In 1931, the city of Berlin was awarded the auspicious task
of hosting the 1936 Summer Olympic Games.

What no one could have predicted was that these games
would be used as a tool for some of the slickest propaganda by one of the most tyrannical regimes
the world has ever seen.

By the early 1930s
and before Hitler came to power, the world was very willing to help try
and embrace Germany once again.

The idea was that the Olympics
would bring people together.

Propaganda for the Nazis
was not just an instrument of governing.

It was the air they breathed.

It was the medium of governance.

From the moment
the Nazi Party assumed power in Germany, a systematic persecution
of Jews took place, and no exception was made.

The persecution would stop, but only
for the two-week duration of the games, whilst the eyes of the world
focused on Berlin.

What happens
is what’s called an Olympic pause, in which Berlin is cleaned up.

Anti-Jewish signs were removed, everything was done
to create the impression that this was a hospitable environment.

Such a policy was not necessarily
that inimicable to many of the visitors who shared the same prejudices
as the Nazis.

The African American athlete Jesse Owens
would make Olympic history there.

He would win four gold medals and become the most popular man
in Nazi Germany at the time.

Germany went wild for the Americans
and it went particularly wild for Owens.

He was described by almost everyone
who saw him as beautiful.

His form was flawless,
as smooth as the West Wing.

It would be the first time a host nation
would project its political ideology and power onto the world.

This stunning act of propaganda
would be emulated by all subsequent Olympics.

It was an operatic production,
lavish in scale.

It invented the Olympic ritual
for all time to come.

The five Olympic rings
being held by the talons of the German Nazi eagle.

Never could you have a more obviously
symbolic depiction of the German and Nazi
hold on the Olympic movement.

The 1936 Olympic Games
gave the world theater, pageantry, and excitement,
all under the banner of the swastika.

This was Hitler’s Olympics.

World War I had left Germany
a ravaged nation.

It was shut out by the rest of Europe and its economic
and political situation was in tatters.

The people were broken and a whole generation of men
had effectively been wiped out.

Germany in the 1920s
was in a lot of turmoil.

There was a revolution.

There was fighting in the street
between left and right.

Germany was in a parlous mess, frankly.

Of course, there was a huge amount
of war reparations that Germany was made to pay for,
the Treaty of Versailles, and this fundamentally crippled
the German economy.

The Weimar Republic operated
without a full mandate from the people.

There was a lot of dissatisfaction
with the economic situation.

Then, of course, the great inflation
and the final hammer blow, which was the Wall Street crash, which of course, created unemployment
of about seven million in Germany.

Suddenly, even the most gilt
edged securities are practically valueless.

The stock market crash has come
and the Great Depression has begun.

The ranks of the unemployed grew.

There were long lines for soup kitchens.

A lot of Germans
were in despair about the future.

It was a very difficult period.

The anti-German sentiment
was widespread throughout Europe from the fallout of World War I.

This was manifest in the banning
of German participation in the 1924 Olympic Games,
which were held in Paris.

The man who had the ultimate power
to sanction this ban was Pierre de Coubertin, the founder
of the modern Olympic Movement.

It was his idea in the late 19th century, to bring about a recrudescence
of this old idea of the Olympic Games.

They were founded on the idea that they would foster
international goodwill.

Until then, the only thing like it
had been the Olympik, with a K, games up in Shropshire,
a place called Much Wenlock.

He was also very much a massive fan
of the English public school system, and he sought that sort of Anglo-Saxon
kind of white way of doing things was the correct way
to approach sport as improving the soul.

The spirit of bringing people together was the catalyst
for Berlin winning the Olympic bid.

The games were awarded to Berlin in 1931.

However, they were first awarded
to Berlin in 1912, to be held in 1914.

Even though at the time it was felt,
as in ancient Greece, the Olympics would continue despite
the fact that countries are at war.

The invention of mustard gas
and so on and so forth put paid to this idea of a civilized war.

There was a great chance
of rehabilitating Germany into the community of nations
and civilizing it, taming it, and giving it something to be pleased
about after all the years of horror.

One of the key figures
for securing the Olympic Games for Berlin was a German sports official,
Dr.

