be respected. German Jews will not as a matter of principle be excluded from German teams in the XI Olympiad."
This guarantee convinced the president of the Olympic Committee, Henri BailletLatour, after a visit to Berlin in November 1935, when he had an audience with Hitler. After that, the attitude of the Olympic Committee was unchanged. There was no wavering, and there was total support for the games in Berlin. From that point onward, both Baillet Latour and Avery Brundage attacked all opponents of the games as being lackeys of Communism. In 1936, Avery Brundage took a place on the IOC at the expense of the American E. L. Jahncke, who had been unremittingly critical of the games in Berlin.
The first thing the Hitler state did was to place its resources wholeheartedly behind the organization committee. A close cooperative relationship developed between Reich Director of Sport Hans von Tschammer und Osten and the organization committee—a collaboration that would be expanded to encompass work on the winter games in GarmischPartenkirchen, which the IOC had no objections about awarding to Germany in the spring of 1933, four months after Hitler came to power. Leading the organization of the latter was Karl Ritter von Halt, who had swiftly joined the Nazi Party in order to assist his career as a banker. All these people combined to convince the outside world that the games in Berlin and GarmischPartenkirchen would take place without discrimination against Jews or other nonAryan races.
Nazi Propaganda and Misdirection
The Nazis reasoned that if the whole world was being invited to Germany as a guest, then the country had to be seen in its most favorable light. Despite the treatment of Jews in Germany, Jews from outside were welcome. The German press was also instructed not to say anything negative about blacks—or only if they could do so by quoting newspapers from America's southern states. Furthermore, at the winter games and the summer games, the German press was forbidden from suggesting that Jews were inferior. Abusive antiSemitic posters were removed, and the SS was given the task of ensuring that these temporary prohibitions were observed.
To underline Nazi goodwill, two German halfJews were allowed to take part in the games: the icehockey player Rudi Ball in the winter games, and the fencer Helene Mayer in the summer games. Both were 50% Jewish according to Nazi definitions, and as such were acceptable. On the other hand, a potential medalist for Germany, Gretel Bergmann, who was a highjumper and fully Jewish, was not allowed to take part.
With the assistance of the Ministry of Propaganda, the Nazis set a largescale campaign in motion to bring the world to Berlin. Bulletins in a number of languages were sent out abroad; German travel agents abroad advertised the Olympic Games in Berlin as the best place to take a summer holiday in 1936; and 156,000 Olympic posters in 19 languages were distributed.
With unlimited funds at their disposal, the organization committee could construct a completely new stadium for the games in Berlin. The style was neoclassical and there was plenty of space for a range of activities, including the socalled Maifeld, which was an exhibition and practice area situated between the stadium's marathon gate and the Olympic novelty, a bell tower with the great bell that summoned the youth of the world to Berlin—"Ich rufe die Jugend der Welt" (I call the youth of the world) was engraved on the castiron bell. The bell tower's foundation consisted of the great Langemarckhalle, originally suggested by Organizing Committee secretary general Carl Diem. The hall was envisoned as a temple commemorating the youth of Germany that had fallen in World War I at Langemarck in Flanders.
The Olympic stadium in Berlin became the site of what were the most successful games of all so far. They were directly transmitted by radio for the first time to countless countries, and in selected cinemas in Berlin it was even possible to see direct television transmission from the games. It was, however, Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia that would stand for posterity as the document of the success of the games. The film was given its premiere on Hitler's birthday in 1938 and from the very first was a roaring success both at home and abroad. It won a number of prizes and at the Venice Film Festival in 1938 was grand prize winner ahead of, for example, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was only in the United States that its success was more muted, since a greater proportion of the public were critical of developments in Germany.
The Games
The games lasted from August 1–16 and lived up to the high expectations in every respect. Athletes from 49 nations competed, 3,738 men and 328 women, and the stadium was sold out for all events, with 105,000 spectators attending every day. The crowning moment of the introductory procession in Berlin was the arrival of the torch bearer into the Olympic stadium. The new German Reich created a perfect staging for sport as an offshoot of ancient Greece. Everything went according to plan, and at the processional entry a number of countries chose to make the Nazi salute when they passed the Fuhrer's box; others stretched out their hands more horizontally and said afterward that it was the Olympic greeting.
The greatest athlete of the games was the African American Jesse Owens, who won five gold medals. Owens won the 100 and 200meter races. He also won the long jump and was in the 4x100 relay, which set a new record of 39.8 seconds, which was the first time ever under 40 seconds and a record that stood for 20 years. Owens's performance was seen by many as a refutation of Hitler's racist theories of Aryan racial superiority and remains the most memorable performance of the games. Basketball, canoeing, and field handball were on the program for the first time, and it caused a sensation when Norway beat Germany in soccer and achieved a bronze. As expected, despite American dominance, Germany ran away with the most medals in athletics.
Reference
Author: Historian and Holocaust scholar Paul R. Bartrop Description: This essay outlines the arguments for and against the international community's participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, hosted during the third year of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin began in the early years of Hitler's regime, which saw laws severely restricting the citizenship and civil rights of Jews known as the Nuremberg Race Laws (1935). Consider the ways in which Germany constructed its image during the Olympic Games. How did that image differ from its image prior to the Olympics? Pay close attention to the arguments for and against a boycott of the 1936 Olympics outlined in the sections titled "Debating Whether to Boycott" and "U.S. Olympic Team." Why did most African American newspapers support participation in the games?
1936 Berlin Olympics: Boycott Debates
The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were highly controversial at the time. From the very start they were marked by racism, with the official Nazi Party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, declaring that Jews and people of African descent, regardless of their country of origin, should not be allowed to participate. Following Nazi demands, the German Olympic Committee denied Jews all opportunity of representing Germany. These measures led many in the international community to call for a boycott of the 1936 games.
Germany Furnishes its Image
When the possibility of an international boycott was threatened, Germany responded with a superficial relaxing of the rules: now, one athlete with a Jewish background was allowed to compete for Germany. Helene Mayer, who had a Jewish father, was a world champion fencer who had already won a gold medal at the 1928 Amsterdam Games. With an eye to the prospect of her winning another gold medal for Germany, she became the token Jew permitted to compete. As it turned out, she won silver in the individual foil event.
The prospect of other Jewish athletes competing for Germany was denied, however. The fourtime world record holder and 10time German national champion in shot put and discus throw, Lilli Henoch, was excluded; she was later deported and murdered in the Riga ghetto in 1942. Gretel Bergmann, an internationally recognized champion high jumper, was replaced on the German team by Dora Ratjen, who was later revealed to be a male who had been raised as a girl.
In order to reassure foreign opinion, Berlin was purged of all traces of Nazi antiSemitism. Local party authorities removed street signs bearing such slogans as "Jews not wanted" from Berlin's main tourist areas. At the same time, all vagrants and Roma were physically moved to a specially constructed "holding camp" outside the city at Marzahn.
Debating Whether to Boycott
In view of Germany's racist domestic policies, there was considerable debate among the international community over whether or not to boycott the games. In some countries, notably Britain, France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands, discussion took place over whether the games should be relocated. Meanwhile, exiled political opponents of the Nazis kept up the pressure for a boycott. These initiatives did not amount to anything definite; opponents of a boycott argued that the games had been awarded to Berlin in 1931 and that it would be wrong to punish the city simply because of a change of government.
Individual Jewish athletes from a number of countries, on the other hand, elected to take matters into their own hands and refused to attend. In this regard, brave athletes such as the South African Sid Kiel and Americans Milton Green and Norman Cahners should be mentioned.
U.S. Olympic Team
As one of the world's leading sporting nations, the position of the United States was crucial. In September 1934, the United States Olympic Committee accepted a German invitation to visit on a factfinding mission. After interviewing German Jews who had been carefully selected by the Nazi regime, U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage concluded that he had not found any discrimination against the Jewish population of Germany. He then became a major supporter of the games being held in Berlin, famously arguing that "politics has no place in sport." By 1935, he had convinced the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States that an American team should be sent to Berlin. The American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee supported a boycott, but they had no say in what was effectively an institutional project by the American Olympic Committee.
Most African American newspapers, on the other hand, supported participation. They argued that this was an opportunity for Nazi racial theories to be challenged and, hopefully, defeated. And to some degree, they were right; the iconic Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events, and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin.
On the day of the men's 4 x 100 relay, the Jewish American sprinters Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman were sidelined from the team. While this gave Owens the opportunity to win his fourth and final gold medal, historians have speculated that the removal of Stoller and Glickman was deliberately antiSemitic and intended to appease Hitler.
Legacy of the 1936 Games
Ultimately, Germany was the most successful country at the games, winning 33 gold medals and 89 medals overall. The United States came second in the medal tally, with 24 gold and 56 overall.
The Berlin Olympics torch relay from Mount Olympus in Greece was the first of its kind, and the games were the first to have live television coverage. Despite these advances, they were also to be the final Olympic Games for 12 years owing to World War II.
Hitler's antihuman ideologies and his quest for supreme domination and racial supremacy were the biggest challenge to the Olympic ideal until 1972—when terrorism and the murder of Jewish athletes at the Munich Games threatened the Olympic ideal once more. The president of the International Olympic Committee then was the same Avery Brundage who so dominated the American team in 1936.
Paul R. Bartrop https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229806
Reference
Author: Historian Natalie Ring Description: This essay defines and illustrates the Jim Crow era of racial segregation and discrimination in the American South.
Context and Things to Consider
What is meant by the term "Jim Crow"? How did Jim Crow laws prevent the social advancement of African Americans from the 1880s to 1960s? What is meant by de jure segregation? What is meant by de facto segregation? Consider race relations in the United States during the 1930s and the extent to which there was a contradiction between Americans' attitudes toward race relations at home and their attitudes related to the 1936 Olympics.
Segregation and Jim Crow
The term "Jim Crow" refers to the system of racial segregation and oppression that existed primarily in the South from 1877 to the mid1960s. Segregation existed in some parts of the North, yet by the turn of the century it had become a distinctly Southern phenomenon. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court declared that "separate but equal" was constitutional, and this provided the legal backbone for segregation until it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In reality, "separate but equal" was never really equal. Racial segregation violated the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, but the federal government continued to sanction the state laws and practices of Jim Crow until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Jim Crow era marked the ascendancy of white supremacy and not only consisted of the social separation of the races, but more broadly included lynching and mob violence, the manipulation of the justice system, inequality in education, economic subjugation, and the elimination of Black suffrage.
Origins of "Jim Crow"
The term Jim Crow is derived from the name of a character in a minstrel song performed by Thomas Rice in the 1830s. Blackface minstrelsy was a form of popular entertainment in which white actors blackened their face with cork and imitated what they considered to be authentic African American dialect, dance, and song. These theatrical performances frequently ridiculed African Americans and exaggerated alleged Black characteristics.
Rice named his act "Jump Jim Crow" and claimed to have based it on a dance he saw performed by an aged crippled slave in Louisville, Kentucky, owned by a Mr. Crow. Wearing ragged clothing representative of a field hand, Rice sang and danced to lyrics that included the stanza "Weel about and turn about / And do jis so, / Eb'ry time I weel about / And jump Jim Crow." The routine was immensely popular during the antebellum period, and the figure of Jim Crow became a recognizable and enduring icon in American popular culture. In the 1840s, abolitionists used the phrase Jim Crow to describe segregated railroad cars. By the end of the 19th century, the term came to signify the social separation of the races.
De Jure Segregation
Two forms of Jim Crow existed in the South: de jure and de facto. De jure segregation referred to the separation of the races as mandated specifically by law, and de facto segregation occurred by custom or tradition. In the 1880s, such laws as the segregation of street cars appeared sporadically across the South. Between 1890 and 1915, Southern states enacted an array of statutes that led to a more rigid and universal framework for the social separation of the races.
This explosion of de jure segregation reflected Southern whites' growing unease about a younger, more assertive generation of African Americans who demanded respect and recognition of their rights. In addition, the intent of widespread codification was to solidify custom and to eliminate uncertainty about the social status of blacks and whites. Signs labeled "For White" and "For Colored" dominated the Southern landscape, and Jim Crow regulated social contact in such places as restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, parks, schools, libraries, hospitals, and waiting rooms. In many cases, social separation often meant total exclusion. State legislatures also enacted antimiscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriage, and passed laws or rewrote the state constitution to make voter registration difficult, if not impossible.
De Facto Segregation
Although Southern states passed an elaborate network of laws, de facto practices of segregation endured. Patterns of de facto segregation varied depending on the location, the traditions of a community, or even the whim of a white person.
In most places, whites and blacks were expected to abide by an unspoken racial etiquette. For example, blacks could not enter a white home through the front door, address a white person by their first name, or refuse to give way to a white person on a sidewalk. Courtrooms often swore in black witnesses with separate bibles, and in many stores, blacks could not be served until white customers were finished. Whites did make exceptions for black domestic workers, but only because a black servant tending to white children in a space marked as white still clearly retained a position of inferiority. For many African Americans, Jim Crow caused incredible apprehension about the repercussions of crossing the color line. Any action taken by a black man or woman that whites perceived to be impudent or disrespectful could lead to swift and violent retaliation.
The Civil Rights Movement
After World War II, the edifice of Jim Crow began to break down. Black soldiers questioned the logic of having to fight for democracy abroad while returning home to face continued racial inequality. Protest on the grassroots level as well that initiated by institutions and celebrated leaders spread in the 1950s and early 1960s. The growing civil rights movement ultimately pressured the federal government to take action.
In 1964, the U.S. Congress answered President Lyndon B. Johnson's call to support racial equality and end Jim Crow. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade discrimination in public places, provided funding for assistance to further desegregate schools, created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and gave the attorney general more authority to prosecute civil rights violations involving voting, the use of public facilities, government, and education. It was the most extensive piece of federal legislation in support of civil rights ever ratified by Congress. While racial discrimination and oppression did not entirely disappear following passage of the Civil Rights Act, it truly marked the end of the widespread legal and social system of Jim Crow.
Natalie J. Ring https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 1903177
Image
Photographer: Unknown Description: This photograph shows a public notice on the streets of New York City announcing a meeting to advocate for a U.S. boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Date: December 3, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The location of the Olympic Games is chosen several years in advance. Germany was selected as the host country for the 1936 Olympics in 1932, shortly before the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Opposition to Hitler's regime mounted, and by the fall of 1935—around the time this photograph was taken—groups in the United States had organized for the express purpose of enacting a boycott of the games.
Use the magnifying glass to zoom in on the posters in this image. Think aboutPage 13 of 24 how the word "summons" contributes to the argument against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics. The poster suggests that boycotting the Olympic Games will help "Preserve the Olympic Ideal." What sort of characteristics does the "Olympic ideal" represent?
Notice announcing public meeting on 1936 Olympic Games boycott
A pedestrian in New York City reads a notice announcing a public meeting, scheduled for December 3, 1935, to urge Americans to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The racist and xenophobic policies of German chancellor Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led many countries to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration] https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230486
Commentary
Author: Historian Harold J. Goldberg Description: This commentary presents a historical interpretation of the 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin and argues that the games were used as a propaganda mechanism for the Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
Consider the notion of the "Olympic spirit" and the "spirit of the games." Did the 1936 undermine those values? Why or why not? Propaganda refers to information that is spread to influence public opinion regarding a specific cause or ideology. For example, a government may spread propaganda during war time to win support for the war or boost morale. Propaganda is often biased and may include disinformation or appeals to emotion rather than reason. How does the author build the case that Germany "turned the games into a propaganda showcase?" Pay close attention to the events described in the section titled "The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity." Why does the author believe the Jewish American athletes were pulled from the 4 X 100 relay team?
The 1936 Olympics were a Nazi Propaganda Showcase
In the early 1930s, enthusiasm for the Olympic Games in Europe was at a historic high. The modern Olympic Games had been held every four years since 1896, except in 1916, when they were scheduled for Berlin and canceled due to World War I. In 1932, the next Olympic Games were awarded to the Weimar Republic to celebrate Germany's new democracy, but in 1933 the republic gave way to Nazi dictatorship with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. Just as the war they started in 1939 destroyed cities, towns, villages, and people, the Nazis also ruined the Olympics held in Berlin in 1936.
A Brief History of Olympic Conflicts
The philosophy of the Olympics seeks to transcend politics and nationalism, as the world comes together to admire pure athletic skill, without concern for race, religion, or national origin. In fact, the games have frequently failed to live up to their ideals. Geopolitical crises and controversies have disrupted the games on multiple occasions, including the cancelation of the games in 1940 and 1944 due to World War II, the terrorist attack and massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972, and the U.S. boycott of the games hosted in Moscow in 1980. Among all of these flawed contests, the 1936 Olympics are still considered the most notorious for violating the spirit of the games.
Berlin, 1936: Propaganda and Discrimination
Visitors to Germany after Hitler consolidated power could not fail to see Berlin bedecked with swastika flags or hear the constant drone of Nazi propaganda on the radio. The Nazi racist agenda was clear, leading Olympic officials to debate a change of venue to another country. The fear was that the games would be spoiled by a Nazi ban on Jewish athletes and a simultaneous propaganda barrage glorifying the Nazi Party. Representatives of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) visited Germany to seek assurances that Nazi propaganda would not dominate the city and that German racial policy would not prevent athletes from participating. IOC officials were greeted by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who saw the games as a propaganda machine for the Nazis and had no reservations about lying and affirming that the games would be open to all. The IOC believed Goebbels and allowed the games to proceed in Berlin.
The result was exactly what people had feared. Nazi officials broke their pledge and refused to allow Jewish athletes to participate. Already in 1933, the German Boxing Association had expelled Erich Seelig, their light heavyweight champion, due to Jewish heritage. For the same reason, Germany's No. 1 tennis player was cut from its Davis Cup team. Likewise, Gretel Bergmann, a strong contender for a medal in the high jump, was put on the German team and then, with less than two weeks to go, was not allowed to compete. The Nazis disguised this discrimination by waiting until the American team was already on its way to Germany before they dropped her because she was Jewish. As she was the favorite for a medal, this treatment indicated that initial fears over keeping the games in Berlin were justified.
Germany turned the games into a Nazi propaganda showcase, with the Nazi flag flying from every balcony in Berlin. Hitler himself opened the games in the new Olympic Stadium on August 1, to the sound of 100,000 spectators shouting "Sieg heil" as they gave the Nazi salute. A recordsetting 49 teams paraded into the stadium; Germany had the most athletes in the stadium, with the United States bringing the secondlargest team. Interestingly, the medal count finished in that order as well: Germany won the most gold medals and the most overall medals, and the U.S. finished second in both medal categories. To complete the spectacle, the last of over 3,000 runners who carried an Olympic flame from Greece arrived to light the torch in Berlin. This Nazi innovation of having the last runner light the flame was intended to link ancient Greece with the present "Aryan" athlete.
The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity
The American team experienced both triumph and selfembarrassment. Jesse Owens, the star of the American track and field team, had already won three gold medals when the coaches called a meeting just before the relay. Owens was not scheduled to participate in that event, but two Jewish Americans had qualified and were anxious to go. One of them, Marty Glickman, described what happened at the team meeting:
"The event I was supposed to run, the 400meter relay, was one of the last events in the track and field program. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial heats, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach. Robertson announced to the 7 of us that he had heard very strong rumors that the Germans were saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400meter relay. Consequently, Sam Stoller and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. We were shocked. Sam was completely stunned. He didn't say a word in the meeting. I was a brash 18yearold kid and I said 'Coach, you can't hide worldclass sprinters.' At which point, Jesse spoke up and said 'Coach, I've won my 3 gold medals [the 100, the 200, and the long jump]. I'm tired. I've had it. Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it,' said Jesse. And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said 'You'll do as you're told.'" (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936)
American coaches had caved in to the Nazi agenda. There were never any secret German runners; in reality, the American coaches had decided that winning with Jewish runners would upset the Nazis more than winning another race with Jesse Owens. Owens went home with four gold medals, while Marty Glickman never got to participate in another Olympics due to the coming war. The United States celebrated the medal victories of Owens, but this great track and field star returned to a segregated America where he could not freely choose a restaurant or hotel for his postOlympic celebration.
Despite the mixed legacy of these games, the IOC was optimistic that 1940 would see an improvement. The games were planned for Tokyo, but Japan withdrew from hosting because of its military activity in China. Immediately the 1940 Olympics were rescheduled for Helsinki, Finland, but again the games were canceled when war started in nearby Poland in 1939. With the war still in progress, there was no possibility of holding the games in 1944, so the next Olympics were finally staged in London in 1948.
During the war, the Nazis killed more than 40 Jewish Olympic athletes as they occupied European countries.
About the Author
Harold J. Goldberg is the David E. Underdown Distinguished Professor of History at Sewanee: The University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee. His published works include Daily Life in NaziOccupied Europe (Greenwood, 2019), Competing Voices from World War II in Europe: Fighting Words (Greenwood, 2010), and DDay in the Pacific: The Battle of Saipan (Indiana University Press, 2007). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229716
Quote
Author: American Committee on Fair Play in Sports Description: This quote expresses the opinion of the American Committee on Fair Play in Sports on the political implications of holding the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Date: November 15, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The American Committee on Fair Play in Sports was assembled in the fall of 1935 to oppose U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympic Games. The committee produced publications and public service announcements intended to educate the public on the totalitarian Nazi government and its policies of racism and anti Semitism. Consider the ideals of the Olympic Games and the extent to which Germany undermined the ideals of democratic competition and sportsmanship.
American Committee on Fair Play in Sports: quote on the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Sport is prostituted when sport loses its independent and democratic character and becomes a political institution … Nazi Germany is endeavouring to use the Eleventh Olympiad to serve the necessities and interests of the Nazi Regime rather than the Olympic ideals.
–American Committee on Fair Play in Sports (November 15, 1935). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229811
Reference
Author: ABCCLIO Description: This reference article discusses goldmedalist sprinter Jesse Owens's participation in the 1936 Olympic Games, including his attitude toward Adolf Hitler as he readied for one of his races.
Context and Things to Consider
African American sprinter Owens became the first athlete in the history of the modern Olympic Games to win four gold medals in a single year. Owens's feat was celebrated by opponents of Hitler's regime as an embarrassing rebuke of Hitler's theories of Aryan racial supremacy. Consider the mindset of Owens as he readied for the 100meter finals heat and the laserfocus required of Olympic athletes. What does Owens's comment suggest about his views on Hitler? Evaluate Owens's comment in relation to the other sources. How does it illustrate the desire to reflect the ideals of the Olympic Games?
Jesse Owens: "Why Worry about Hitler?" (1936)
Jesse Owens was an African American track and field athlete. During the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, he became a national hero for defeating Adolf Hitler's Aryan athletes in a series of athletic contests.
In 1936, just a few years after Hitler rose to power in Germany, the Summer Olympic Games were held in Berlin, the nation's capital. Hitler believed in an Aryan "master race," an allegedly pure Germanic/Nordic race of people who were, according to Hitler, racially, physically, and intellectually above "lesser" peoples. The Aryan ideal was a Nordic type—tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.
Owens became the star of the 1936 Games, winning a total of four gold medals, including a world recordtying performance in the 100meter dash. Reflecting on this race, Owens discussed its personal significance and his state of focus despite the political implications of competing in Nazi Germany:
When I lined up in my lane for the finals of the 100 meters . . . I thought of all the years of practice and competition, of all who had believed in me, and of my state and university [Ohio, and the Ohio State University.]
I saw the finish line, and knew that 10 seconds would climax the work of eight years. One mistake could ruin those eight years. So, why worry about Hitler?
Hitler did not approve of Black athletes participating in the Games. By 1936, his views on the superiority of the Aryan race were known around the world, though Germany made an effort to obscure its antiSemitic policies as host of the Games. As someone who did not fit Hitler's ideal, Owens's victory in the 1936 Olympics was widely considered to be a refutation of the dictator's racist worldview and an embarrassment for the Nazi regime.
Mark Strong https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230575
COPYRIGHT 2021 ABCCLIO, LLC https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337 U.S. Participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympics Activity
Inquiry Question What were the arguments for and against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics?
The U.S. decision to take part in the 1936 Olympics, which took place in Berlin at the time of Nazi leadership, was a controversial issue that divided participating athletes, administrative organizations, and the American public itself, especially since the country was dealing with its own problems of racism during the era of Jim Crow laws. Use information collected from the provided sources and analyze your findings to explain the arguments presented by both sides: those who felt the U.S. should compete in the games, and those who felt the nation should boycott.
Clarifying Questions
What was the status of civil rights in Germany in the mid1930s, and how did it compare to the situation in the United States? What were the main arguments for participating in the games? What were the main arguments against participating in the games? How did the 1936 Berlin Olympics influence the global perception of Nazi Germany?
Vocabulary
boycott de facto segregation de jure segregation Jim Crow Nazi Party propaganda
Background Information
1936 Summer Olympic Games, Berlin
The 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin, Germany, marked a pivotal moment in the history of the international games. German chancellor Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and the institution of racist and xenophobic policies by the Nazi Party, led many to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
Hitler's Rise to Power
In their choice of Berlin, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had wanted to stress Germany's return to the international sporting world after World War I. When the Olympics were held in 1936, however, it was quite a different Germany and quite a different Berlin from those to whom the IOC had awarded the games in 1931. The rise to prominence of the Nazi Party in the 1930s elevated the party's leader, Adolf Hitler, as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Hitler's seizure of absolute power in 1934 ushered in a totalitarian regime in Germany that ruthlessly suppressed the civil rights of minorities, particularly German Jews.
Organizing the Games
The overwhelming problem for the IOC and for the United States was to get a guarantee that Jewish athletes would not be excluded from the games. At the IOC meeting in Vienna in June 1933, president of the Olympic organizing committee Theodor Lewald was able to give an assurance with the approval of the German government that "all laws relating to the Olympic Games will be respected. German Jews will not as a matter of principle be excluded from German teams in the XI Olympiad."
This guarantee convinced the president of the Olympic Committee, Henri BailletLatour, after a visit to Berlin in November 1935, when he had an audience with Hitler. After that, the attitude of the Olympic Committee was unchanged. There was no wavering, and there was total support for the games in Berlin. From that point onward, both Baillet Latour and Avery Brundage attacked all opponents of the games as being lackeys of Communism. In 1936, Avery Brundage took a place on the IOC at the expense of the American E. L. Jahncke, who had been unremittingly critical of the games in Berlin.
The first thing the Hitler state did was to place its resources wholeheartedly behind the organization committee. A close cooperative relationship developed between Reich Director of Sport Hans von Tschammer und Osten and the organization committee—a collaboration that would be expanded to encompass work on the winter games in GarmischPartenkirchen, which the IOC had no objections about awarding to Germany in the spring of 1933, four months after Hitler came to power. Leading the organization of the latter was Karl Ritter von Halt, who had swiftly joined the Nazi Party in order to assist his career as a banker. All these people combined to convince the outside world that the games in Berlin and GarmischPartenkirchen would take place without discrimination against Jews or other nonAryan races.
Nazi Propaganda and Misdirection
The Nazis reasoned that if the whole world was being invited to Germany as a guest, then the country had to be seen in its most favorable light. Despite the treatment of Jews in Germany, Jews from outside were welcome. The German press was also instructed not to say anything negative about blacks—or only if they could do so by quoting newspapers from America's southern states. Furthermore, at the winter games and the summer games, the German press was forbidden from suggesting that Jews were inferior. Abusive antiSemitic posters were removed, and the SS was given the task of ensuring that these temporary prohibitions were observed.
To underline Nazi goodwill, two German halfJews were allowed to take part in the games: the icehockey player Rudi Ball in the winter games, and the fencer Helene Mayer in the summer games. Both were 50% Jewish according to Nazi definitions, and as such were acceptable. On the other hand, a potential medalist for Germany, Gretel Bergmann, who was a highjumper and fully Jewish, was not allowed to take part.
With the assistance of the Ministry of Propaganda, the Nazis set a largescale campaign in motion to bring the world to Berlin. Bulletins in a number of languages were sent out abroad; German travel agents abroad advertised the Olympic Games in Berlin as the best place to take a summer holiday in 1936; and 156,000 Olympic posters in 19 languages were distributed.
With unlimited funds at their disposal, the organization committee could construct a completely new stadium for the games in Berlin. The style was neoclassical and there was plenty of space for a range of activities, including the socalled Maifeld, which was an exhibition and practice area situated between the stadium's marathon gate and the Olympic novelty, a bell tower with the great bell that summoned the youth of the world to Berlin—"Ich rufe die Jugend der Welt" (I call the youth of the world) was engraved on the castiron bell. The bell tower's foundation consisted of the great Langemarckhalle, originally suggested by Organizing Committee secretary general Carl Diem. The hall was envisoned as a temple commemorating the youth of Germany that had fallen in World War I at Langemarck in Flanders.
The Olympic stadium in Berlin became the site of what were the most successful games of all so far. They were directly transmitted by radio for the first time to countless countries, and in selected cinemas in Berlin it was even possible to see direct television transmission from the games. It was, however, Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia that would stand for posterity as the document of the success of the games. The film was given its premiere on Hitler's birthday in 1938 and from the very first was a roaring success both at home and abroad. It won a number of prizes and at the Venice Film Festival in 1938 was grand prize winner ahead of, for example, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was only in the United States that its success was more muted, since a greater proportion of the public were critical of developments in Germany.
The Games
The games lasted from August 1–16 and lived up to the high expectations in every respect. Athletes from 49 nations competed, 3,738 men and 328 women, and the stadium was sold out for all events, with 105,000 spectators attending every day. The crowning moment of the introductory procession in Berlin was the arrival of the torch bearer into the Olympic stadium. The new German Reich created a perfect staging for sport as an offshoot of ancient Greece. Everything went according to plan, and at the processional entry a number of countries chose to make the Nazi salute when they passed the Fuhrer's box; others stretched out their hands more horizontally and said afterward that it was the Olympic greeting.
The greatest athlete of the games was the African American Jesse Owens, who won five gold medals. Owens won the 100 and 200meter races. He also won the long jump and was in the 4x100 relay, which set a new record of 39.8 seconds, which was the first time ever under 40 seconds and a record that stood for 20 years. Owens's performance was seen by many as a refutation of Hitler's racist theories of Aryan racial superiority and remains the most memorable performance of the games. Basketball, canoeing, and field handball were on the program for the first time, and it caused a sensation when Norway beat Germany in soccer and achieved a bronze. As expected, despite American dominance, Germany ran away with the most medals in athletics.
Reference
Author: Historian and Holocaust scholar Paul R. Bartrop Description: This essay outlines the arguments for and against the international community's participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, hosted during the third year of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin began in the early years of Hitler's regime, which saw laws severely restricting the citizenship and civil rights of Jews known as the Nuremberg Race Laws (1935). Consider the ways in which Germany constructed its image during the Olympic Games. How did that image differ from its image prior to the Olympics? Pay close attention to the arguments for and against a boycott of the 1936 Olympics outlined in the sections titled "Debating Whether to Boycott" and "U.S. Olympic Team." Why did most African American newspapers support participation in the games?
1936 Berlin Olympics: Boycott Debates
The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were highly controversial at the time. From the very start they were marked by racism, with the official Nazi Party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, declaring that Jews and people of African descent, regardless of their country of origin, should not be allowed to participate. Following Nazi demands, the German Olympic Committee denied Jews all opportunity of representing Germany. These measures led many in the international community to call for a boycott of the 1936 games.
Germany Furnishes its Image
When the possibility of an international boycott was threatened, Germany responded with a superficial relaxing of the rules: now, one athlete with a Jewish background was allowed to compete for Germany. Helene Mayer, who had a Jewish father, was a world champion fencer who had already won a gold medal at the 1928 Amsterdam Games. With an eye to the prospect of her winning another gold medal for Germany, she became the token Jew permitted to compete. As it turned out, she won silver in the individual foil event.
The prospect of other Jewish athletes competing for Germany was denied, however. The fourtime world record holder and 10time German national champion in shot put and discus throw, Lilli Henoch, was excluded; she was later deported and murdered in the Riga ghetto in 1942. Gretel Bergmann, an internationally recognized champion high jumper, was replaced on the German team by Dora Ratjen, who was later revealed to be a male who had been raised as a girl.
In order to reassure foreign opinion, Berlin was purged of all traces of Nazi antiSemitism. Local party authorities removed street signs bearing such slogans as "Jews not wanted" from Berlin's main tourist areas. At the same time, all vagrants and Roma were physically moved to a specially constructed "holding camp" outside the city at Marzahn.
Debating Whether to Boycott
In view of Germany's racist domestic policies, there was considerable debate among the international community over whether or not to boycott the games. In some countries, notably Britain, France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands, discussion took place over whether the games should be relocated. Meanwhile, exiled political opponents of the Nazis kept up the pressure for a boycott. These initiatives did not amount to anything definite; opponents of a boycott argued that the games had been awarded to Berlin in 1931 and that it would be wrong to punish the city simply because of a change of government.
Individual Jewish athletes from a number of countries, on the other hand, elected to take matters into their own hands and refused to attend. In this regard, brave athletes such as the South African Sid Kiel and Americans Milton Green and Norman Cahners should be mentioned.
U.S. Olympic Team
As one of the world's leading sporting nations, the position of the United States was crucial. In September 1934, the United States Olympic Committee accepted a German invitation to visit on a factfinding mission. After interviewing German Jews who had been carefully selected by the Nazi regime, U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage concluded that he had not found any discrimination against the Jewish population of Germany. He then became a major supporter of the games being held in Berlin, famously arguing that "politics has no place in sport." By 1935, he had convinced the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States that an American team should be sent to Berlin. The American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee supported a boycott, but they had no say in what was effectively an institutional project by the American Olympic Committee.
Most African American newspapers, on the other hand, supported participation. They argued that this was an opportunity for Nazi racial theories to be challenged and, hopefully, defeated. And to some degree, they were right; the iconic Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events, and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin.
On the day of the men's 4 x 100 relay, the Jewish American sprinters Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman were sidelined from the team. While this gave Owens the opportunity to win his fourth and final gold medal, historians have speculated that the removal of Stoller and Glickman was deliberately antiSemitic and intended to appease Hitler.
Legacy of the 1936 Games
Ultimately, Germany was the most successful country at the games, winning 33 gold medals and 89 medals overall. The United States came second in the medal tally, with 24 gold and 56 overall.
The Berlin Olympics torch relay from Mount Olympus in Greece was the first of its kind, and the games were the first to have live television coverage. Despite these advances, they were also to be the final Olympic Games for 12 years owing to World War II.
Hitler's antihuman ideologies and his quest for supreme domination and racial supremacy were the biggest challenge to the Olympic ideal until 1972—when terrorism and the murder of Jewish athletes at the Munich Games threatened the Olympic ideal once more. The president of the International Olympic Committee then was the same Avery Brundage who so dominated the American team in 1936.
Paul R. Bartrop https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229806
Reference
Author: Historian Natalie Ring Description: This essay defines and illustrates the Jim Crow era of racial segregation and discrimination in the American South.
Context and Things to Consider
What is meant by the term "Jim Crow"? How did Jim Crow laws prevent the social advancement of African Americans from the 1880s to 1960s? What is meant by de jure segregation? What is meant by de facto segregation? Consider race relations in the United States during the 1930s and the extent to which there was a contradiction between Americans' attitudes toward race relations at home and their attitudes related to the 1936 Olympics.
Segregation and Jim Crow
The term "Jim Crow" refers to the system of racial segregation and oppression that existed primarily in the South from 1877 to the mid1960s. Segregation existed in some parts of the North, yet by the turn of the century it had become a distinctly Southern phenomenon. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court declared that "separate but equal" was constitutional, and this provided the legal backbone for segregation until it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In reality, "separate but equal" was never really equal. Racial segregation violated the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, but the federal government continued to sanction the state laws and practices of Jim Crow until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Jim Crow era marked the ascendancy of white supremacy and not only consisted of the social separation of the races, but more broadly included lynching and mob violence, the manipulation of the justice system, inequality in education, economic subjugation, and the elimination of Black suffrage.
Origins of "Jim Crow"
The term Jim Crow is derived from the name of a character in a minstrel song performed by Thomas Rice in the 1830s. Blackface minstrelsy was a form of popular entertainment in which white actors blackened their face with cork and imitated what they considered to be authentic African American dialect, dance, and song. These theatrical performances frequently ridiculed African Americans and exaggerated alleged Black characteristics.
Rice named his act "Jump Jim Crow" and claimed to have based it on a dance he saw performed by an aged crippled slave in Louisville, Kentucky, owned by a Mr. Crow. Wearing ragged clothing representative of a field hand, Rice sang and danced to lyrics that included the stanza "Weel about and turn about / And do jis so, / Eb'ry time I weel about / And jump Jim Crow." The routine was immensely popular during the antebellum period, and the figure of Jim Crow became a recognizable and enduring icon in American popular culture. In the 1840s, abolitionists used the phrase Jim Crow to describe segregated railroad cars. By the end of the 19th century, the term came to signify the social separation of the races.
De Jure Segregation
Two forms of Jim Crow existed in the South: de jure and de facto. De jure segregation referred to the separation of the races as mandated specifically by law, and de facto segregation occurred by custom or tradition. In the 1880s, such laws as the segregation of street cars appeared sporadically across the South. Between 1890 and 1915, Southern states enacted an array of statutes that led to a more rigid and universal framework for the social separation of the races.
This explosion of de jure segregation reflected Southern whites' growing unease about a younger, more assertive generation of African Americans who demanded respect and recognition of their rights. In addition, the intent of widespread codification was to solidify custom and to eliminate uncertainty about the social status of blacks and whites. Signs labeled "For White" and "For Colored" dominated the Southern landscape, and Jim Crow regulated social contact in such places as restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, parks, schools, libraries, hospitals, and waiting rooms. In many cases, social separation often meant total exclusion. State legislatures also enacted antimiscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriage, and passed laws or rewrote the state constitution to make voter registration difficult, if not impossible.
De Facto Segregation
Although Southern states passed an elaborate network of laws, de facto practices of segregation endured. Patterns of de facto segregation varied depending on the location, the traditions of a community, or even the whim of a white person.
In most places, whites and blacks were expected to abide by an unspoken racial etiquette. For example, blacks could not enter a white home through the front door, address a white person by their first name, or refuse to give way to a white person on a sidewalk. Courtrooms often swore in black witnesses with separate bibles, and in many stores, blacks could not be served until white customers were finished. Whites did make exceptions for black domestic workers, but only because a black servant tending to white children in a space marked as white still clearly retained a position of inferiority. For many African Americans, Jim Crow caused incredible apprehension about the repercussions of crossing the color line. Any action taken by a black man or woman that whites perceived to be impudent or disrespectful could lead to swift and violent retaliation.
