would signal the beginning of the games, but this act of pageantry was just one
of many highly choreographed set pieces which made up the opening ceremony.

The opening ceremony
is the first Olympic opening ceremony of modern time.

Jimmy was very excited.

We stood beside Germans and I think one has to say
they were all impressed in various ways.

On August 1st, the last relay teams sprint into Berlin
and into the 325-acre Reich Sports Field.

An overflow crowd of 105,000 people stood
at attention for the historic moment.

It really invented Olympic ritual
for all time to come.

It is full of artillery fire.

It is full of Nazi flags
and Olympic flags put together.

Swastikas everywhere.

Yes, they’re carrying the swastikas
around the arena it made a very different impression,
actually.

You have the marches of the teams,
you have the great entry of Hitler, and then finally,
you have the arrival of the Olympic torch.

The Nazis, of course,
understood the power of silence as well as the power of noise.

The lithe athlete charges
through the stadium amongst the steps, and then suddenly he pauses
before he lights the flame.

That pause is quite extraordinary.

They released 20,000 pigeons into the air.

All well and good until bang, there’s this great big artillery barrage
goes out at the same time.

Net result, pigeons get frightened, frightened pigeons
do what frightened pigeons do.

The heads and hair of the American team
largely are splattered in guano.

It is highly comic moment, and it shows that underneath
all the sophisticated pageantry, things aren’t entirely brilliant.

It is an absolutely huge, deafening event, and it’s all about one man, Adolf Hitler.

He is at the epicenter
of these games at the ceremony, and he will be for the next two weeks.

The astonishing thing was, you realize right away
that Hitler had this lot in his hand.

After the euphoria
of the opening ceremony, the competition would finally commence.

Yet it would be a competition
that would be missed by many Jewish athletes.

Margaret Lambert
had managed to escape the persecution and relocate to England in April 1933, but was ordered by the Nazi Party
to move back to Germany in a bid to highlight
their liberal attitude.

Refusal would jeopardize
her family’s safety.

Reluctantly, she moved back,
and in a Pre-Olympic competition, she equaled the German record
of jumping 1 meter 60 centimeters.

Just two weeks
before the start of the games, Margaret
was stripped of all her achievements and was told
she would not be participating.

There were only two people,
instead of three because I was supposed
to be the third one, and they claimed that I was injured
and I couldn’t compete.

They wouldn’t let me.

I was cursing my head off.

I mean, I never got to Berlin.

I was in Laupheim
and I was the big shot.

Well, they did tell me.

They sent out an official letter,
“Sorry you didn’t make it,” “but you can have
a standing room ticket” “which I did not accept.

” Margaret’s replacement in the German team
was an athlete named Dora Rankin, who only managed to jump 1 meter
58 centimeters, finishing fourth.

In 1939, after complaints
from other athletes, Dora was found to be working as a waiter
under the name of Hermann.

An investigation was launched
and it was found that Rankin was male.

Olympic games have begun.

The best athletes in the world
have come to Berlin.

Although highlighted by their absence, the persecution
of Jewish athletes was eclipsed by the presence of Jesse Owens.

When he stepped into the arena,
the anticipation was palpable.

I saw him win all four of his events.

The title of World’s Fastest Man,
goes to the 100-meter Olympic champion.

If he won the 100-meter dash, it almost wouldn’t matter
what happened in the others.

He powered through the competition and won the gold medal
without having to work for it too hard.

The 200-meter dash
was an even easier competition for Jesse.

The silver medalist,
Mack Robinson from the U.

S.

wasn’t close.

Nobody could touch him at 200 meters.

Owens made a huge impact.

The major realized
that this Aryan superiority maybe wasn’t quite what it seemed to be.

With two gold medals won,
the third gold seemed a mere formality.

Jesse, however, would run into difficulty
during the heats of the long jump, the conclusion of which would be the start
of an unlikely friendship that would go down in Olympic history.

Jesse was close
to fouling out of the competition.

You get three attempts
in the preliminary round, and he had misunderstood
the European rules.

He’d overshot the mark
he had fouled on his second attempt.

Now Jesse Owens, who is the world record holder
in the broad jump, is this close
to being out of the competition, and his most formidable opponent takes it
upon himself to offer some advice.