Theodor Lewald.

He would become the chairman
of the organising committee for the games, a position that would soon
be dramatically compromised.

Theodor Lewald was a pillar
of the German sports community.

He was a very capable administrator,
and he was well known, because going all the way back
to the 1904 Olympics in Saint Louis, he had been a representative of Germany.

He was someone well-respected
in the international Olympic community.

He’s a tremendously powerful figure
in German sport, and it’s him and his protege, Carl Diem, who are successful
in lobbying the Olympic movement to get the Olympics to Berlin.

He was a member
of the International Olympic Committee, and they wanted to give the games back,
in a sense, to Lewald, and that’s one reason
why they chose Berlin as the host city in 1931.

However, Lewald has a problem that will manifest
when Hitler comes to power, and that’s the fact
that his maternal grandmother was Jewish.

His father had become
a practicing Christian 110 years earlier.

Obviously,
he dated from the Weimar regime, but he was in a particularly
invidious position because, of course, he was under enormous pressure
from the Nazis.

Lewald had secured the Olympics
for Weimar Germany.

The rise of the National Socialist Party
was sudden.

Although many Germans supported them, the Nazi regime capitalized
on a nation that seemed weary of politics.

In early 1930s Germany, I think the key issue
was not so much that everyone was a Nazi.

They never got a majority of votes, but that everyone had ceased
to believe in democracy.

Society was split between right
and left with no center anymore.

Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor
of Germany in January 1933.

He was not elected to office, but he quickly worked
to assume greater powers.

The Enabling Act
is a key piece of legislation.

It cements Hitler’s power
into this absolutely dominant position.

Hitler had the country
and with it the Olympics.

However, he did not view the games
in an altogether favorable light, and he would require some persuasion
in order for the games to go ahead.

The modern Olympic Games, founded on the idea that they would foster
international goodwill, and this was about
as diametrically opposed to the ultranationalist Nazis
as you could get.

Goebbels saw it clearly
straight from the start.

He was in no doubt at all.

You merely pointed out
the propaganda potential.

Goebbels and Hitler
were visiting the Olympic Stadium.

Goebbels was able to show him this is going
to be a fantastic arena to celebrate.

That is going to just do so much
for our prestige.

Hitler suddenly saw,
in a flash of clarity, what actually could be achieved
for Germany, for its international reputation,
for its projection, and its diplomacy
if it did indeed host the Olympics.

It was the Nazis and Germany in 1936
who saw it for the first time.

The Berlin Olympics had been hijacked.

With Hitler’s backing, the Olympics,
like every other aspect of German life, would be nazi-fied.

As the world looked on
at the injustices of this regime, the Olympic values of friendship
and respect would be used as a false facade for a terrifying,
sinister, and deadly cause.

After World War I, Germany was ostracized
from the rest of Europe, but in 1931, the International Olympic Committee
reached out to a name, Berlin, as the host nation
for the 1936 Summer Games.

The Germany to which the games
were bestowed would, however, be very different to the Germany
that would end up hosting them.

Once the Nazi Party
had assumed power in March 1933, their anti-Semitic rhetoric
was put into action.

All books of Jewish authors
are ordered burned in the public squares.

Authors, scientists,
artists are driven from Germany.

Soon after Hitler took power, Jews began to be excluded
from many different areas of German life, and this included sports.

With the Nuremberg Laws, which were 1935,
Jews became non-citizens of Germany.

It’s as simple as that, but specifically, they banned Jewish athletes
from all sports clubs and forced them
into the Jewish sports organization.

They could no longer
do sports training with non-Jews.

If you’re not Aryan,
you’re to be excluded from sports.

Grotesque anti-Semitism, which totally flies
in the idea of the Olympic movement, which suggests
that all sportsmen and women should have an equal chance to compete.

Clearly, the Jews of Germany did not.

Many German sportsmen
and women at the time were Jews, and all found that their professional
and personal lives were being affected by the persecution of the Nazis.

One of these athletes
was Margaret Lambert.

She was born Gretel Bergman in 1914,
in Laupheim, southern Germany.