The Civil Rights Movement
After World War II, the edifice of Jim Crow began to break down. Black soldiers questioned the logic of having to fight for democracy abroad while returning home to face continued racial inequality. Protest on the grassroots level as well that initiated by institutions and celebrated leaders spread in the 1950s and early 1960s. The growing civil rights movement ultimately pressured the federal government to take action.
In 1964, the U.S. Congress answered President Lyndon B. Johnson's call to support racial equality and end Jim Crow. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade discrimination in public places, provided funding for assistance to further desegregate schools, created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and gave the attorney general more authority to prosecute civil rights violations involving voting, the use of public facilities, government, and education. It was the most extensive piece of federal legislation in support of civil rights ever ratified by Congress. While racial discrimination and oppression did not entirely disappear following passage of the Civil Rights Act, it truly marked the end of the widespread legal and social system of Jim Crow.
Natalie J. Ring https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 1903177
Image
Photographer: Unknown Description: This photograph shows a public notice on the streets of New York City announcing a meeting to advocate for a U.S. boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Date: December 3, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The location of the Olympic Games is chosen several years in advance. Germany was selected as the host country for the 1936 Olympics in 1932, shortly before the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Opposition to Hitler's regime mounted, and by the fall of 1935—around the time this photograph was taken—groups in the United States had organized for the express purpose of enacting a boycott of the games. Use the magnifying glass to zoom in on the posters in this image. Think about how the word "summons" contributes to the argument against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics. The poster suggests that boycotting the Olympic Games will help "Preserve the Olympic Ideal." What sort of characteristics does the "Olympic ideal" represent?
Notice announcing public meeting on 1936 Olympic Games boycott
A pedestrian in New York City reads a notice announcing a public meeting, scheduled for December 3, 1935, to urge Americans to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The racist and xenophobic policies of German chancellor Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led many countries to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
Page 14 of 24
[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration] https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230486
Commentary
Author: Historian Harold J. Goldberg Description: This commentary presents a historical interpretation of the 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin and argues that the games were used as a propaganda mechanism for the Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
Consider the notion of the "Olympic spirit" and the "spirit of the games." Did the 1936 undermine those values? Why or why not? Propaganda refers to information that is spread to influence public opinion regarding a specific cause or ideology. For example, a government may spread propaganda during war time to win support for the war or boost morale. Propaganda is often biased and may include disinformation or appeals to emotion rather than reason. How does the author build the case that Germany "turned the games into a propaganda showcase?" Pay close attention to the events described in the section titled "The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity." Why does the author believe the Jewish American athletes were pulled from the 4 X 100 relay team?
The 1936 Olympics were a Nazi Propaganda Showcase
In the early 1930s, enthusiasm for the Olympic Games in Europe was at a historic high. The modern Olympic Games had been held every four years since 1896, except in 1916, when they were scheduled for Berlin and canceled due to World War I. In 1932, the next Olympic Games were awarded to the Weimar Republic to celebrate Germany's new democracy, but in 1933 the republic gave way to Nazi dictatorship with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. Just as the war they started in 1939 destroyed cities, towns, villages, and people, the Nazis also ruined the Olympics held in Berlin in 1936.
A Brief History of Olympic Conflicts
The philosophy of the Olympics seeks to transcend politics and nationalism, as the world comes together to admire pure athletic skill, without concern for race, religion, or national origin. In fact, the games have frequently failed to live up to their ideals. Geopolitical crises and controversies have disrupted the games on multiple occasions, including the cancelation of the games in 1940 and 1944 due to World War II, the terrorist attack and massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972, and the U.S. boycott of the games hosted in Moscow in 1980. Among all of these flawed contests, the 1936 Olympics are still considered the most notorious for violating the spirit of the games.
Berlin, 1936: Propaganda and Discrimination
Visitors to Germany after Hitler consolidated power could not fail to see Berlin bedecked with swastika flags or hear the constant drone of Nazi propaganda on the radio. The Nazi racist agenda was clear, leading Olympic officials to debate a change of venue to another country. The fear was that the games would be spoiled by a Nazi ban on Jewish athletes and a simultaneous propaganda barrage glorifying the Nazi Party. Representatives of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) visited Germany to seek assurances that Nazi propaganda would not dominate the city and that German racial policy would not prevent athletes from participating. IOC officials were greeted by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who saw the games as a propaganda machine for the Nazis and had no reservations about lying and affirming that the games would be open to all. The IOC believed Goebbels and allowed the games to proceed in Berlin.
The result was exactly what people had feared. Nazi officials broke their pledge and refused to allow Jewish athletes to participate. Already in 1933, the German Boxing Association had expelled Erich Seelig, their light heavyweight champion, due to Jewish heritage. For the same reason, Germany's No. 1 tennis player was cut from its Davis Cup team. Likewise, Gretel Bergmann, a strong contender for a medal in the high jump, was put on the German team and then, with less than two weeks to go, was not allowed to compete. The Nazis disguised this discrimination by waiting until the American team was already on its way to Germany before they dropped her because she was Jewish. As she was the favorite for a medal, this treatment indicated that initial fears over keeping the games in Berlin were justified.
Germany turned the games into a Nazi propaganda showcase, with the Nazi flag flying from every balcony in Berlin. Hitler himself opened the games in the new Olympic Stadium on August 1, to the sound of 100,000 spectators shouting "Sieg heil" as they gave the Nazi salute. A recordsetting 49 teams paraded into the stadium; Germany had the most athletes in the stadium, with the United States bringing the secondlargest team. Interestingly, the medal count finished in that order as well: Germany won the most gold medals and the most overall medals, and the U.S. finished second in both medal categories. To complete the spectacle, the last of over 3,000 runners who carried an Olympic flame from Greece arrived to light the torch in Berlin. This Nazi innovation of having the last runner light the flame was intended to link ancient Greece with the present "Aryan" athlete.
The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity
The American team experienced both triumph and selfembarrassment. Jesse Owens, the star of the American track and field team, had already won three gold medals when the coaches called a meeting just before the relay. Owens was not scheduled to participate in that event, but two Jewish Americans had qualified and were anxious to go. One of them, Marty Glickman, described what happened at the team meeting:
"The event I was supposed to run, the 400meter relay, was one of the last events in the track and field program. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial heats, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach. Robertson announced to the 7 of us that he had heard very strong rumors that the Germans were saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400meter relay. Consequently, Sam Stoller and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. We were shocked. Sam was completely stunned. He didn't say a word in the meeting. I was a brash 18yearold kid and I said 'Coach, you can't hide worldclass sprinters.' At which point, Jesse spoke up and said 'Coach, I've won my 3 gold medals [the 100, the 200, and the long jump]. I'm tired. I've had it. Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it,' said Jesse. And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said 'You'll do as you're told.'" (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936)
American coaches had caved in to the Nazi agenda. There were never any secret German runners; in reality, the American coaches had decided that winning with Jewish runners would upset the Nazis more than winning another race with Jesse Owens. Owens went home with four gold medals, while Marty Glickman never got to participate in another Olympics due to the coming war. The United States celebrated the medal victories of Owens, but this great track and field star returned to a segregated America where he could not freely choose a restaurant or hotel for his postOlympic celebration.
Despite the mixed legacy of these games, the IOC was optimistic that 1940 would see an improvement. The games were planned for Tokyo, but Japan withdrew from hosting because of its military activity in China. Immediately the 1940 Olympics were rescheduled for Helsinki, Finland, but again the games were canceled when war started in nearby Poland in 1939. With the war still in progress, there was no possibility of holding the games in 1944, so the next Olympics were finally staged in London in 1948.
During the war, the Nazis killed more than 40 Jewish Olympic athletes as they occupied European countries.
About the Author
Harold J. Goldberg is the David E. Underdown Distinguished Professor of History at Sewanee: The University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee. His published works include Daily Life in NaziOccupied Europe (Greenwood, 2019), Competing Voices from World War II in Europe: Fighting Words (Greenwood, 2010), and DDay in the Pacific: The Battle of Saipan (Indiana University Press, 2007). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229716
Quote
Author: American Committee on Fair Play in Sports Description: This quote expresses the opinion of the American Committee on Fair Play in Sports on the political implications of holding the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Date: November 15, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The American Committee on Fair Play in Sports was assembled in the fall of 1935 to oppose U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympic Games. The committee produced publications and public service announcements intended to educate the public on the totalitarian Nazi government and its policies of racism and anti Semitism. Consider the ideals of the Olympic Games and the extent to which Germany undermined the ideals of democratic competition and sportsmanship.
American Committee on Fair Play in Sports: quote on the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Sport is prostituted when sport loses its independent and democratic character and becomes a political institution … Nazi Germany is endeavouring to use the Eleventh Olympiad to serve the necessities and interests of the Nazi Regime rather than the Olympic ideals.
–American Committee on Fair Play in Sports (November 15, 1935). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229811
Reference
Author: ABCCLIO Description: This reference article discusses goldmedalist sprinter Jesse Owens's participation in the 1936 Olympic Games, including his attitude toward Adolf Hitler as he readied for one of his races.
Context and Things to Consider
African American sprinter Owens became the first athlete in the history of the modern Olympic Games to win four gold medals in a single year. Owens's feat was celebrated by opponents of Hitler's regime as an embarrassing rebuke of Hitler's theories of Aryan racial supremacy. Consider the mindset of Owens as he readied for the 100meter finals heat and the laserfocus required of Olympic athletes. What does Owens's comment suggest about his views on Hitler? Evaluate Owens's comment in relation to the other sources. How does it illustrate the desire to reflect the ideals of the Olympic Games?
Jesse Owens: "Why Worry about Hitler?" (1936)
Jesse Owens was an African American track and field athlete. During the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, he became a national hero for defeating Adolf Hitler's Aryan athletes in a series of athletic contests.
In 1936, just a few years after Hitler rose to power in Germany, the Summer Olympic Games were held in Berlin, the nation's capital. Hitler believed in an Aryan "master race," an allegedly pure Germanic/Nordic race of people who were, according to Hitler, racially, physically, and intellectually above "lesser" peoples. The Aryan ideal was a Nordic type—tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.
Owens became the star of the 1936 Games, winning a total of four gold medals, including a world recordtying performance in the 100meter dash. Reflecting on this race, Owens discussed its personal significance and his state of focus despite the political implications of competing in Nazi Germany:
When I lined up in my lane for the finals of the 100 meters . . . I thought of all the years of practice and competition, of all who had believed in me, and of my state and university [Ohio, and the Ohio State University.]
I saw the finish line, and knew that 10 seconds would climax the work of eight years. One mistake could ruin those eight years. So, why worry about Hitler?
Hitler did not approve of Black athletes participating in the Games. By 1936, his views on the superiority of the Aryan race were known around the world, though Germany made an effort to obscure its antiSemitic policies as host of the Games. As someone who did not fit Hitler's ideal, Owens's victory in the 1936 Olympics was widely considered to be a refutation of the dictator's racist worldview and an embarrassment for the Nazi regime.
Mark Strong https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230575
COPYRIGHT 2021 ABCCLIO, LLC https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337 U.S. Participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympics Activity
Inquiry Question What were the arguments for and against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics?
The U.S. decision to take part in the 1936 Olympics, which took place in Berlin at the time of Nazi leadership, was a controversial issue that divided participating athletes, administrative organizations, and the American public itself, especially since the country was dealing with its own problems of racism during the era of Jim Crow laws. Use information collected from the provided sources and analyze your findings to explain the arguments presented by both sides: those who felt the U.S. should compete in the games, and those who felt the nation should boycott.
Clarifying Questions
What was the status of civil rights in Germany in the mid1930s, and how did it compare to the situation in the United States? What were the main arguments for participating in the games? What were the main arguments against participating in the games? How did the 1936 Berlin Olympics influence the global perception of Nazi Germany?
Vocabulary
boycott de facto segregation de jure segregation Jim Crow Nazi Party propaganda
Background Information
1936 Summer Olympic Games, Berlin
The 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin, Germany, marked a pivotal moment in the history of the international games. German chancellor Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and the institution of racist and xenophobic policies by the Nazi Party, led many to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
Hitler's Rise to Power
In their choice of Berlin, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had wanted to stress Germany's return to the international sporting world after World War I. When the Olympics were held in 1936, however, it was quite a different Germany and quite a different Berlin from those to whom the IOC had awarded the games in 1931. The rise to prominence of the Nazi Party in the 1930s elevated the party's leader, Adolf Hitler, as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Hitler's seizure of absolute power in 1934 ushered in a totalitarian regime in Germany that ruthlessly suppressed the civil rights of minorities, particularly German Jews.
Organizing the Games
The overwhelming problem for the IOC and for the United States was to get a guarantee that Jewish athletes would not be excluded from the games. At the IOC meeting in Vienna in June 1933, president of the Olympic organizing committee Theodor Lewald was able to give an assurance with the approval of the German government that "all laws relating to the Olympic Games will be respected. German Jews will not as a matter of principle be excluded from German teams in the XI Olympiad."
This guarantee convinced the president of the Olympic Committee, Henri BailletLatour, after a visit to Berlin in November 1935, when he had an audience with Hitler. After that, the attitude of the Olympic Committee was unchanged. There was no wavering, and there was total support for the games in Berlin. From that point onward, both Baillet Latour and Avery Brundage attacked all opponents of the games as being lackeys of Communism. In 1936, Avery Brundage took a place on the IOC at the expense of the American E. L. Jahncke, who had been unremittingly critical of the games in Berlin.
The first thing the Hitler state did was to place its resources wholeheartedly behind the organization committee. A close cooperative relationship developed between Reich Director of Sport Hans von Tschammer und Osten and the organization committee—a collaboration that would be expanded to encompass work on the winter games in GarmischPartenkirchen, which the IOC had no objections about awarding to Germany in the spring of 1933, four months after Hitler came to power. Leading the organization of the latter was Karl Ritter von Halt, who had swiftly joined the Nazi Party in order to assist his career as a banker. All these people combined to convince the outside world that the games in Berlin and GarmischPartenkirchen would take place without discrimination against Jews or other nonAryan races.
Nazi Propaganda and Misdirection
The Nazis reasoned that if the whole world was being invited to Germany as a guest, then the country had to be seen in its most favorable light. Despite the treatment of Jews in Germany, Jews from outside were welcome. The German press was also instructed not to say anything negative about blacks—or only if they could do so by quoting newspapers from America's southern states. Furthermore, at the winter games and the summer games, the German press was forbidden from suggesting that Jews were inferior. Abusive antiSemitic posters were removed, and the SS was given the task of ensuring that these temporary prohibitions were observed.
To underline Nazi goodwill, two German halfJews were allowed to take part in the games: the icehockey player Rudi Ball in the winter games, and the fencer Helene Mayer in the summer games. Both were 50% Jewish according to Nazi definitions, and as such were acceptable. On the other hand, a potential medalist for Germany, Gretel Bergmann, who was a highjumper and fully Jewish, was not allowed to take part.
With the assistance of the Ministry of Propaganda, the Nazis set a largescale campaign in motion to bring the world to Berlin. Bulletins in a number of languages were sent out abroad; German travel agents abroad advertised the Olympic Games in Berlin as the best place to take a summer holiday in 1936; and 156,000 Olympic posters in 19 languages were distributed.
With unlimited funds at their disposal, the organization committee could construct a completely new stadium for the games in Berlin. The style was neoclassical and there was plenty of space for a range of activities, including the socalled Maifeld, which was an exhibition and practice area situated between the stadium's marathon gate and the Olympic novelty, a bell tower with the great bell that summoned the youth of the world to Berlin—"Ich rufe die Jugend der Welt" (I call the youth of the world) was engraved on the castiron bell. The bell tower's foundation consisted of the great Langemarckhalle, originally suggested by Organizing Committee secretary general Carl Diem. The hall was envisoned as a temple commemorating the youth of Germany that had fallen in World War I at Langemarck in Flanders.
The Olympic stadium in Berlin became the site of what were the most successful games of all so far. They were directly transmitted by radio for the first time to countless countries, and in selected cinemas in Berlin it was even possible to see direct television transmission from the games. It was, however, Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia that would stand for posterity as the document of the success of the games. The film was given its premiere on Hitler's birthday in 1938 and from the very first was a roaring success both at home and abroad. It won a number of prizes and at the Venice Film Festival in 1938 was grand prize winner ahead of, for example, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was only in the United States that its success was more muted, since a greater proportion of the public were critical of developments in Germany.
The Games
The games lasted from August 1–16 and lived up to the high expectations in every respect. Athletes from 49 nations competed, 3,738 men and 328 women, and the stadium was sold out for all events, with 105,000 spectators attending every day. The crowning moment of the introductory procession in Berlin was the arrival of the torch bearer into the Olympic stadium. The new German Reich created a perfect staging for sport as an offshoot of ancient Greece. Everything went according to plan, and at the processional entry a number of countries chose to make the Nazi salute when they passed the Fuhrer's box; others stretched out their hands more horizontally and said afterward that it was the Olympic greeting.
The greatest athlete of the games was the African American Jesse Owens, who won five gold medals. Owens won the 100 and 200meter races. He also won the long jump and was in the 4x100 relay, which set a new record of 39.8 seconds, which was the first time ever under 40 seconds and a record that stood for 20 years. Owens's performance was seen by many as a refutation of Hitler's racist theories of Aryan racial superiority and remains the most memorable performance of the games. Basketball, canoeing, and field handball were on the program for the first time, and it caused a sensation when Norway beat Germany in soccer and achieved a bronze. As expected, despite American dominance, Germany ran away with the most medals in athletics.
Reference
Author: Historian and Holocaust scholar Paul R. Bartrop Description: This essay outlines the arguments for and against the international community's participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, hosted during the third year of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin began in the early years of Hitler's regime, which saw laws severely restricting the citizenship and civil rights of Jews known as the Nuremberg Race Laws (1935). Consider the ways in which Germany constructed its image during the Olympic Games. How did that image differ from its image prior to the Olympics? Pay close attention to the arguments for and against a boycott of the 1936 Olympics outlined in the sections titled "Debating Whether to Boycott" and "U.S. Olympic Team." Why did most African American newspapers support participation in the games?
1936 Berlin Olympics: Boycott Debates
The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were highly controversial at the time. From the very start they were marked by racism, with the official Nazi Party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, declaring that Jews and people of African descent, regardless of their country of origin, should not be allowed to participate. Following Nazi demands, the German Olympic Committee denied Jews all opportunity of representing Germany. These measures led many in the international community to call for a boycott of the 1936 games.
Germany Furnishes its Image
When the possibility of an international boycott was threatened, Germany responded with a superficial relaxing of the rules: now, one athlete with a Jewish background was allowed to compete for Germany. Helene Mayer, who had a Jewish father, was a world champion fencer who had already won a gold medal at the 1928 Amsterdam Games. With an eye to the prospect of her winning another gold medal for Germany, she became the token Jew permitted to compete. As it turned out, she won silver in the individual foil event.
The prospect of other Jewish athletes competing for Germany was denied, however. The fourtime world record holder and 10time German national champion in shot put and discus throw, Lilli Henoch, was excluded; she was later deported and murdered in the Riga ghetto in 1942. Gretel Bergmann, an internationally recognized champion high jumper, was replaced on the German team by Dora Ratjen, who was later revealed to be a male who had been raised as a girl.
In order to reassure foreign opinion, Berlin was purged of all traces of Nazi antiSemitism. Local party authorities removed street signs bearing such slogans as "Jews not wanted" from Berlin's main tourist areas. At the same time, all vagrants and Roma were physically moved to a specially constructed "holding camp" outside the city at Marzahn.
Debating Whether to Boycott
In view of Germany's racist domestic policies, there was considerable debate among the international community over whether or not to boycott the games. In some countries, notably Britain, France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands, discussion took place over whether the games should be relocated. Meanwhile, exiled political opponents of the Nazis kept up the pressure for a boycott. These initiatives did not amount to anything definite; opponents of a boycott argued that the games had been awarded to Berlin in 1931 and that it would be wrong to punish the city simply because of a change of government.
Individual Jewish athletes from a number of countries, on the other hand, elected to take matters into their own hands and refused to attend. In this regard, brave athletes such as the South African Sid Kiel and Americans Milton Green and Norman Cahners should be mentioned.
U.S. Olympic Team
As one of the world's leading sporting nations, the position of the United States was crucial. In September 1934, the United States Olympic Committee accepted a German invitation to visit on a factfinding mission. After interviewing German Jews who had been carefully selected by the Nazi regime, U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage concluded that he had not found any discrimination against the Jewish population of Germany. He then became a major supporter of the games being held in Berlin, famously arguing that "politics has no place in sport." By 1935, he had convinced the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States that an American team should be sent to Berlin. The American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee supported a boycott, but they had no say in what was effectively an institutional project by the American Olympic Committee.
Most African American newspapers, on the other hand, supported participation. They argued that this was an opportunity for Nazi racial theories to be challenged and, hopefully, defeated. And to some degree, they were right; the iconic Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events, and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin.
On the day of the men's 4 x 100 relay, the Jewish American sprinters Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman were sidelined from the team. While this gave Owens the opportunity to win his fourth and final gold medal, historians have speculated that the removal of Stoller and Glickman was deliberately antiSemitic and intended to appease Hitler.
Legacy of the 1936 Games
Ultimately, Germany was the most successful country at the games, winning 33 gold medals and 89 medals overall. The United States came second in the medal tally, with 24 gold and 56 overall.
The Berlin Olympics torch relay from Mount Olympus in Greece was the first of its kind, and the games were the first to have live television coverage. Despite these advances, they were also to be the final Olympic Games for 12 years owing to World War II.
Hitler's antihuman ideologies and his quest for supreme domination and racial supremacy were the biggest challenge to the Olympic ideal until 1972—when terrorism and the murder of Jewish athletes at the Munich Games threatened the Olympic ideal once more. The president of the International Olympic Committee then was the same Avery Brundage who so dominated the American team in 1936.
Paul R. Bartrop https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229806
Reference
Author: Historian Natalie Ring Description: This essay defines and illustrates the Jim Crow era of racial segregation and discrimination in the American South.
Context and Things to Consider
What is meant by the term "Jim Crow"? How did Jim Crow laws prevent the social advancement of African Americans from the 1880s to 1960s? What is meant by de jure segregation? What is meant by de facto segregation? Consider race relations in the United States during the 1930s and the extent to which there was a contradiction between Americans' attitudes toward race relations at home and their attitudes related to the 1936 Olympics.
Segregation and Jim Crow
The term "Jim Crow" refers to the system of racial segregation and oppression that existed primarily in the South from 1877 to the mid1960s. Segregation existed in some parts of the North, yet by the turn of the century it had become a distinctly Southern phenomenon. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court declared that "separate but equal" was constitutional, and this provided the legal backbone for segregation until it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In reality, "separate but equal" was never really equal. Racial segregation violated the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, but the federal government continued to sanction the state laws and practices of Jim Crow until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Jim Crow era marked the ascendancy of white supremacy and not only consisted of the social separation of the races, but more broadly included lynching and mob violence, the manipulation of the justice system, inequality in education, economic subjugation, and the elimination of Black suffrage.
Origins of "Jim Crow"
The term Jim Crow is derived from the name of a character in a minstrel song performed by Thomas Rice in the 1830s. Blackface minstrelsy was a form of popular entertainment in which white actors blackened their face with cork and imitated what they considered to be authentic African American dialect, dance, and song. These theatrical performances frequently ridiculed African Americans and exaggerated alleged Black characteristics.
Rice named his act "Jump Jim Crow" and claimed to have based it on a dance he saw performed by an aged crippled slave in Louisville, Kentucky, owned by a Mr. Crow. Wearing ragged clothing representative of a field hand, Rice sang and danced to lyrics that included the stanza "Weel about and turn about / And do jis so, / Eb'ry time I weel about / And jump Jim Crow." The routine was immensely popular during the antebellum period, and the figure of Jim Crow became a recognizable and enduring icon in American popular culture. In the 1840s, abolitionists used the phrase Jim Crow to describe segregated railroad cars. By the end of the 19th century, the term came to signify the social separation of the races.
De Jure Segregation
Two forms of Jim Crow existed in the South: de jure and de facto. De jure segregation referred to the separation of the races as mandated specifically by law, and de facto segregation occurred by custom or tradition. In the 1880s, such laws as the segregation of street cars appeared sporadically across the South. Between 1890 and 1915, Southern states enacted an array of statutes that led to a more rigid and universal framework for the social separation of the races.
This explosion of de jure segregation reflected Southern whites' growing unease about a younger, more assertive generation of African Americans who demanded respect and recognition of their rights. In addition, the intent of widespread codification was to solidify custom and to eliminate uncertainty about the social status of blacks and whites. Signs labeled "For White" and "For Colored" dominated the Southern landscape, and Jim Crow regulated social contact in such places as restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, parks, schools, libraries, hospitals, and waiting rooms. In many cases, social separation often meant total exclusion. State legislatures also enacted antimiscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriage, and passed laws or rewrote the state constitution to make voter registration difficult, if not impossible.
De Facto Segregation
Although Southern states passed an elaborate network of laws, de facto practices of segregation endured. Patterns of de facto segregation varied depending on the location, the traditions of a community, or even the whim of a white person.
In most places, whites and blacks were expected to abide by an unspoken racial etiquette. For example, blacks could not enter a white home through the front door, address a white person by their first name, or refuse to give way to a white person on a sidewalk. Courtrooms often swore in black witnesses with separate bibles, and in many stores, blacks could not be served until white customers were finished. Whites did make exceptions for black domestic workers, but only because a black servant tending to white children in a space marked as white still clearly retained a position of inferiority. For many African Americans, Jim Crow caused incredible apprehension about the repercussions of crossing the color line. Any action taken by a black man or woman that whites perceived to be impudent or disrespectful could lead to swift and violent retaliation.
The Civil Rights Movement
After World War II, the edifice of Jim Crow began to break down. Black soldiers questioned the logic of having to fight for democracy abroad while returning home to face continued racial inequality. Protest on the grassroots level as well that initiated by institutions and celebrated leaders spread in the 1950s and early 1960s. The growing civil rights movement ultimately pressured the federal government to take action.
In 1964, the U.S. Congress answered President Lyndon B. Johnson's call to support racial equality and end Jim Crow. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade discrimination in public places, provided funding for assistance to further desegregate schools, created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and gave the attorney general more authority to prosecute civil rights violations involving voting, the use of public facilities, government, and education. It was the most extensive piece of federal legislation in support of civil rights ever ratified by Congress. While racial discrimination and oppression did not entirely disappear following passage of the Civil Rights Act, it truly marked the end of the widespread legal and social system of Jim Crow.
Natalie J. Ring https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 1903177
Image
Photographer: Unknown Description: This photograph shows a public notice on the streets of New York City announcing a meeting to advocate for a U.S. boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Date: December 3, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The location of the Olympic Games is chosen several years in advance. Germany was selected as the host country for the 1936 Olympics in 1932, shortly before the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Opposition to Hitler's regime mounted, and by the fall of 1935—around the time this photograph was taken—groups in the United States had organized for the express purpose of enacting a boycott of the games. Use the magnifying glass to zoom in on the posters in this image. Think about how the word "summons" contributes to the argument against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics. The poster suggests that boycotting the Olympic Games will help "Preserve the Olympic Ideal." What sort of characteristics does the "Olympic ideal" represent?
Notice announcing public meeting on 1936 Olympic Games boycott
A pedestrian in New York City reads a notice announcing a public meeting, scheduled for December 3, 1935, to urge Americans to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The racist and xenophobic policies of German chancellor Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led many countries to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration] https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230486
Commentary
Author: Historian Harold J. Goldberg Description: This commentary presents a historical interpretation of the 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin and argues that the games were used as a propaganda mechanism for the Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
Consider the notion of the "Olympic spirit" and the "spirit of the games." Did the 1936 undermine those values? Why or why not? Propaganda refers to information that is spread to influence public opinion
regarding a specific cause or ideology. For example, a government may spreadPage 15 of 24 propaganda during war time to win support for the war or boost morale. Propaganda is often biased and may include disinformation or appeals to emotion rather than reason. How does the author build the case that Germany "turned the games into a propaganda showcase?" Pay close attention to the events described in the section titled "The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity." Why does the author believe the Jewish American athletes were pulled from the 4 X 100 relay team?
The 1936 Olympics were a Nazi Propaganda Showcase
In the early 1930s, enthusiasm for the Olympic Games in Europe was at a historic high. The modern Olympic Games had been held every four years since 1896, except in 1916, when they were scheduled for Berlin and canceled due to World War I. In 1932, the next Olympic Games were awarded to the Weimar Republic to celebrate Germany's new democracy, but in 1933 the republic gave way to Nazi dictatorship with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. Just as the war they started in 1939 destroyed cities, towns, villages, and people, the Nazis also ruined the Olympics held in Berlin in 1936.
A Brief History of Olympic Conflicts
The philosophy of the Olympics seeks to transcend politics and nationalism, as the world comes together to admire pure athletic skill, without concern for race, religion, or national origin. In fact, the games have frequently failed to live up to their ideals. Geopolitical crises and controversies have disrupted the games on multiple occasions, including the cancelation of the games in 1940 and 1944 due to World War II, the terrorist attack and massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972, and the U.S. boycott of the games hosted in Moscow in 1980. Among all of these flawed contests, the 1936 Olympics are still considered the most notorious for violating the spirit of the games.
Berlin, 1936: Propaganda and Discrimination
Visitors to Germany after Hitler consolidated power could not fail to see Berlin bedecked with swastika flags or hear the constant drone of Nazi propaganda on the radio. The Nazi racist agenda was clear, leading Olympic officials to debate a change of venue to another country. The fear was that the games would be spoiled by a Nazi ban on Jewish athletes and a simultaneous propaganda barrage glorifying the Nazi Party. Representatives of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) visited Germany to seek assurances that Nazi propaganda would not dominate the city and that German racial policy would not prevent athletes from participating. IOC officials were greeted by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who saw the games as a propaganda machine for the Nazis and had no reservations about lying and affirming that the games would be open to all. The IOC believed Goebbels and allowed the games to proceed in Berlin.
The result was exactly what people had feared. Nazi officials broke their pledge and refused to allow Jewish athletes to participate. Already in 1933, the German Boxing Association had expelled Erich Seelig, their light heavyweight champion, due to Jewish heritage. For the same reason, Germany's No. 1 tennis player was cut from its Davis Cup team. Likewise, Gretel Bergmann, a strong contender for a medal in the high jump, was put on the German team and then, with less than two weeks to go, was not allowed to compete. The Nazis disguised this discrimination by waiting until the American team was already on its way to Germany before they dropped her because she was Jewish. As she was the favorite for a medal, this treatment indicated that initial fears over keeping the games in Berlin were justified.
Germany turned the games into a Nazi propaganda showcase, with the Nazi flag flying from every balcony in Berlin. Hitler himself opened the games in the new Olympic Stadium on August 1, to the sound of 100,000 spectators shouting "Sieg heil" as they gave the Nazi salute. A recordsetting 49 teams paraded into the stadium; Germany had the most athletes in the stadium, with the United States bringing the secondlargest team. Interestingly, the medal count finished in that order as well: Germany won the most gold medals and the most overall medals, and the U.S. finished second in both medal categories. To complete the spectacle, the last of over 3,000 runners who carried an Olympic flame from Greece arrived to light the torch in Berlin. This Nazi innovation of having the last runner light the flame was intended to link ancient Greece with the present "Aryan" athlete.
The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity
The American team experienced both triumph and selfembarrassment. Jesse Owens, the star of the American track and field team, had already won three gold medals when the coaches called a meeting just before the relay. Owens was not scheduled to participate in that event, but two Jewish Americans had qualified and were anxious to go. One of them, Marty Glickman, described what happened at the team meeting:
"The event I was supposed to run, the 400meter relay, was one of the last events in the track and field program. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial heats, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach. Robertson announced to the 7 of us that he had heard very strong rumors that the Germans were saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400meter relay. Consequently, Sam Stoller and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. We were shocked. Sam was completely stunned. He didn't say a word in the meeting. I was a brash 18yearold kid and I said 'Coach, you can't hide worldclass sprinters.' At which point, Jesse spoke up and said 'Coach, I've won my 3 gold medals [the 100, the 200, and the long jump]. I'm tired. I've had it. Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it,' said Jesse. And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said 'You'll do as you're told.'" (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936)
American coaches had caved in to the Nazi agenda. There were never any secret German runners; in reality, the American coaches had decided that winning with Jewish runners would upset the Nazis more than winning another race with Jesse Owens. Owens went home with four gold medals, while Marty Glickman never got to participate in another Olympics due to the coming war. The United States celebrated the medal victories of Owens, but this great track and field star returned to a segregated America where he could not freely choose a restaurant or hotel for his postOlympic celebration.
Despite the mixed legacy of these games, the IOC was optimistic that 1940 would see an improvement. The games were planned for Tokyo, but Japan withdrew from hosting because of its military activity in China. Immediately the 1940 Olympics were rescheduled for Helsinki, Finland, but again the games were canceled when war started in nearby Poland in 1939. With the war still in progress, there was no possibility of holding the games in 1944, so the next Olympics were finally staged in London in 1948.
During the war, the Nazis killed more than 40 Jewish Olympic athletes as they occupied European countries.
About the Author
Harold J. Goldberg is the David E. Underdown Distinguished Professor of History at Sewanee: The University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee. His published works include Daily Life in NaziOccupied Europe (Greenwood, 2019), Competing Voices from World War II in Europe: Fighting Words (Greenwood, 2010), and DDay in the Pacific: The Battle of Saipan (Indiana University Press, 2007). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229716
Quote
Author: American Committee on Fair Play in Sports Description: This quote expresses the opinion of the American Committee on Fair Play in Sports on the political implications of holding the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Date: November 15, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The American Committee on Fair Play in Sports was assembled in the fall of 1935 to oppose U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympic Games. The committee produced publications and public service announcements intended to educate the public on the totalitarian Nazi government and its policies of racism and anti Semitism. Consider the ideals of the Olympic Games and the extent to which Germany undermined the ideals of democratic competition and sportsmanship.
American Committee on Fair Play in Sports: quote on the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Sport is prostituted when sport loses its independent and democratic character and becomes a political institution … Nazi Germany is endeavouring to use the Eleventh Olympiad to serve the necessities and interests of the Nazi Regime rather than the Olympic ideals.
–American Committee on Fair Play in Sports (November 15, 1935). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229811
Reference
Author: ABCCLIO Description: This reference article discusses goldmedalist sprinter Jesse Owens's participation in the 1936 Olympic Games, including his attitude toward Adolf Hitler as he readied for one of his races.
Context and Things to Consider
African American sprinter Owens became the first athlete in the history of the modern Olympic Games to win four gold medals in a single year. Owens's feat was celebrated by opponents of Hitler's regime as an embarrassing rebuke of Hitler's theories of Aryan racial supremacy. Consider the mindset of Owens as he readied for the 100meter finals heat and the laserfocus required of Olympic athletes. What does Owens's comment suggest about his views on Hitler? Evaluate Owens's comment in relation to the other sources. How does it illustrate the desire to reflect the ideals of the Olympic Games?
Jesse Owens: "Why Worry about Hitler?" (1936)
Jesse Owens was an African American track and field athlete. During the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, he became a national hero for defeating Adolf Hitler's Aryan athletes in a series of athletic contests.
In 1936, just a few years after Hitler rose to power in Germany, the Summer Olympic Games were held in Berlin, the nation's capital. Hitler believed in an Aryan "master race," an allegedly pure Germanic/Nordic race of people who were, according to Hitler, racially, physically, and intellectually above "lesser" peoples. The Aryan ideal was a Nordic type—tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.
Owens became the star of the 1936 Games, winning a total of four gold medals, including a world recordtying performance in the 100meter dash. Reflecting on this race, Owens discussed its personal significance and his state of focus despite the political implications of competing in Nazi Germany:
When I lined up in my lane for the finals of the 100 meters . . . I thought of all the years of practice and competition, of all who had believed in me, and of my state and university [Ohio, and the Ohio State University.]
I saw the finish line, and knew that 10 seconds would climax the work of eight years. One mistake could ruin those eight years. So, why worry about Hitler?
Hitler did not approve of Black athletes participating in the Games. By 1936, his views on the superiority of the Aryan race were known around the world, though Germany made an effort to obscure its antiSemitic policies as host of the Games. As someone who did not fit Hitler's ideal, Owens's victory in the 1936 Olympics was widely considered to be a refutation of the dictator's racist worldview and an embarrassment for the Nazi regime.
Mark Strong https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230575
COPYRIGHT 2021 ABCCLIO, LLC https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337 U.S. Participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympics Activity
Inquiry Question What were the arguments for and against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics?
The U.S. decision to take part in the 1936 Olympics, which took place in Berlin at the time of Nazi leadership, was a controversial issue that divided participating athletes, administrative organizations, and the American public itself, especially since the country was dealing with its own problems of racism during the era of Jim Crow laws. Use information collected from the provided sources and analyze your findings to explain the arguments presented by both sides: those who felt the U.S. should compete in the games, and those who felt the nation should boycott.
Clarifying Questions
What was the status of civil rights in Germany in the mid1930s, and how did it compare to the situation in the United States? What were the main arguments for participating in the games? What were the main arguments against participating in the games? How did the 1936 Berlin Olympics influence the global perception of Nazi Germany?
Vocabulary
boycott de facto segregation de jure segregation Jim Crow Nazi Party propaganda
Background Information
1936 Summer Olympic Games, Berlin
The 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin, Germany, marked a pivotal moment in the history of the international games. German chancellor Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and the institution of racist and xenophobic policies by the Nazi Party, led many to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
Hitler's Rise to Power
In their choice of Berlin, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had wanted to stress Germany's return to the international sporting world after World War I. When the Olympics were held in 1936, however, it was quite a different Germany and quite a different Berlin from those to whom the IOC had awarded the games in 1931. The rise to prominence of the Nazi Party in the 1930s elevated the party's leader, Adolf Hitler, as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Hitler's seizure of absolute power in 1934 ushered in a totalitarian regime in Germany that ruthlessly suppressed the civil rights of minorities, particularly German Jews.