According to the story,
Luz Long goes over to him and says, “Take your towel, put it half a foot back,
jump from where your towel is,” “and then you’re still going to qualify,” “even if you jump two meters
behind the board.

” Jesse does this, qualifies, and then goes on
to beat Luz Long in the final.

Luz Long was very disappointed,
and nobody left that stadium.

and didn’t think
are there others like this guy.

The long jump secured Owens
his third gold medal.

He’d won all his events with ease.

A twist of fate would offer Jesse
the chance to compete for a fourth gold medal.

There was a certain anxiety
around the American team as to who they should pick
for their 4 by 100-meter relay.

Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe
replaced Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman.

Speculation ensued
as to whether the move was anti-Semitic, as both Stoller and Glickman were Jewish, but the fact remained
that Owens and Metcalf were the stronger athletes.

The relay team went on to win
and set a new world record.

Jesse Owens had four gold medals.

This single-handedly crushed Hitler’s myth
of Aryan supremacy.

One of the great stories
everybody knows from all my school days is how Hitler snubbed Jesse Owens and how Jesse Owens
stuck two fingers up at the Nazis and their racial theories.

This is an enormous myth.

Hitler began the Olympics
shaking quite a lot of hands, but was advised that what he should do is restrict
this probably just to German athletes.

It had to be either everybody or nobody.

In fact, Owens always claimed
that Hitler waved at him.

We shall never know the truth, but it’s certainly
not true that he stormed out.

Hitler had a right to run.

He couldn’t be there the whole time,
he had to go and do his pure-aring for the rest of the day.

The Olympic Games could not
have been going better for Hitler.

Despite the success of Jesse Owens,
Germany were leading the medal table.

However, it was not just German sporting
endeavor that was being showcased.

They also gave the opportunity
for the regime to show off their expertise
in technology and militaristic venture.

Spectators were enraptured by the games.

Ritualistic ceremony, coupled with the greatest
athletic pursuit, was so intoxicating
that all the debates of Nazi oppression were momentarily forgotten.

The Nazi regime
capitalized on this feeling by a constant stream
of receptions and galas that orbited the main attraction, making sure it was not just Germany’s
sporting prowess on display, but the entire breadth
of German enterprise.

Although attended
by many figures from around the world representing the wider political spectrum,
these events attracted many fascists eager to ingratiate themselves
with the Third Reich.

It was seen by politicians, diplomats, and statesmen
around the world to have a get-together, and the Nazis knew this all too well.

All of the penitents of the Reich held magnificent lavish dinners
and ceremonies.

Reich Marshal Goering topping them all with the production of a complete funfair
later on in the evening.

There are also a lot of links
being made between fascists such as Oswald Mosley
in the form of his about-to-be wife, going to see Goebbels asking
for the British Union of Fascists to have lots of money.

This is going on during the Berlin Games.

When Jesse Owens is winning medals, you’ve got British fascists trying
to forge links with the Germans at the same time.

All sorts of things
going on in the background.

As the global far-right mixed
in the melting pot of German fascism, Hitler and Goebbels
made sure the world’s press were reporting what was planned.

Global media outlets
were treated like VIPs and were given free access
to the pioneering communication technology which Germany had developed.

The games were also the subject
of the first live television broadcast.

Although quality was low, this would dictate
how future Olympics would be consumed.

The reporting in Germany
was totally controlled.

The reporting out of Germany
was controlled differently.

Hitler bribed the international
journalistic cadre by treating them terribly well by using what Berliners
called butter propaganda because butter was in short supply,
but they got all they needed.

The games gave some very good press
to the Nazis globally.

They built six huge
international transmitters, giving journalists
incredible amount of access.

They didn’t see the concentration camps.

They didn’t hear from people whose parents
had been locked up for their race.

They were blinded by the magnificence
of the ceremony, the ritual, and the outside splendor
of the Olympic Stadium itself.

What Germany was doing
was advertising itself as a technopolis, the global leader
in technology in organization, the herald of a new form of efficient
human civilization, a kind of prototype,
and people were taken in.

Technological advancement
meant the news coverage coming out of Germany traveled fast, and the actions
of the German Jewish fencer Helena Meyer would quickly spread
and enrage the global Jewish population.

So controversial was her action that its motive and meaning
is still debated to this day.

She was a star fencer,
but because her father was Jewish, she was drummed
out of her local fencing club and not allowed to compete.