She was a promising young athlete and would go on
to become Germany’s leading high jumper.

It was beautiful there.

Everybody knew everybody else and everybody was friendly
with everybody else.

We had friends all over the place.

There was really no difference
between Jews and non-Jews, we’re all friends.

I just loved sports.

I did everything.

My parents were a little bit upset
about my sports career.

I was one of the few Jewish kids
who had a life in sports.

At 18 years old,
Margaret would witness the Nazi Party, assuming power in Germany.

When the Nazis came in,
it wasn’t any fun, I can tell you.

When I met my friends, no hello.

They passed me by.

They came to the house
at about 11:00 at night to visit us because they were not supposed
to see us.

We were excluded immediately.

I had friends who were Irish.

I had friends who were Jewish.

I had friends all over the place,
and all of a sudden, they were not allowed
to talk to us anymore.

We were upstairs in our house,
and downstairs, the dancers were marching
and singing about killing the Jews.

That wasn’t very pleasant.

As Margaret found her life
changed beyond recognition, the Olympics loomed on the horizon.

Athletic groups and political parties
in many different countries started questioning
whether it would be morally right to compete in the Olympics
in a Germany under Nazi rule.

The United States of America was pivotal in whether the games
would go ahead or not.

If the country with the strongest, fastest, most successful athletes
were not going to show, then the games
would not be worth putting on.

The fate of the games
would rest on the arguments of two men.

In the United States, you have a figure called Avery Brundage
of the American Olympic Committee.

He sees a lot in the Nazi creed that he sees well as marrying
into his own personal philosophies as a self-made millionaire in Chicago.

A kid with nothing who turned himself
into an Olympic athlete and a millionaire construction magnate.

Brundage is not
on the American Olympic Committee.

He’s also a member of the AAU,
the American Athletics Union.

He then decides to resign, passes over leadership to a man
called Judge Jeremiah Mahoney, who is passionately anti-Nazi.

Jeremiah T.

Mahoney
was a New York Athletic Club guy, and he was particularly concerned
not only about the Jews, but about the anti-Christian policies.

He saw the issue
with astonishing moral clarity that this would be to legitimize
the most appalling tyranny.

In a bid to convince the U.

S.

to participate, Avery Brundage was invited to Berlin
in 1934 on a fact-finding mission to investigate
the treatment of Jewish athletes.

It was a very tightly
controlled inspection.

His purpose was to see if there was discrimination
against Jewish athletes or Olympic fair play was in place.

The Germans wheeled out a couple
of very pliable Jewish athletes to say that everything
was going well for them.

This was complete nonsense.

The Third Reich was marvelous
at laying out the carpet.

Reich Marshal Goering
was amazingly charming.

Hitler could, from time to time,
listen politely.

Brundage had no desire
to come back to the United States and create any difficulties
for the Germans.

The decision was made in December of 1935.

You had these Brundageites
who said, “Germany’s not so bad.

” You also had most of the athletes,
including the African American athletes, who said, “How can you ask us
not to go to Germany” “because
of the way they’re treating Jews,” “when we’re treated,
the way we’re treated here in the U.

S.

?” They had a point.

Brundage was successful, and with the inclusion of America,
the rest of the world followed.

The games would go ahead, and as the U.

S.

team would prepare to make
the voyage from New York to Berlin, Hitler and Goebbels made preparations for welcoming the globe
to a liberal Nazi Germany.

Berlin’s parks and playgrounds
are filled with groups of plain, cheerful people
who show no signs of dissatisfaction with the fascist dictatorship
that controls their lives.

What happens
largely under Goebbel’s stewardship is what’s called an Olympic pause.

Anti-Jewish signs
were removed from any streets or anywhere close to Olympic venues.

Shops have to be let out
at a very cheap rate in order to show
that there is a thriving economy.

Everybody on certain streets in Berlin is forced to hang up
either a swastika flag or an Olympic flag.

Everywhere is whitewashed
along the train lines, from lines going
through Germany to Berlin.

All the houses that back
onto the train lines have to be repainted to show that everything’s spick and span
and all very rich and tidy.

There was this big tidy-up
of buildings and people.