Organizing the Games
The overwhelming problem for the IOC and for the United States was to get a guarantee that Jewish athletes would not be excluded from the games. At the IOC meeting in Vienna in June 1933, president of the Olympic organizing committee Theodor Lewald was able to give an assurance with the approval of the German government that "all laws relating to the Olympic Games will be respected. German Jews will not as a matter of principle be excluded from German teams in the XI Olympiad."
This guarantee convinced the president of the Olympic Committee, Henri BailletLatour, after a visit to Berlin in November 1935, when he had an audience with Hitler. After that, the attitude of the Olympic Committee was unchanged. There was no wavering, and there was total support for the games in Berlin. From that point onward, both Baillet Latour and Avery Brundage attacked all opponents of the games as being lackeys of Communism. In 1936, Avery Brundage took a place on the IOC at the expense of the American E. L. Jahncke, who had been unremittingly critical of the games in Berlin.
The first thing the Hitler state did was to place its resources wholeheartedly behind the organization committee. A close cooperative relationship developed between Reich Director of Sport Hans von Tschammer und Osten and the organization committee—a collaboration that would be expanded to encompass work on the winter games in GarmischPartenkirchen, which the IOC had no objections about awarding to Germany in the spring of 1933, four months after Hitler came to power. Leading the organization of the latter was Karl Ritter von Halt, who had swiftly joined the Nazi Party in order to assist his career as a banker. All these people combined to convince the outside world that the games in Berlin and GarmischPartenkirchen would take place without discrimination against Jews or other nonAryan races.
Nazi Propaganda and Misdirection
The Nazis reasoned that if the whole world was being invited to Germany as a guest, then the country had to be seen in its most favorable light. Despite the treatment of Jews in Germany, Jews from outside were welcome. The German press was also instructed not to say anything negative about blacks—or only if they could do so by quoting newspapers from America's southern states. Furthermore, at the winter games and the summer games, the German press was forbidden from suggesting that Jews were inferior. Abusive antiSemitic posters were removed, and the SS was given the task of ensuring that these temporary prohibitions were observed.
To underline Nazi goodwill, two German halfJews were allowed to take part in the games: the icehockey player Rudi Ball in the winter games, and the fencer Helene Mayer in the summer games. Both were 50% Jewish according to Nazi definitions, and as such were acceptable. On the other hand, a potential medalist for Germany, Gretel Bergmann, who was a highjumper and fully Jewish, was not allowed to take part.
With the assistance of the Ministry of Propaganda, the Nazis set a largescale campaign in motion to bring the world to Berlin. Bulletins in a number of languages were sent out abroad; German travel agents abroad advertised the Olympic Games in Berlin as the best place to take a summer holiday in 1936; and 156,000 Olympic posters in 19 languages were distributed.
With unlimited funds at their disposal, the organization committee could construct a completely new stadium for the games in Berlin. The style was neoclassical and there was plenty of space for a range of activities, including the socalled Maifeld, which was an exhibition and practice area situated between the stadium's marathon gate and the Olympic novelty, a bell tower with the great bell that summoned the youth of the world to Berlin—"Ich rufe die Jugend der Welt" (I call the youth of the world) was engraved on the castiron bell. The bell tower's foundation consisted of the great Langemarckhalle, originally suggested by Organizing Committee secretary general Carl Diem. The hall was envisoned as a temple commemorating the youth of Germany that had fallen in World War I at Langemarck in Flanders.
The Olympic stadium in Berlin became the site of what were the most successful games of all so far. They were directly transmitted by radio for the first time to countless countries, and in selected cinemas in Berlin it was even possible to see direct television transmission from the games. It was, however, Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia that would stand for posterity as the document of the success of the games. The film was given its premiere on Hitler's birthday in 1938 and from the very first was a roaring success both at home and abroad. It won a number of prizes and at the Venice Film Festival in 1938 was grand prize winner ahead of, for example, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was only in the United States that its success was more muted, since a greater proportion of the public were critical of developments in Germany.
The Games
The games lasted from August 1–16 and lived up to the high expectations in every respect. Athletes from 49 nations competed, 3,738 men and 328 women, and the stadium was sold out for all events, with 105,000 spectators attending every day. The crowning moment of the introductory procession in Berlin was the arrival of the torch bearer into the Olympic stadium. The new German Reich created a perfect staging for sport as an offshoot of ancient Greece. Everything went according to plan, and at the processional entry a number of countries chose to make the Nazi salute when they passed the Fuhrer's box; others stretched out their hands more horizontally and said afterward that it was the Olympic greeting.
The greatest athlete of the games was the African American Jesse Owens, who won five gold medals. Owens won the 100 and 200meter races. He also won the long jump and was in the 4x100 relay, which set a new record of 39.8 seconds, which was the first time ever under 40 seconds and a record that stood for 20 years. Owens's performance was seen by many as a refutation of Hitler's racist theories of Aryan racial superiority and remains the most memorable performance of the games. Basketball, canoeing, and field handball were on the program for the first time, and it caused a sensation when Norway beat Germany in soccer and achieved a bronze. As expected, despite American dominance, Germany ran away with the most medals in athletics.
Reference
Author: Historian and Holocaust scholar Paul R. Bartrop Description: This essay outlines the arguments for and against the international community's participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, hosted during the third year of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin began in the early years of Hitler's regime, which saw laws severely restricting the citizenship and civil rights of Jews known as the Nuremberg Race Laws (1935). Consider the ways in which Germany constructed its image during the Olympic Games. How did that image differ from its image prior to the Olympics? Pay close attention to the arguments for and against a boycott of the 1936 Olympics outlined in the sections titled "Debating Whether to Boycott" and "U.S. Olympic Team." Why did most African American newspapers support participation in the games?
1936 Berlin Olympics: Boycott Debates
The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were highly controversial at the time. From the very start they were marked by racism, with the official Nazi Party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, declaring that Jews and people of African descent, regardless of their country of origin, should not be allowed to participate. Following Nazi demands, the German Olympic Committee denied Jews all opportunity of representing Germany. These measures led many in the international community to call for a boycott of the 1936 games.
Germany Furnishes its Image
When the possibility of an international boycott was threatened, Germany responded with a superficial relaxing of the rules: now, one athlete with a Jewish background was allowed to compete for Germany. Helene Mayer, who had a Jewish father, was a world champion fencer who had already won a gold medal at the 1928 Amsterdam Games. With an eye to the prospect of her winning another gold medal for Germany, she became the token Jew permitted to compete. As it turned out, she won silver in the individual foil event.
The prospect of other Jewish athletes competing for Germany was denied, however. The fourtime world record holder and 10time German national champion in shot put and discus throw, Lilli Henoch, was excluded; she was later deported and murdered in the Riga ghetto in 1942. Gretel Bergmann, an internationally recognized champion high jumper, was replaced on the German team by Dora Ratjen, who was later revealed to be a male who had been raised as a girl.
In order to reassure foreign opinion, Berlin was purged of all traces of Nazi antiSemitism. Local party authorities removed street signs bearing such slogans as "Jews not wanted" from Berlin's main tourist areas. At the same time, all vagrants and Roma were physically moved to a specially constructed "holding camp" outside the city at Marzahn.
Debating Whether to Boycott
In view of Germany's racist domestic policies, there was considerable debate among the international community over whether or not to boycott the games. In some countries, notably Britain, France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands, discussion took place over whether the games should be relocated. Meanwhile, exiled political opponents of the Nazis kept up the pressure for a boycott. These initiatives did not amount to anything definite; opponents of a boycott argued that the games had been awarded to Berlin in 1931 and that it would be wrong to punish the city simply because of a change of government.
Individual Jewish athletes from a number of countries, on the other hand, elected to take matters into their own hands and refused to attend. In this regard, brave athletes such as the South African Sid Kiel and Americans Milton Green and Norman Cahners should be mentioned.
U.S. Olympic Team
As one of the world's leading sporting nations, the position of the United States was crucial. In September 1934, the United States Olympic Committee accepted a German invitation to visit on a factfinding mission. After interviewing German Jews who had been carefully selected by the Nazi regime, U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage concluded that he had not found any discrimination against the Jewish population of Germany. He then became a major supporter of the games being held in Berlin, famously arguing that "politics has no place in sport." By 1935, he had convinced the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States that an American team should be sent to Berlin. The American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee supported a boycott, but they had no say in what was effectively an institutional project by the American Olympic Committee.
Most African American newspapers, on the other hand, supported participation. They argued that this was an opportunity for Nazi racial theories to be challenged and, hopefully, defeated. And to some degree, they were right; the iconic Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events, and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin.
On the day of the men's 4 x 100 relay, the Jewish American sprinters Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman were sidelined from the team. While this gave Owens the opportunity to win his fourth and final gold medal, historians have speculated that the removal of Stoller and Glickman was deliberately antiSemitic and intended to appease Hitler.
Legacy of the 1936 Games
Ultimately, Germany was the most successful country at the games, winning 33 gold medals and 89 medals overall. The United States came second in the medal tally, with 24 gold and 56 overall.
The Berlin Olympics torch relay from Mount Olympus in Greece was the first of its kind, and the games were the first to have live television coverage. Despite these advances, they were also to be the final Olympic Games for 12 years owing to World War II.
Hitler's antihuman ideologies and his quest for supreme domination and racial supremacy were the biggest challenge to the Olympic ideal until 1972—when terrorism and the murder of Jewish athletes at the Munich Games threatened the Olympic ideal once more. The president of the International Olympic Committee then was the same Avery Brundage who so dominated the American team in 1936.
Paul R. Bartrop https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229806
Reference
Author: Historian Natalie Ring Description: This essay defines and illustrates the Jim Crow era of racial segregation and discrimination in the American South.
Context and Things to Consider
What is meant by the term "Jim Crow"? How did Jim Crow laws prevent the social advancement of African Americans from the 1880s to 1960s? What is meant by de jure segregation? What is meant by de facto segregation? Consider race relations in the United States during the 1930s and the extent to which there was a contradiction between Americans' attitudes toward race relations at home and their attitudes related to the 1936 Olympics.
Segregation and Jim Crow
The term "Jim Crow" refers to the system of racial segregation and oppression that existed primarily in the South from 1877 to the mid1960s. Segregation existed in some parts of the North, yet by the turn of the century it had become a distinctly Southern phenomenon. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court declared that "separate but equal" was constitutional, and this provided the legal backbone for segregation until it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In reality, "separate but equal" was never really equal. Racial segregation violated the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, but the federal government continued to sanction the state laws and practices of Jim Crow until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Jim Crow era marked the ascendancy of white supremacy and not only consisted of the social separation of the races, but more broadly included lynching and mob violence, the manipulation of the justice system, inequality in education, economic subjugation, and the elimination of Black suffrage.
Origins of "Jim Crow"
The term Jim Crow is derived from the name of a character in a minstrel song performed by Thomas Rice in the 1830s. Blackface minstrelsy was a form of popular entertainment in which white actors blackened their face with cork and imitated what they considered to be authentic African American dialect, dance, and song. These theatrical performances frequently ridiculed African Americans and exaggerated alleged Black characteristics.
Rice named his act "Jump Jim Crow" and claimed to have based it on a dance he saw performed by an aged crippled slave in Louisville, Kentucky, owned by a Mr. Crow. Wearing ragged clothing representative of a field hand, Rice sang and danced to lyrics that included the stanza "Weel about and turn about / And do jis so, / Eb'ry time I weel about / And jump Jim Crow." The routine was immensely popular during the antebellum period, and the figure of Jim Crow became a recognizable and enduring icon in American popular culture. In the 1840s, abolitionists used the phrase Jim Crow to describe segregated railroad cars. By the end of the 19th century, the term came to signify the social separation of the races.
De Jure Segregation
Two forms of Jim Crow existed in the South: de jure and de facto. De jure segregation referred to the separation of the races as mandated specifically by law, and de facto segregation occurred by custom or tradition. In the 1880s, such laws as the segregation of street cars appeared sporadically across the South. Between 1890 and 1915, Southern states enacted an array of statutes that led to a more rigid and universal framework for the social separation of the races.
This explosion of de jure segregation reflected Southern whites' growing unease about a younger, more assertive generation of African Americans who demanded respect and recognition of their rights. In addition, the intent of widespread codification was to solidify custom and to eliminate uncertainty about the social status of blacks and whites. Signs labeled "For White" and "For Colored" dominated the Southern landscape, and Jim Crow regulated social contact in such places as restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, parks, schools, libraries, hospitals, and waiting rooms. In many cases, social separation often meant total exclusion. State legislatures also enacted antimiscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriage, and passed laws or rewrote the state constitution to make voter registration difficult, if not impossible.
De Facto Segregation
Although Southern states passed an elaborate network of laws, de facto practices of segregation endured. Patterns of de facto segregation varied depending on the location, the traditions of a community, or even the whim of a white person.
In most places, whites and blacks were expected to abide by an unspoken racial etiquette. For example, blacks could not enter a white home through the front door, address a white person by their first name, or refuse to give way to a white person on a sidewalk. Courtrooms often swore in black witnesses with separate bibles, and in many stores, blacks could not be served until white customers were finished. Whites did make exceptions for black domestic workers, but only because a black servant tending to white children in a space marked as white still clearly retained a position of inferiority. For many African Americans, Jim Crow caused incredible apprehension about the repercussions of crossing the color line. Any action taken by a black man or woman that whites perceived to be impudent or disrespectful could lead to swift and violent retaliation.
The Civil Rights Movement
After World War II, the edifice of Jim Crow began to break down. Black soldiers questioned the logic of having to fight for democracy abroad while returning home to face continued racial inequality. Protest on the grassroots level as well that initiated by institutions and celebrated leaders spread in the 1950s and early 1960s. The growing civil rights movement ultimately pressured the federal government to take action.
In 1964, the U.S. Congress answered President Lyndon B. Johnson's call to support racial equality and end Jim Crow. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade discrimination in public places, provided funding for assistance to further desegregate schools, created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and gave the attorney general more authority to prosecute civil rights violations involving voting, the use of public facilities, government, and education. It was the most extensive piece of federal legislation in support of civil rights ever ratified by Congress. While racial discrimination and oppression did not entirely disappear following passage of the Civil Rights Act, it truly marked the end of the widespread legal and social system of Jim Crow.
Natalie J. Ring https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 1903177
Image
Photographer: Unknown Description: This photograph shows a public notice on the streets of New York City announcing a meeting to advocate for a U.S. boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Date: December 3, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The location of the Olympic Games is chosen several years in advance. Germany was selected as the host country for the 1936 Olympics in 1932, shortly before the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Opposition to Hitler's regime mounted, and by the fall of 1935—around the time this photograph was taken—groups in the United States had organized for the express purpose of enacting a boycott of the games. Use the magnifying glass to zoom in on the posters in this image. Think about how the word "summons" contributes to the argument against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics. The poster suggests that boycotting the Olympic Games will help "Preserve the Olympic Ideal." What sort of characteristics does the "Olympic ideal" represent?
Notice announcing public meeting on 1936 Olympic Games boycott
A pedestrian in New York City reads a notice announcing a public meeting, scheduled for December 3, 1935, to urge Americans to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The racist and xenophobic policies of German chancellor Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led many countries to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration] https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230486
Commentary
Author: Historian Harold J. Goldberg Description: This commentary presents a historical interpretation of the 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin and argues that the games were used as a propaganda mechanism for the Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
Consider the notion of the "Olympic spirit" and the "spirit of the games." Did the 1936 undermine those values? Why or why not? Propaganda refers to information that is spread to influence public opinion regarding a specific cause or ideology. For example, a government may spread propaganda during war time to win support for the war or boost morale. Propaganda is often biased and may include disinformation or appeals to emotion rather than reason. How does the author build the case that Germany "turned the games into a propaganda showcase?" Pay close attention to the events described in the section titled "The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity." Why does the author believe the Jewish American athletes were pulled from the 4 X 100 relay team?
The 1936 Olympics were a Nazi Propaganda Showcase
In the early 1930s, enthusiasm for the Olympic Games in Europe was at a historic high. The modern Olympic Games had been held every four years since 1896, except in 1916, when they were scheduled for Berlin and canceled due to World War I. In 1932, the next Olympic Games were awarded to the Weimar Republic to celebrate Germany's new democracy, but in 1933 the republic gave way to Nazi dictatorship with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. Just as the war they started in 1939 destroyed cities, towns, villages, and people, the Nazis also ruined the Olympics held in Berlin in 1936. Page 16 of 24 A Brief History of Olympic Conflicts
The philosophy of the Olympics seeks to transcend politics and nationalism, as the world comes together to admire pure athletic skill, without concern for race, religion, or national origin. In fact, the games have frequently failed to live up to their ideals. Geopolitical crises and controversies have disrupted the games on multiple occasions, including the cancelation of the games in 1940 and 1944 due to World War II, the terrorist attack and massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972, and the U.S. boycott of the games hosted in Moscow in 1980. Among all of these flawed contests, the 1936 Olympics are still considered the most notorious for violating the spirit of the games.
Berlin, 1936: Propaganda and Discrimination
Visitors to Germany after Hitler consolidated power could not fail to see Berlin bedecked with swastika flags or hear the constant drone of Nazi propaganda on the radio. The Nazi racist agenda was clear, leading Olympic officials to debate a change of venue to another country. The fear was that the games would be spoiled by a Nazi ban on Jewish athletes and a simultaneous propaganda barrage glorifying the Nazi Party. Representatives of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) visited Germany to seek assurances that Nazi propaganda would not dominate the city and that German racial policy would not prevent athletes from participating. IOC officials were greeted by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who saw the games as a propaganda machine for the Nazis and had no reservations about lying and affirming that the games would be open to all. The IOC believed Goebbels and allowed the games to proceed in Berlin.
The result was exactly what people had feared. Nazi officials broke their pledge and refused to allow Jewish athletes to participate. Already in 1933, the German Boxing Association had expelled Erich Seelig, their light heavyweight champion, due to Jewish heritage. For the same reason, Germany's No. 1 tennis player was cut from its Davis Cup team. Likewise, Gretel Bergmann, a strong contender for a medal in the high jump, was put on the German team and then, with less than two weeks to go, was not allowed to compete. The Nazis disguised this discrimination by waiting until the American team was already on its way to Germany before they dropped her because she was Jewish. As she was the favorite for a medal, this treatment indicated that initial fears over keeping the games in Berlin were justified.
Germany turned the games into a Nazi propaganda showcase, with the Nazi flag flying from every balcony in Berlin. Hitler himself opened the games in the new Olympic Stadium on August 1, to the sound of 100,000 spectators shouting "Sieg heil" as they gave the Nazi salute. A recordsetting 49 teams paraded into the stadium; Germany had the most athletes in the stadium, with the United States bringing the secondlargest team. Interestingly, the medal count finished in that order as well: Germany won the most gold medals and the most overall medals, and the U.S. finished second in both medal categories. To complete the spectacle, the last of over 3,000 runners who carried an Olympic flame from Greece arrived to light the torch in Berlin. This Nazi innovation of having the last runner light the flame was intended to link ancient Greece with the present "Aryan" athlete.
The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity
The American team experienced both triumph and selfembarrassment. Jesse Owens, the star of the American track and field team, had already won three gold medals when the coaches called a meeting just before the relay. Owens was not scheduled to participate in that event, but two Jewish Americans had qualified and were anxious to go. One of them, Marty Glickman, described what happened at the team meeting:
"The event I was supposed to run, the 400meter relay, was one of the last events in the track and field program. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial heats, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach. Robertson announced to the 7 of us that he had heard very strong rumors that the Germans were saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400meter relay. Consequently, Sam Stoller and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. We were shocked. Sam was completely stunned. He didn't say a word in the meeting. I was a brash 18yearold kid and I said 'Coach, you can't hide worldclass sprinters.' At which point, Jesse spoke up and said 'Coach, I've won my 3 gold medals [the 100, the 200, and the long jump]. I'm tired. I've had it. Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it,' said Jesse. And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said 'You'll do as you're told.'" (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936)
American coaches had caved in to the Nazi agenda. There were never any secret German runners; in reality, the American coaches had decided that winning with Jewish runners would upset the Nazis more than winning another race with Jesse Owens. Owens went home with four gold medals, while Marty Glickman never got to participate in another Olympics due to the coming war. The United States celebrated the medal victories of Owens, but this great track and field star returned to a segregated America where he could not freely choose a restaurant or hotel for his postOlympic celebration.
Despite the mixed legacy of these games, the IOC was optimistic that 1940 would see an improvement. The games were planned for Tokyo, but Japan withdrew from hosting because of its military activity in China. Immediately the 1940 Olympics were rescheduled for Helsinki, Finland, but again the games were canceled when war started in nearby Poland in 1939. With the war still in progress, there was no possibility of holding the games in 1944, so the next Olympics were finally staged in London in 1948.
During the war, the Nazis killed more than 40 Jewish Olympic athletes as they occupied European countries.
About the Author
Harold J. Goldberg is the David E. Underdown Distinguished Professor of History at Sewanee: The University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee. His published works include Daily Life in NaziOccupied Europe (Greenwood, 2019), Competing Voices from World War II in Europe: Fighting Words (Greenwood, 2010), and DDay in the Pacific: The Battle of Saipan (Indiana University Press, 2007). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229716
Quote
Author: American Committee on Fair Play in Sports Description: This quote expresses the opinion of the American Committee on Fair Play in Sports on the political implications of holding the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Date: November 15, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The American Committee on Fair Play in Sports was assembled in the fall of 1935 to oppose U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympic Games. The committee produced publications and public service announcements intended to educate the public on the totalitarian Nazi government and its policies of racism and anti Semitism. Consider the ideals of the Olympic Games and the extent to which Germany undermined the ideals of democratic competition and sportsmanship.
American Committee on Fair Play in Sports: quote on the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Sport is prostituted when sport loses its independent and democratic character and becomes a political institution … Nazi Germany is endeavouring to use the Eleventh Olympiad to serve the necessities and interests of the Nazi Regime rather than the Olympic ideals.
–American Committee on Fair Play in Sports (November 15, 1935). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229811
Reference
Author: ABCCLIO Description: This reference article discusses goldmedalist sprinter Jesse Owens's participation in the 1936 Olympic Games, including his attitude toward Adolf Hitler as he readied for one of his races.
Context and Things to Consider
African American sprinter Owens became the first athlete in the history of the modern Olympic Games to win four gold medals in a single year. Owens's feat was celebrated by opponents of Hitler's regime as an embarrassing rebuke of Hitler's theories of Aryan racial supremacy. Consider the mindset of Owens as he readied for the 100meter finals heat and the laserfocus required of Olympic athletes. What does Owens's comment suggest about his views on Hitler? Evaluate Owens's comment in relation to the other sources. How does it illustrate the desire to reflect the ideals of the Olympic Games?
Jesse Owens: "Why Worry about Hitler?" (1936)
Jesse Owens was an African American track and field athlete. During the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, he became a national hero for defeating Adolf Hitler's Aryan athletes in a series of athletic contests.
In 1936, just a few years after Hitler rose to power in Germany, the Summer Olympic Games were held in Berlin, the nation's capital. Hitler believed in an Aryan "master race," an allegedly pure Germanic/Nordic race of people who were, according to Hitler, racially, physically, and intellectually above "lesser" peoples. The Aryan ideal was a Nordic type—tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.
Owens became the star of the 1936 Games, winning a total of four gold medals, including a world recordtying performance in the 100meter dash. Reflecting on this race, Owens discussed its personal significance and his state of focus despite the political implications of competing in Nazi Germany:
When I lined up in my lane for the finals of the 100 meters . . . I thought of all the years of practice and competition, of all who had believed in me, and of my state and university [Ohio, and the Ohio State University.]
I saw the finish line, and knew that 10 seconds would climax the work of eight years. One mistake could ruin those eight years. So, why worry about Hitler?
Hitler did not approve of Black athletes participating in the Games. By 1936, his views on the superiority of the Aryan race were known around the world, though Germany made an effort to obscure its antiSemitic policies as host of the Games. As someone who did not fit Hitler's ideal, Owens's victory in the 1936 Olympics was widely considered to be a refutation of the dictator's racist worldview and an embarrassment for the Nazi regime.
Mark Strong https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230575
COPYRIGHT 2021 ABCCLIO, LLC https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337 U.S. Participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympics Activity
Inquiry Question What were the arguments for and against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics?
The U.S. decision to take part in the 1936 Olympics, which took place in Berlin at the time of Nazi leadership, was a controversial issue that divided participating athletes, administrative organizations, and the American public itself, especially since the country was dealing with its own problems of racism during the era of Jim Crow laws. Use information collected from the provided sources and analyze your findings to explain the arguments presented by both sides: those who felt the U.S. should compete in the games, and those who felt the nation should boycott.
Clarifying Questions
What was the status of civil rights in Germany in the mid1930s, and how did it compare to the situation in the United States? What were the main arguments for participating in the games? What were the main arguments against participating in the games? How did the 1936 Berlin Olympics influence the global perception of Nazi Germany?
Vocabulary
boycott de facto segregation de jure segregation Jim Crow Nazi Party propaganda
Background Information
1936 Summer Olympic Games, Berlin
The 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin, Germany, marked a pivotal moment in the history of the international games. German chancellor Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and the institution of racist and xenophobic policies by the Nazi Party, led many to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
Hitler's Rise to Power
In their choice of Berlin, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had wanted to stress Germany's return to the international sporting world after World War I. When the Olympics were held in 1936, however, it was quite a different Germany and quite a different Berlin from those to whom the IOC had awarded the games in 1931. The rise to prominence of the Nazi Party in the 1930s elevated the party's leader, Adolf Hitler, as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Hitler's seizure of absolute power in 1934 ushered in a totalitarian regime in Germany that ruthlessly suppressed the civil rights of minorities, particularly German Jews.
Organizing the Games
The overwhelming problem for the IOC and for the United States was to get a guarantee that Jewish athletes would not be excluded from the games. At the IOC meeting in Vienna in June 1933, president of the Olympic organizing committee Theodor Lewald was able to give an assurance with the approval of the German government that "all laws relating to the Olympic Games will be respected. German Jews will not as a matter of principle be excluded from German teams in the XI Olympiad."
This guarantee convinced the president of the Olympic Committee, Henri BailletLatour, after a visit to Berlin in November 1935, when he had an audience with Hitler. After that, the attitude of the Olympic Committee was unchanged. There was no wavering, and there was total support for the games in Berlin. From that point onward, both Baillet Latour and Avery Brundage attacked all opponents of the games as being lackeys of Communism. In 1936, Avery Brundage took a place on the IOC at the expense of the American E. L. Jahncke, who had been unremittingly critical of the games in Berlin.
The first thing the Hitler state did was to place its resources wholeheartedly behind the organization committee. A close cooperative relationship developed between Reich Director of Sport Hans von Tschammer und Osten and the organization committee—a collaboration that would be expanded to encompass work on the winter games in GarmischPartenkirchen, which the IOC had no objections about awarding to Germany in the spring of 1933, four months after Hitler came to power. Leading the organization of the latter was Karl Ritter von Halt, who had swiftly joined the Nazi Party in order to assist his career as a banker. All these people combined to convince the outside world that the games in Berlin and GarmischPartenkirchen would take place without discrimination against Jews or other nonAryan races.
Nazi Propaganda and Misdirection
The Nazis reasoned that if the whole world was being invited to Germany as a guest, then the country had to be seen in its most favorable light. Despite the treatment of Jews in Germany, Jews from outside were welcome. The German press was also instructed not to say anything negative about blacks—or only if they could do so by quoting newspapers from America's southern states. Furthermore, at the winter games and the summer games, the German press was forbidden from suggesting that Jews were inferior. Abusive antiSemitic posters were removed, and the SS was given the task of ensuring that these temporary prohibitions were observed.
To underline Nazi goodwill, two German halfJews were allowed to take part in the games: the icehockey player Rudi Ball in the winter games, and the fencer Helene Mayer in the summer games. Both were 50% Jewish according to Nazi definitions, and as such were acceptable. On the other hand, a potential medalist for Germany, Gretel Bergmann, who was a highjumper and fully Jewish, was not allowed to take part.
With the assistance of the Ministry of Propaganda, the Nazis set a largescale campaign in motion to bring the world to Berlin. Bulletins in a number of languages were sent out abroad; German travel agents abroad advertised the Olympic Games in Berlin as the best place to take a summer holiday in 1936; and 156,000 Olympic posters in 19 languages were distributed.
With unlimited funds at their disposal, the organization committee could construct a completely new stadium for the games in Berlin. The style was neoclassical and there was plenty of space for a range of activities, including the socalled Maifeld, which was an exhibition and practice area situated between the stadium's marathon gate and the Olympic novelty, a bell tower with the great bell that summoned the youth of the world to Berlin—"Ich rufe die Jugend der Welt" (I call the youth of the world) was engraved on the castiron bell. The bell tower's foundation consisted of the great Langemarckhalle, originally suggested by Organizing Committee secretary general Carl Diem. The hall was envisoned as a temple commemorating the youth of Germany that had fallen in World War I at Langemarck in Flanders.
The Olympic stadium in Berlin became the site of what were the most successful games of all so far. They were directly transmitted by radio for the first time to countless countries, and in selected cinemas in Berlin it was even possible to see direct television transmission from the games. It was, however, Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia that would stand for posterity as the document of the success of the games. The film was given its premiere on Hitler's birthday in 1938 and from the very first was a roaring success both at home and abroad. It won a number of prizes and at the Venice Film Festival in 1938 was grand prize winner ahead of, for example, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was only in the United States that its success was more muted, since a greater proportion of the public were critical of developments in Germany.
The Games
The games lasted from August 1–16 and lived up to the high expectations in every respect. Athletes from 49 nations competed, 3,738 men and 328 women, and the stadium was sold out for all events, with 105,000 spectators attending every day. The crowning moment of the introductory procession in Berlin was the arrival of the torch bearer into the Olympic stadium. The new German Reich created a perfect staging for sport as an offshoot of ancient Greece. Everything went according to plan, and at the processional entry a number of countries chose to make the Nazi salute when they passed the Fuhrer's box; others stretched out their hands more horizontally and said afterward that it was the Olympic greeting.
The greatest athlete of the games was the African American Jesse Owens, who won five gold medals. Owens won the 100 and 200meter races. He also won the long jump and was in the 4x100 relay, which set a new record of 39.8 seconds, which was the first time ever under 40 seconds and a record that stood for 20 years. Owens's performance was seen by many as a refutation of Hitler's racist theories of Aryan racial superiority and remains the most memorable performance of the games. Basketball, canoeing, and field handball were on the program for the first time, and it caused a sensation when Norway beat Germany in soccer and achieved a bronze. As expected, despite American dominance, Germany ran away with the most medals in athletics.
Reference
Author: Historian and Holocaust scholar Paul R. Bartrop Description: This essay outlines the arguments for and against the international community's participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, hosted during the third year of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin began in the early years of Hitler's regime, which saw laws severely restricting the citizenship and civil rights of Jews known as the Nuremberg Race Laws (1935). Consider the ways in which Germany constructed its image during the Olympic Games. How did that image differ from its image prior to the Olympics? Pay close attention to the arguments for and against a boycott of the 1936 Olympics outlined in the sections titled "Debating Whether to Boycott" and "U.S. Olympic Team." Why did most African American newspapers support participation in the games?
1936 Berlin Olympics: Boycott Debates
The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were highly controversial at the time. From the very start they were marked by racism, with the official Nazi Party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, declaring that Jews and people of African descent, regardless of their country of origin, should not be allowed to participate. Following Nazi demands, the German Olympic Committee denied Jews all opportunity of representing Germany. These measures led many in the international community to call for a boycott of the 1936 games.
Germany Furnishes its Image
When the possibility of an international boycott was threatened, Germany responded with a superficial relaxing of the rules: now, one athlete with a Jewish background was allowed to compete for Germany. Helene Mayer, who had a Jewish father, was a world champion fencer who had already won a gold medal at the 1928 Amsterdam Games. With an eye to the prospect of her winning another gold medal for Germany, she became the token Jew permitted to compete. As it turned out, she won silver in the individual foil event.
The prospect of other Jewish athletes competing for Germany was denied, however. The fourtime world record holder and 10time German national champion in shot put and discus throw, Lilli Henoch, was excluded; she was later deported and murdered in the Riga ghetto in 1942. Gretel Bergmann, an internationally recognized champion high jumper, was replaced on the German team by Dora Ratjen, who was later revealed to be a male who had been raised as a girl.
In order to reassure foreign opinion, Berlin was purged of all traces of Nazi antiSemitism. Local party authorities removed street signs bearing such slogans as "Jews not wanted" from Berlin's main tourist areas. At the same time, all vagrants and Roma were physically moved to a specially constructed "holding camp" outside the city at Marzahn.
Debating Whether to Boycott
In view of Germany's racist domestic policies, there was considerable debate among the international community over whether or not to boycott the games. In some countries, notably Britain, France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands, discussion took place over whether the games should be relocated. Meanwhile, exiled political opponents of the Nazis kept up the pressure for a boycott. These initiatives did not amount to anything definite; opponents of a boycott argued that the games had been awarded to Berlin in 1931 and that it would be wrong to punish the city simply because of a change of government.
Individual Jewish athletes from a number of countries, on the other hand, elected to take matters into their own hands and refused to attend. In this regard, brave athletes such as the South African Sid Kiel and Americans Milton Green and Norman Cahners should be mentioned.
U.S. Olympic Team
As one of the world's leading sporting nations, the position of the United States was crucial. In September 1934, the United States Olympic Committee accepted a German invitation to visit on a factfinding mission. After interviewing German Jews who had been carefully selected by the Nazi regime, U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage concluded that he had not found any discrimination against the Jewish population of Germany. He then became a major supporter of the games being held in Berlin, famously arguing that "politics has no place in sport." By 1935, he had convinced the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States that an American team should be sent to Berlin. The American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee supported a boycott, but they had no say in what was effectively an institutional project by the American Olympic Committee.
Most African American newspapers, on the other hand, supported participation. They argued that this was an opportunity for Nazi racial theories to be challenged and, hopefully, defeated. And to some degree, they were right; the iconic Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events, and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin.
On the day of the men's 4 x 100 relay, the Jewish American sprinters Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman were sidelined from the team. While this gave Owens the opportunity to win his fourth and final gold medal, historians have speculated that the removal of Stoller and Glickman was deliberately antiSemitic and intended to appease Hitler.
Legacy of the 1936 Games
Ultimately, Germany was the most successful country at the games, winning 33 gold medals and 89 medals overall. The United States came second in the medal tally, with 24 gold and 56 overall.
The Berlin Olympics torch relay from Mount Olympus in Greece was the first of its kind, and the games were the first to have live television coverage. Despite these advances, they were also to be the final Olympic Games for 12 years owing to World War II.
Hitler's antihuman ideologies and his quest for supreme domination and racial supremacy were the biggest challenge to the Olympic ideal until 1972—when terrorism and the murder of Jewish athletes at the Munich Games threatened the Olympic ideal once more. The president of the International Olympic Committee then was the same Avery Brundage who so dominated the American team in 1936.
Paul R. Bartrop https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229806
Reference
Author: Historian Natalie Ring Description: This essay defines and illustrates the Jim Crow era of racial segregation and discrimination in the American South.
Context and Things to Consider
What is meant by the term "Jim Crow"? How did Jim Crow laws prevent the social advancement of African Americans from the 1880s to 1960s? What is meant by de jure segregation? What is meant by de facto segregation? Consider race relations in the United States during the 1930s and the extent to which there was a contradiction between Americans' attitudes toward race relations at home and their attitudes related to the 1936 Olympics.
Segregation and Jim Crow
The term "Jim Crow" refers to the system of racial segregation and oppression that existed primarily in the South from 1877 to the mid1960s. Segregation existed in some parts of the North, yet by the turn of the century it had become a distinctly Southern phenomenon. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court declared that "separate but equal" was constitutional, and this provided the legal backbone for segregation until it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In reality, "separate but equal" was never really equal. Racial segregation violated the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, but the federal government continued to sanction the state laws and practices of Jim Crow until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Jim Crow era marked the ascendancy of white supremacy and not only consisted of the social separation of the races, but more broadly included lynching and mob violence, the manipulation of the justice system, inequality in education, economic subjugation, and the elimination of Black suffrage.
Origins of "Jim Crow"
The term Jim Crow is derived from the name of a character in a minstrel song performed by Thomas Rice in the 1830s. Blackface minstrelsy was a form of popular entertainment in which white actors blackened their face with cork and imitated what they considered to be authentic African American dialect, dance, and song. These theatrical performances frequently ridiculed African Americans and exaggerated alleged Black characteristics.
Rice named his act "Jump Jim Crow" and claimed to have based it on a dance he saw performed by an aged crippled slave in Louisville, Kentucky, owned by a Mr. Crow. Wearing ragged clothing representative of a field hand, Rice sang and danced to lyrics that included the stanza "Weel about and turn about / And do jis so, / Eb'ry time I weel about / And jump Jim Crow." The routine was immensely popular during the antebellum period, and the figure of Jim Crow became a recognizable and enduring icon in American popular culture. In the 1840s, abolitionists used the phrase Jim Crow to describe segregated railroad cars. By the end of the 19th century, the term came to signify the social separation of the races.
De Jure Segregation
Two forms of Jim Crow existed in the South: de jure and de facto. De jure segregation referred to the separation of the races as mandated specifically by law, and de facto segregation occurred by custom or tradition. In the 1880s, such laws as the segregation of street cars appeared sporadically across the South. Between 1890 and 1915, Southern states enacted an array of statutes that led to a more rigid and universal framework for the social separation of the races.
This explosion of de jure segregation reflected Southern whites' growing unease about a younger, more assertive generation of African Americans who demanded respect and recognition of their rights. In addition, the intent of widespread codification was to solidify custom and to eliminate uncertainty about the social status of blacks and whites. Signs labeled "For White" and "For Colored" dominated the Southern landscape, and Jim Crow regulated social contact in such places as restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, parks, schools, libraries, hospitals, and waiting rooms. In many cases, social separation often meant total exclusion. State legislatures also enacted antimiscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriage, and passed laws or rewrote the state constitution to make voter registration difficult, if not impossible.
De Facto Segregation
Although Southern states passed an elaborate network of laws, de facto practices of segregation endured. Patterns of de facto segregation varied depending on the location, the traditions of a community, or even the whim of a white person.
In most places, whites and blacks were expected to abide by an unspoken racial etiquette. For example, blacks could not enter a white home through the front door, address a white person by their first name, or refuse to give way to a white person on a sidewalk. Courtrooms often swore in black witnesses with separate bibles, and in many stores, blacks could not be served until white customers were finished. Whites did make exceptions for black domestic workers, but only because a black servant tending to white children in a space marked as white still clearly retained a position of inferiority. For many African Americans, Jim Crow caused incredible apprehension about the repercussions of crossing the color line. Any action taken by a black man or woman that whites perceived to be impudent or disrespectful could lead to swift and violent retaliation.
The Civil Rights Movement
After World War II, the edifice of Jim Crow began to break down. Black soldiers questioned the logic of having to fight for democracy abroad while returning home to face continued racial inequality. Protest on the grassroots level as well that initiated by institutions and celebrated leaders spread in the 1950s and early 1960s. The growing civil rights movement ultimately pressured the federal government to take action.
In 1964, the U.S. Congress answered President Lyndon B. Johnson's call to support racial equality and end Jim Crow. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade discrimination in public places, provided funding for assistance to further desegregate schools, created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and gave the attorney general more authority to prosecute civil rights violations involving voting, the use of public facilities, government, and education. It was the most extensive piece of federal legislation in support of civil rights ever ratified by Congress. While racial discrimination and oppression did not entirely disappear following passage of the Civil Rights Act, it truly marked the end of the widespread legal and social system of Jim Crow.
Natalie J. Ring https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 1903177
Image
Photographer: Unknown Description: This photograph shows a public notice on the streets of New York City announcing a meeting to advocate for a U.S. boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Date: December 3, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The location of the Olympic Games is chosen several years in advance. Germany was selected as the host country for the 1936 Olympics in 1932, shortly before the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Opposition to Hitler's regime mounted, and by the fall of 1935—around the time this photograph was taken—groups in the United States had organized for the express purpose of enacting a boycott of the games. Use the magnifying glass to zoom in on the posters in this image. Think about how the word "summons" contributes to the argument against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics. The poster suggests that boycotting the Olympic Games will help "Preserve the Olympic Ideal." What sort of characteristics does the "Olympic ideal" represent?
Notice announcing public meeting on 1936 Olympic Games boycott
A pedestrian in New York City reads a notice announcing a public meeting, scheduled for December 3, 1935, to urge Americans to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The racist and xenophobic policies of German chancellor Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led many countries to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration] https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230486
Commentary
Author: Historian Harold J. Goldberg Description: This commentary presents a historical interpretation of the 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin and argues that the games were used as a propaganda mechanism for the Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
Consider the notion of the "Olympic spirit" and the "spirit of the games." Did the 1936 undermine those values? Why or why not? Propaganda refers to information that is spread to influence public opinion regarding a specific cause or ideology. For example, a government may spread propaganda during war time to win support for the war or boost morale. Propaganda is often biased and may include disinformation or appeals to emotion rather than reason. How does the author build the case that Germany "turned the games into a propaganda showcase?" Pay close attention to the events described in the section titled "The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity." Why does the author believe the Jewish American athletes were pulled from the 4 X 100 relay team?
The 1936 Olympics were a Nazi Propaganda Showcase
In the early 1930s, enthusiasm for the Olympic Games in Europe was at a historic high. The modern Olympic Games had been held every four years since 1896, except in 1916, when they were scheduled for Berlin and canceled due to World War I. In 1932, the next Olympic Games were awarded to the Weimar Republic to celebrate Germany's new democracy, but in 1933 the republic gave way to Nazi dictatorship with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. Just as the war they started in 1939 destroyed cities, towns, villages, and people, the Nazis also ruined the Olympics held in Berlin in 1936.
A Brief History of Olympic Conflicts
The philosophy of the Olympics seeks to transcend politics and nationalism, as the world comes together to admire pure athletic skill, without concern for race, religion, or national origin. In fact, the games have frequently failed to live up to their ideals. Geopolitical crises and controversies have disrupted the games on multiple occasions, including the cancelation of the games in 1940 and 1944 due to World War II, the terrorist attack and massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972, and the U.S. boycott of the games hosted in Moscow in 1980. Among all of these flawed contests, the 1936 Olympics are still considered the most notorious for violating the spirit of the games.
Berlin, 1936: Propaganda and Discrimination
Visitors to Germany after Hitler consolidated power could not fail to see Berlin bedecked with swastika flags or hear the constant drone of Nazi propaganda on the radio. The Nazi racist agenda was clear, leading Olympic officials to debate a change of venue to another country. The fear was that the games would be spoiled by a Nazi ban on Jewish athletes and a simultaneous propaganda barrage glorifying the Nazi Party. Representatives of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) visited Germany to seek assurances that Nazi propaganda would not dominate the city and that German racial policy would not prevent athletes from participating. IOC officials were greeted by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who saw the games as a propaganda machine for the Nazis and had no reservations about lying and affirming that the games would be open to all. The IOC believed Goebbels and allowed the games to proceed in Berlin.
The result was exactly what people had feared. Nazi officials broke their pledge and refused to allow Jewish athletes to participate. Already in 1933, the German Boxing Association had expelled Erich Seelig, their light heavyweight champion, due to Jewish heritage. For the same reason, Germany's No. 1 tennis player was cut from its Davis Cup team. Likewise, Gretel Bergmann, a strong contender for a medal in the high jump, was put on the German team and then, with less than two weeks to go, was not allowed to compete. The NazisPage 17 of 24 disguised this discrimination by waiting until the American team was already on its way to Germany before they dropped her because she was Jewish. As she was the favorite for a medal, this treatment indicated that initial fears over keeping the games in Berlin were justified.
Germany turned the games into a Nazi propaganda showcase, with the Nazi flag flying from every balcony in Berlin. Hitler himself opened the games in the new Olympic Stadium on August 1, to the sound of 100,000 spectators shouting "Sieg heil" as they gave the Nazi salute. A recordsetting 49 teams paraded into the stadium; Germany had the most athletes in the stadium, with the United States bringing the secondlargest team. Interestingly, the medal count finished in that order as well: Germany won the most gold medals and the most overall medals, and the U.S. finished second in both medal categories. To complete the spectacle, the last of over 3,000 runners who carried an Olympic flame from Greece arrived to light the torch in Berlin. This Nazi innovation of having the last runner light the flame was intended to link ancient Greece with the present "Aryan" athlete.
The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity
The American team experienced both triumph and selfembarrassment. Jesse Owens, the star of the American track and field team, had already won three gold medals when the coaches called a meeting just before the relay. Owens was not scheduled to participate in that event, but two Jewish Americans had qualified and were anxious to go. One of them, Marty Glickman, described what happened at the team meeting:
"The event I was supposed to run, the 400meter relay, was one of the last events in the track and field program. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial heats, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach. Robertson announced to the 7 of us that he had heard very strong rumors that the Germans were saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400meter relay. Consequently, Sam Stoller and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. We were shocked. Sam was completely stunned. He didn't say a word in the meeting. I was a brash 18yearold kid and I said 'Coach, you can't hide worldclass sprinters.' At which point, Jesse spoke up and said 'Coach, I've won my 3 gold medals [the 100, the 200, and the long jump]. I'm tired. I've had it. Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it,' said Jesse. And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said 'You'll do as you're told.'" (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936)
American coaches had caved in to the Nazi agenda. There were never any secret German runners; in reality, the American coaches had decided that winning with Jewish runners would upset the Nazis more than winning another race with Jesse Owens. Owens went home with four gold medals, while Marty Glickman never got to participate in another Olympics due to the coming war. The United States celebrated the medal victories of Owens, but this great track and field star returned to a segregated America where he could not freely choose a restaurant or hotel for his postOlympic celebration.
Despite the mixed legacy of these games, the IOC was optimistic that 1940 would see an improvement. The games were planned for Tokyo, but Japan withdrew from hosting because of its military activity in China. Immediately the 1940 Olympics were rescheduled for Helsinki, Finland, but again the games were canceled when war started in nearby Poland in 1939. With the war still in progress, there was no possibility of holding the games in 1944, so the next Olympics were finally staged in London in 1948.
During the war, the Nazis killed more than 40 Jewish Olympic athletes as they occupied European countries.
About the Author
Harold J. Goldberg is the David E. Underdown Distinguished Professor of History at Sewanee: The University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee. His published works include Daily Life in NaziOccupied Europe (Greenwood, 2019), Competing Voices from World War II in Europe: Fighting Words (Greenwood, 2010), and DDay in the Pacific: The Battle of Saipan (Indiana University Press, 2007). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229716
Quote
Author: American Committee on Fair Play in Sports Description: This quote expresses the opinion of the American Committee on Fair Play in Sports on the political implications of holding the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Date: November 15, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The American Committee on Fair Play in Sports was assembled in the fall of 1935 to oppose U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympic Games. The committee produced publications and public service announcements intended to educate the public on the totalitarian Nazi government and its policies of racism and anti Semitism. Consider the ideals of the Olympic Games and the extent to which Germany undermined the ideals of democratic competition and sportsmanship.
American Committee on Fair Play in Sports: quote on the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Sport is prostituted when sport loses its independent and democratic character and becomes a political institution … Nazi Germany is endeavouring to use the Eleventh Olympiad to serve the necessities and interests of the Nazi Regime rather than the Olympic ideals.
–American Committee on Fair Play in Sports (November 15, 1935). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229811
Reference
Author: ABCCLIO Description: This reference article discusses goldmedalist sprinter Jesse Owens's participation in the 1936 Olympic Games, including his attitude toward Adolf Hitler as he readied for one of his races.
Context and Things to Consider
African American sprinter Owens became the first athlete in the history of the modern Olympic Games to win four gold medals in a single year. Owens's feat was celebrated by opponents of Hitler's regime as an embarrassing rebuke of Hitler's theories of Aryan racial supremacy. Consider the mindset of Owens as he readied for the 100meter finals heat and the laserfocus required of Olympic athletes. What does Owens's comment suggest about his views on Hitler? Evaluate Owens's comment in relation to the other sources. How does it illustrate the desire to reflect the ideals of the Olympic Games?
Jesse Owens: "Why Worry about Hitler?" (1936)
Jesse Owens was an African American track and field athlete. During the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, he became a national hero for defeating Adolf Hitler's Aryan athletes in a series of athletic contests.
In 1936, just a few years after Hitler rose to power in Germany, the Summer Olympic Games were held in Berlin, the nation's capital. Hitler believed in an Aryan "master race," an allegedly pure Germanic/Nordic race of people who were, according to Hitler, racially, physically, and intellectually above "lesser" peoples. The Aryan ideal was a Nordic type—tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.
Owens became the star of the 1936 Games, winning a total of four gold medals, including a world recordtying performance in the 100meter dash. Reflecting on this race, Owens discussed its personal significance and his state of focus despite the political implications of competing in Nazi Germany:
When I lined up in my lane for the finals of the 100 meters . . . I thought of all the years of practice and competition, of all who had believed in me, and of my state and university [Ohio, and the Ohio State University.]
I saw the finish line, and knew that 10 seconds would climax the work of eight years. One mistake could ruin those eight years. So, why worry about Hitler?
Hitler did not approve of Black athletes participating in the Games. By 1936, his views on the superiority of the Aryan race were known around the world, though Germany made an effort to obscure its antiSemitic policies as host of the Games. As someone who did not fit Hitler's ideal, Owens's victory in the 1936 Olympics was widely considered to be a refutation of the dictator's racist worldview and an embarrassment for the Nazi regime.
Mark Strong https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230575
COPYRIGHT 2021 ABCCLIO, LLC https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337 U.S. Participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympics Activity
Inquiry Question What were the arguments for and against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics?
The U.S. decision to take part in the 1936 Olympics, which took place in Berlin at the time of Nazi leadership, was a controversial issue that divided participating athletes, administrative organizations, and the American public itself, especially since the country was dealing with its own problems of racism during the era of Jim Crow laws. Use information collected from the provided sources and analyze your findings to explain the arguments presented by both sides: those who felt the U.S. should compete in the games, and those who felt the nation should boycott.
Clarifying Questions
What was the status of civil rights in Germany in the mid1930s, and how did it compare to the situation in the United States? What were the main arguments for participating in the games? What were the main arguments against participating in the games? How did the 1936 Berlin Olympics influence the global perception of Nazi Germany?
Vocabulary
boycott de facto segregation de jure segregation Jim Crow Nazi Party propaganda
Background Information
1936 Summer Olympic Games, Berlin
The 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin, Germany, marked a pivotal moment in the history of the international games. German chancellor Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and the institution of racist and xenophobic policies by the Nazi Party, led many to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
Hitler's Rise to Power
In their choice of Berlin, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had wanted to stress Germany's return to the international sporting world after World War I. When the Olympics were held in 1936, however, it was quite a different Germany and quite a different Berlin from those to whom the IOC had awarded the games in 1931. The rise to prominence of the Nazi Party in the 1930s elevated the party's leader, Adolf Hitler, as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Hitler's seizure of absolute power in 1934 ushered in a totalitarian regime in Germany that ruthlessly suppressed the civil rights of minorities, particularly German Jews.
Organizing the Games
The overwhelming problem for the IOC and for the United States was to get a guarantee that Jewish athletes would not be excluded from the games. At the IOC meeting in Vienna in June 1933, president of the Olympic organizing committee Theodor Lewald was able to give an assurance with the approval of the German government that "all laws relating to the Olympic Games will be respected. German Jews will not as a matter of principle be excluded from German teams in the XI Olympiad."
This guarantee convinced the president of the Olympic Committee, Henri BailletLatour, after a visit to Berlin in November 1935, when he had an audience with Hitler. After that, the attitude of the Olympic Committee was unchanged. There was no wavering, and there was total support for the games in Berlin. From that point onward, both Baillet Latour and Avery Brundage attacked all opponents of the games as being lackeys of Communism. In 1936, Avery Brundage took a place on the IOC at the expense of the American E. L. Jahncke, who had been unremittingly critical of the games in Berlin.
The first thing the Hitler state did was to place its resources wholeheartedly behind the organization committee. A close cooperative relationship developed between Reich Director of Sport Hans von Tschammer und Osten and the organization committee—a collaboration that would be expanded to encompass work on the winter games in GarmischPartenkirchen, which the IOC had no objections about awarding to Germany in the spring of 1933, four months after Hitler came to power. Leading the organization of the latter was Karl Ritter von Halt, who had swiftly joined the Nazi Party in order to assist his career as a banker. All these people combined to convince the outside world that the games in Berlin and GarmischPartenkirchen would take place without discrimination against Jews or other nonAryan races.
Nazi Propaganda and Misdirection
The Nazis reasoned that if the whole world was being invited to Germany as a guest, then the country had to be seen in its most favorable light. Despite the treatment of Jews in Germany, Jews from outside were welcome. The German press was also instructed not to say anything negative about blacks—or only if they could do so by quoting newspapers from America's southern states. Furthermore, at the winter games and the summer games, the German press was forbidden from suggesting that Jews were inferior. Abusive antiSemitic posters were removed, and the SS was given the task of ensuring that these temporary prohibitions were observed.
To underline Nazi goodwill, two German halfJews were allowed to take part in the games: the icehockey player Rudi Ball in the winter games, and the fencer Helene Mayer in the summer games. Both were 50% Jewish according to Nazi definitions, and as such were acceptable. On the other hand, a potential medalist for Germany, Gretel Bergmann, who was a highjumper and fully Jewish, was not allowed to take part.
With the assistance of the Ministry of Propaganda, the Nazis set a largescale campaign in motion to bring the world to Berlin. Bulletins in a number of languages were sent out abroad; German travel agents abroad advertised the Olympic Games in Berlin as the best place to take a summer holiday in 1936; and 156,000 Olympic posters in 19 languages were distributed.
With unlimited funds at their disposal, the organization committee could construct a completely new stadium for the games in Berlin. The style was neoclassical and there was plenty of space for a range of activities, including the socalled Maifeld, which was an exhibition and practice area situated between the stadium's marathon gate and the Olympic novelty, a bell tower with the great bell that summoned the youth of the world to Berlin—"Ich rufe die Jugend der Welt" (I call the youth of the world) was engraved on the castiron bell. The bell tower's foundation consisted of the great Langemarckhalle, originally suggested by Organizing Committee secretary general Carl Diem. The hall was envisoned as a temple commemorating the youth of Germany that had fallen in World War I at Langemarck in Flanders.
The Olympic stadium in Berlin became the site of what were the most successful games of all so far. They were directly transmitted by radio for the first time to countless countries, and in selected cinemas in Berlin it was even possible to see direct television transmission from the games. It was, however, Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia that would stand for posterity as the document of the success of the games. The film was given its premiere on Hitler's birthday in 1938 and from the very first was a roaring success both at home and abroad. It won a number of prizes and at the Venice Film Festival in 1938 was grand prize winner ahead of, for example, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was only in the United States that its success was more muted, since a greater proportion of the public were critical of developments in Germany.
The Games
The games lasted from August 1–16 and lived up to the high expectations in every respect. Athletes from 49 nations competed, 3,738 men and 328 women, and the stadium was sold out for all events, with 105,000 spectators attending every day. The crowning moment of the introductory procession in Berlin was the arrival of the torch bearer into the Olympic stadium. The new German Reich created a perfect staging for sport as an offshoot of ancient Greece. Everything went according to plan, and at the processional entry a number of countries chose to make the Nazi salute when they passed the Fuhrer's box; others stretched out their hands more horizontally and said afterward that it was the Olympic greeting.
The greatest athlete of the games was the African American Jesse Owens, who won five gold medals. Owens won the 100 and 200meter races. He also won the long jump and was in the 4x100 relay, which set a new record of 39.8 seconds, which was the first time ever under 40 seconds and a record that stood for 20 years. Owens's performance was seen by many as a refutation of Hitler's racist theories of Aryan racial superiority and remains the most memorable performance of the games. Basketball, canoeing, and field handball were on the program for the first time, and it caused a sensation when Norway beat Germany in soccer and achieved a bronze. As expected, despite American dominance, Germany ran away with the most medals in athletics.
Reference
Author: Historian and Holocaust scholar Paul R. Bartrop Description: This essay outlines the arguments for and against the international community's participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, hosted during the third year of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin began in the early years of Hitler's regime, which saw laws severely restricting the citizenship and civil rights of Jews known as the Nuremberg Race Laws (1935). Consider the ways in which Germany constructed its image during the Olympic Games. How did that image differ from its image prior to the Olympics? Pay close attention to the arguments for and against a boycott of the 1936 Olympics outlined in the sections titled "Debating Whether to Boycott" and "U.S. Olympic Team." Why did most African American newspapers support participation in the games?
1936 Berlin Olympics: Boycott Debates
The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were highly controversial at the time. From the very start they were marked by racism, with the official Nazi Party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, declaring that Jews and people of African descent, regardless of their country of origin, should not be allowed to participate. Following Nazi demands, the German Olympic Committee denied Jews all opportunity of representing Germany. These measures led many in the international community to call for a boycott of the 1936 games.
Germany Furnishes its Image
When the possibility of an international boycott was threatened, Germany responded with a superficial relaxing of the rules: now, one athlete with a Jewish background was allowed to compete for Germany. Helene Mayer, who had a Jewish father, was a world champion fencer who had already won a gold medal at the 1928 Amsterdam Games. With an eye to the prospect of her winning another gold medal for Germany, she became the token Jew permitted to compete. As it turned out, she won silver in the individual foil event.
The prospect of other Jewish athletes competing for Germany was denied, however. The fourtime world record holder and 10time German national champion in shot put and discus throw, Lilli Henoch, was excluded; she was later deported and murdered in the Riga ghetto in 1942. Gretel Bergmann, an internationally recognized champion high jumper, was replaced on the German team by Dora Ratjen, who was later revealed to be a male who had been raised as a girl.
In order to reassure foreign opinion, Berlin was purged of all traces of Nazi antiSemitism. Local party authorities removed street signs bearing such slogans as "Jews not wanted" from Berlin's main tourist areas. At the same time, all vagrants and Roma were physically moved to a specially constructed "holding camp" outside the city at Marzahn.
Debating Whether to Boycott
In view of Germany's racist domestic policies, there was considerable debate among the international community over whether or not to boycott the games. In some countries, notably Britain, France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands, discussion took place over whether the games should be relocated. Meanwhile, exiled political opponents of the Nazis kept up the pressure for a boycott. These initiatives did not amount to anything definite; opponents of a boycott argued that the games had been awarded to Berlin in 1931 and that it would be wrong to punish the city simply because of a change of government.
Individual Jewish athletes from a number of countries, on the other hand, elected to take matters into their own hands and refused to attend. In this regard, brave athletes such as the South African Sid Kiel and Americans Milton Green and Norman Cahners should be mentioned.
U.S. Olympic Team
As one of the world's leading sporting nations, the position of the United States was crucial. In September 1934, the United States Olympic Committee accepted a German invitation to visit on a factfinding mission. After interviewing German Jews who had been carefully selected by the Nazi regime, U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage concluded that he had not found any discrimination against the Jewish population of Germany. He then became a major supporter of the games being held in Berlin, famously arguing that "politics has no place in sport." By 1935, he had convinced the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States that an American team should be sent to Berlin. The American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee supported a boycott, but they had no say in what was effectively an institutional project by the American Olympic Committee.
Most African American newspapers, on the other hand, supported participation. They argued that this was an opportunity for Nazi racial theories to be challenged and, hopefully, defeated. And to some degree, they were right; the iconic Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events, and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin.
On the day of the men's 4 x 100 relay, the Jewish American sprinters Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman were sidelined from the team. While this gave Owens the opportunity to win his fourth and final gold medal, historians have speculated that the removal of Stoller and Glickman was deliberately antiSemitic and intended to appease Hitler.
Legacy of the 1936 Games
Ultimately, Germany was the most successful country at the games, winning 33 gold medals and 89 medals overall. The United States came second in the medal tally, with 24 gold and 56 overall.
The Berlin Olympics torch relay from Mount Olympus in Greece was the first of its kind, and the games were the first to have live television coverage. Despite these advances, they were also to be the final Olympic Games for 12 years owing to World War II.
Hitler's antihuman ideologies and his quest for supreme domination and racial supremacy were the biggest challenge to the Olympic ideal until 1972—when terrorism and the murder of Jewish athletes at the Munich Games threatened the Olympic ideal once more. The president of the International Olympic Committee then was the same Avery Brundage who so dominated the American team in 1936.
Paul R. Bartrop https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229806
Reference
Author: Historian Natalie Ring Description: This essay defines and illustrates the Jim Crow era of racial segregation and discrimination in the American South.
Context and Things to Consider
What is meant by the term "Jim Crow"? How did Jim Crow laws prevent the social advancement of African Americans from the 1880s to 1960s? What is meant by de jure segregation? What is meant by de facto segregation? Consider race relations in the United States during the 1930s and the extent to which there was a contradiction between Americans' attitudes toward race relations at home and their attitudes related to the 1936 Olympics.
Segregation and Jim Crow
The term "Jim Crow" refers to the system of racial segregation and oppression that existed primarily in the South from 1877 to the mid1960s. Segregation existed in some parts of the North, yet by the turn of the century it had become a distinctly Southern phenomenon. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court declared that "separate but equal" was constitutional, and this provided the legal backbone for segregation until it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In reality, "separate but equal" was never really equal. Racial segregation violated the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, but the federal government continued to sanction the state laws and practices of Jim Crow until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Jim Crow era marked the ascendancy of white supremacy and not only consisted of the social separation of the races, but more broadly included lynching and mob violence, the manipulation of the justice system, inequality in education, economic subjugation, and the elimination of Black suffrage.
Origins of "Jim Crow"
The term Jim Crow is derived from the name of a character in a minstrel song performed by Thomas Rice in the 1830s. Blackface minstrelsy was a form of popular entertainment in which white actors blackened their face with cork and imitated what they considered to be authentic African American dialect, dance, and song. These theatrical performances frequently ridiculed African Americans and exaggerated alleged Black characteristics.
Rice named his act "Jump Jim Crow" and claimed to have based it on a dance he saw performed by an aged crippled slave in Louisville, Kentucky, owned by a Mr. Crow. Wearing ragged clothing representative of a field hand, Rice sang and danced to lyrics that included the stanza "Weel about and turn about / And do jis so, / Eb'ry time I weel about / And jump Jim Crow." The routine was immensely popular during the antebellum period, and the figure of Jim Crow became a recognizable and enduring icon in American popular culture. In the 1840s, abolitionists used the phrase Jim Crow to describe segregated railroad cars. By the end of the 19th century, the term came to signify the social separation of the races.
De Jure Segregation
Two forms of Jim Crow existed in the South: de jure and de facto. De jure segregation referred to the separation of the races as mandated specifically by law, and de facto segregation occurred by custom or tradition. In the 1880s, such laws as the segregation of street cars appeared sporadically across the South. Between 1890 and 1915, Southern states enacted an array of statutes that led to a more rigid and universal framework for the social separation of the races.
This explosion of de jure segregation reflected Southern whites' growing unease about a younger, more assertive generation of African Americans who demanded respect and recognition of their rights. In addition, the intent of widespread codification was to solidify custom and to eliminate uncertainty about the social status of blacks and whites. Signs labeled "For White" and "For Colored" dominated the Southern landscape, and Jim Crow regulated social contact in such places as restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, parks, schools, libraries, hospitals, and waiting rooms. In many cases, social separation often meant total exclusion. State legislatures also enacted antimiscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriage, and passed laws or rewrote the state constitution to make voter registration difficult, if not impossible.
De Facto Segregation
Although Southern states passed an elaborate network of laws, de facto practices of segregation endured. Patterns of de facto segregation varied depending on the location, the traditions of a community, or even the whim of a white person.
In most places, whites and blacks were expected to abide by an unspoken racial etiquette. For example, blacks could not enter a white home through the front door, address a white person by their first name, or refuse to give way to a white person on a sidewalk. Courtrooms often swore in black witnesses with separate bibles, and in many stores, blacks could not be served until white customers were finished. Whites did make exceptions for black domestic workers, but only because a black servant tending to white children in a space marked as white still clearly retained a position of inferiority. For many African Americans, Jim Crow caused incredible apprehension about the repercussions of crossing the color line. Any action taken by a black man or woman that whites perceived to be impudent or disrespectful could lead to swift and violent retaliation.
The Civil Rights Movement
After World War II, the edifice of Jim Crow began to break down. Black soldiers questioned the logic of having to fight for democracy abroad while returning home to face continued racial inequality. Protest on the grassroots level as well that initiated by institutions and celebrated leaders spread in the 1950s and early 1960s. The growing civil rights movement ultimately pressured the federal government to take action.
In 1964, the U.S. Congress answered President Lyndon B. Johnson's call to support racial equality and end Jim Crow. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade discrimination in public places, provided funding for assistance to further desegregate schools, created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and gave the attorney general more authority to prosecute civil rights violations involving voting, the use of public facilities, government, and education. It was the most extensive piece of federal legislation in support of civil rights ever ratified by Congress. While racial discrimination and oppression did not entirely disappear following passage of the Civil Rights Act, it truly marked the end of the widespread legal and social system of Jim Crow.
Natalie J. Ring https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 1903177
Image
Photographer: Unknown Description: This photograph shows a public notice on the streets of New York City announcing a meeting to advocate for a U.S. boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Date: December 3, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The location of the Olympic Games is chosen several years in advance. Germany was selected as the host country for the 1936 Olympics in 1932, shortly before the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Opposition to Hitler's regime mounted, and by the fall of 1935—around the time this photograph was taken—groups in the United States had organized for the express purpose of enacting a boycott of the games. Use the magnifying glass to zoom in on the posters in this image. Think about how the word "summons" contributes to the argument against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics. The poster suggests that boycotting the Olympic Games will help "Preserve the Olympic Ideal." What sort of characteristics does the "Olympic ideal" represent?
Notice announcing public meeting on 1936 Olympic Games boycott
A pedestrian in New York City reads a notice announcing a public meeting, scheduled for December 3, 1935, to urge Americans to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The racist and xenophobic policies of German chancellor Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led many countries to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration] https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230486
Commentary
Author: Historian Harold J. Goldberg Description: This commentary presents a historical interpretation of the 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin and argues that the games were used as a propaganda mechanism for the Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
Consider the notion of the "Olympic spirit" and the "spirit of the games." Did the 1936 undermine those values? Why or why not? Propaganda refers to information that is spread to influence public opinion regarding a specific cause or ideology. For example, a government may spread propaganda during war time to win support for the war or boost morale. Propaganda is often biased and may include disinformation or appeals to emotion rather than reason. How does the author build the case that Germany "turned the games into a propaganda showcase?" Pay close attention to the events described in the section titled "The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity." Why does the author believe the Jewish American athletes were pulled from the 4 X 100 relay team?
The 1936 Olympics were a Nazi Propaganda Showcase
In the early 1930s, enthusiasm for the Olympic Games in Europe was at a historic high. The modern Olympic Games had been held every four years since 1896, except in 1916, when they were scheduled for Berlin and canceled due to World War I. In 1932, the next Olympic Games were awarded to the Weimar Republic to celebrate Germany's new democracy, but in 1933 the republic gave way to Nazi dictatorship with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. Just as the war they started in 1939 destroyed cities, towns, villages, and people, the Nazis also ruined the Olympics held in Berlin in 1936.
A Brief History of Olympic Conflicts
The philosophy of the Olympics seeks to transcend politics and nationalism, as the world comes together to admire pure athletic skill, without concern for race, religion, or national origin. In fact, the games have frequently failed to live up to their ideals. Geopolitical crises and controversies have disrupted the games on multiple occasions, including the cancelation of the games in 1940 and 1944 due to World War II, the terrorist attack and massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972, and the U.S. boycott of the games hosted in Moscow in 1980. Among all of these flawed contests, the 1936 Olympics are still considered the most notorious for violating the spirit of the games.
Berlin, 1936: Propaganda and Discrimination
Visitors to Germany after Hitler consolidated power could not fail to see Berlin bedecked with swastika flags or hear the constant drone of Nazi propaganda on the radio. The Nazi racist agenda was clear, leading Olympic officials to debate a change of venue to another country. The fear was that the games would be spoiled by a Nazi ban on Jewish athletes and a simultaneous propaganda barrage glorifying the Nazi Party. Representatives of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) visited Germany to seek assurances that Nazi propaganda would not dominate the city and that German racial policy would not prevent athletes from participating. IOC officials were greeted by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who saw the games as a propaganda machine for the Nazis and had no reservations about lying and affirming that the games would be open to all. The IOC believed Goebbels and allowed the games to proceed in Berlin.
The result was exactly what people had feared. Nazi officials broke their pledge and refused to allow Jewish athletes to participate. Already in 1933, the German Boxing Association had expelled Erich Seelig, their light heavyweight champion, due to Jewish heritage. For the same reason, Germany's No. 1 tennis player was cut from its Davis Cup team. Likewise, Gretel Bergmann, a strong contender for a medal in the high jump, was put on the German team and then, with less than two weeks to go, was not allowed to compete. The Nazis disguised this discrimination by waiting until the American team was already on its way to Germany before they dropped her because she was Jewish. As she was the favorite for a medal, this treatment indicated that initial fears over keeping the games in Berlin were justified.
Germany turned the games into a Nazi propaganda showcase, with the Nazi flag flying from every balcony in Berlin. Hitler himself opened the games in the new Olympic Stadium on August 1, to the sound of 100,000 spectators shouting "Sieg heil" as they gave the Nazi salute. A recordsetting 49 teams paraded into the stadium; Germany had the most athletes in the stadium, with the United States bringing the secondlargest team. Interestingly, the medal count finished in that order as well: Germany won the most gold medals and the most overall medals, and the U.S. finished second in both medal categories. To complete the spectacle, the last of over 3,000 runners who carried an Olympic flame from Greece arrived to light the torch in Berlin. This Nazi innovation of having the last runner light the flame was intended to link ancient Greece with the present "Aryan" athlete.
The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity
The American team experienced both triumph and selfembarrassment. Jesse Owens, the star of the American track and field team, had already won three gold medals when the coaches called a meeting just before the relay. Owens was not scheduled to participate in that event, but two Jewish Americans had qualified and were anxious to go. One of them, Marty Glickman, described what happened at the team meeting:
"The event I was supposed to run, the 400meter relay, was one of the last events in the track and field program. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial heats, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach. Robertson announced to the 7 of us that he had heard very strong rumors that the Germans were saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400meter relay. Consequently, Sam Stoller and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Page 18 of 24 Metcalfe. We were shocked. Sam was completely stunned. He didn't say a word in the meeting. I was a brash 18yearold kid and I said 'Coach, you can't hide worldclass sprinters.' At which point, Jesse spoke up and said 'Coach, I've won my 3 gold medals [the 100, the 200, and the long jump]. I'm tired. I've had it. Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it,' said Jesse. And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said 'You'll do as you're told.'" (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936)
American coaches had caved in to the Nazi agenda. There were never any secret German runners; in reality, the American coaches had decided that winning with Jewish runners would upset the Nazis more than winning another race with Jesse Owens. Owens went home with four gold medals, while Marty Glickman never got to participate in another Olympics due to the coming war. The United States celebrated the medal victories of Owens, but this great track and field star returned to a segregated America where he could not freely choose a restaurant or hotel for his postOlympic celebration.
Despite the mixed legacy of these games, the IOC was optimistic that 1940 would see an improvement. The games were planned for Tokyo, but Japan withdrew from hosting because of its military activity in China. Immediately the 1940 Olympics were rescheduled for Helsinki, Finland, but again the games were canceled when war started in nearby Poland in 1939. With the war still in progress, there was no possibility of holding the games in 1944, so the next Olympics were finally staged in London in 1948.
During the war, the Nazis killed more than 40 Jewish Olympic athletes as they occupied European countries.
About the Author
Harold J. Goldberg is the David E. Underdown Distinguished Professor of History at Sewanee: The University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee. His published works include Daily Life in NaziOccupied Europe (Greenwood, 2019), Competing Voices from World War II in Europe: Fighting Words (Greenwood, 2010), and DDay in the Pacific: The Battle of Saipan (Indiana University Press, 2007). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229716
Quote
Author: American Committee on Fair Play in Sports Description: This quote expresses the opinion of the American Committee on Fair Play in Sports on the political implications of holding the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Date: November 15, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The American Committee on Fair Play in Sports was assembled in the fall of 1935 to oppose U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympic Games. The committee produced publications and public service announcements intended to educate the public on the totalitarian Nazi government and its policies of racism and anti Semitism. Consider the ideals of the Olympic Games and the extent to which Germany undermined the ideals of democratic competition and sportsmanship.
American Committee on Fair Play in Sports: quote on the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Sport is prostituted when sport loses its independent and democratic character and becomes a political institution … Nazi Germany is endeavouring to use the Eleventh Olympiad to serve the necessities and interests of the Nazi Regime rather than the Olympic ideals.
–American Committee on Fair Play in Sports (November 15, 1935). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229811
Reference
Author: ABCCLIO Description: This reference article discusses goldmedalist sprinter Jesse Owens's participation in the 1936 Olympic Games, including his attitude toward Adolf Hitler as he readied for one of his races.
Context and Things to Consider
African American sprinter Owens became the first athlete in the history of the modern Olympic Games to win four gold medals in a single year. Owens's feat was celebrated by opponents of Hitler's regime as an embarrassing rebuke of Hitler's theories of Aryan racial supremacy. Consider the mindset of Owens as he readied for the 100meter finals heat and the laserfocus required of Olympic athletes. What does Owens's comment suggest about his views on Hitler? Evaluate Owens's comment in relation to the other sources. How does it illustrate the desire to reflect the ideals of the Olympic Games?
Jesse Owens: "Why Worry about Hitler?" (1936)
Jesse Owens was an African American track and field athlete. During the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, he became a national hero for defeating Adolf Hitler's Aryan athletes in a series of athletic contests.
In 1936, just a few years after Hitler rose to power in Germany, the Summer Olympic Games were held in Berlin, the nation's capital. Hitler believed in an Aryan "master race," an allegedly pure Germanic/Nordic race of people who were, according to Hitler, racially, physically, and intellectually above "lesser" peoples. The Aryan ideal was a Nordic type—tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.
Owens became the star of the 1936 Games, winning a total of four gold medals, including a world recordtying performance in the 100meter dash. Reflecting on this race, Owens discussed its personal significance and his state of focus despite the political implications of competing in Nazi Germany:
When I lined up in my lane for the finals of the 100 meters . . . I thought of all the years of practice and competition, of all who had believed in me, and of my state and university [Ohio, and the Ohio State University.]
I saw the finish line, and knew that 10 seconds would climax the work of eight years. One mistake could ruin those eight years. So, why worry about Hitler?
Hitler did not approve of Black athletes participating in the Games. By 1936, his views on the superiority of the Aryan race were known around the world, though Germany made an effort to obscure its antiSemitic policies as host of the Games. As someone who did not fit Hitler's ideal, Owens's victory in the 1936 Olympics was widely considered to be a refutation of the dictator's racist worldview and an embarrassment for the Nazi regime.
Mark Strong https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230575
COPYRIGHT 2021 ABCCLIO, LLC https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337 U.S. Participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympics Activity
Inquiry Question What were the arguments for and against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics?
The U.S. decision to take part in the 1936 Olympics, which took place in Berlin at the time of Nazi leadership, was a controversial issue that divided participating athletes, administrative organizations, and the American public itself, especially since the country was dealing with its own problems of racism during the era of Jim Crow laws. Use information collected from the provided sources and analyze your findings to explain the arguments presented by both sides: those who felt the U.S. should compete in the games, and those who felt the nation should boycott.
Clarifying Questions
What was the status of civil rights in Germany in the mid1930s, and how did it compare to the situation in the United States? What were the main arguments for participating in the games? What were the main arguments against participating in the games? How did the 1936 Berlin Olympics influence the global perception of Nazi Germany?
Vocabulary
boycott de facto segregation de jure segregation Jim Crow Nazi Party propaganda
Background Information
1936 Summer Olympic Games, Berlin
The 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin, Germany, marked a pivotal moment in the history of the international games. German chancellor Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and the institution of racist and xenophobic policies by the Nazi Party, led many to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
Hitler's Rise to Power
In their choice of Berlin, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had wanted to stress Germany's return to the international sporting world after World War I. When the Olympics were held in 1936, however, it was quite a different Germany and quite a different Berlin from those to whom the IOC had awarded the games in 1931. The rise to prominence of the Nazi Party in the 1930s elevated the party's leader, Adolf Hitler, as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Hitler's seizure of absolute power in 1934 ushered in a totalitarian regime in Germany that ruthlessly suppressed the civil rights of minorities, particularly German Jews.