During the big cleanup in Germany, the world’s greatest athletes
would be journeying to Berlin and following them
would be a hungry press, hopeful politicians
and excited spectators.

On July the 15th, the U.

S.

team set sail from New York Harbor
on the S.

S.

Manhattan.

They left a fanfare and cheers
and would be met in Berlin with the same.

It was very much the Olympic grandees
in first class and the athletes in steerage,
but apparently everybody had a good time.

It took nearly ten days to reach Berlin.

You have these super fit, young, and very beautiful people
together for ten days.

There was a certain amount of scandal.

We do know that Eleanor Holm was one
of these athletes who, maddeningly, could just smoke and drink all night
and then win gold medals the next day.

She had been flirting ostentatiously and ingratiating
with the first-class passengers, getting frightfully drunk and ignoring every warning
and every Olympian ideal.

Avery Brundage hated that
and booted her off the team.

What’s also remarkable is that the American Olympic athletes
weren’t segregated.

For the first time,
you have a lot of white athletes, especially from the South, who’ve never actually shared a meal
with a black person before, gone to the same lavatory,
or shared the same sort of dorm.

What’s very interesting
is that there was no problem with that.

On their way
to the Olympic Games in Berlin, on the U.

S.

S.

Manhattan
are the best of American athletes.

On deck, Glenn Cunningham and Jesse Owens
anticipate stiff competition in this greatest of all sports events.

The U.

S.

team was a collection
of world-class athletes.

Many would be favorites
for podium finishes.

One athlete who the entire world
would be eager to watch was Jesse Owens.

Many thought he would go on
to win three gold medals, but very few thought
he would surpass that.

Jesse Owens was born
in rural Alabama in 1913.

His father was a sharecropper.

His grandparents had been slaves.

He came from the most humble
beginnings imaginable.

Certainly,
people were aware of Jesse Owens wherever people were running and jumping
because he was breaking world records.

Particularly among
his fellow African Americans, he was a great hope.

Blacks could not play
in the baseball major leagues.

Blacks could not play
in the National Football League.

There had not been a Black
heavyweight champion since 1915.

Therefore, he was someone that,
in particular, the African American community
pinned a lot of its hopes on.

As athletes began to arrive
from all over the globe, so did many spectators.

Eric Brown was a 17-year-old boy
at the time when his father, a former Air Force pilot, received an invitation from Germany
for previous combatants to attend the games.

Eric and his father made the decision
to see this once in a lifetime spectacle.

We were welcomed.

I must say enthusiastically.

It was a great sight because,
being a young man, I loved the razzmatazz.

It was not a quiet event by any means.

Berlin’s stage was set, and the next two weeks would be a festival
of athletic and sporting prowess.

Under Hitler’s supervision, spectators would witness men and women
performing faster, higher, and stronger than ever before.

The advanced technology
that Germany had been developing made sure that this high-drama
would be played out to the globe.

The 11th Olympiad was almost underway.

Boycott movements had come to nothing.

A planned People’s Olympics, due to be held in Barcelona
as a protest to the Berlin Games, had to be canceled due to the outbreak
of the Spanish Civil War.

For two weeks,
all eyes would be on Germany as the world’s greatest athletes
and scores of excited spectators travelled to the Olympic Stadium
to attend the opening ceremony.

The Olympic flame
was making the final leg of its journey from Olympia in Greece to Berlin.

The Berlin Games, I think in many ways represent
the beginning of the Olympic Games as we now see them.

The torch relay
was invented for these games.

It’s invented by the Nazis, but they give the impression
that it’s an ancient Greek thing that always happened.

It shows the element
of complete imagining and fantasy.

The presentation of Greece
is the seed of Germanic civilization.

It works very well, frankly.

That’s why people do it still today.

However, the irony about the Olympic torch
is that it’s made out of Krupp steel.

That same steel is going to go south
in about four years time, as German steel tanks made by Krupp
invade the Balkans and Greece.

It’s, in many ways, a reverse prophecy
of what’s going to happen.

Crowds lined the streets
of Berlin to witness the arrival of Hitler and his dramatic entry into the stadium.

The lighting of the Olympic flame

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