Organizing the Games
The overwhelming problem for the IOC and for the United States was to get a guarantee that Jewish athletes would not be excluded from the games. At the IOC meeting in Vienna in June 1933, president of the Olympic organizing committee Theodor Lewald was able to give an assurance with the approval of the German government that "all laws relating to the Olympic Games will be respected. German Jews will not as a matter of principle be excluded from German teams in the XI Olympiad."
This guarantee convinced the president of the Olympic Committee, Henri BailletLatour, after a visit to Berlin in November 1935, when he had an audience with Hitler. After that, the attitude of the Olympic Committee was unchanged. There was no wavering, and there was total support for the games in Berlin. From that point onward, both Baillet Latour and Avery Brundage attacked all opponents of the games as being lackeys of Communism. In 1936, Avery Brundage took a place on the IOC at the expense of the American E. L. Jahncke, who had been unremittingly critical of the games in Berlin.
The first thing the Hitler state did was to place its resources wholeheartedly behind the organization committee. A close cooperative relationship developed between Reich Director of Sport Hans von Tschammer und Osten and the organization committee—a collaboration that would be expanded to encompass work on the winter games in GarmischPartenkirchen, which the IOC had no objections about awarding to Germany in the spring of 1933, four months after Hitler came to power. Leading the organization of the latter was Karl Ritter von Halt, who had swiftly joined the Nazi Party in order to assist his career as a banker. All these people combined to convince the outside world that the games in Berlin and GarmischPartenkirchen would take place without discrimination against Jews or other nonAryan races.
Nazi Propaganda and Misdirection
The Nazis reasoned that if the whole world was being invited to Germany as a guest, then the country had to be seen in its most favorable light. Despite the treatment of Jews in Germany, Jews from outside were welcome. The German press was also instructed not to say anything negative about blacks—or only if they could do so by quoting newspapers from America's southern states. Furthermore, at the winter games and the summer games, the German press was forbidden from suggesting that Jews were inferior. Abusive antiSemitic posters were removed, and the SS was given the task of ensuring that these temporary prohibitions were observed.
To underline Nazi goodwill, two German halfJews were allowed to take part in the games: the icehockey player Rudi Ball in the winter games, and the fencer Helene Mayer in the summer games. Both were 50% Jewish according to Nazi definitions, and as such were acceptable. On the other hand, a potential medalist for Germany, Gretel Bergmann, who was a highjumper and fully Jewish, was not allowed to take part.
With the assistance of the Ministry of Propaganda, the Nazis set a largescale campaign in motion to bring the world to Berlin. Bulletins in a number of languages were sent out abroad; German travel agents abroad advertised the Olympic Games in Berlin as the best place to take a summer holiday in 1936; and 156,000 Olympic posters in 19 languages were distributed.
With unlimited funds at their disposal, the organization committee could construct a completely new stadium for the games in Berlin. The style was neoclassical and there was plenty of space for a range of activities, including the socalled Maifeld, which was an exhibition and practice area situated between the stadium's marathon gate and the Olympic novelty, a bell tower with the great bell that summoned the youth of the world to Berlin—"Ich rufe die Jugend der Welt" (I call the youth of the world) was engraved on the castiron bell. The bell tower's foundation consisted of the great Langemarckhalle, originally suggested by Organizing Committee secretary general Carl Diem. The hall was envisoned as a temple commemorating the youth of Germany that had fallen in World War I at Langemarck in Flanders.
The Olympic stadium in Berlin became the site of what were the most successful games of all so far. They were directly transmitted by radio for the first time to countless countries, and in selected cinemas in Berlin it was even possible to see direct television transmission from the games. It was, however, Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia that would stand for posterity as the document of the success of the games. The film was given its premiere on Hitler's birthday in 1938 and from the very first was a roaring success both at home and abroad. It won a number of prizes and at the Venice Film Festival in 1938 was grand prize winner ahead of, for example, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was only in the United States that its success was more muted, since a greater proportion of the public were critical of developments in Germany.
The Games
The games lasted from August 1–16 and lived up to the high expectations in every respect. Athletes from 49 nations competed, 3,738 men and 328 women, and the stadium was sold out for all events, with 105,000 spectators attending every day. The crowning moment of the introductory procession in Berlin was the arrival of the torch bearer into the Olympic stadium. The new German Reich created a perfect staging for sport as an offshoot of ancient Greece. Everything went according to plan, and at the processional entry a number of countries chose to make the Nazi salute when they passed the Fuhrer's box; others stretched out their hands more horizontally and said afterward that it was the Olympic greeting.
The greatest athlete of the games was the African American Jesse Owens, who won five gold medals. Owens won the 100 and 200meter races. He also won the long jump and was in the 4x100 relay, which set a new record of 39.8 seconds, which was the first time ever under 40 seconds and a record that stood for 20 years. Owens's performance was seen by many as a refutation of Hitler's racist theories of Aryan racial superiority and remains the most memorable performance of the games. Basketball, canoeing, and field handball were on the program for the first time, and it caused a sensation when Norway beat Germany in soccer and achieved a bronze. As expected, despite American dominance, Germany ran away with the most medals in athletics.
Reference
Author: Historian and Holocaust scholar Paul R. Bartrop Description: This essay outlines the arguments for and against the international community's participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, hosted during the third year of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin began in the early years of Hitler's regime, which saw laws severely restricting the citizenship and civil rights of Jews known as the Nuremberg Race Laws (1935). Consider the ways in which Germany constructed its image during the Olympic Games. How did that image differ from its image prior to the Olympics? Pay close attention to the arguments for and against a boycott of the 1936 Olympics outlined in the sections titled "Debating Whether to Boycott" and "U.S. Olympic Team." Why did most African American newspapers support participation in the games?
1936 Berlin Olympics: Boycott Debates
The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were highly controversial at the time. From the very start they were marked by racism, with the official Nazi Party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, declaring that Jews and people of African descent, regardless of their country of origin, should not be allowed to participate. Following Nazi demands, the German Olympic Committee denied Jews all opportunity of representing Germany. These measures led many in the international community to call for a boycott of the 1936 games.
Germany Furnishes its Image
When the possibility of an international boycott was threatened, Germany responded with a superficial relaxing of the rules: now, one athlete with a Jewish background was allowed to compete for Germany. Helene Mayer, who had a Jewish father, was a world champion fencer who had already won a gold medal at the 1928 Amsterdam Games. With an eye to the prospect of her winning another gold medal for Germany, she became the token Jew permitted to compete. As it turned out, she won silver in the individual foil event.
The prospect of other Jewish athletes competing for Germany was denied, however. The fourtime world record holder and 10time German national champion in shot put and discus throw, Lilli Henoch, was excluded; she was later deported and murdered in the Riga ghetto in 1942. Gretel Bergmann, an internationally recognized champion high jumper, was replaced on the German team by Dora Ratjen, who was later revealed to be a male who had been raised as a girl.
In order to reassure foreign opinion, Berlin was purged of all traces of Nazi antiSemitism. Local party authorities removed street signs bearing such slogans as "Jews not wanted" from Berlin's main tourist areas. At the same time, all vagrants and Roma were physically moved to a specially constructed "holding camp" outside the city at Marzahn.
Debating Whether to Boycott
In view of Germany's racist domestic policies, there was considerable debate among the international community over whether or not to boycott the games. In some countries, notably Britain, France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands, discussion took place over whether the games should be relocated. Meanwhile, exiled political opponents of the Nazis kept up the pressure for a boycott. These initiatives did not amount to anything definite; opponents of a boycott argued that the games had been awarded to Berlin in 1931 and that it would be wrong to punish the city simply because of a change of government.
Individual Jewish athletes from a number of countries, on the other hand, elected to take matters into their own hands and refused to attend. In this regard, brave athletes such as the South African Sid Kiel and Americans Milton Green and Norman Cahners should be mentioned.
U.S. Olympic Team
As one of the world's leading sporting nations, the position of the United States was crucial. In September 1934, the United States Olympic Committee accepted a German invitation to visit on a factfinding mission. After interviewing German Jews who had been carefully selected by the Nazi regime, U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage concluded that he had not found any discrimination against the Jewish population of Germany. He then became a major supporter of the games being held in Berlin, famously arguing that "politics has no place in sport." By 1935, he had convinced the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States that an American team should be sent to Berlin. The American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee supported a boycott, but they had no say in what was effectively an institutional project by the American Olympic Committee.
Most African American newspapers, on the other hand, supported participation. They argued that this was an opportunity for Nazi racial theories to be challenged and, hopefully, defeated. And to some degree, they were right; the iconic Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events, and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin.
On the day of the men's 4 x 100 relay, the Jewish American sprinters Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman were sidelined from the team. While this gave Owens the opportunity to win his fourth and final gold medal, historians have speculated that the removal of Stoller and Glickman was deliberately antiSemitic and intended to appease Hitler.
Legacy of the 1936 Games
Ultimately, Germany was the most successful country at the games, winning 33 gold medals and 89 medals overall. The United States came second in the medal tally, with 24 gold and 56 overall.
The Berlin Olympics torch relay from Mount Olympus in Greece was the first of its kind, and the games were the first to have live television coverage. Despite these advances, they were also to be the final Olympic Games for 12 years owing to World War II.
Hitler's antihuman ideologies and his quest for supreme domination and racial supremacy were the biggest challenge to the Olympic ideal until 1972—when terrorism and the murder of Jewish athletes at the Munich Games threatened the Olympic ideal once more. The president of the International Olympic Committee then was the same Avery Brundage who so dominated the American team in 1936.
Paul R. Bartrop https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229806
Reference
Author: Historian Natalie Ring Description: This essay defines and illustrates the Jim Crow era of racial segregation and discrimination in the American South.
Context and Things to Consider
What is meant by the term "Jim Crow"? How did Jim Crow laws prevent the social advancement of African Americans from the 1880s to 1960s? What is meant by de jure segregation? What is meant by de facto segregation? Consider race relations in the United States during the 1930s and the extent to which there was a contradiction between Americans' attitudes toward race relations at home and their attitudes related to the 1936 Olympics.
Segregation and Jim Crow
The term "Jim Crow" refers to the system of racial segregation and oppression that existed primarily in the South from 1877 to the mid1960s. Segregation existed in some parts of the North, yet by the turn of the century it had become a distinctly Southern phenomenon. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court declared that "separate but equal" was constitutional, and this provided the legal backbone for segregation until it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In reality, "separate but equal" was never really equal. Racial segregation violated the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, but the federal government continued to sanction the state laws and practices of Jim Crow until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Jim Crow era marked the ascendancy of white supremacy and not only consisted of the social separation of the races, but more broadly included lynching and mob violence, the manipulation of the justice system, inequality in education, economic subjugation, and the elimination of Black suffrage.
Origins of "Jim Crow"
The term Jim Crow is derived from the name of a character in a minstrel song performed by Thomas Rice in the 1830s. Blackface minstrelsy was a form of popular entertainment in which white actors blackened their face with cork and imitated what they considered to be authentic African American dialect, dance, and song. These theatrical performances frequently ridiculed African Americans and exaggerated alleged Black characteristics.
Rice named his act "Jump Jim Crow" and claimed to have based it on a dance he saw performed by an aged crippled slave in Louisville, Kentucky, owned by a Mr. Crow. Wearing ragged clothing representative of a field hand, Rice sang and danced to lyrics that included the stanza "Weel about and turn about / And do jis so, / Eb'ry time I weel about / And jump Jim Crow." The routine was immensely popular during the antebellum period, and the figure of Jim Crow became a recognizable and enduring icon in American popular culture. In the 1840s, abolitionists used the phrase Jim Crow to describe segregated railroad cars. By the end of the 19th century, the term came to signify the social separation of the races.
De Jure Segregation
Two forms of Jim Crow existed in the South: de jure and de facto. De jure segregation referred to the separation of the races as mandated specifically by law, and de facto segregation occurred by custom or tradition. In the 1880s, such laws as the segregation of street cars appeared sporadically across the South. Between 1890 and 1915, Southern states enacted an array of statutes that led to a more rigid and universal framework for the social separation of the races.
This explosion of de jure segregation reflected Southern whites' growing unease about a younger, more assertive generation of African Americans who demanded respect and recognition of their rights. In addition, the intent of widespread codification was to solidify custom and to eliminate uncertainty about the social status of blacks and whites. Signs labeled "For White" and "For Colored" dominated the Southern landscape, and Jim Crow regulated social contact in such places as restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, parks, schools, libraries, hospitals, and waiting rooms. In many cases, social separation often meant total exclusion. State legislatures also enacted antimiscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriage, and passed laws or rewrote the state constitution to make voter registration difficult, if not impossible.
De Facto Segregation
Although Southern states passed an elaborate network of laws, de facto practices of segregation endured. Patterns of de facto segregation varied depending on the location, the traditions of a community, or even the whim of a white person.
In most places, whites and blacks were expected to abide by an unspoken racial etiquette. For example, blacks could not enter a white home through the front door, address a white person by their first name, or refuse to give way to a white person on a sidewalk. Courtrooms often swore in black witnesses with separate bibles, and in many stores, blacks could not be served until white customers were finished. Whites did make exceptions for black domestic workers, but only because a black servant tending to white children in a space marked as white still clearly retained a position of inferiority. For many African Americans, Jim Crow caused incredible apprehension about the repercussions of crossing the color line. Any action taken by a black man or woman that whites perceived to be impudent or disrespectful could lead to swift and violent retaliation.
The Civil Rights Movement
After World War II, the edifice of Jim Crow began to break down. Black soldiers questioned the logic of having to fight for democracy abroad while returning home to face continued racial inequality. Protest on the grassroots level as well that initiated by institutions and celebrated leaders spread in the 1950s and early 1960s. The growing civil rights movement ultimately pressured the federal government to take action.
In 1964, the U.S. Congress answered President Lyndon B. Johnson's call to support racial equality and end Jim Crow. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade discrimination in public places, provided funding for assistance to further desegregate schools, created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and gave the attorney general more authority to prosecute civil rights violations involving voting, the use of public facilities, government, and education. It was the most extensive piece of federal legislation in support of civil rights ever ratified by Congress. While racial discrimination and oppression did not entirely disappear following passage of the Civil Rights Act, it truly marked the end of the widespread legal and social system of Jim Crow.
Natalie J. Ring https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 1903177
Image
Photographer: Unknown Description: This photograph shows a public notice on the streets of New York City announcing a meeting to advocate for a U.S. boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Date: December 3, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The location of the Olympic Games is chosen several years in advance. Germany was selected as the host country for the 1936 Olympics in 1932, shortly before the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Opposition to Hitler's regime mounted, and by the fall of 1935—around the time this photograph was taken—groups in the United States had organized for the express purpose of enacting a boycott of the games. Use the magnifying glass to zoom in on the posters in this image. Think about how the word "summons" contributes to the argument against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics. The poster suggests that boycotting the Olympic Games will help "Preserve the Olympic Ideal." What sort of characteristics does the "Olympic ideal" represent?
Notice announcing public meeting on 1936 Olympic Games boycott
A pedestrian in New York City reads a notice announcing a public meeting, scheduled for December 3, 1935, to urge Americans to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The racist and xenophobic policies of German chancellor Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led many countries to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration] https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230486
Commentary
Author: Historian Harold J. Goldberg Description: This commentary presents a historical interpretation of the 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin and argues that the games were used as a propaganda mechanism for the Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
Consider the notion of the "Olympic spirit" and the "spirit of the games." Did the 1936 undermine those values? Why or why not? Propaganda refers to information that is spread to influence public opinion regarding a specific cause or ideology. For example, a government may spread propaganda during war time to win support for the war or boost morale. Propaganda is often biased and may include disinformation or appeals to emotion rather than reason. How does the author build the case that Germany "turned the games into a propaganda showcase?" Pay close attention to the events described in the section titled "The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity." Why does the author believe the Jewish American athletes were pulled from the 4 X 100 relay team?
The 1936 Olympics were a Nazi Propaganda Showcase
In the early 1930s, enthusiasm for the Olympic Games in Europe was at a historic high. The modern Olympic Games had been held every four years since 1896, except in 1916, when they were scheduled for Berlin and canceled due to World War I. In 1932, the next Olympic Games were awarded to the Weimar Republic to celebrate Germany's new democracy, but in 1933 the republic gave way to Nazi dictatorship with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. Just as the war they started in 1939 destroyed cities, towns, villages, and people, the Nazis also ruined the Olympics held in Berlin in 1936.
A Brief History of Olympic Conflicts
The philosophy of the Olympics seeks to transcend politics and nationalism, as the world comes together to admire pure athletic skill, without concern for race, religion, or national origin. In fact, the games have frequently failed to live up to their ideals. Geopolitical crises and controversies have disrupted the games on multiple occasions, including the cancelation of the games in 1940 and 1944 due to World War II, the terrorist attack and massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972, and the U.S. boycott of the games hosted in Moscow in 1980. Among all of these flawed contests, the 1936 Olympics are still considered the most notorious for violating the spirit of the games.
Berlin, 1936: Propaganda and Discrimination
Visitors to Germany after Hitler consolidated power could not fail to see Berlin bedecked with swastika flags or hear the constant drone of Nazi propaganda on the radio. The Nazi racist agenda was clear, leading Olympic officials to debate a change of venue to another country. The fear was that the games would be spoiled by a Nazi ban on Jewish athletes and a simultaneous propaganda barrage glorifying the Nazi Party. Representatives of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) visited Germany to seek assurances that Nazi propaganda would not dominate the city and that German racial policy would not prevent athletes from participating. IOC officials were greeted by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who saw the games as a propaganda machine for the Nazis and had no reservations about lying and affirming that the games would be open to all. The IOC believed Goebbels and allowed the games to proceed in Berlin.
The result was exactly what people had feared. Nazi officials broke their pledge and refused to allow Jewish athletes to participate. Already in 1933, the German Boxing Association had expelled Erich Seelig, their light heavyweight champion, due to Jewish heritage. For the same reason, Germany's No. 1 tennis player was cut from its Davis Cup team. Likewise, Gretel Bergmann, a strong contender for a medal in the high jump, was put on the German team and then, with less than two weeks to go, was not allowed to compete. The Nazis disguised this discrimination by waiting until the American team was already on its way to Germany before they dropped her because she was Jewish. As she was the favorite for a medal, this treatment indicated that initial fears over keeping the games in Berlin were justified.
Germany turned the games into a Nazi propaganda showcase, with the Nazi flag flying from every balcony in Berlin. Hitler himself opened the games in the new Olympic Stadium on August 1, to the sound of 100,000 spectators shouting "Sieg heil" as they gave the Nazi salute. A recordsetting 49 teams paraded into the stadium; Germany had the most athletes in the stadium, with the United States bringing the secondlargest team. Interestingly, the medal count finished in that order as well: Germany won the most gold medals and the most overall medals, and the U.S. finished second in both medal categories. To complete the spectacle, the last of over 3,000 runners who carried an Olympic flame from Greece arrived to light the torch in Berlin. This Nazi innovation of having the last runner light the flame was intended to link ancient Greece with the present "Aryan" athlete.
The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity
The American team experienced both triumph and selfembarrassment. Jesse Owens, the star of the American track and field team, had already won three gold medals when the coaches called a meeting just before the relay. Owens was not scheduled to participate in that event, but two Jewish Americans had qualified and were anxious to go. One of them, Marty Glickman, described what happened at the team meeting:
"The event I was supposed to run, the 400meter relay, was one of the last events in the track and field program. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial heats, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach. Robertson announced to the 7 of us that he had heard very strong rumors that the Germans were saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400meter relay. Consequently, Sam Stoller and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. We were shocked. Sam was completely stunned. He didn't say a word in the meeting. I was a brash 18yearold kid and I said 'Coach, you can't hide worldclass sprinters.' At which point, Jesse spoke up and said 'Coach, I've won my 3 gold medals [the 100, the 200, and the long jump]. I'm tired. I've had it. Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it,' said Jesse. And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said 'You'll do as you're told.'" (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936)
American coaches had caved in to the Nazi agenda. There were never any secret German runners; in reality, the American coaches had decided that winning with Jewish runners would upset the Nazis more than winning another race with Jesse Owens. Owens went home with four gold medals, while Marty Glickman never got to participate in another Olympics due to the coming war. The United States celebrated the medal victories of Owens, but this great track and field star returned to a segregated America where he could not freely choose a restaurant or hotel for his postOlympic celebration.
Despite the mixed legacy of these games, the IOC was optimistic that 1940 would see an improvement. The games were planned for Tokyo, but Japan withdrew from hosting because of its military activity in China. Immediately the 1940 Olympics were rescheduled for Helsinki, Finland, but again the games were canceled when war started in nearby Poland in 1939. With the war still in progress, there was no possibility of holding the games in 1944, so the next Olympics were finally staged in London in 1948.
During the war, the Nazis killed more than 40 Jewish Olympic athletes as they occupied European countries.
About the Author
Harold J. Goldberg is the David E. Underdown Distinguished Professor of History at Sewanee: The University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee. His published works include Daily Life in NaziOccupied Europe (Greenwood, 2019), Competing Voices from World War II in Europe: Fighting Words (Greenwood, 2010), and DDay in the Pacific: The Page 19 of 24 Battle of Saipan (Indiana University Press, 2007). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229716
Quote
Author: American Committee on Fair Play in Sports Description: This quote expresses the opinion of the American Committee on Fair Play in Sports on the political implications of holding the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Date: November 15, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The American Committee on Fair Play in Sports was assembled in the fall of 1935 to oppose U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympic Games. The committee produced publications and public service announcements intended to educate the public on the totalitarian Nazi government and its policies of racism and anti Semitism. Consider the ideals of the Olympic Games and the extent to which Germany undermined the ideals of democratic competition and sportsmanship.
American Committee on Fair Play in Sports: quote on the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Sport is prostituted when sport loses its independent and democratic character and becomes a political institution … Nazi Germany is endeavouring to use the Eleventh Olympiad to serve the necessities and interests of the Nazi Regime rather than the Olympic ideals.
–American Committee on Fair Play in Sports (November 15, 1935). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229811
Reference
Author: ABCCLIO Description: This reference article discusses goldmedalist sprinter Jesse Owens's participation in the 1936 Olympic Games, including his attitude toward Adolf Hitler as he readied for one of his races.
Context and Things to Consider
African American sprinter Owens became the first athlete in the history of the modern Olympic Games to win four gold medals in a single year. Owens's feat was celebrated by opponents of Hitler's regime as an embarrassing rebuke of Hitler's theories of Aryan racial supremacy. Consider the mindset of Owens as he readied for the 100meter finals heat and the laserfocus required of Olympic athletes. What does Owens's comment suggest about his views on Hitler? Evaluate Owens's comment in relation to the other sources. How does it illustrate the desire to reflect the ideals of the Olympic Games?
Jesse Owens: "Why Worry about Hitler?" (1936)
Jesse Owens was an African American track and field athlete. During the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, he became a national hero for defeating Adolf Hitler's Aryan athletes in a series of athletic contests.
In 1936, just a few years after Hitler rose to power in Germany, the Summer Olympic Games were held in Berlin, the nation's capital. Hitler believed in an Aryan "master race," an allegedly pure Germanic/Nordic race of people who were, according to Hitler, racially, physically, and intellectually above "lesser" peoples. The Aryan ideal was a Nordic type—tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.
Owens became the star of the 1936 Games, winning a total of four gold medals, including a world recordtying performance in the 100meter dash. Reflecting on this race, Owens discussed its personal significance and his state of focus despite the political implications of competing in Nazi Germany:
When I lined up in my lane for the finals of the 100 meters . . . I thought of all the years of practice and competition, of all who had believed in me, and of my state and university [Ohio, and the Ohio State University.]
I saw the finish line, and knew that 10 seconds would climax the work of eight years. One mistake could ruin those eight years. So, why worry about Hitler?
Hitler did not approve of Black athletes participating in the Games. By 1936, his views on the superiority of the Aryan race were known around the world, though Germany made an effort to obscure its antiSemitic policies as host of the Games. As someone who did not fit Hitler's ideal, Owens's victory in the 1936 Olympics was widely considered to be a refutation of the dictator's racist worldview and an embarrassment for the Nazi regime.
Mark Strong https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230575
COPYRIGHT 2021 ABCCLIO, LLC https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337 U.S. Participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympics Activity
Inquiry Question What were the arguments for and against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics?
The U.S. decision to take part in the 1936 Olympics, which took place in Berlin at the time of Nazi leadership, was a controversial issue that divided participating athletes, administrative organizations, and the American public itself, especially since the country was dealing with its own problems of racism during the era of Jim Crow laws. Use information collected from the provided sources and analyze your findings to explain the arguments presented by both sides: those who felt the U.S. should compete in the games, and those who felt the nation should boycott.
Clarifying Questions
What was the status of civil rights in Germany in the mid1930s, and how did it compare to the situation in the United States? What were the main arguments for participating in the games? What were the main arguments against participating in the games? How did the 1936 Berlin Olympics influence the global perception of Nazi Germany?
Vocabulary
boycott de facto segregation de jure segregation Jim Crow Nazi Party propaganda
Background Information
1936 Summer Olympic Games, Berlin
The 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin, Germany, marked a pivotal moment in the history of the international games. German chancellor Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and the institution of racist and xenophobic policies by the Nazi Party, led many to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
Hitler's Rise to Power
In their choice of Berlin, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had wanted to stress Germany's return to the international sporting world after World War I. When the Olympics were held in 1936, however, it was quite a different Germany and quite a different Berlin from those to whom the IOC had awarded the games in 1931. The rise to prominence of the Nazi Party in the 1930s elevated the party's leader, Adolf Hitler, as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Hitler's seizure of absolute power in 1934 ushered in a totalitarian regime in Germany that ruthlessly suppressed the civil rights of minorities, particularly German Jews.
Organizing the Games
The overwhelming problem for the IOC and for the United States was to get a guarantee that Jewish athletes would not be excluded from the games. At the IOC meeting in Vienna in June 1933, president of the Olympic organizing committee Theodor Lewald was able to give an assurance with the approval of the German government that "all laws relating to the Olympic Games will be respected. German Jews will not as a matter of principle be excluded from German teams in the XI Olympiad."
This guarantee convinced the president of the Olympic Committee, Henri BailletLatour, after a visit to Berlin in November 1935, when he had an audience with Hitler. After that, the attitude of the Olympic Committee was unchanged. There was no wavering, and there was total support for the games in Berlin. From that point onward, both Baillet Latour and Avery Brundage attacked all opponents of the games as being lackeys of Communism. In 1936, Avery Brundage took a place on the IOC at the expense of the American E. L. Jahncke, who had been unremittingly critical of the games in Berlin.
The first thing the Hitler state did was to place its resources wholeheartedly behind the organization committee. A close cooperative relationship developed between Reich Director of Sport Hans von Tschammer und Osten and the organization committee—a collaboration that would be expanded to encompass work on the winter games in GarmischPartenkirchen, which the IOC had no objections about awarding to Germany in the spring of 1933, four months after Hitler came to power. Leading the organization of the latter was Karl Ritter von Halt, who had swiftly joined the Nazi Party in order to assist his career as a banker. All these people combined to convince the outside world that the games in Berlin and GarmischPartenkirchen would take place without discrimination against Jews or other nonAryan races.
Nazi Propaganda and Misdirection
The Nazis reasoned that if the whole world was being invited to Germany as a guest, then the country had to be seen in its most favorable light. Despite the treatment of Jews in Germany, Jews from outside were welcome. The German press was also instructed not to say anything negative about blacks—or only if they could do so by quoting newspapers from America's southern states. Furthermore, at the winter games and the summer games, the German press was forbidden from suggesting that Jews were inferior. Abusive antiSemitic posters were removed, and the SS was given the task of ensuring that these temporary prohibitions were observed.
To underline Nazi goodwill, two German halfJews were allowed to take part in the games: the icehockey player Rudi Ball in the winter games, and the fencer Helene Mayer in the summer games. Both were 50% Jewish according to Nazi definitions, and as such were acceptable. On the other hand, a potential medalist for Germany, Gretel Bergmann, who was a highjumper and fully Jewish, was not allowed to take part.
With the assistance of the Ministry of Propaganda, the Nazis set a largescale campaign in motion to bring the world to Berlin. Bulletins in a number of languages were sent out abroad; German travel agents abroad advertised the Olympic Games in Berlin as the best place to take a summer holiday in 1936; and 156,000 Olympic posters in 19 languages were distributed.
With unlimited funds at their disposal, the organization committee could construct a completely new stadium for the games in Berlin. The style was neoclassical and there was plenty of space for a range of activities, including the socalled Maifeld, which was an exhibition and practice area situated between the stadium's marathon gate and the Olympic novelty, a bell tower with the great bell that summoned the youth of the world to Berlin—"Ich rufe die Jugend der Welt" (I call the youth of the world) was engraved on the castiron bell. The bell tower's foundation consisted of the great Langemarckhalle, originally suggested by Organizing Committee secretary general Carl Diem. The hall was envisoned as a temple commemorating the youth of Germany that had fallen in World War I at Langemarck in Flanders.
The Olympic stadium in Berlin became the site of what were the most successful games of all so far. They were directly transmitted by radio for the first time to countless countries, and in selected cinemas in Berlin it was even possible to see direct television transmission from the games. It was, however, Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia that would stand for posterity as the document of the success of the games. The film was given its premiere on Hitler's birthday in 1938 and from the very first was a roaring success both at home and abroad. It won a number of prizes and at the Venice Film Festival in 1938 was grand prize winner ahead of, for example, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was only in the United States that its success was more muted, since a greater proportion of the public were critical of developments in Germany.
The Games
The games lasted from August 1–16 and lived up to the high expectations in every respect. Athletes from 49 nations competed, 3,738 men and 328 women, and the stadium was sold out for all events, with 105,000 spectators attending every day. The crowning moment of the introductory procession in Berlin was the arrival of the torch bearer into the Olympic stadium. The new German Reich created a perfect staging for sport as an offshoot of ancient Greece. Everything went according to plan, and at the processional entry a number of countries chose to make the Nazi salute when they passed the Fuhrer's box; others stretched out their hands more horizontally and said afterward that it was the Olympic greeting.
The greatest athlete of the games was the African American Jesse Owens, who won five gold medals. Owens won the 100 and 200meter races. He also won the long jump and was in the 4x100 relay, which set a new record of 39.8 seconds, which was the first time ever under 40 seconds and a record that stood for 20 years. Owens's performance was seen by many as a refutation of Hitler's racist theories of Aryan racial superiority and remains the most memorable performance of the games. Basketball, canoeing, and field handball were on the program for the first time, and it caused a sensation when Norway beat Germany in soccer and achieved a bronze. As expected, despite American dominance, Germany ran away with the most medals in athletics.
Reference
Author: Historian and Holocaust scholar Paul R. Bartrop Description: This essay outlines the arguments for and against the international community's participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, hosted during the third year of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin began in the early years of Hitler's regime, which saw laws severely restricting the citizenship and civil rights of Jews known as the Nuremberg Race Laws (1935). Consider the ways in which Germany constructed its image during the Olympic Games. How did that image differ from its image prior to the Olympics? Pay close attention to the arguments for and against a boycott of the 1936 Olympics outlined in the sections titled "Debating Whether to Boycott" and "U.S. Olympic Team." Why did most African American newspapers support participation in the games?
1936 Berlin Olympics: Boycott Debates
The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were highly controversial at the time. From the very start they were marked by racism, with the official Nazi Party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, declaring that Jews and people of African descent, regardless of their country of origin, should not be allowed to participate. Following Nazi demands, the German Olympic Committee denied Jews all opportunity of representing Germany. These measures led many in the international community to call for a boycott of the 1936 games.
Germany Furnishes its Image
When the possibility of an international boycott was threatened, Germany responded with a superficial relaxing of the rules: now, one athlete with a Jewish background was allowed to compete for Germany. Helene Mayer, who had a Jewish father, was a world champion fencer who had already won a gold medal at the 1928 Amsterdam Games. With an eye to the prospect of her winning another gold medal for Germany, she became the token Jew permitted to compete. As it turned out, she won silver in the individual foil event.
The prospect of other Jewish athletes competing for Germany was denied, however. The fourtime world record holder and 10time German national champion in shot put and discus throw, Lilli Henoch, was excluded; she was later deported and murdered in the Riga ghetto in 1942. Gretel Bergmann, an internationally recognized champion high jumper, was replaced on the German team by Dora Ratjen, who was later revealed to be a male who had been raised as a girl.
In order to reassure foreign opinion, Berlin was purged of all traces of Nazi antiSemitism. Local party authorities removed street signs bearing such slogans as "Jews not wanted" from Berlin's main tourist areas. At the same time, all vagrants and Roma were physically moved to a specially constructed "holding camp" outside the city at Marzahn.
Debating Whether to Boycott
In view of Germany's racist domestic policies, there was considerable debate among the international community over whether or not to boycott the games. In some countries, notably Britain, France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands, discussion took place over whether the games should be relocated. Meanwhile, exiled political opponents of the Nazis kept up the pressure for a boycott. These initiatives did not amount to anything definite; opponents of a boycott argued that the games had been awarded to Berlin in 1931 and that it would be wrong to punish the city simply because of a change of government.
Individual Jewish athletes from a number of countries, on the other hand, elected to take matters into their own hands and refused to attend. In this regard, brave athletes such as the South African Sid Kiel and Americans Milton Green and Norman Cahners should be mentioned.
U.S. Olympic Team
As one of the world's leading sporting nations, the position of the United States was crucial. In September 1934, the United States Olympic Committee accepted a German invitation to visit on a factfinding mission. After interviewing German Jews who had been carefully selected by the Nazi regime, U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage concluded that he had not found any discrimination against the Jewish population of Germany. He then became a major supporter of the games being held in Berlin, famously arguing that "politics has no place in sport." By 1935, he had convinced the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States that an American team should be sent to Berlin. The American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee supported a boycott, but they had no say in what was effectively an institutional project by the American Olympic Committee.
Most African American newspapers, on the other hand, supported participation. They argued that this was an opportunity for Nazi racial theories to be challenged and, hopefully, defeated. And to some degree, they were right; the iconic Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events, and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin.
On the day of the men's 4 x 100 relay, the Jewish American sprinters Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman were sidelined from the team. While this gave Owens the opportunity to win his fourth and final gold medal, historians have speculated that the removal of Stoller and Glickman was deliberately antiSemitic and intended to appease Hitler.
Legacy of the 1936 Games
Ultimately, Germany was the most successful country at the games, winning 33 gold medals and 89 medals overall. The United States came second in the medal tally, with 24 gold and 56 overall.
The Berlin Olympics torch relay from Mount Olympus in Greece was the first of its kind, and the games were the first to have live television coverage. Despite these advances, they were also to be the final Olympic Games for 12 years owing to World War II.
Hitler's antihuman ideologies and his quest for supreme domination and racial supremacy were the biggest challenge to the Olympic ideal until 1972—when terrorism and the murder of Jewish athletes at the Munich Games threatened the Olympic ideal once more. The president of the International Olympic Committee then was the same Avery Brundage who so dominated the American team in 1936.
Paul R. Bartrop https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229806
Reference
Author: Historian Natalie Ring Description: This essay defines and illustrates the Jim Crow era of racial segregation and discrimination in the American South.
Context and Things to Consider
What is meant by the term "Jim Crow"? How did Jim Crow laws prevent the social advancement of African Americans from the 1880s to 1960s? What is meant by de jure segregation? What is meant by de facto segregation? Consider race relations in the United States during the 1930s and the extent to which there was a contradiction between Americans' attitudes toward race relations at home and their attitudes related to the 1936 Olympics.
Segregation and Jim Crow
The term "Jim Crow" refers to the system of racial segregation and oppression that existed primarily in the South from 1877 to the mid1960s. Segregation existed in some parts of the North, yet by the turn of the century it had become a distinctly Southern phenomenon. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court declared that "separate but equal" was constitutional, and this provided the legal backbone for segregation until it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In reality, "separate but equal" was never really equal. Racial segregation violated the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, but the federal government continued to sanction the state laws and practices of Jim Crow until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Jim Crow era marked the ascendancy of white supremacy and not only consisted of the social separation of the races, but more broadly included lynching and mob violence, the manipulation of the justice system, inequality in education, economic subjugation, and the elimination of Black suffrage.
Origins of "Jim Crow"
The term Jim Crow is derived from the name of a character in a minstrel song performed by Thomas Rice in the 1830s. Blackface minstrelsy was a form of popular entertainment in which white actors blackened their face with cork and imitated what they considered to be authentic African American dialect, dance, and song. These theatrical performances frequently ridiculed African Americans and exaggerated alleged Black characteristics.
Rice named his act "Jump Jim Crow" and claimed to have based it on a dance he saw performed by an aged crippled slave in Louisville, Kentucky, owned by a Mr. Crow. Wearing ragged clothing representative of a field hand, Rice sang and danced to lyrics that included the stanza "Weel about and turn about / And do jis so, / Eb'ry time I weel about / And jump Jim Crow." The routine was immensely popular during the antebellum period, and the figure of Jim Crow became a recognizable and enduring icon in American popular culture. In the 1840s, abolitionists used the phrase Jim Crow to describe segregated railroad cars. By the end of the 19th century, the term came to signify the social separation of the races.
De Jure Segregation
Two forms of Jim Crow existed in the South: de jure and de facto. De jure segregation referred to the separation of the races as mandated specifically by law, and de facto segregation occurred by custom or tradition. In the 1880s, such laws as the segregation of street cars appeared sporadically across the South. Between 1890 and 1915, Southern states enacted an array of statutes that led to a more rigid and universal framework for the social separation of the races.
This explosion of de jure segregation reflected Southern whites' growing unease about a younger, more assertive generation of African Americans who demanded respect and recognition of their rights. In addition, the intent of widespread codification was to solidify custom and to eliminate uncertainty about the social status of blacks and whites. Signs labeled "For White" and "For Colored" dominated the Southern landscape, and Jim Crow regulated social contact in such places as restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, parks, schools, libraries, hospitals, and waiting rooms. In many cases, social separation often meant total exclusion. State legislatures also enacted antimiscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriage, and passed laws or rewrote the state constitution to make voter registration difficult, if not impossible.
De Facto Segregation
Although Southern states passed an elaborate network of laws, de facto practices of segregation endured. Patterns of de facto segregation varied depending on the location, the traditions of a community, or even the whim of a white person.
In most places, whites and blacks were expected to abide by an unspoken racial etiquette. For example, blacks could not enter a white home through the front door, address a white person by their first name, or refuse to give way to a white person on a sidewalk. Courtrooms often swore in black witnesses with separate bibles, and in many stores, blacks could not be served until white customers were finished. Whites did make exceptions for black domestic workers, but only because a black servant tending to white children in a space marked as white still clearly retained a position of inferiority. For many African Americans, Jim Crow caused incredible apprehension about the repercussions of crossing the color line. Any action taken by a black man or woman that whites perceived to be impudent or disrespectful could lead to swift and violent retaliation.
The Civil Rights Movement
After World War II, the edifice of Jim Crow began to break down. Black soldiers questioned the logic of having to fight for democracy abroad while returning home to face continued racial inequality. Protest on the grassroots level as well that initiated by institutions and celebrated leaders spread in the 1950s and early 1960s. The growing civil rights movement ultimately pressured the federal government to take action.
In 1964, the U.S. Congress answered President Lyndon B. Johnson's call to support racial equality and end Jim Crow. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade discrimination in public places, provided funding for assistance to further desegregate schools, created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and gave the attorney general more authority to prosecute civil rights violations involving voting, the use of public facilities, government, and education. It was the most extensive piece of federal legislation in support of civil rights ever ratified by Congress. While racial discrimination and oppression did not entirely disappear following passage of the Civil Rights Act, it truly marked the end of the widespread legal and social system of Jim Crow.
Natalie J. Ring https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 1903177
Image
Photographer: Unknown Description: This photograph shows a public notice on the streets of New York City announcing a meeting to advocate for a U.S. boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Date: December 3, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The location of the Olympic Games is chosen several years in advance. Germany was selected as the host country for the 1936 Olympics in 1932, shortly before the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Opposition to Hitler's regime mounted, and by the fall of 1935—around the time this photograph was taken—groups in the United States had organized for the express purpose of enacting a boycott of the games. Use the magnifying glass to zoom in on the posters in this image. Think about how the word "summons" contributes to the argument against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics. The poster suggests that boycotting the Olympic Games will help "Preserve the Olympic Ideal." What sort of characteristics does the "Olympic ideal" represent?
Notice announcing public meeting on 1936 Olympic Games boycott
A pedestrian in New York City reads a notice announcing a public meeting, scheduled for December 3, 1935, to urge Americans to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The racist and xenophobic policies of German chancellor Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led many countries to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration] https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230486
Commentary
Author: Historian Harold J. Goldberg Description: This commentary presents a historical interpretation of the 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin and argues that the games were used as a propaganda mechanism for the Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
Consider the notion of the "Olympic spirit" and the "spirit of the games." Did the 1936 undermine those values? Why or why not? Propaganda refers to information that is spread to influence public opinion regarding a specific cause or ideology. For example, a government may spread propaganda during war time to win support for the war or boost morale. Propaganda is often biased and may include disinformation or appeals to emotion rather than reason. How does the author build the case that Germany "turned the games into a propaganda showcase?" Pay close attention to the events described in the section titled "The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity." Why does the author believe the Jewish American athletes were pulled from the 4 X 100 relay team?
The 1936 Olympics were a Nazi Propaganda Showcase
In the early 1930s, enthusiasm for the Olympic Games in Europe was at a historic high. The modern Olympic Games had been held every four years since 1896, except in 1916, when they were scheduled for Berlin and canceled due to World War I. In 1932, the next Olympic Games were awarded to the Weimar Republic to celebrate Germany's new democracy, but in 1933 the republic gave way to Nazi dictatorship with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. Just as the war they started in 1939 destroyed cities, towns, villages, and people, the Nazis also ruined the Olympics held in Berlin in 1936.
A Brief History of Olympic Conflicts
The philosophy of the Olympics seeks to transcend politics and nationalism, as the world comes together to admire pure athletic skill, without concern for race, religion, or national origin. In fact, the games have frequently failed to live up to their ideals. Geopolitical crises and controversies have disrupted the games on multiple occasions, including the cancelation of the games in 1940 and 1944 due to World War II, the terrorist attack and massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972, and the U.S. boycott of the games hosted in Moscow in 1980. Among all of these flawed contests, the 1936 Olympics are still considered the most notorious for violating the spirit of the games.
Berlin, 1936: Propaganda and Discrimination
Visitors to Germany after Hitler consolidated power could not fail to see Berlin bedecked with swastika flags or hear the constant drone of Nazi propaganda on the radio. The Nazi racist agenda was clear, leading Olympic officials to debate a change of venue to another country. The fear was that the games would be spoiled by a Nazi ban on Jewish athletes and a simultaneous propaganda barrage glorifying the Nazi Party. Representatives of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) visited Germany to seek assurances that Nazi propaganda would not dominate the city and that German racial policy would not prevent athletes from participating. IOC officials were greeted by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who saw the games as a propaganda machine for the Nazis and had no reservations about lying and affirming that the games would be open to all. The IOC believed Goebbels and allowed the games to proceed in Berlin.
The result was exactly what people had feared. Nazi officials broke their pledge and refused to allow Jewish athletes to participate. Already in 1933, the German Boxing Association had expelled Erich Seelig, their light heavyweight champion, due to Jewish heritage. For the same reason, Germany's No. 1 tennis player was cut from its Davis Cup team. Likewise, Gretel Bergmann, a strong contender for a medal in the high jump, was put on the German team and then, with less than two weeks to go, was not allowed to compete. The Nazis disguised this discrimination by waiting until the American team was already on its way to Germany before they dropped her because she was Jewish. As she was the favorite for a medal, this treatment indicated that initial fears over keeping the games in Berlin were justified.
Germany turned the games into a Nazi propaganda showcase, with the Nazi flag flying from every balcony in Berlin. Hitler himself opened the games in the new Olympic Stadium on August 1, to the sound of 100,000 spectators shouting "Sieg heil" as they gave the Nazi salute. A recordsetting 49 teams paraded into the stadium; Germany had the most athletes in the stadium, with the United States bringing the secondlargest team. Interestingly, the medal count finished in that order as well: Germany won the most gold medals and the most overall medals, and the U.S. finished second in both medal categories. To complete the spectacle, the last of over 3,000 runners who carried an Olympic flame from Greece arrived to light the torch in Berlin. This Nazi innovation of having the last runner light the flame was intended to link ancient Greece with the present "Aryan" athlete.
The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity
The American team experienced both triumph and selfembarrassment. Jesse Owens, the star of the American track and field team, had already won three gold medals when the coaches called a meeting just before the relay. Owens was not scheduled to participate in that event, but two Jewish Americans had qualified and were anxious to go. One of them, Marty Glickman, described what happened at the team meeting:
"The event I was supposed to run, the 400meter relay, was one of the last events in the track and field program. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial heats, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach. Robertson announced to the 7 of us that he had heard very strong rumors that the Germans were saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400meter relay. Consequently, Sam Stoller and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. We were shocked. Sam was completely stunned. He didn't say a word in the meeting. I was a brash 18yearold kid and I said 'Coach, you can't hide worldclass sprinters.' At which point, Jesse spoke up and said 'Coach, I've won my 3 gold medals [the 100, the 200, and the long jump]. I'm tired. I've had it. Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it,' said Jesse. And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said 'You'll do as you're told.'" (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936)
American coaches had caved in to the Nazi agenda. There were never any secret German runners; in reality, the American coaches had decided that winning with Jewish runners would upset the Nazis more than winning another race with Jesse Owens. Owens went home with four gold medals, while Marty Glickman never got to participate in another Olympics due to the coming war. The United States celebrated the medal victories of Owens, but this great track and field star returned to a segregated America where he could not freely choose a restaurant or hotel for his postOlympic celebration.
Despite the mixed legacy of these games, the IOC was optimistic that 1940 would see an improvement. The games were planned for Tokyo, but Japan withdrew from hosting because of its military activity in China. Immediately the 1940 Olympics were rescheduled for Helsinki, Finland, but again the games were canceled when war started in nearby Poland in 1939. With the war still in progress, there was no possibility of holding the games in 1944, so the next Olympics were finally staged in London in 1948.
During the war, the Nazis killed more than 40 Jewish Olympic athletes as they occupied European countries.
About the Author
Harold J. Goldberg is the David E. Underdown Distinguished Professor of History at Sewanee: The University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee. His published works include Daily Life in NaziOccupied Europe (Greenwood, 2019), Competing Voices from World War II in Europe: Fighting Words (Greenwood, 2010), and DDay in the Pacific: The Battle of Saipan (Indiana University Press, 2007). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229716
Quote
Author: American Committee on Fair Play in Sports Description: This quote expresses the opinion of the American Committee on Fair Play in Sports on the political implications of holding the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Date: November 15, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The American Committee on Fair Play in Sports was assembled in the fall of 1935 to oppose U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympic Games. The committee produced publications and public service announcements intended to educate the public on the totalitarian Nazi government and its policies of racism and anti Semitism. Consider the ideals of the Olympic Games and the extent to which Germany undermined the ideals of democratic competition and sportsmanship.
American Committee on Fair Play in Sports: quote on the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Sport is prostituted when sport loses its independent and democratic character and becomes a political institution … Nazi Germany is endeavouring to use the Eleventh Olympiad to serve the necessities and interests of the Nazi Regime rather than the Olympic ideals.
–American Committee on Fair Play in Sports (November 15, 1935). Page 20 of 24 https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229811
Reference
Author: ABCCLIO Description: This reference article discusses goldmedalist sprinter Jesse Owens's participation in the 1936 Olympic Games, including his attitude toward Adolf Hitler as he readied for one of his races.
Context and Things to Consider
African American sprinter Owens became the first athlete in the history of the modern Olympic Games to win four gold medals in a single year. Owens's feat was celebrated by opponents of Hitler's regime as an embarrassing rebuke of Hitler's theories of Aryan racial supremacy. Consider the mindset of Owens as he readied for the 100meter finals heat and the laserfocus required of Olympic athletes. What does Owens's comment suggest about his views on Hitler? Evaluate Owens's comment in relation to the other sources. How does it illustrate the desire to reflect the ideals of the Olympic Games?
Jesse Owens: "Why Worry about Hitler?" (1936)
Jesse Owens was an African American track and field athlete. During the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, he became a national hero for defeating Adolf Hitler's Aryan athletes in a series of athletic contests.
In 1936, just a few years after Hitler rose to power in Germany, the Summer Olympic Games were held in Berlin, the nation's capital. Hitler believed in an Aryan "master race," an allegedly pure Germanic/Nordic race of people who were, according to Hitler, racially, physically, and intellectually above "lesser" peoples. The Aryan ideal was a Nordic type—tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.
Owens became the star of the 1936 Games, winning a total of four gold medals, including a world recordtying performance in the 100meter dash. Reflecting on this race, Owens discussed its personal significance and his state of focus despite the political implications of competing in Nazi Germany:
When I lined up in my lane for the finals of the 100 meters . . . I thought of all the years of practice and competition, of all who had believed in me, and of my state and university [Ohio, and the Ohio State University.]
I saw the finish line, and knew that 10 seconds would climax the work of eight years. One mistake could ruin those eight years. So, why worry about Hitler?
Hitler did not approve of Black athletes participating in the Games. By 1936, his views on the superiority of the Aryan race were known around the world, though Germany made an effort to obscure its antiSemitic policies as host of the Games. As someone who did not fit Hitler's ideal, Owens's victory in the 1936 Olympics was widely considered to be a refutation of the dictator's racist worldview and an embarrassment for the Nazi regime.
Mark Strong https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230575
COPYRIGHT 2021 ABCCLIO, LLC https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337 U.S. Participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympics Activity
Inquiry Question What were the arguments for and against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics?
The U.S. decision to take part in the 1936 Olympics, which took place in Berlin at the time of Nazi leadership, was a controversial issue that divided participating athletes, administrative organizations, and the American public itself, especially since the country was dealing with its own problems of racism during the era of Jim Crow laws. Use information collected from the provided sources and analyze your findings to explain the arguments presented by both sides: those who felt the U.S. should compete in the games, and those who felt the nation should boycott.
Clarifying Questions
What was the status of civil rights in Germany in the mid1930s, and how did it compare to the situation in the United States? What were the main arguments for participating in the games? What were the main arguments against participating in the games? How did the 1936 Berlin Olympics influence the global perception of Nazi Germany?
Vocabulary
boycott de facto segregation de jure segregation Jim Crow Nazi Party propaganda
Background Information
1936 Summer Olympic Games, Berlin
The 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin, Germany, marked a pivotal moment in the history of the international games. German chancellor Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and the institution of racist and xenophobic policies by the Nazi Party, led many to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
Hitler's Rise to Power
In their choice of Berlin, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had wanted to stress Germany's return to the international sporting world after World War I. When the Olympics were held in 1936, however, it was quite a different Germany and quite a different Berlin from those to whom the IOC had awarded the games in 1931. The rise to prominence of the Nazi Party in the 1930s elevated the party's leader, Adolf Hitler, as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Hitler's seizure of absolute power in 1934 ushered in a totalitarian regime in Germany that ruthlessly suppressed the civil rights of minorities, particularly German Jews.
Organizing the Games
The overwhelming problem for the IOC and for the United States was to get a guarantee that Jewish athletes would not be excluded from the games. At the IOC meeting in Vienna in June 1933, president of the Olympic organizing committee Theodor Lewald was able to give an assurance with the approval of the German government that "all laws relating to the Olympic Games will be respected. German Jews will not as a matter of principle be excluded from German teams in the XI Olympiad."
This guarantee convinced the president of the Olympic Committee, Henri BailletLatour, after a visit to Berlin in November 1935, when he had an audience with Hitler. After that, the attitude of the Olympic Committee was unchanged. There was no wavering, and there was total support for the games in Berlin. From that point onward, both Baillet Latour and Avery Brundage attacked all opponents of the games as being lackeys of Communism. In 1936, Avery Brundage took a place on the IOC at the expense of the American E. L. Jahncke, who had been unremittingly critical of the games in Berlin.
The first thing the Hitler state did was to place its resources wholeheartedly behind the organization committee. A close cooperative relationship developed between Reich Director of Sport Hans von Tschammer und Osten and the organization committee—a collaboration that would be expanded to encompass work on the winter games in GarmischPartenkirchen, which the IOC had no objections about awarding to Germany in the spring of 1933, four months after Hitler came to power. Leading the organization of the latter was Karl Ritter von Halt, who had swiftly joined the Nazi Party in order to assist his career as a banker. All these people combined to convince the outside world that the games in Berlin and GarmischPartenkirchen would take place without discrimination against Jews or other nonAryan races.
Nazi Propaganda and Misdirection
The Nazis reasoned that if the whole world was being invited to Germany as a guest, then the country had to be seen in its most favorable light. Despite the treatment of Jews in Germany, Jews from outside were welcome. The German press was also instructed not to say anything negative about blacks—or only if they could do so by quoting newspapers from America's southern states. Furthermore, at the winter games and the summer games, the German press was forbidden from suggesting that Jews were inferior. Abusive antiSemitic posters were removed, and the SS was given the task of ensuring that these temporary prohibitions were observed.
To underline Nazi goodwill, two German halfJews were allowed to take part in the games: the icehockey player Rudi Ball in the winter games, and the fencer Helene Mayer in the summer games. Both were 50% Jewish according to Nazi definitions, and as such were acceptable. On the other hand, a potential medalist for Germany, Gretel Bergmann, who was a highjumper and fully Jewish, was not allowed to take part.
With the assistance of the Ministry of Propaganda, the Nazis set a largescale campaign in motion to bring the world to Berlin. Bulletins in a number of languages were sent out abroad; German travel agents abroad advertised the Olympic Games in Berlin as the best place to take a summer holiday in 1936; and 156,000 Olympic posters in 19 languages were distributed.
With unlimited funds at their disposal, the organization committee could construct a completely new stadium for the games in Berlin. The style was neoclassical and there was plenty of space for a range of activities, including the socalled Maifeld, which was an exhibition and practice area situated between the stadium's marathon gate and the Olympic novelty, a bell tower with the great bell that summoned the youth of the world to Berlin—"Ich rufe die Jugend der Welt" (I call the youth of the world) was engraved on the castiron bell. The bell tower's foundation consisted of the great Langemarckhalle, originally suggested by Organizing Committee secretary general Carl Diem. The hall was envisoned as a temple commemorating the youth of Germany that had fallen in World War I at Langemarck in Flanders.
The Olympic stadium in Berlin became the site of what were the most successful games of all so far. They were directly transmitted by radio for the first time to countless countries, and in selected cinemas in Berlin it was even possible to see direct television transmission from the games. It was, however, Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia that would stand for posterity as the document of the success of the games. The film was given its premiere on Hitler's birthday in 1938 and from the very first was a roaring success both at home and abroad. It won a number of prizes and at the Venice Film Festival in 1938 was grand prize winner ahead of, for example, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was only in the United States that its success was more muted, since a greater proportion of the public were critical of developments in Germany.
The Games
The games lasted from August 1–16 and lived up to the high expectations in every respect. Athletes from 49 nations competed, 3,738 men and 328 women, and the stadium was sold out for all events, with 105,000 spectators attending every day. The crowning moment of the introductory procession in Berlin was the arrival of the torch bearer into the Olympic stadium. The new German Reich created a perfect staging for sport as an offshoot of ancient Greece. Everything went according to plan, and at the processional entry a number of countries chose to make the Nazi salute when they passed the Fuhrer's box; others stretched out their hands more horizontally and said afterward that it was the Olympic greeting.
The greatest athlete of the games was the African American Jesse Owens, who won five gold medals. Owens won the 100 and 200meter races. He also won the long jump and was in the 4x100 relay, which set a new record of 39.8 seconds, which was the first time ever under 40 seconds and a record that stood for 20 years. Owens's performance was seen by many as a refutation of Hitler's racist theories of Aryan racial superiority and remains the most memorable performance of the games. Basketball, canoeing, and field handball were on the program for the first time, and it caused a sensation when Norway beat Germany in soccer and achieved a bronze. As expected, despite American dominance, Germany ran away with the most medals in athletics.
Reference
Author: Historian and Holocaust scholar Paul R. Bartrop Description: This essay outlines the arguments for and against the international community's participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, hosted during the third year of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin began in the early years of Hitler's regime, which saw laws severely restricting the citizenship and civil rights of Jews known as the Nuremberg Race Laws (1935). Consider the ways in which Germany constructed its image during the Olympic Games. How did that image differ from its image prior to the Olympics? Pay close attention to the arguments for and against a boycott of the 1936 Olympics outlined in the sections titled "Debating Whether to Boycott" and "U.S. Olympic Team." Why did most African American newspapers support participation in the games?
1936 Berlin Olympics: Boycott Debates
The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were highly controversial at the time. From the very start they were marked by racism, with the official Nazi Party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, declaring that Jews and people of African descent, regardless of their country of origin, should not be allowed to participate. Following Nazi demands, the German Olympic Committee denied Jews all opportunity of representing Germany. These measures led many in the international community to call for a boycott of the 1936 games.
Germany Furnishes its Image
When the possibility of an international boycott was threatened, Germany responded with a superficial relaxing of the rules: now, one athlete with a Jewish background was allowed to compete for Germany. Helene Mayer, who had a Jewish father, was a world champion fencer who had already won a gold medal at the 1928 Amsterdam Games. With an eye to the prospect of her winning another gold medal for Germany, she became the token Jew permitted to compete. As it turned out, she won silver in the individual foil event.
The prospect of other Jewish athletes competing for Germany was denied, however. The fourtime world record holder and 10time German national champion in shot put and discus throw, Lilli Henoch, was excluded; she was later deported and murdered in the Riga ghetto in 1942. Gretel Bergmann, an internationally recognized champion high jumper, was replaced on the German team by Dora Ratjen, who was later revealed to be a male who had been raised as a girl.
In order to reassure foreign opinion, Berlin was purged of all traces of Nazi antiSemitism. Local party authorities removed street signs bearing such slogans as "Jews not wanted" from Berlin's main tourist areas. At the same time, all vagrants and Roma were physically moved to a specially constructed "holding camp" outside the city at Marzahn.
Debating Whether to Boycott
In view of Germany's racist domestic policies, there was considerable debate among the international community over whether or not to boycott the games. In some countries, notably Britain, France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands, discussion took place over whether the games should be relocated. Meanwhile, exiled political opponents of the Nazis kept up the pressure for a boycott. These initiatives did not amount to anything definite; opponents of a boycott argued that the games had been awarded to Berlin in 1931 and that it would be wrong to punish the city simply because of a change of government.
Individual Jewish athletes from a number of countries, on the other hand, elected to take matters into their own hands and refused to attend. In this regard, brave athletes such as the South African Sid Kiel and Americans Milton Green and Norman Cahners should be mentioned.
U.S. Olympic Team
As one of the world's leading sporting nations, the position of the United States was crucial. In September 1934, the United States Olympic Committee accepted a German invitation to visit on a factfinding mission. After interviewing German Jews who had been carefully selected by the Nazi regime, U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage concluded that he had not found any discrimination against the Jewish population of Germany. He then became a major supporter of the games being held in Berlin, famously arguing that "politics has no place in sport." By 1935, he had convinced the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States that an American team should be sent to Berlin. The American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee supported a boycott, but they had no say in what was effectively an institutional project by the American Olympic Committee.
Most African American newspapers, on the other hand, supported participation. They argued that this was an opportunity for Nazi racial theories to be challenged and, hopefully, defeated. And to some degree, they were right; the iconic Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events, and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin.
On the day of the men's 4 x 100 relay, the Jewish American sprinters Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman were sidelined from the team. While this gave Owens the opportunity to win his fourth and final gold medal, historians have speculated that the removal of Stoller and Glickman was deliberately antiSemitic and intended to appease Hitler.
Legacy of the 1936 Games
Ultimately, Germany was the most successful country at the games, winning 33 gold medals and 89 medals overall. The United States came second in the medal tally, with 24 gold and 56 overall.
The Berlin Olympics torch relay from Mount Olympus in Greece was the first of its kind, and the games were the first to have live television coverage. Despite these advances, they were also to be the final Olympic Games for 12 years owing to World War II.
Hitler's antihuman ideologies and his quest for supreme domination and racial supremacy were the biggest challenge to the Olympic ideal until 1972—when terrorism and the murder of Jewish athletes at the Munich Games threatened the Olympic ideal once more. The president of the International Olympic Committee then was the same Avery Brundage who so dominated the American team in 1936.
Paul R. Bartrop https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229806
Reference
Author: Historian Natalie Ring Description: This essay defines and illustrates the Jim Crow era of racial segregation and discrimination in the American South.
Context and Things to Consider
What is meant by the term "Jim Crow"? How did Jim Crow laws prevent the social advancement of African Americans from the 1880s to 1960s? What is meant by de jure segregation? What is meant by de facto segregation? Consider race relations in the United States during the 1930s and the extent to which there was a contradiction between Americans' attitudes toward race relations at home and their attitudes related to the 1936 Olympics.
Segregation and Jim Crow
The term "Jim Crow" refers to the system of racial segregation and oppression that existed primarily in the South from 1877 to the mid1960s. Segregation existed in some parts of the North, yet by the turn of the century it had become a distinctly Southern phenomenon. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court declared that "separate but equal" was constitutional, and this provided the legal backbone for segregation until it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In reality, "separate but equal" was never really equal. Racial segregation violated the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, but the federal government continued to sanction the state laws and practices of Jim Crow until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Jim Crow era marked the ascendancy of white supremacy and not only consisted of the social separation of the races, but more broadly included lynching and mob violence, the manipulation of the justice system, inequality in education, economic subjugation, and the elimination of Black suffrage.
Origins of "Jim Crow"
The term Jim Crow is derived from the name of a character in a minstrel song performed by Thomas Rice in the 1830s. Blackface minstrelsy was a form of popular entertainment in which white actors blackened their face with cork and imitated what they considered to be authentic African American dialect, dance, and song. These theatrical performances frequently ridiculed African Americans and exaggerated alleged Black characteristics.
Rice named his act "Jump Jim Crow" and claimed to have based it on a dance he saw performed by an aged crippled slave in Louisville, Kentucky, owned by a Mr. Crow. Wearing ragged clothing representative of a field hand, Rice sang and danced to lyrics that included the stanza "Weel about and turn about / And do jis so, / Eb'ry time I weel about / And jump Jim Crow." The routine was immensely popular during the antebellum period, and the figure of Jim Crow became a recognizable and enduring icon in American popular culture. In the 1840s, abolitionists used the phrase Jim Crow to describe segregated railroad cars. By the end of the 19th century, the term came to signify the social separation of the races.
De Jure Segregation
Two forms of Jim Crow existed in the South: de jure and de facto. De jure segregation referred to the separation of the races as mandated specifically by law, and de facto segregation occurred by custom or tradition. In the 1880s, such laws as the segregation of street cars appeared sporadically across the South. Between 1890 and 1915, Southern states enacted an array of statutes that led to a more rigid and universal framework for the social separation of the races.
This explosion of de jure segregation reflected Southern whites' growing unease about a younger, more assertive generation of African Americans who demanded respect and recognition of their rights. In addition, the intent of widespread codification was to solidify custom and to eliminate uncertainty about the social status of blacks and whites. Signs labeled "For White" and "For Colored" dominated the Southern landscape, and Jim Crow regulated social contact in such places as restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, parks, schools, libraries, hospitals, and waiting rooms. In many cases, social separation often meant total exclusion. State legislatures also enacted antimiscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriage, and passed laws or rewrote the state constitution to make voter registration difficult, if not impossible.
De Facto Segregation
Although Southern states passed an elaborate network of laws, de facto practices of segregation endured. Patterns of de facto segregation varied depending on the location, the traditions of a community, or even the whim of a white person.
In most places, whites and blacks were expected to abide by an unspoken racial etiquette. For example, blacks could not enter a white home through the front door, address a white person by their first name, or refuse to give way to a white person on a sidewalk. Courtrooms often swore in black witnesses with separate bibles, and in many stores, blacks could not be served until white customers were finished. Whites did make exceptions for black domestic workers, but only because a black servant tending to white children in a space marked as white still clearly retained a position of inferiority. For many African Americans, Jim Crow caused incredible apprehension about the repercussions of crossing the color line. Any action taken by a black man or woman that whites perceived to be impudent or disrespectful could lead to swift and violent retaliation.
The Civil Rights Movement
After World War II, the edifice of Jim Crow began to break down. Black soldiers questioned the logic of having to fight for democracy abroad while returning home to face continued racial inequality. Protest on the grassroots level as well that initiated by institutions and celebrated leaders spread in the 1950s and early 1960s. The growing civil rights movement ultimately pressured the federal government to take action.
In 1964, the U.S. Congress answered President Lyndon B. Johnson's call to support racial equality and end Jim Crow. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade discrimination in public places, provided funding for assistance to further desegregate schools, created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and gave the attorney general more authority to prosecute civil rights violations involving voting, the use of public facilities, government, and education. It was the most extensive piece of federal legislation in support of civil rights ever ratified by Congress. While racial discrimination and oppression did not entirely disappear following passage of the Civil Rights Act, it truly marked the end of the widespread legal and social system of Jim Crow.
Natalie J. Ring https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 1903177
Image
Photographer: Unknown Description: This photograph shows a public notice on the streets of New York City announcing a meeting to advocate for a U.S. boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Date: December 3, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The location of the Olympic Games is chosen several years in advance. Germany was selected as the host country for the 1936 Olympics in 1932, shortly before the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Opposition to Hitler's regime mounted, and by the fall of 1935—around the time this photograph was taken—groups in the United States had organized for the express purpose of enacting a boycott of the games. Use the magnifying glass to zoom in on the posters in this image. Think about how the word "summons" contributes to the argument against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics. The poster suggests that boycotting the Olympic Games will help "Preserve the Olympic Ideal." What sort of characteristics does the "Olympic ideal" represent?
Notice announcing public meeting on 1936 Olympic Games boycott
A pedestrian in New York City reads a notice announcing a public meeting, scheduled for December 3, 1935, to urge Americans to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The racist and xenophobic policies of German chancellor Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led many countries to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration] https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230486
Commentary
Author: Historian Harold J. Goldberg Description: This commentary presents a historical interpretation of the 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin and argues that the games were used as a propaganda mechanism for the Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
Consider the notion of the "Olympic spirit" and the "spirit of the games." Did the 1936 undermine those values? Why or why not? Propaganda refers to information that is spread to influence public opinion regarding a specific cause or ideology. For example, a government may spread propaganda during war time to win support for the war or boost morale. Propaganda is often biased and may include disinformation or appeals to emotion rather than reason. How does the author build the case that Germany "turned the games into a propaganda showcase?" Pay close attention to the events described in the section titled "The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity." Why does the author believe the Jewish American athletes were pulled from the 4 X 100 relay team?
The 1936 Olympics were a Nazi Propaganda Showcase
In the early 1930s, enthusiasm for the Olympic Games in Europe was at a historic high. The modern Olympic Games had been held every four years since 1896, except in 1916, when they were scheduled for Berlin and canceled due to World War I. In 1932, the next Olympic Games were awarded to the Weimar Republic to celebrate Germany's new democracy, but in 1933 the republic gave way to Nazi dictatorship with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. Just as the war they started in 1939 destroyed cities, towns, villages, and people, the Nazis also ruined the Olympics held in Berlin in 1936.
A Brief History of Olympic Conflicts
The philosophy of the Olympics seeks to transcend politics and nationalism, as the world comes together to admire pure athletic skill, without concern for race, religion, or national origin. In fact, the games have frequently failed to live up to their ideals. Geopolitical crises and controversies have disrupted the games on multiple occasions, including the cancelation of the games in 1940 and 1944 due to World War II, the terrorist attack and massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972, and the U.S. boycott of the games hosted in Moscow in 1980. Among all of these flawed contests, the 1936 Olympics are still considered the most notorious for violating the spirit of the games.
Berlin, 1936: Propaganda and Discrimination
Visitors to Germany after Hitler consolidated power could not fail to see Berlin bedecked with swastika flags or hear the constant drone of Nazi propaganda on the radio. The Nazi racist agenda was clear, leading Olympic officials to debate a change of venue to another country. The fear was that the games would be spoiled by a Nazi ban on Jewish athletes and a simultaneous propaganda barrage glorifying the Nazi Party. Representatives of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) visited Germany to seek assurances that Nazi propaganda would not dominate the city and that German racial policy would not prevent athletes from participating. IOC officials were greeted by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who saw the games as a propaganda machine for the Nazis and had no reservations about lying and affirming that the games would be open to all. The IOC believed Goebbels and allowed the games to proceed in Berlin.
The result was exactly what people had feared. Nazi officials broke their pledge and refused to allow Jewish athletes to participate. Already in 1933, the German Boxing Association had expelled Erich Seelig, their light heavyweight champion, due to Jewish heritage. For the same reason, Germany's No. 1 tennis player was cut from its Davis Cup team. Likewise, Gretel Bergmann, a strong contender for a medal in the high jump, was put on the German team and then, with less than two weeks to go, was not allowed to compete. The Nazis disguised this discrimination by waiting until the American team was already on its way to Germany before they dropped her because she was Jewish. As she was the favorite for a medal, this treatment indicated that initial fears over keeping the games in Berlin were justified.
Germany turned the games into a Nazi propaganda showcase, with the Nazi flag flying from every balcony in Berlin. Hitler himself opened the games in the new Olympic Stadium on August 1, to the sound of 100,000 spectators shouting "Sieg heil" as they gave the Nazi salute. A recordsetting 49 teams paraded into the stadium; Germany had the most athletes in the stadium, with the United States bringing the secondlargest team. Interestingly, the medal count finished in that order as well: Germany won the most gold medals and the most overall medals, and the U.S. finished second in both medal categories. To complete the spectacle, the last of over 3,000 runners who carried an Olympic flame from Greece arrived to light the torch in Berlin. This Nazi innovation of having the last runner light the flame was intended to link ancient Greece with the present "Aryan" athlete.
The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity
The American team experienced both triumph and selfembarrassment. Jesse Owens, the star of the American track and field team, had already won three gold medals when the coaches called a meeting just before the relay. Owens was not scheduled to participate in that event, but two Jewish Americans had qualified and were anxious to go. One of them, Marty Glickman, described what happened at the team meeting:
"The event I was supposed to run, the 400meter relay, was one of the last events in the track and field program. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial heats, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach. Robertson announced to the 7 of us that he had heard very strong rumors that the Germans were saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400meter relay. Consequently, Sam Stoller and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. We were shocked. Sam was completely stunned. He didn't say a word in the meeting. I was a brash 18yearold kid and I said 'Coach, you can't hide worldclass sprinters.' At which point, Jesse spoke up and said 'Coach, I've won my 3 gold medals [the 100, the 200, and the long jump]. I'm tired. I've had it. Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it,' said Jesse. And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said 'You'll do as you're told.'" (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936)
American coaches had caved in to the Nazi agenda. There were never any secret German runners; in reality, the American coaches had decided that winning with Jewish runners would upset the Nazis more than winning another race with Jesse Owens. Owens went home with four gold medals, while Marty Glickman never got to participate in another Olympics due to the coming war. The United States celebrated the medal victories of Owens, but this great track and field star returned to a segregated America where he could not freely choose a restaurant or hotel for his postOlympic celebration.
Despite the mixed legacy of these games, the IOC was optimistic that 1940 would see an improvement. The games were planned for Tokyo, but Japan withdrew from hosting because of its military activity in China. Immediately the 1940 Olympics were rescheduled for Helsinki, Finland, but again the games were canceled when war started in nearby Poland in 1939. With the war still in progress, there was no possibility of holding the games in 1944, so the next Olympics were finally staged in London in 1948.
During the war, the Nazis killed more than 40 Jewish Olympic athletes as they occupied European countries.
About the Author
Harold J. Goldberg is the David E. Underdown Distinguished Professor of History at Sewanee: The University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee. His published works include Daily Life in NaziOccupied Europe (Greenwood, 2019), Competing Voices from World War II in Europe: Fighting Words (Greenwood, 2010), and DDay in the Pacific: The Battle of Saipan (Indiana University Press, 2007). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229716
Quote
Author: American Committee on Fair Play in Sports Description: This quote expresses the opinion of the American Committee on Fair Play in Sports on the political implications of holding the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Date: November 15, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The American Committee on Fair Play in Sports was assembled in the fall of 1935 to oppose U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympic Games. The committee produced publications and public service announcements intended to educate the public on the totalitarian Nazi government and its policies of racism and anti Semitism. Consider the ideals of the Olympic Games and the extent to which Germany undermined the ideals of democratic competition and sportsmanship.
American Committee on Fair Play in Sports: quote on the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Sport is prostituted when sport loses its independent and democratic character and becomes a political institution … Nazi Germany is endeavouring to use the Eleventh Olympiad to serve the necessities and interests of the Nazi Regime rather than the Olympic ideals.
–American Committee on Fair Play in Sports (November 15, 1935). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229811
Reference
Page 21 of 24
Author: ABCCLIO Description: This reference article discusses goldmedalist sprinter Jesse Owens's participation in the 1936 Olympic Games, including his attitude toward Adolf Hitler as he readied for one of his races.
Context and Things to Consider
African American sprinter Owens became the first athlete in the history of the modern Olympic Games to win four gold medals in a single year. Owens's feat was celebrated by opponents of Hitler's regime as an embarrassing rebuke of Hitler's theories of Aryan racial supremacy. Consider the mindset of Owens as he readied for the 100meter finals heat and the laserfocus required of Olympic athletes. What does Owens's comment suggest about his views on Hitler? Evaluate Owens's comment in relation to the other sources. How does it illustrate the desire to reflect the ideals of the Olympic Games?
Jesse Owens: "Why Worry about Hitler?" (1936)
Jesse Owens was an African American track and field athlete. During the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, he became a national hero for defeating Adolf Hitler's Aryan athletes in a series of athletic contests.
In 1936, just a few years after Hitler rose to power in Germany, the Summer Olympic Games were held in Berlin, the nation's capital. Hitler believed in an Aryan "master race," an allegedly pure Germanic/Nordic race of people who were, according to Hitler, racially, physically, and intellectually above "lesser" peoples. The Aryan ideal was a Nordic type—tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.
Owens became the star of the 1936 Games, winning a total of four gold medals, including a world recordtying performance in the 100meter dash. Reflecting on this race, Owens discussed its personal significance and his state of focus despite the political implications of competing in Nazi Germany:
When I lined up in my lane for the finals of the 100 meters . . . I thought of all the years of practice and competition, of all who had believed in me, and of my state and university [Ohio, and the Ohio State University.]
I saw the finish line, and knew that 10 seconds would climax the work of eight years. One mistake could ruin those eight years. So, why worry about Hitler?
Hitler did not approve of Black athletes participating in the Games. By 1936, his views on the superiority of the Aryan race were known around the world, though Germany made an effort to obscure its antiSemitic policies as host of the Games. As someone who did not fit Hitler's ideal, Owens's victory in the 1936 Olympics was widely considered to be a refutation of the dictator's racist worldview and an embarrassment for the Nazi regime.
Mark Strong https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230575
COPYRIGHT 2021 ABCCLIO, LLC https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337 U.S. Participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympics Activity
Inquiry Question What were the arguments for and against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics?
The U.S. decision to take part in the 1936 Olympics, which took place in Berlin at the time of Nazi leadership, was a controversial issue that divided participating athletes, administrative organizations, and the American public itself, especially since the country was dealing with its own problems of racism during the era of Jim Crow laws. Use information collected from the provided sources and analyze your findings to explain the arguments presented by both sides: those who felt the U.S. should compete in the games, and those who felt the nation should boycott.
Clarifying Questions
What was the status of civil rights in Germany in the mid1930s, and how did it compare to the situation in the United States? What were the main arguments for participating in the games? What were the main arguments against participating in the games? How did the 1936 Berlin Olympics influence the global perception of Nazi Germany?
Vocabulary
boycott de facto segregation de jure segregation Jim Crow Nazi Party propaganda
Background Information
1936 Summer Olympic Games, Berlin
The 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin, Germany, marked a pivotal moment in the history of the international games. German chancellor Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and the institution of racist and xenophobic policies by the Nazi Party, led many to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
Hitler's Rise to Power
In their choice of Berlin, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had wanted to stress Germany's return to the international sporting world after World War I. When the Olympics were held in 1936, however, it was quite a different Germany and quite a different Berlin from those to whom the IOC had awarded the games in 1931. The rise to prominence of the Nazi Party in the 1930s elevated the party's leader, Adolf Hitler, as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Hitler's seizure of absolute power in 1934 ushered in a totalitarian regime in Germany that ruthlessly suppressed the civil rights of minorities, particularly German Jews.
Organizing the Games
The overwhelming problem for the IOC and for the United States was to get a guarantee that Jewish athletes would not be excluded from the games. At the IOC meeting in Vienna in June 1933, president of the Olympic organizing committee Theodor Lewald was able to give an assurance with the approval of the German government that "all laws relating to the Olympic Games will be respected. German Jews will not as a matter of principle be excluded from German teams in the XI Olympiad."
This guarantee convinced the president of the Olympic Committee, Henri BailletLatour, after a visit to Berlin in November 1935, when he had an audience with Hitler. After that, the attitude of the Olympic Committee was unchanged. There was no wavering, and there was total support for the games in Berlin. From that point onward, both Baillet Latour and Avery Brundage attacked all opponents of the games as being lackeys of Communism. In 1936, Avery Brundage took a place on the IOC at the expense of the American E. L. Jahncke, who had been unremittingly critical of the games in Berlin.
The first thing the Hitler state did was to place its resources wholeheartedly behind the organization committee. A close cooperative relationship developed between Reich Director of Sport Hans von Tschammer und Osten and the organization committee—a collaboration that would be expanded to encompass work on the winter games in GarmischPartenkirchen, which the IOC had no objections about awarding to Germany in the spring of 1933, four months after Hitler came to power. Leading the organization of the latter was Karl Ritter von Halt, who had swiftly joined the Nazi Party in order to assist his career as a banker. All these people combined to convince the outside world that the games in Berlin and GarmischPartenkirchen would take place without discrimination against Jews or other nonAryan races.
Nazi Propaganda and Misdirection
The Nazis reasoned that if the whole world was being invited to Germany as a guest, then the country had to be seen in its most favorable light. Despite the treatment of Jews in Germany, Jews from outside were welcome. The German press was also instructed not to say anything negative about blacks—or only if they could do so by quoting newspapers from America's southern states. Furthermore, at the winter games and the summer games, the German press was forbidden from suggesting that Jews were inferior. Abusive antiSemitic posters were removed, and the SS was given the task of ensuring that these temporary prohibitions were observed.
To underline Nazi goodwill, two German halfJews were allowed to take part in the games: the icehockey player Rudi Ball in the winter games, and the fencer Helene Mayer in the summer games. Both were 50% Jewish according to Nazi definitions, and as such were acceptable. On the other hand, a potential medalist for Germany, Gretel Bergmann, who was a highjumper and fully Jewish, was not allowed to take part.
With the assistance of the Ministry of Propaganda, the Nazis set a largescale campaign in motion to bring the world to Berlin. Bulletins in a number of languages were sent out abroad; German travel agents abroad advertised the Olympic Games in Berlin as the best place to take a summer holiday in 1936; and 156,000 Olympic posters in 19 languages were distributed.
With unlimited funds at their disposal, the organization committee could construct a completely new stadium for the games in Berlin. The style was neoclassical and there was plenty of space for a range of activities, including the socalled Maifeld, which was an exhibition and practice area situated between the stadium's marathon gate and the Olympic novelty, a bell tower with the great bell that summoned the youth of the world to Berlin—"Ich rufe die Jugend der Welt" (I call the youth of the world) was engraved on the castiron bell. The bell tower's foundation consisted of the great Langemarckhalle, originally suggested by Organizing Committee secretary general Carl Diem. The hall was envisoned as a temple commemorating the youth of Germany that had fallen in World War I at Langemarck in Flanders.
The Olympic stadium in Berlin became the site of what were the most successful games of all so far. They were directly transmitted by radio for the first time to countless countries, and in selected cinemas in Berlin it was even possible to see direct television transmission from the games. It was, however, Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia that would stand for posterity as the document of the success of the games. The film was given its premiere on Hitler's birthday in 1938 and from the very first was a roaring success both at home and abroad. It won a number of prizes and at the Venice Film Festival in 1938 was grand prize winner ahead of, for example, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was only in the United States that its success was more muted, since a greater proportion of the public were critical of developments in Germany.
The Games
The games lasted from August 1–16 and lived up to the high expectations in every respect. Athletes from 49 nations competed, 3,738 men and 328 women, and the stadium was sold out for all events, with 105,000 spectators attending every day. The crowning moment of the introductory procession in Berlin was the arrival of the torch bearer into the Olympic stadium. The new German Reich created a perfect staging for sport as an offshoot of ancient Greece. Everything went according to plan, and at the processional entry a number of countries chose to make the Nazi salute when they passed the Fuhrer's box; others stretched out their hands more horizontally and said afterward that it was the Olympic greeting.
The greatest athlete of the games was the African American Jesse Owens, who won five gold medals. Owens won the 100 and 200meter races. He also won the long jump and was in the 4x100 relay, which set a new record of 39.8 seconds, which was the first time ever under 40 seconds and a record that stood for 20 years. Owens's performance was seen by many as a refutation of Hitler's racist theories of Aryan racial superiority and remains the most memorable performance of the games. Basketball, canoeing, and field handball were on the program for the first time, and it caused a sensation when Norway beat Germany in soccer and achieved a bronze. As expected, despite American dominance, Germany ran away with the most medals in athletics.
Reference
Author: Historian and Holocaust scholar Paul R. Bartrop Description: This essay outlines the arguments for and against the international community's participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, hosted during the third year of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin began in the early years of Hitler's regime, which saw laws severely restricting the citizenship and civil rights of Jews known as the Nuremberg Race Laws (1935). Consider the ways in which Germany constructed its image during the Olympic Games. How did that image differ from its image prior to the Olympics? Pay close attention to the arguments for and against a boycott of the 1936 Olympics outlined in the sections titled "Debating Whether to Boycott" and "U.S. Olympic Team." Why did most African American newspapers support participation in the games?
1936 Berlin Olympics: Boycott Debates
The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were highly controversial at the time. From the very start they were marked by racism, with the official Nazi Party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, declaring that Jews and people of African descent, regardless of their country of origin, should not be allowed to participate. Following Nazi demands, the German Olympic Committee denied Jews all opportunity of representing Germany. These measures led many in the international community to call for a boycott of the 1936 games.
Germany Furnishes its Image
When the possibility of an international boycott was threatened, Germany responded with a superficial relaxing of the rules: now, one athlete with a Jewish background was allowed to compete for Germany. Helene Mayer, who had a Jewish father, was a world champion fencer who had already won a gold medal at the 1928 Amsterdam Games. With an eye to the prospect of her winning another gold medal for Germany, she became the token Jew permitted to compete. As it turned out, she won silver in the individual foil event.
The prospect of other Jewish athletes competing for Germany was denied, however. The fourtime world record holder and 10time German national champion in shot put and discus throw, Lilli Henoch, was excluded; she was later deported and murdered in the Riga ghetto in 1942. Gretel Bergmann, an internationally recognized champion high jumper, was replaced on the German team by Dora Ratjen, who was later revealed to be a male who had been raised as a girl.
In order to reassure foreign opinion, Berlin was purged of all traces of Nazi antiSemitism. Local party authorities removed street signs bearing such slogans as "Jews not wanted" from Berlin's main tourist areas. At the same time, all vagrants and Roma were physically moved to a specially constructed "holding camp" outside the city at Marzahn.
Debating Whether to Boycott
In view of Germany's racist domestic policies, there was considerable debate among the international community over whether or not to boycott the games. In some countries, notably Britain, France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands, discussion took place over whether the games should be relocated. Meanwhile, exiled political opponents of the Nazis kept up the pressure for a boycott. These initiatives did not amount to anything definite; opponents of a boycott argued that the games had been awarded to Berlin in 1931 and that it would be wrong to punish the city simply because of a change of government.
Individual Jewish athletes from a number of countries, on the other hand, elected to take matters into their own hands and refused to attend. In this regard, brave athletes such as the South African Sid Kiel and Americans Milton Green and Norman Cahners should be mentioned.
U.S. Olympic Team
As one of the world's leading sporting nations, the position of the United States was crucial. In September 1934, the United States Olympic Committee accepted a German invitation to visit on a factfinding mission. After interviewing German Jews who had been carefully selected by the Nazi regime, U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage concluded that he had not found any discrimination against the Jewish population of Germany. He then became a major supporter of the games being held in Berlin, famously arguing that "politics has no place in sport." By 1935, he had convinced the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States that an American team should be sent to Berlin. The American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee supported a boycott, but they had no say in what was effectively an institutional project by the American Olympic Committee.
Most African American newspapers, on the other hand, supported participation. They argued that this was an opportunity for Nazi racial theories to be challenged and, hopefully, defeated. And to some degree, they were right; the iconic Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events, and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin.
On the day of the men's 4 x 100 relay, the Jewish American sprinters Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman were sidelined from the team. While this gave Owens the opportunity to win his fourth and final gold medal, historians have speculated that the removal of Stoller and Glickman was deliberately antiSemitic and intended to appease Hitler.
Legacy of the 1936 Games
Ultimately, Germany was the most successful country at the games, winning 33 gold medals and 89 medals overall. The United States came second in the medal tally, with 24 gold and 56 overall.
The Berlin Olympics torch relay from Mount Olympus in Greece was the first of its kind, and the games were the first to have live television coverage. Despite these advances, they were also to be the final Olympic Games for 12 years owing to World War II.
Hitler's antihuman ideologies and his quest for supreme domination and racial supremacy were the biggest challenge to the Olympic ideal until 1972—when terrorism and the murder of Jewish athletes at the Munich Games threatened the Olympic ideal once more. The president of the International Olympic Committee then was the same Avery Brundage who so dominated the American team in 1936.
Paul R. Bartrop https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229806
Reference
Author: Historian Natalie Ring Description: This essay defines and illustrates the Jim Crow era of racial segregation and discrimination in the American South.
Context and Things to Consider
What is meant by the term "Jim Crow"? How did Jim Crow laws prevent the social advancement of African Americans from the 1880s to 1960s? What is meant by de jure segregation? What is meant by de facto segregation? Consider race relations in the United States during the 1930s and the extent to which there was a contradiction between Americans' attitudes toward race relations at home and their attitudes related to the 1936 Olympics.
Segregation and Jim Crow
The term "Jim Crow" refers to the system of racial segregation and oppression that existed primarily in the South from 1877 to the mid1960s. Segregation existed in some parts of the North, yet by the turn of the century it had become a distinctly Southern phenomenon. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court declared that "separate but equal" was constitutional, and this provided the legal backbone for segregation until it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In reality, "separate but equal" was never really equal. Racial segregation violated the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, but the federal government continued to sanction the state laws and practices of Jim Crow until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Jim Crow era marked the ascendancy of white supremacy and not only consisted of the social separation of the races, but more broadly included lynching and mob violence, the manipulation of the justice system, inequality in education, economic subjugation, and the elimination of Black suffrage.
Origins of "Jim Crow"
The term Jim Crow is derived from the name of a character in a minstrel song performed by Thomas Rice in the 1830s. Blackface minstrelsy was a form of popular entertainment in which white actors blackened their face with cork and imitated what they considered to be authentic African American dialect, dance, and song. These theatrical performances frequently ridiculed African Americans and exaggerated alleged Black characteristics.
Rice named his act "Jump Jim Crow" and claimed to have based it on a dance he saw performed by an aged crippled slave in Louisville, Kentucky, owned by a Mr. Crow. Wearing ragged clothing representative of a field hand, Rice sang and danced to lyrics that included the stanza "Weel about and turn about / And do jis so, / Eb'ry time I weel about / And jump Jim Crow." The routine was immensely popular during the antebellum period, and the figure of Jim Crow became a recognizable and enduring icon in American popular culture. In the 1840s, abolitionists used the phrase Jim Crow to describe segregated railroad cars. By the end of the 19th century, the term came to signify the social separation of the races.
De Jure Segregation
Two forms of Jim Crow existed in the South: de jure and de facto. De jure segregation referred to the separation of the races as mandated specifically by law, and de facto segregation occurred by custom or tradition. In the 1880s, such laws as the segregation of street cars appeared sporadically across the South. Between 1890 and 1915, Southern states enacted an array of statutes that led to a more rigid and universal framework for the social separation of the races.
This explosion of de jure segregation reflected Southern whites' growing unease about a younger, more assertive generation of African Americans who demanded respect and recognition of their rights. In addition, the intent of widespread codification was to solidify custom and to eliminate uncertainty about the social status of blacks and whites. Signs labeled "For White" and "For Colored" dominated the Southern landscape, and Jim Crow regulated social contact in such places as restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, parks, schools, libraries, hospitals, and waiting rooms. In many cases, social separation often meant total exclusion. State legislatures also enacted antimiscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriage, and passed laws or rewrote the state constitution to make voter registration difficult, if not impossible.
De Facto Segregation
Although Southern states passed an elaborate network of laws, de facto practices of segregation endured. Patterns of de facto segregation varied depending on the location, the traditions of a community, or even the whim of a white person.
In most places, whites and blacks were expected to abide by an unspoken racial etiquette. For example, blacks could not enter a white home through the front door, address a white person by their first name, or refuse to give way to a white person on a sidewalk. Courtrooms often swore in black witnesses with separate bibles, and in many stores, blacks could not be served until white customers were finished. Whites did make exceptions for black domestic workers, but only because a black servant tending to white children in a space marked as white still clearly retained a position of inferiority. For many African Americans, Jim Crow caused incredible apprehension about the repercussions of crossing the color line. Any action taken by a black man or woman that whites perceived to be impudent or disrespectful could lead to swift and violent retaliation.
The Civil Rights Movement
After World War II, the edifice of Jim Crow began to break down. Black soldiers questioned the logic of having to fight for democracy abroad while returning home to face continued racial inequality. Protest on the grassroots level as well that initiated by institutions and celebrated leaders spread in the 1950s and early 1960s. The growing civil rights movement ultimately pressured the federal government to take action.
In 1964, the U.S. Congress answered President Lyndon B. Johnson's call to support racial equality and end Jim Crow. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade discrimination in public places, provided funding for assistance to further desegregate schools, created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and gave the attorney general more authority to prosecute civil rights violations involving voting, the use of public facilities, government, and education. It was the most extensive piece of federal legislation in support of civil rights ever ratified by Congress. While racial discrimination and oppression did not entirely disappear following passage of the Civil Rights Act, it truly marked the end of the widespread legal and social system of Jim Crow.
Natalie J. Ring https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 1903177
Image
Photographer: Unknown Description: This photograph shows a public notice on the streets of New York City announcing a meeting to advocate for a U.S. boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Date: December 3, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The location of the Olympic Games is chosen several years in advance. Germany was selected as the host country for the 1936 Olympics in 1932, shortly before the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Opposition to Hitler's regime mounted, and by the fall of 1935—around the time this photograph was taken—groups in the United States had organized for the express purpose of enacting a boycott of the games. Use the magnifying glass to zoom in on the posters in this image. Think about how the word "summons" contributes to the argument against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics. The poster suggests that boycotting the Olympic Games will help "Preserve the Olympic Ideal." What sort of characteristics does the "Olympic ideal" represent?
Notice announcing public meeting on 1936 Olympic Games boycott
A pedestrian in New York City reads a notice announcing a public meeting, scheduled for December 3, 1935, to urge Americans to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The racist and xenophobic policies of German chancellor Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led many countries to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration] https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230486
Commentary
Author: Historian Harold J. Goldberg Description: This commentary presents a historical interpretation of the 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin and argues that the games were used as a propaganda mechanism for the Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
Consider the notion of the "Olympic spirit" and the "spirit of the games." Did the 1936 undermine those values? Why or why not? Propaganda refers to information that is spread to influence public opinion regarding a specific cause or ideology. For example, a government may spread propaganda during war time to win support for the war or boost morale. Propaganda is often biased and may include disinformation or appeals to emotion rather than reason. How does the author build the case that Germany "turned the games into a propaganda showcase?" Pay close attention to the events described in the section titled "The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity." Why does the author believe the Jewish American athletes were pulled from the 4 X 100 relay team?
The 1936 Olympics were a Nazi Propaganda Showcase
In the early 1930s, enthusiasm for the Olympic Games in Europe was at a historic high. The modern Olympic Games had been held every four years since 1896, except in 1916, when they were scheduled for Berlin and canceled due to World War I. In 1932, the next Olympic Games were awarded to the Weimar Republic to celebrate Germany's new democracy, but in 1933 the republic gave way to Nazi dictatorship with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. Just as the war they started in 1939 destroyed cities, towns, villages, and people, the Nazis also ruined the Olympics held in Berlin in 1936.
A Brief History of Olympic Conflicts
The philosophy of the Olympics seeks to transcend politics and nationalism, as the world comes together to admire pure athletic skill, without concern for race, religion, or national origin. In fact, the games have frequently failed to live up to their ideals. Geopolitical crises and controversies have disrupted the games on multiple occasions, including the cancelation of the games in 1940 and 1944 due to World War II, the terrorist attack and massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972, and the U.S. boycott of the games hosted in Moscow in 1980. Among all of these flawed contests, the 1936 Olympics are still considered the most notorious for violating the spirit of the games.
Berlin, 1936: Propaganda and Discrimination
Visitors to Germany after Hitler consolidated power could not fail to see Berlin bedecked with swastika flags or hear the constant drone of Nazi propaganda on the radio. The Nazi racist agenda was clear, leading Olympic officials to debate a change of venue to another country. The fear was that the games would be spoiled by a Nazi ban on Jewish athletes and a simultaneous propaganda barrage glorifying the Nazi Party. Representatives of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) visited Germany to seek assurances that Nazi propaganda would not dominate the city and that German racial policy would not prevent athletes from participating. IOC officials were greeted by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who saw the games as a propaganda machine for the Nazis and had no reservations about lying and affirming that the games would be open to all. The IOC believed Goebbels and allowed the games to proceed in Berlin.
The result was exactly what people had feared. Nazi officials broke their pledge and refused to allow Jewish athletes to participate. Already in 1933, the German Boxing Association had expelled Erich Seelig, their light heavyweight champion, due to Jewish heritage. For the same reason, Germany's No. 1 tennis player was cut from its Davis Cup team. Likewise, Gretel Bergmann, a strong contender for a medal in the high jump, was put on the German team and then, with less than two weeks to go, was not allowed to compete. The Nazis disguised this discrimination by waiting until the American team was already on its way to Germany before they dropped her because she was Jewish. As she was the favorite for a medal, this treatment indicated that initial fears over keeping the games in Berlin were justified.
Germany turned the games into a Nazi propaganda showcase, with the Nazi flag flying from every balcony in Berlin. Hitler himself opened the games in the new Olympic Stadium on August 1, to the sound of 100,000 spectators shouting "Sieg heil" as they gave the Nazi salute. A recordsetting 49 teams paraded into the stadium; Germany had the most athletes in the stadium, with the United States bringing the secondlargest team. Interestingly, the medal count finished in that order as well: Germany won the most gold medals and the most overall medals, and the U.S. finished second in both medal categories. To complete the spectacle, the last of over 3,000 runners who carried an Olympic flame from Greece arrived to light the torch in Berlin. This Nazi innovation of having the last runner light the flame was intended to link ancient Greece with the present "Aryan" athlete.
The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity
The American team experienced both triumph and selfembarrassment. Jesse Owens, the star of the American track and field team, had already won three gold medals when the coaches called a meeting just before the relay. Owens was not scheduled to participate in that event, but two Jewish Americans had qualified and were anxious to go. One of them, Marty Glickman, described what happened at the team meeting:
"The event I was supposed to run, the 400meter relay, was one of the last events in the track and field program. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial heats, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach. Robertson announced to the 7 of us that he had heard very strong rumors that the Germans were saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400meter relay. Consequently, Sam Stoller and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. We were shocked. Sam was completely stunned. He didn't say a word in the meeting. I was a brash 18yearold kid and I said 'Coach, you can't hide worldclass sprinters.' At which point, Jesse spoke up and said 'Coach, I've won my 3 gold medals [the 100, the 200, and the long jump]. I'm tired. I've had it. Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it,' said Jesse. And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said 'You'll do as you're told.'" (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936)
American coaches had caved in to the Nazi agenda. There were never any secret German runners; in reality, the American coaches had decided that winning with Jewish runners would upset the Nazis more than winning another race with Jesse Owens. Owens went home with four gold medals, while Marty Glickman never got to participate in another Olympics due to the coming war. The United States celebrated the medal victories of Owens, but this great track and field star returned to a segregated America where he could not freely choose a restaurant or hotel for his postOlympic celebration.
Despite the mixed legacy of these games, the IOC was optimistic that 1940 would see an improvement. The games were planned for Tokyo, but Japan withdrew from hosting because of its military activity in China. Immediately the 1940 Olympics were rescheduled for Helsinki, Finland, but again the games were canceled when war started in nearby Poland in 1939. With the war still in progress, there was no possibility of holding the games in 1944, so the next Olympics were finally staged in London in 1948.
During the war, the Nazis killed more than 40 Jewish Olympic athletes as they occupied European countries.
About the Author
Harold J. Goldberg is the David E. Underdown Distinguished Professor of History at Sewanee: The University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee. His published works include Daily Life in NaziOccupied Europe (Greenwood, 2019), Competing Voices from World War II in Europe: Fighting Words (Greenwood, 2010), and DDay in the Pacific: The Battle of Saipan (Indiana University Press, 2007). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229716
Quote
Author: American Committee on Fair Play in Sports Description: This quote expresses the opinion of the American Committee on Fair Play in Sports on the political implications of holding the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Date: November 15, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The American Committee on Fair Play in Sports was assembled in the fall of 1935 to oppose U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympic Games. The committee produced publications and public service announcements intended to educate the public on the totalitarian Nazi government and its policies of racism and anti Semitism. Consider the ideals of the Olympic Games and the extent to which Germany undermined the ideals of democratic competition and sportsmanship.
American Committee on Fair Play in Sports: quote on the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Sport is prostituted when sport loses its independent and democratic character and becomes a political institution … Nazi Germany is endeavouring to use the Eleventh Olympiad to serve the necessities and interests of the Nazi Regime rather than the Olympic ideals.
–American Committee on Fair Play in Sports (November 15, 1935). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229811
Reference
Author: ABCCLIO Description: This reference article discusses goldmedalist sprinter Jesse Owens's participation in the 1936 Olympic Games, including his attitude toward Adolf Hitler as he readied for one of his races.
Context and Things to Consider
African American sprinter Owens became the first athlete in the history of the modern Olympic Games to win four gold medals in a single year. Owens's feat was celebrated by opponents of Hitler's regime as an embarrassing rebuke of Hitler's theories of Aryan racial supremacy. Consider the mindset of Owens as he readied for the 100meter finals heat and the laserfocus required of Olympic athletes. What does Owens's comment suggest about his views on Hitler? Evaluate Owens's comment in relation to the other sources. How does it illustrate the desire to reflect the ideals of the Olympic Games?
Jesse Owens: "Why Worry about Hitler?" (1936)
Jesse Owens was an African American track and field athlete. During the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, he became a national hero for defeating Adolf Hitler's Aryan athletes in a series of athletic contests.
In 1936, just a few years after Hitler rose to power in Germany, the Summer Olympic Games were held in Berlin, the nation's capital. Hitler believed in an Aryan "master race," an allegedly pure Germanic/Nordic race of people who were, according to Hitler, racially, physically, and intellectually above "lesser" peoples. The Aryan ideal was a Nordic type—tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.
Owens became the star of the 1936 Games, winning a total of four gold medals, including aPage 22 of 24 world recordtying performance in the 100meter dash. Reflecting on this race, Owens discussed its personal significance and his state of focus despite the political implications of competing in Nazi Germany:
When I lined up in my lane for the finals of the 100 meters . . . I thought of all the years of practice and competition, of all who had believed in me, and of my state and university [Ohio, and the Ohio State University.]
I saw the finish line, and knew that 10 seconds would climax the work of eight years. One mistake could ruin those eight years. So, why worry about Hitler?
Hitler did not approve of Black athletes participating in the Games. By 1936, his views on the superiority of the Aryan race were known around the world, though Germany made an effort to obscure its antiSemitic policies as host of the Games. As someone who did not fit Hitler's ideal, Owens's victory in the 1936 Olympics was widely considered to be a refutation of the dictator's racist worldview and an embarrassment for the Nazi regime.
Mark Strong https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230575
COPYRIGHT 2021 ABCCLIO, LLC https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337 U.S. Participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympics Activity
Inquiry Question What were the arguments for and against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics?
The U.S. decision to take part in the 1936 Olympics, which took place in Berlin at the time of Nazi leadership, was a controversial issue that divided participating athletes, administrative organizations, and the American public itself, especially since the country was dealing with its own problems of racism during the era of Jim Crow laws. Use information collected from the provided sources and analyze your findings to explain the arguments presented by both sides: those who felt the U.S. should compete in the games, and those who felt the nation should boycott.
Clarifying Questions
What was the status of civil rights in Germany in the mid1930s, and how did it compare to the situation in the United States? What were the main arguments for participating in the games? What were the main arguments against participating in the games? How did the 1936 Berlin Olympics influence the global perception of Nazi Germany?
Vocabulary
boycott de facto segregation de jure segregation Jim Crow Nazi Party propaganda
Background Information
1936 Summer Olympic Games, Berlin
The 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin, Germany, marked a pivotal moment in the history of the international games. German chancellor Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and the institution of racist and xenophobic policies by the Nazi Party, led many to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
Hitler's Rise to Power
In their choice of Berlin, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had wanted to stress Germany's return to the international sporting world after World War I. When the Olympics were held in 1936, however, it was quite a different Germany and quite a different Berlin from those to whom the IOC had awarded the games in 1931. The rise to prominence of the Nazi Party in the 1930s elevated the party's leader, Adolf Hitler, as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Hitler's seizure of absolute power in 1934 ushered in a totalitarian regime in Germany that ruthlessly suppressed the civil rights of minorities, particularly German Jews.
Organizing the Games
The overwhelming problem for the IOC and for the United States was to get a guarantee that Jewish athletes would not be excluded from the games. At the IOC meeting in Vienna in June 1933, president of the Olympic organizing committee Theodor Lewald was able to give an assurance with the approval of the German government that "all laws relating to the Olympic Games will be respected. German Jews will not as a matter of principle be excluded from German teams in the XI Olympiad."
This guarantee convinced the president of the Olympic Committee, Henri BailletLatour, after a visit to Berlin in November 1935, when he had an audience with Hitler. After that, the attitude of the Olympic Committee was unchanged. There was no wavering, and there was total support for the games in Berlin. From that point onward, both Baillet Latour and Avery Brundage attacked all opponents of the games as being lackeys of Communism. In 1936, Avery Brundage took a place on the IOC at the expense of the American E. L. Jahncke, who had been unremittingly critical of the games in Berlin.
The first thing the Hitler state did was to place its resources wholeheartedly behind the organization committee. A close cooperative relationship developed between Reich Director of Sport Hans von Tschammer und Osten and the organization committee—a collaboration that would be expanded to encompass work on the winter games in GarmischPartenkirchen, which the IOC had no objections about awarding to Germany in the spring of 1933, four months after Hitler came to power. Leading the organization of the latter was Karl Ritter von Halt, who had swiftly joined the Nazi Party in order to assist his career as a banker. All these people combined to convince the outside world that the games in Berlin and GarmischPartenkirchen would take place without discrimination against Jews or other nonAryan races.
Nazi Propaganda and Misdirection
The Nazis reasoned that if the whole world was being invited to Germany as a guest, then the country had to be seen in its most favorable light. Despite the treatment of Jews in Germany, Jews from outside were welcome. The German press was also instructed not to say anything negative about blacks—or only if they could do so by quoting newspapers from America's southern states. Furthermore, at the winter games and the summer games, the German press was forbidden from suggesting that Jews were inferior. Abusive antiSemitic posters were removed, and the SS was given the task of ensuring that these temporary prohibitions were observed.
To underline Nazi goodwill, two German halfJews were allowed to take part in the games: the icehockey player Rudi Ball in the winter games, and the fencer Helene Mayer in the summer games. Both were 50% Jewish according to Nazi definitions, and as such were acceptable. On the other hand, a potential medalist for Germany, Gretel Bergmann, who was a highjumper and fully Jewish, was not allowed to take part.
With the assistance of the Ministry of Propaganda, the Nazis set a largescale campaign in motion to bring the world to Berlin. Bulletins in a number of languages were sent out abroad; German travel agents abroad advertised the Olympic Games in Berlin as the best place to take a summer holiday in 1936; and 156,000 Olympic posters in 19 languages were distributed.
With unlimited funds at their disposal, the organization committee could construct a completely new stadium for the games in Berlin. The style was neoclassical and there was plenty of space for a range of activities, including the socalled Maifeld, which was an exhibition and practice area situated between the stadium's marathon gate and the Olympic novelty, a bell tower with the great bell that summoned the youth of the world to Berlin—"Ich rufe die Jugend der Welt" (I call the youth of the world) was engraved on the castiron bell. The bell tower's foundation consisted of the great Langemarckhalle, originally suggested by Organizing Committee secretary general Carl Diem. The hall was envisoned as a temple commemorating the youth of Germany that had fallen in World War I at Langemarck in Flanders.
The Olympic stadium in Berlin became the site of what were the most successful games of all so far. They were directly transmitted by radio for the first time to countless countries, and in selected cinemas in Berlin it was even possible to see direct television transmission from the games. It was, however, Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia that would stand for posterity as the document of the success of the games. The film was given its premiere on Hitler's birthday in 1938 and from the very first was a roaring success both at home and abroad. It won a number of prizes and at the Venice Film Festival in 1938 was grand prize winner ahead of, for example, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was only in the United States that its success was more muted, since a greater proportion of the public were critical of developments in Germany.
The Games
The games lasted from August 1–16 and lived up to the high expectations in every respect. Athletes from 49 nations competed, 3,738 men and 328 women, and the stadium was sold out for all events, with 105,000 spectators attending every day. The crowning moment of the introductory procession in Berlin was the arrival of the torch bearer into the Olympic stadium. The new German Reich created a perfect staging for sport as an offshoot of ancient Greece. Everything went according to plan, and at the processional entry a number of countries chose to make the Nazi salute when they passed the Fuhrer's box; others stretched out their hands more horizontally and said afterward that it was the Olympic greeting.
The greatest athlete of the games was the African American Jesse Owens, who won five gold medals. Owens won the 100 and 200meter races. He also won the long jump and was in the 4x100 relay, which set a new record of 39.8 seconds, which was the first time ever under 40 seconds and a record that stood for 20 years. Owens's performance was seen by many as a refutation of Hitler's racist theories of Aryan racial superiority and remains the most memorable performance of the games. Basketball, canoeing, and field handball were on the program for the first time, and it caused a sensation when Norway beat Germany in soccer and achieved a bronze. As expected, despite American dominance, Germany ran away with the most medals in athletics.
Reference
Author: Historian and Holocaust scholar Paul R. Bartrop Description: This essay outlines the arguments for and against the international community's participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, hosted during the third year of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin began in the early years of Hitler's regime, which saw laws severely restricting the citizenship and civil rights of Jews known as the Nuremberg Race Laws (1935). Consider the ways in which Germany constructed its image during the Olympic Games. How did that image differ from its image prior to the Olympics? Pay close attention to the arguments for and against a boycott of the 1936 Olympics outlined in the sections titled "Debating Whether to Boycott" and "U.S. Olympic Team." Why did most African American newspapers support participation in the games?
1936 Berlin Olympics: Boycott Debates
The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were highly controversial at the time. From the very start they were marked by racism, with the official Nazi Party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, declaring that Jews and people of African descent, regardless of their country of origin, should not be allowed to participate. Following Nazi demands, the German Olympic Committee denied Jews all opportunity of representing Germany. These measures led many in the international community to call for a boycott of the 1936 games.
Germany Furnishes its Image
When the possibility of an international boycott was threatened, Germany responded with a superficial relaxing of the rules: now, one athlete with a Jewish background was allowed to compete for Germany. Helene Mayer, who had a Jewish father, was a world champion fencer who had already won a gold medal at the 1928 Amsterdam Games. With an eye to the prospect of her winning another gold medal for Germany, she became the token Jew permitted to compete. As it turned out, she won silver in the individual foil event.
The prospect of other Jewish athletes competing for Germany was denied, however. The fourtime world record holder and 10time German national champion in shot put and discus throw, Lilli Henoch, was excluded; she was later deported and murdered in the Riga ghetto in 1942. Gretel Bergmann, an internationally recognized champion high jumper, was replaced on the German team by Dora Ratjen, who was later revealed to be a male who had been raised as a girl.
In order to reassure foreign opinion, Berlin was purged of all traces of Nazi antiSemitism. Local party authorities removed street signs bearing such slogans as "Jews not wanted" from Berlin's main tourist areas. At the same time, all vagrants and Roma were physically moved to a specially constructed "holding camp" outside the city at Marzahn.
Debating Whether to Boycott
In view of Germany's racist domestic policies, there was considerable debate among the international community over whether or not to boycott the games. In some countries, notably Britain, France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands, discussion took place over whether the games should be relocated. Meanwhile, exiled political opponents of the Nazis kept up the pressure for a boycott. These initiatives did not amount to anything definite; opponents of a boycott argued that the games had been awarded to Berlin in 1931 and that it would be wrong to punish the city simply because of a change of government.
Individual Jewish athletes from a number of countries, on the other hand, elected to take matters into their own hands and refused to attend. In this regard, brave athletes such as the South African Sid Kiel and Americans Milton Green and Norman Cahners should be mentioned.
U.S. Olympic Team
As one of the world's leading sporting nations, the position of the United States was crucial. In September 1934, the United States Olympic Committee accepted a German invitation to visit on a factfinding mission. After interviewing German Jews who had been carefully selected by the Nazi regime, U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage concluded that he had not found any discrimination against the Jewish population of Germany. He then became a major supporter of the games being held in Berlin, famously arguing that "politics has no place in sport." By 1935, he had convinced the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States that an American team should be sent to Berlin. The American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee supported a boycott, but they had no say in what was effectively an institutional project by the American Olympic Committee.
Most African American newspapers, on the other hand, supported participation. They argued that this was an opportunity for Nazi racial theories to be challenged and, hopefully, defeated. And to some degree, they were right; the iconic Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events, and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin.
On the day of the men's 4 x 100 relay, the Jewish American sprinters Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman were sidelined from the team. While this gave Owens the opportunity to win his fourth and final gold medal, historians have speculated that the removal of Stoller and Glickman was deliberately antiSemitic and intended to appease Hitler.
Legacy of the 1936 Games
Ultimately, Germany was the most successful country at the games, winning 33 gold medals and 89 medals overall. The United States came second in the medal tally, with 24 gold and 56 overall.
The Berlin Olympics torch relay from Mount Olympus in Greece was the first of its kind, and the games were the first to have live television coverage. Despite these advances, they were also to be the final Olympic Games for 12 years owing to World War II.
Hitler's antihuman ideologies and his quest for supreme domination and racial supremacy were the biggest challenge to the Olympic ideal until 1972—when terrorism and the murder of Jewish athletes at the Munich Games threatened the Olympic ideal once more. The president of the International Olympic Committee then was the same Avery Brundage who so dominated the American team in 1936.
Paul R. Bartrop https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229806
Reference
Author: Historian Natalie Ring Description: This essay defines and illustrates the Jim Crow era of racial segregation and discrimination in the American South.
Context and Things to Consider
What is meant by the term "Jim Crow"? How did Jim Crow laws prevent the social advancement of African Americans from the 1880s to 1960s? What is meant by de jure segregation? What is meant by de facto segregation? Consider race relations in the United States during the 1930s and the extent to which there was a contradiction between Americans' attitudes toward race relations at home and their attitudes related to the 1936 Olympics.
Segregation and Jim Crow
The term "Jim Crow" refers to the system of racial segregation and oppression that existed primarily in the South from 1877 to the mid1960s. Segregation existed in some parts of the North, yet by the turn of the century it had become a distinctly Southern phenomenon. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court declared that "separate but equal" was constitutional, and this provided the legal backbone for segregation until it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In reality, "separate but equal" was never really equal. Racial segregation violated the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, but the federal government continued to sanction the state laws and practices of Jim Crow until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Jim Crow era marked the ascendancy of white supremacy and not only consisted of the social separation of the races, but more broadly included lynching and mob violence, the manipulation of the justice system, inequality in education, economic subjugation, and the elimination of Black suffrage.
Origins of "Jim Crow"
The term Jim Crow is derived from the name of a character in a minstrel song performed by Thomas Rice in the 1830s. Blackface minstrelsy was a form of popular entertainment in which white actors blackened their face with cork and imitated what they considered to be authentic African American dialect, dance, and song. These theatrical performances frequently ridiculed African Americans and exaggerated alleged Black characteristics.
Rice named his act "Jump Jim Crow" and claimed to have based it on a dance he saw performed by an aged crippled slave in Louisville, Kentucky, owned by a Mr. Crow. Wearing ragged clothing representative of a field hand, Rice sang and danced to lyrics that included the stanza "Weel about and turn about / And do jis so, / Eb'ry time I weel about / And jump Jim Crow." The routine was immensely popular during the antebellum period, and the figure of Jim Crow became a recognizable and enduring icon in American popular culture. In the 1840s, abolitionists used the phrase Jim Crow to describe segregated railroad cars. By the end of the 19th century, the term came to signify the social separation of the races.
De Jure Segregation
Two forms of Jim Crow existed in the South: de jure and de facto. De jure segregation referred to the separation of the races as mandated specifically by law, and de facto segregation occurred by custom or tradition. In the 1880s, such laws as the segregation of street cars appeared sporadically across the South. Between 1890 and 1915, Southern states enacted an array of statutes that led to a more rigid and universal framework for the social separation of the races.
This explosion of de jure segregation reflected Southern whites' growing unease about a younger, more assertive generation of African Americans who demanded respect and recognition of their rights. In addition, the intent of widespread codification was to solidify custom and to eliminate uncertainty about the social status of blacks and whites. Signs labeled "For White" and "For Colored" dominated the Southern landscape, and Jim Crow regulated social contact in such places as restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, parks, schools, libraries, hospitals, and waiting rooms. In many cases, social separation often meant total exclusion. State legislatures also enacted antimiscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriage, and passed laws or rewrote the state constitution to make voter registration difficult, if not impossible.
De Facto Segregation
Although Southern states passed an elaborate network of laws, de facto practices of segregation endured. Patterns of de facto segregation varied depending on the location, the traditions of a community, or even the whim of a white person.
In most places, whites and blacks were expected to abide by an unspoken racial etiquette. For example, blacks could not enter a white home through the front door, address a white person by their first name, or refuse to give way to a white person on a sidewalk. Courtrooms often swore in black witnesses with separate bibles, and in many stores, blacks could not be served until white customers were finished. Whites did make exceptions for black domestic workers, but only because a black servant tending to white children in a space marked as white still clearly retained a position of inferiority. For many African Americans, Jim Crow caused incredible apprehension about the repercussions of crossing the color line. Any action taken by a black man or woman that whites perceived to be impudent or disrespectful could lead to swift and violent retaliation.
The Civil Rights Movement
After World War II, the edifice of Jim Crow began to break down. Black soldiers questioned the logic of having to fight for democracy abroad while returning home to face continued racial inequality. Protest on the grassroots level as well that initiated by institutions and celebrated leaders spread in the 1950s and early 1960s. The growing civil rights movement ultimately pressured the federal government to take action.
In 1964, the U.S. Congress answered President Lyndon B. Johnson's call to support racial equality and end Jim Crow. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade discrimination in public places, provided funding for assistance to further desegregate schools, created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and gave the attorney general more authority to prosecute civil rights violations involving voting, the use of public facilities, government, and education. It was the most extensive piece of federal legislation in support of civil rights ever ratified by Congress. While racial discrimination and oppression did not entirely disappear following passage of the Civil Rights Act, it truly marked the end of the widespread legal and social system of Jim Crow.
Natalie J. Ring https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 1903177
Image
Photographer: Unknown Description: This photograph shows a public notice on the streets of New York City announcing a meeting to advocate for a U.S. boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Date: December 3, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The location of the Olympic Games is chosen several years in advance. Germany was selected as the host country for the 1936 Olympics in 1932, shortly before the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Opposition to Hitler's regime mounted, and by the fall of 1935—around the time this photograph was taken—groups in the United States had organized for the express purpose of enacting a boycott of the games. Use the magnifying glass to zoom in on the posters in this image. Think about how the word "summons" contributes to the argument against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics. The poster suggests that boycotting the Olympic Games will help "Preserve the Olympic Ideal." What sort of characteristics does the "Olympic ideal" represent?
Notice announcing public meeting on 1936 Olympic Games boycott
A pedestrian in New York City reads a notice announcing a public meeting, scheduled for December 3, 1935, to urge Americans to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The racist and xenophobic policies of German chancellor Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led many countries to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration] https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230486
Commentary
Author: Historian Harold J. Goldberg Description: This commentary presents a historical interpretation of the 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin and argues that the games were used as a propaganda mechanism for the Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
Consider the notion of the "Olympic spirit" and the "spirit of the games." Did the 1936 undermine those values? Why or why not? Propaganda refers to information that is spread to influence public opinion regarding a specific cause or ideology. For example, a government may spread propaganda during war time to win support for the war or boost morale. Propaganda is often biased and may include disinformation or appeals to emotion rather than reason. How does the author build the case that Germany "turned the games into a propaganda showcase?" Pay close attention to the events described in the section titled "The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity." Why does the author believe the Jewish American athletes were pulled from the 4 X 100 relay team?
The 1936 Olympics were a Nazi Propaganda Showcase
In the early 1930s, enthusiasm for the Olympic Games in Europe was at a historic high. The modern Olympic Games had been held every four years since 1896, except in 1916, when they were scheduled for Berlin and canceled due to World War I. In 1932, the next Olympic Games were awarded to the Weimar Republic to celebrate Germany's new democracy, but in 1933 the republic gave way to Nazi dictatorship with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. Just as the war they started in 1939 destroyed cities, towns, villages, and people, the Nazis also ruined the Olympics held in Berlin in 1936.
A Brief History of Olympic Conflicts
The philosophy of the Olympics seeks to transcend politics and nationalism, as the world comes together to admire pure athletic skill, without concern for race, religion, or national origin. In fact, the games have frequently failed to live up to their ideals. Geopolitical crises and controversies have disrupted the games on multiple occasions, including the cancelation of the games in 1940 and 1944 due to World War II, the terrorist attack and massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972, and the U.S. boycott of the games hosted in Moscow in 1980. Among all of these flawed contests, the 1936 Olympics are still considered the most notorious for violating the spirit of the games.
Berlin, 1936: Propaganda and Discrimination
Visitors to Germany after Hitler consolidated power could not fail to see Berlin bedecked with swastika flags or hear the constant drone of Nazi propaganda on the radio. The Nazi racist agenda was clear, leading Olympic officials to debate a change of venue to another country. The fear was that the games would be spoiled by a Nazi ban on Jewish athletes and a simultaneous propaganda barrage glorifying the Nazi Party. Representatives of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) visited Germany to seek assurances that Nazi propaganda would not dominate the city and that German racial policy would not prevent athletes from participating. IOC officials were greeted by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who saw the games as a propaganda machine for the Nazis and had no reservations about lying and affirming that the games would be open to all. The IOC believed Goebbels and allowed the games to proceed in Berlin.
The result was exactly what people had feared. Nazi officials broke their pledge and refused to allow Jewish athletes to participate. Already in 1933, the German Boxing Association had expelled Erich Seelig, their light heavyweight champion, due to Jewish heritage. For the same reason, Germany's No. 1 tennis player was cut from its Davis Cup team. Likewise, Gretel Bergmann, a strong contender for a medal in the high jump, was put on the German team and then, with less than two weeks to go, was not allowed to compete. The Nazis disguised this discrimination by waiting until the American team was already on its way to Germany before they dropped her because she was Jewish. As she was the favorite for a medal, this treatment indicated that initial fears over keeping the games in Berlin were justified.
Germany turned the games into a Nazi propaganda showcase, with the Nazi flag flying from every balcony in Berlin. Hitler himself opened the games in the new Olympic Stadium on August 1, to the sound of 100,000 spectators shouting "Sieg heil" as they gave the Nazi salute. A recordsetting 49 teams paraded into the stadium; Germany had the most athletes in the stadium, with the United States bringing the secondlargest team. Interestingly, the medal count finished in that order as well: Germany won the most gold medals and the most overall medals, and the U.S. finished second in both medal categories. To complete the spectacle, the last of over 3,000 runners who carried an Olympic flame from Greece arrived to light the torch in Berlin. This Nazi innovation of having the last runner light the flame was intended to link ancient Greece with the present "Aryan" athlete.
The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity
The American team experienced both triumph and selfembarrassment. Jesse Owens, the star of the American track and field team, had already won three gold medals when the coaches called a meeting just before the relay. Owens was not scheduled to participate in that event, but two Jewish Americans had qualified and were anxious to go. One of them, Marty Glickman, described what happened at the team meeting:
"The event I was supposed to run, the 400meter relay, was one of the last events in the track and field program. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial heats, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach. Robertson announced to the 7 of us that he had heard very strong rumors that the Germans were saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400meter relay. Consequently, Sam Stoller and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. We were shocked. Sam was completely stunned. He didn't say a word in the meeting. I was a brash 18yearold kid and I said 'Coach, you can't hide worldclass sprinters.' At which point, Jesse spoke up and said 'Coach, I've won my 3 gold medals [the 100, the 200, and the long jump]. I'm tired. I've had it. Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it,' said Jesse. And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said 'You'll do as you're told.'" (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936)
American coaches had caved in to the Nazi agenda. There were never any secret German runners; in reality, the American coaches had decided that winning with Jewish runners would upset the Nazis more than winning another race with Jesse Owens. Owens went home with four gold medals, while Marty Glickman never got to participate in another Olympics due to the coming war. The United States celebrated the medal victories of Owens, but this great track and field star returned to a segregated America where he could not freely choose a restaurant or hotel for his postOlympic celebration.
Despite the mixed legacy of these games, the IOC was optimistic that 1940 would see an improvement. The games were planned for Tokyo, but Japan withdrew from hosting because of its military activity in China. Immediately the 1940 Olympics were rescheduled for Helsinki, Finland, but again the games were canceled when war started in nearby Poland in 1939. With the war still in progress, there was no possibility of holding the games in 1944, so the next Olympics were finally staged in London in 1948.
During the war, the Nazis killed more than 40 Jewish Olympic athletes as they occupied European countries.
About the Author
Harold J. Goldberg is the David E. Underdown Distinguished Professor of History at Sewanee: The University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee. His published works include Daily Life in NaziOccupied Europe (Greenwood, 2019), Competing Voices from World War II in Europe: Fighting Words (Greenwood, 2010), and DDay in the Pacific: The Battle of Saipan (Indiana University Press, 2007). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229716
Quote
Author: American Committee on Fair Play in Sports Description: This quote expresses the opinion of the American Committee on Fair Play in Sports on the political implications of holding the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Date: November 15, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The American Committee on Fair Play in Sports was assembled in the fall of 1935 to oppose U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympic Games. The committee produced publications and public service announcements intended to educate the public on the totalitarian Nazi government and its policies of racism and anti Semitism. Consider the ideals of the Olympic Games and the extent to which Germany undermined the ideals of democratic competition and sportsmanship.
American Committee on Fair Play in Sports: quote on the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Sport is prostituted when sport loses its independent and democratic character and becomes a political institution … Nazi Germany is endeavouring to use the Eleventh Olympiad to serve the necessities and interests of the Nazi Regime rather than the Olympic ideals.
–American Committee on Fair Play in Sports (November 15, 1935). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229811
Reference
Author: ABCCLIO Description: This reference article discusses goldmedalist sprinter Jesse Owens's participation in the 1936 Olympic Games, including his attitude toward Adolf Hitler as he readied for one of his races.
Context and Things to Consider
African American sprinter Owens became the first athlete in the history of the modern Olympic Games to win four gold medals in a single year. Owens's feat was celebrated by opponents of Hitler's regime as an embarrassing rebuke of Hitler's theories of Aryan racial supremacy. Consider the mindset of Owens as he readied for the 100meter finals heat and the laserfocus required of Olympic athletes. What does Owens's comment suggest about his views on Hitler? Evaluate Owens's comment in relation to the other sources. How does it illustrate the desire to reflect the ideals of the Olympic Games?
Jesse Owens: "Why Worry about Hitler?" (1936)
Jesse Owens was an African American track and field athlete. During the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, he became a national hero for defeating Adolf Hitler's Aryan athletes in a series of athletic contests.
In 1936, just a few years after Hitler rose to power in Germany, the Summer Olympic Games were held in Berlin, the nation's capital. Hitler believed in an Aryan "master race," an allegedly pure Germanic/Nordic race of people who were, according to Hitler, racially, physically, and intellectually above "lesser" peoples. The Aryan ideal was a Nordic type—tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.
Owens became the star of the 1936 Games, winning a total of four gold medals, including a world recordtying performance in the 100meter dash. Reflecting on this race, Owens discussed its personal significance and his state of focus despite the political implications of competing in Nazi Germany:
When I lined up in my lane for the finals of the 100 meters . . . I thought of all the years of practice and competition, of all who had believed in me, and of my state and university [Ohio, and the Ohio State University.]
I saw the finish line, and knew that 10 seconds would climax the work of eight years. One mistake could ruin those eight years. So, why worry about Hitler?
Hitler did not approve of Black athletes participating in the Games. By 1936, his views on the superiority of the Aryan race were known around the world, though Germany made an effort to obscure its antiSemitic policies as host of the Games. As someone who did not fit Hitler's ideal, Owens's victory in the 1936 Olympics was widely considered to be a refutation of the dictator's racist worldview and an embarrassment for the Nazi regime.
Mark Strong https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230575
COPYRIGHT 2021 ABCCLIO, LLC https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Page 23 of 24 U.S. Participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympics Activity
Inquiry Question What were the arguments for and against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics?
The U.S. decision to take part in the 1936 Olympics, which took place in Berlin at the time of Nazi leadership, was a controversial issue that divided participating athletes, administrative organizations, and the American public itself, especially since the country was dealing with its own problems of racism during the era of Jim Crow laws. Use information collected from the provided sources and analyze your findings to explain the arguments presented by both sides: those who felt the U.S. should compete in the games, and those who felt the nation should boycott.
Clarifying Questions
What was the status of civil rights in Germany in the mid1930s, and how did it compare to the situation in the United States? What were the main arguments for participating in the games? What were the main arguments against participating in the games? How did the 1936 Berlin Olympics influence the global perception of Nazi Germany?
Vocabulary
boycott de facto segregation de jure segregation Jim Crow Nazi Party propaganda
Background Information
1936 Summer Olympic Games, Berlin
The 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin, Germany, marked a pivotal moment in the history of the international games. German chancellor Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and the institution of racist and xenophobic policies by the Nazi Party, led many to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
Hitler's Rise to Power
In their choice of Berlin, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had wanted to stress Germany's return to the international sporting world after World War I. When the Olympics were held in 1936, however, it was quite a different Germany and quite a different Berlin from those to whom the IOC had awarded the games in 1931. The rise to prominence of the Nazi Party in the 1930s elevated the party's leader, Adolf Hitler, as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Hitler's seizure of absolute power in 1934 ushered in a totalitarian regime in Germany that ruthlessly suppressed the civil rights of minorities, particularly German Jews.
Organizing the Games
The overwhelming problem for the IOC and for the United States was to get a guarantee that Jewish athletes would not be excluded from the games. At the IOC meeting in Vienna in June 1933, president of the Olympic organizing committee Theodor Lewald was able to give an assurance with the approval of the German government that "all laws relating to the Olympic Games will be respected. German Jews will not as a matter of principle be excluded from German teams in the XI Olympiad."
This guarantee convinced the president of the Olympic Committee, Henri BailletLatour, after a visit to Berlin in November 1935, when he had an audience with Hitler. After that, the attitude of the Olympic Committee was unchanged. There was no wavering, and there was total support for the games in Berlin. From that point onward, both Baillet Latour and Avery Brundage attacked all opponents of the games as being lackeys of Communism. In 1936, Avery Brundage took a place on the IOC at the expense of the American E. L. Jahncke, who had been unremittingly critical of the games in Berlin.
The first thing the Hitler state did was to place its resources wholeheartedly behind the organization committee. A close cooperative relationship developed between Reich Director of Sport Hans von Tschammer und Osten and the organization committee—a collaboration that would be expanded to encompass work on the winter games in GarmischPartenkirchen, which the IOC had no objections about awarding to Germany in the spring of 1933, four months after Hitler came to power. Leading the organization of the latter was Karl Ritter von Halt, who had swiftly joined the Nazi Party in order to assist his career as a banker. All these people combined to convince the outside world that the games in Berlin and GarmischPartenkirchen would take place without discrimination against Jews or other nonAryan races.
Nazi Propaganda and Misdirection
The Nazis reasoned that if the whole world was being invited to Germany as a guest, then the country had to be seen in its most favorable light. Despite the treatment of Jews in Germany, Jews from outside were welcome. The German press was also instructed not to say anything negative about blacks—or only if they could do so by quoting newspapers from America's southern states. Furthermore, at the winter games and the summer games, the German press was forbidden from suggesting that Jews were inferior. Abusive antiSemitic posters were removed, and the SS was given the task of ensuring that these temporary prohibitions were observed.
To underline Nazi goodwill, two German halfJews were allowed to take part in the games: the icehockey player Rudi Ball in the winter games, and the fencer Helene Mayer in the summer games. Both were 50% Jewish according to Nazi definitions, and as such were acceptable. On the other hand, a potential medalist for Germany, Gretel Bergmann, who was a highjumper and fully Jewish, was not allowed to take part.
With the assistance of the Ministry of Propaganda, the Nazis set a largescale campaign in motion to bring the world to Berlin. Bulletins in a number of languages were sent out abroad; German travel agents abroad advertised the Olympic Games in Berlin as the best place to take a summer holiday in 1936; and 156,000 Olympic posters in 19 languages were distributed.
With unlimited funds at their disposal, the organization committee could construct a completely new stadium for the games in Berlin. The style was neoclassical and there was plenty of space for a range of activities, including the socalled Maifeld, which was an exhibition and practice area situated between the stadium's marathon gate and the Olympic novelty, a bell tower with the great bell that summoned the youth of the world to Berlin—"Ich rufe die Jugend der Welt" (I call the youth of the world) was engraved on the castiron bell. The bell tower's foundation consisted of the great Langemarckhalle, originally suggested by Organizing Committee secretary general Carl Diem. The hall was envisoned as a temple commemorating the youth of Germany that had fallen in World War I at Langemarck in Flanders.
The Olympic stadium in Berlin became the site of what were the most successful games of all so far. They were directly transmitted by radio for the first time to countless countries, and in selected cinemas in Berlin it was even possible to see direct television transmission from the games. It was, however, Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia that would stand for posterity as the document of the success of the games. The film was given its premiere on Hitler's birthday in 1938 and from the very first was a roaring success both at home and abroad. It won a number of prizes and at the Venice Film Festival in 1938 was grand prize winner ahead of, for example, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was only in the United States that its success was more muted, since a greater proportion of the public were critical of developments in Germany.
The Games
The games lasted from August 1–16 and lived up to the high expectations in every respect. Athletes from 49 nations competed, 3,738 men and 328 women, and the stadium was sold out for all events, with 105,000 spectators attending every day. The crowning moment of the introductory procession in Berlin was the arrival of the torch bearer into the Olympic stadium. The new German Reich created a perfect staging for sport as an offshoot of ancient Greece. Everything went according to plan, and at the processional entry a number of countries chose to make the Nazi salute when they passed the Fuhrer's box; others stretched out their hands more horizontally and said afterward that it was the Olympic greeting.
The greatest athlete of the games was the African American Jesse Owens, who won five gold medals. Owens won the 100 and 200meter races. He also won the long jump and was in the 4x100 relay, which set a new record of 39.8 seconds, which was the first time ever under 40 seconds and a record that stood for 20 years. Owens's performance was seen by many as a refutation of Hitler's racist theories of Aryan racial superiority and remains the most memorable performance of the games. Basketball, canoeing, and field handball were on the program for the first time, and it caused a sensation when Norway beat Germany in soccer and achieved a bronze. As expected, despite American dominance, Germany ran away with the most medals in athletics.
Reference
Author: Historian and Holocaust scholar Paul R. Bartrop Description: This essay outlines the arguments for and against the international community's participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, hosted during the third year of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin began in the early years of Hitler's regime, which saw laws severely restricting the citizenship and civil rights of Jews known as the Nuremberg Race Laws (1935). Consider the ways in which Germany constructed its image during the Olympic Games. How did that image differ from its image prior to the Olympics? Pay close attention to the arguments for and against a boycott of the 1936 Olympics outlined in the sections titled "Debating Whether to Boycott" and "U.S. Olympic Team." Why did most African American newspapers support participation in the games?
1936 Berlin Olympics: Boycott Debates
The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were highly controversial at the time. From the very start they were marked by racism, with the official Nazi Party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, declaring that Jews and people of African descent, regardless of their country of origin, should not be allowed to participate. Following Nazi demands, the German Olympic Committee denied Jews all opportunity of representing Germany. These measures led many in the international community to call for a boycott of the 1936 games.
Germany Furnishes its Image
When the possibility of an international boycott was threatened, Germany responded with a superficial relaxing of the rules: now, one athlete with a Jewish background was allowed to compete for Germany. Helene Mayer, who had a Jewish father, was a world champion fencer who had already won a gold medal at the 1928 Amsterdam Games. With an eye to the prospect of her winning another gold medal for Germany, she became the token Jew permitted to compete. As it turned out, she won silver in the individual foil event.
The prospect of other Jewish athletes competing for Germany was denied, however. The fourtime world record holder and 10time German national champion in shot put and discus throw, Lilli Henoch, was excluded; she was later deported and murdered in the Riga ghetto in 1942. Gretel Bergmann, an internationally recognized champion high jumper, was replaced on the German team by Dora Ratjen, who was later revealed to be a male who had been raised as a girl.
In order to reassure foreign opinion, Berlin was purged of all traces of Nazi antiSemitism. Local party authorities removed street signs bearing such slogans as "Jews not wanted" from Berlin's main tourist areas. At the same time, all vagrants and Roma were physically moved to a specially constructed "holding camp" outside the city at Marzahn.
Debating Whether to Boycott
In view of Germany's racist domestic policies, there was considerable debate among the international community over whether or not to boycott the games. In some countries, notably Britain, France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands, discussion took place over whether the games should be relocated. Meanwhile, exiled political opponents of the Nazis kept up the pressure for a boycott. These initiatives did not amount to anything definite; opponents of a boycott argued that the games had been awarded to Berlin in 1931 and that it would be wrong to punish the city simply because of a change of government.
Individual Jewish athletes from a number of countries, on the other hand, elected to take matters into their own hands and refused to attend. In this regard, brave athletes such as the South African Sid Kiel and Americans Milton Green and Norman Cahners should be mentioned.
U.S. Olympic Team
As one of the world's leading sporting nations, the position of the United States was crucial. In September 1934, the United States Olympic Committee accepted a German invitation to visit on a factfinding mission. After interviewing German Jews who had been carefully selected by the Nazi regime, U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage concluded that he had not found any discrimination against the Jewish population of Germany. He then became a major supporter of the games being held in Berlin, famously arguing that "politics has no place in sport." By 1935, he had convinced the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States that an American team should be sent to Berlin. The American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee supported a boycott, but they had no say in what was effectively an institutional project by the American Olympic Committee.
Most African American newspapers, on the other hand, supported participation. They argued that this was an opportunity for Nazi racial theories to be challenged and, hopefully, defeated. And to some degree, they were right; the iconic Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events, and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin.
On the day of the men's 4 x 100 relay, the Jewish American sprinters Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman were sidelined from the team. While this gave Owens the opportunity to win his fourth and final gold medal, historians have speculated that the removal of Stoller and Glickman was deliberately antiSemitic and intended to appease Hitler.
Legacy of the 1936 Games
Ultimately, Germany was the most successful country at the games, winning 33 gold medals and 89 medals overall. The United States came second in the medal tally, with 24 gold and 56 overall.
The Berlin Olympics torch relay from Mount Olympus in Greece was the first of its kind, and the games were the first to have live television coverage. Despite these advances, they were also to be the final Olympic Games for 12 years owing to World War II.
Hitler's antihuman ideologies and his quest for supreme domination and racial supremacy were the biggest challenge to the Olympic ideal until 1972—when terrorism and the murder of Jewish athletes at the Munich Games threatened the Olympic ideal once more. The president of the International Olympic Committee then was the same Avery Brundage who so dominated the American team in 1936.
Paul R. Bartrop https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229806
Reference
Author: Historian Natalie Ring Description: This essay defines and illustrates the Jim Crow era of racial segregation and discrimination in the American South.
Context and Things to Consider
What is meant by the term "Jim Crow"? How did Jim Crow laws prevent the social advancement of African Americans from the 1880s to 1960s? What is meant by de jure segregation? What is meant by de facto segregation? Consider race relations in the United States during the 1930s and the extent to which there was a contradiction between Americans' attitudes toward race relations at home and their attitudes related to the 1936 Olympics.
Segregation and Jim Crow
The term "Jim Crow" refers to the system of racial segregation and oppression that existed primarily in the South from 1877 to the mid1960s. Segregation existed in some parts of the North, yet by the turn of the century it had become a distinctly Southern phenomenon. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court declared that "separate but equal" was constitutional, and this provided the legal backbone for segregation until it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In reality, "separate but equal" was never really equal. Racial segregation violated the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, but the federal government continued to sanction the state laws and practices of Jim Crow until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Jim Crow era marked the ascendancy of white supremacy and not only consisted of the social separation of the races, but more broadly included lynching and mob violence, the manipulation of the justice system, inequality in education, economic subjugation, and the elimination of Black suffrage.
Origins of "Jim Crow"
The term Jim Crow is derived from the name of a character in a minstrel song performed by Thomas Rice in the 1830s. Blackface minstrelsy was a form of popular entertainment in which white actors blackened their face with cork and imitated what they considered to be authentic African American dialect, dance, and song. These theatrical performances frequently ridiculed African Americans and exaggerated alleged Black characteristics.
Rice named his act "Jump Jim Crow" and claimed to have based it on a dance he saw performed by an aged crippled slave in Louisville, Kentucky, owned by a Mr. Crow. Wearing ragged clothing representative of a field hand, Rice sang and danced to lyrics that included the stanza "Weel about and turn about / And do jis so, / Eb'ry time I weel about / And jump Jim Crow." The routine was immensely popular during the antebellum period, and the figure of Jim Crow became a recognizable and enduring icon in American popular culture. In the 1840s, abolitionists used the phrase Jim Crow to describe segregated railroad cars. By the end of the 19th century, the term came to signify the social separation of the races.
De Jure Segregation
Two forms of Jim Crow existed in the South: de jure and de facto. De jure segregation referred to the separation of the races as mandated specifically by law, and de facto segregation occurred by custom or tradition. In the 1880s, such laws as the segregation of street cars appeared sporadically across the South. Between 1890 and 1915, Southern states enacted an array of statutes that led to a more rigid and universal framework for the social separation of the races.
This explosion of de jure segregation reflected Southern whites' growing unease about a younger, more assertive generation of African Americans who demanded respect and recognition of their rights. In addition, the intent of widespread codification was to solidify custom and to eliminate uncertainty about the social status of blacks and whites. Signs labeled "For White" and "For Colored" dominated the Southern landscape, and Jim Crow regulated social contact in such places as restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, parks, schools, libraries, hospitals, and waiting rooms. In many cases, social separation often meant total exclusion. State legislatures also enacted antimiscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriage, and passed laws or rewrote the state constitution to make voter registration difficult, if not impossible.
De Facto Segregation
Although Southern states passed an elaborate network of laws, de facto practices of segregation endured. Patterns of de facto segregation varied depending on the location, the traditions of a community, or even the whim of a white person.
In most places, whites and blacks were expected to abide by an unspoken racial etiquette. For example, blacks could not enter a white home through the front door, address a white person by their first name, or refuse to give way to a white person on a sidewalk. Courtrooms often swore in black witnesses with separate bibles, and in many stores, blacks could not be served until white customers were finished. Whites did make exceptions for black domestic workers, but only because a black servant tending to white children in a space marked as white still clearly retained a position of inferiority. For many African Americans, Jim Crow caused incredible apprehension about the repercussions of crossing the color line. Any action taken by a black man or woman that whites perceived to be impudent or disrespectful could lead to swift and violent retaliation.
The Civil Rights Movement
After World War II, the edifice of Jim Crow began to break down. Black soldiers questioned the logic of having to fight for democracy abroad while returning home to face continued racial inequality. Protest on the grassroots level as well that initiated by institutions and celebrated leaders spread in the 1950s and early 1960s. The growing civil rights movement ultimately pressured the federal government to take action.
In 1964, the U.S. Congress answered President Lyndon B. Johnson's call to support racial equality and end Jim Crow. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade discrimination in public places, provided funding for assistance to further desegregate schools, created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and gave the attorney general more authority to prosecute civil rights violations involving voting, the use of public facilities, government, and education. It was the most extensive piece of federal legislation in support of civil rights ever ratified by Congress. While racial discrimination and oppression did not entirely disappear following passage of the Civil Rights Act, it truly marked the end of the widespread legal and social system of Jim Crow.
Natalie J. Ring https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 1903177
Image
Photographer: Unknown Description: This photograph shows a public notice on the streets of New York City announcing a meeting to advocate for a U.S. boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Date: December 3, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The location of the Olympic Games is chosen several years in advance. Germany was selected as the host country for the 1936 Olympics in 1932, shortly before the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Opposition to Hitler's regime mounted, and by the fall of 1935—around the time this photograph was taken—groups in the United States had organized for the express purpose of enacting a boycott of the games. Use the magnifying glass to zoom in on the posters in this image. Think about how the word "summons" contributes to the argument against U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympics. The poster suggests that boycotting the Olympic Games will help "Preserve the Olympic Ideal." What sort of characteristics does the "Olympic ideal" represent?
Notice announcing public meeting on 1936 Olympic Games boycott
A pedestrian in New York City reads a notice announcing a public meeting, scheduled for December 3, 1935, to urge Americans to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The racist and xenophobic policies of German chancellor Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led many countries to call for a boycott of the games, arguing that participation would amount to an endorsement of Hitler's regime.
[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration] https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230486
Commentary
Author: Historian Harold J. Goldberg Description: This commentary presents a historical interpretation of the 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin and argues that the games were used as a propaganda mechanism for the Nazi regime.
Context and Things to Consider
Consider the notion of the "Olympic spirit" and the "spirit of the games." Did the 1936 undermine those values? Why or why not? Propaganda refers to information that is spread to influence public opinion regarding a specific cause or ideology. For example, a government may spread propaganda during war time to win support for the war or boost morale. Propaganda is often biased and may include disinformation or appeals to emotion rather than reason. How does the author build the case that Germany "turned the games into a propaganda showcase?" Pay close attention to the events described in the section titled "The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity." Why does the author believe the Jewish American athletes were pulled from the 4 X 100 relay team?
The 1936 Olympics were a Nazi Propaganda Showcase
In the early 1930s, enthusiasm for the Olympic Games in Europe was at a historic high. The modern Olympic Games had been held every four years since 1896, except in 1916, when they were scheduled for Berlin and canceled due to World War I. In 1932, the next Olympic Games were awarded to the Weimar Republic to celebrate Germany's new democracy, but in 1933 the republic gave way to Nazi dictatorship with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. Just as the war they started in 1939 destroyed cities, towns, villages, and people, the Nazis also ruined the Olympics held in Berlin in 1936.
A Brief History of Olympic Conflicts
The philosophy of the Olympics seeks to transcend politics and nationalism, as the world comes together to admire pure athletic skill, without concern for race, religion, or national origin. In fact, the games have frequently failed to live up to their ideals. Geopolitical crises and controversies have disrupted the games on multiple occasions, including the cancelation of the games in 1940 and 1944 due to World War II, the terrorist attack and massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972, and the U.S. boycott of the games hosted in Moscow in 1980. Among all of these flawed contests, the 1936 Olympics are still considered the most notorious for violating the spirit of the games.
Berlin, 1936: Propaganda and Discrimination
Visitors to Germany after Hitler consolidated power could not fail to see Berlin bedecked with swastika flags or hear the constant drone of Nazi propaganda on the radio. The Nazi racist agenda was clear, leading Olympic officials to debate a change of venue to another country. The fear was that the games would be spoiled by a Nazi ban on Jewish athletes and a simultaneous propaganda barrage glorifying the Nazi Party. Representatives of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) visited Germany to seek assurances that Nazi propaganda would not dominate the city and that German racial policy would not prevent athletes from participating. IOC officials were greeted by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who saw the games as a propaganda machine for the Nazis and had no reservations about lying and affirming that the games would be open to all. The IOC believed Goebbels and allowed the games to proceed in Berlin.
The result was exactly what people had feared. Nazi officials broke their pledge and refused to allow Jewish athletes to participate. Already in 1933, the German Boxing Association had expelled Erich Seelig, their light heavyweight champion, due to Jewish heritage. For the same reason, Germany's No. 1 tennis player was cut from its Davis Cup team. Likewise, Gretel Bergmann, a strong contender for a medal in the high jump, was put on the German team and then, with less than two weeks to go, was not allowed to compete. The Nazis disguised this discrimination by waiting until the American team was already on its way to Germany before they dropped her because she was Jewish. As she was the favorite for a medal, this treatment indicated that initial fears over keeping the games in Berlin were justified.
Germany turned the games into a Nazi propaganda showcase, with the Nazi flag flying from every balcony in Berlin. Hitler himself opened the games in the new Olympic Stadium on August 1, to the sound of 100,000 spectators shouting "Sieg heil" as they gave the Nazi salute. A recordsetting 49 teams paraded into the stadium; Germany had the most athletes in the stadium, with the United States bringing the secondlargest team. Interestingly, the medal count finished in that order as well: Germany won the most gold medals and the most overall medals, and the U.S. finished second in both medal categories. To complete the spectacle, the last of over 3,000 runners who carried an Olympic flame from Greece arrived to light the torch in Berlin. This Nazi innovation of having the last runner light the flame was intended to link ancient Greece with the present "Aryan" athlete.
The Role of the U.S.: Participation and Complicity
The American team experienced both triumph and selfembarrassment. Jesse Owens, the star of the American track and field team, had already won three gold medals when the coaches called a meeting just before the relay. Owens was not scheduled to participate in that event, but two Jewish Americans had qualified and were anxious to go. One of them, Marty Glickman, described what happened at the team meeting:
"The event I was supposed to run, the 400meter relay, was one of the last events in the track and field program. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial heats, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach. Robertson announced to the 7 of us that he had heard very strong rumors that the Germans were saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400meter relay. Consequently, Sam Stoller and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. We were shocked. Sam was completely stunned. He didn't say a word in the meeting. I was a brash 18yearold kid and I said 'Coach, you can't hide worldclass sprinters.' At which point, Jesse spoke up and said 'Coach, I've won my 3 gold medals [the 100, the 200, and the long jump]. I'm tired. I've had it. Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it,' said Jesse. And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said 'You'll do as you're told.'" (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936)
American coaches had caved in to the Nazi agenda. There were never any secret German runners; in reality, the American coaches had decided that winning with Jewish runners would upset the Nazis more than winning another race with Jesse Owens. Owens went home with four gold medals, while Marty Glickman never got to participate in another Olympics due to the coming war. The United States celebrated the medal victories of Owens, but this great track and field star returned to a segregated America where he could not freely choose a restaurant or hotel for his postOlympic celebration.
Despite the mixed legacy of these games, the IOC was optimistic that 1940 would see an improvement. The games were planned for Tokyo, but Japan withdrew from hosting because of its military activity in China. Immediately the 1940 Olympics were rescheduled for Helsinki, Finland, but again the games were canceled when war started in nearby Poland in 1939. With the war still in progress, there was no possibility of holding the games in 1944, so the next Olympics were finally staged in London in 1948.
During the war, the Nazis killed more than 40 Jewish Olympic athletes as they occupied European countries.
About the Author
Harold J. Goldberg is the David E. Underdown Distinguished Professor of History at Sewanee: The University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee. His published works include Daily Life in NaziOccupied Europe (Greenwood, 2019), Competing Voices from World War II in Europe: Fighting Words (Greenwood, 2010), and DDay in the Pacific: The Battle of Saipan (Indiana University Press, 2007). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229716
Quote
Author: American Committee on Fair Play in Sports Description: This quote expresses the opinion of the American Committee on Fair Play in Sports on the political implications of holding the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Date: November 15, 1935
Context and Things to Consider
The American Committee on Fair Play in Sports was assembled in the fall of 1935 to oppose U.S. participation in the 1936 Olympic Games. The committee produced publications and public service announcements intended to educate the public on the totalitarian Nazi government and its policies of racism and anti Semitism. Consider the ideals of the Olympic Games and the extent to which Germany undermined the ideals of democratic competition and sportsmanship.
American Committee on Fair Play in Sports: quote on the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Sport is prostituted when sport loses its independent and democratic character and becomes a political institution … Nazi Germany is endeavouring to use the Eleventh Olympiad to serve the necessities and interests of the Nazi Regime rather than the Olympic ideals.
–American Committee on Fair Play in Sports (November 15, 1935). https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2229811
Reference
Author: ABCCLIO Description: This reference article discusses goldmedalist sprinter Jesse Owens's participation in the 1936 Olympic Games, including his attitude toward Adolf Hitler as he readied for one of his races.
Context and Things to Consider
African American sprinter Owens became the first athlete in the history of the modern Olympic Games to win four gold medals in a single year. Owens's feat was celebrated by opponents of Hitler's regime as an embarrassing rebuke of Hitler's theories of Aryan racial supremacy. Consider the mindset of Owens as he readied for the 100meter finals heat and the laserfocus required of Olympic athletes. What does Owens's comment suggest about his views on Hitler? Evaluate Owens's comment in relation to the other sources. How does it illustrate the desire to reflect the ideals of the Olympic Games?
Jesse Owens: "Why Worry about Hitler?" (1936)
Jesse Owens was an African American track and field athlete. During the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, he became a national hero for defeating Adolf Hitler's Aryan athletes in a series of athletic contests.
In 1936, just a few years after Hitler rose to power in Germany, the Summer Olympic Games were held in Berlin, the nation's capital. Hitler believed in an Aryan "master race," an allegedly pure Germanic/Nordic race of people who were, according to Hitler, racially, physically, and intellectually above "lesser" peoples. The Aryan ideal was a Nordic type—tall, with blond hair and blue eyes.
Owens became the star of the 1936 Games, winning a total of four gold medals, including a world recordtying performance in the 100meter dash. Reflecting on this race, Owens discussed its personal significance and his state of focus despite the political implications of competing in Nazi Germany:
When I lined up in my lane for the finals of the 100 meters . . . I thought of all the years of practice and competition, of all who had believed in me, and of my state and university [Ohio, and the Ohio State University.]
I saw the finish line, and knew that 10 seconds would climax the work of eight years. One mistake could ruin those eight years. So, why worry about Hitler?
Hitler did not approve of Black athletes participating in the Games. By 1936, his views on the superiority of the Aryan race were known around the world, though Germany made an effort to obscure its antiSemitic policies as host of the Games. As someone who did not fit Hitler's ideal, Owens's victory in the 1936 Olympics was widely considered to be a refutation of the dictator's racist worldview and an embarrassment for the Nazi regime.
Mark Strong https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
Entry ID: 2230575
COPYRIGHT 2021 ABCCLIO, LLC https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2253337
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Name Name Class Class
Was Aaron Burr a Traitor? U.S. Participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympics Collect Compare and Organize and Contrast Information
Present your own argument claiming whether or not Aaron Burr was a traitor Inquiry Question The U.S. decision to take part in the 1936 Olympics, which took place in to the U.S. Berlin at the time of Nazi leadership, was a controversial issue that divided participating athletes, administrative organizations, and the American public itself; especially since the country was dealing with its own problems of Inquiry Question racism during the era of Jim Crow laws. Use information collected from the Type 2-col, 1 row table provided sources and analyze your findings to explain the arguments Headings Cporelusmennt eHde bayd ibnogtsh: sEivdiedse:n tcheo: sGeu wilthyo, Efveildt ethnec eU:. ISn.n sohcoeunldt. compete in the games, and those who felt the nation should boycott. Other Notes there's too much evidence on either side for the #7 layout to cover it all
Arguments against TyArgumentspe T aforble-2 xParticipation1 Participation Headings Column Headers: Arguments for Participation, Arguments against Participation
Other Notes
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Name Name Class Class
What were the arguments for and against U.S. participation in the 1936 Inquiry Question Olympics?
Response
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