In Hitler’s eyes, she looks the absolute,
athletic, Nordic Aryan business.

Meyer was training now in another country.

She was in California, but she was summoned back to Germany
by the implicit threat to her family.

Meyer was beaten
by the Hungarian fencer Ilona Elek, and she had to settle for silver.

It would be her actions on the podium that would cement
her place in Olympic history.

She was on the podium
with the other medalists, and she did give the Nazi salute, though perhaps
in a slightly hesitating manner.

She was never forgiven
by the Jewish community.

I think the real explanation is that she was terrified
about her family, still in Germany, and made this ostentatious gesture
of regime ingratiation, sacrificing her moral scruples
to that end because of the terror.

The closing day ceremonies found
the Olympic flame for untold centuries, the symbol of international peace
being extinguished.

Germany led the medal table
as the games came to a close.

The Olympics were the success
of the Nazi regime, but it would not take long
for the tyranny to return.

Captain Wolfgang Forstner, the commandant of the Olympic Village,
was the first to fall victim.

A brilliant young army captain
and a very good administrator.

However, during the arrangements it was discovered
that he was partly Jewish.

It was quite clear
that he couldn’t continue his meteoric rise in the German army.

He was one of these people
who can envisage no other life than outside the army.

Forstner shot himself on August 19, 1936, just three days
after the end of the Olympics.

The Nazis, of course,
said this was a car accident.

They’re very good at that.

The false flowers and so forth.

The false tears.

It’s what you did as a Nazi.

You had a false face.

For Margaret Lambert, like all the Jews of Germany,
life would become increasingly unbearable.

I had a friend that lived next door to me,
and she ate more meals in our house, than in her own house,
and she wouldn’t talk to me anymore.

Years later,
I would meet her outside my house and she started to talk to me.

I said to her, “You know what, Maya?
You go to hell.

” That was, to me, salvation.

In 1937, Margaret
managed to emigrate to New York and married a German Jewish doctor,
Bruno Lambert.

Recognition for her achievements
would come in 1999, when the stadium in Laupheim,
from where she’d been banned, was renamed after her.

I left Germany,
and I didn’t want to know of anything.

The people that I was fighting with,
I said, “Go to hell.

” It was a tough life, very tough.

However, I’m a tough lady.

Not all Jewish athletes, however, were lucky enough to be able
to find refuge in other countries.

Lilli Henoch was a Jewish shot putter
and discus thrower.

She remained in Germany
throughout the 1930s, and in 1942, was taken with her mother
to German-occupied Latvia and interned in a ghetto.

They were one of many Jewish athletes
who were victims of the Holocaust, and they were taken out
of the ghetto at a certain moment, and they were killed
in a mass shooting operation that was organised by the SS.

If you happened to be Jewish, you were to be killed
as part of the Final Solution to the Jewish question.

The games of the 11th Olympiad
would bring diametrically opposed fates for both Jesse Owens and Avery Brundage.

In an aim to exploit
promised sponsorship deals, Owens was stripped
of his amateur athletic status by Brundage even before stepping back on U.

S.

soil.

The superstar of the games
returned to the U.

S.

and enjoyed a hero’s welcome, but none of the sponsorship deals
amounted to anything, as America’s own discrimination
at the time, seemed blind
to Owens remarkable achievement.

He was forced to earn a living by taking any employment opportunity
that came to him.

Brundage, on the other hand,
returned home with the Commission for the construction
of the German Embassy in Washington and would also go on to become the chairman
of the International Olympic Committee.

For Adolf Hitler, there was no uncertainty
about the fate of the Olympics.

It may have taken Goebbels
to convince him of their potential, but once the games were over,
he was in no doubt about their importance.

His plans for subsequent games
were monumental.

Hitler was dissatisfied with the scope
and the scale of the Berlin stadium.

It wasn’t big enough,
it wasn’t grand enough, and it wasn’t what he wanted entirely.

His plan was to build a stadium
that would seat 400,000 people.

He had a discussion
with his favorite architect, Albert Speer, about this.

Speer pointed out that the kind of stadium
that Hitler had in mind was not going to be allowed
by Olympic rules.

The track dimensions weren’t correct.

They’re not the right
Olympic measurements, and Hitler says, “Worry not about that
because when we rule the world,” “we will be able to rule the Olympics
and determine what the new measurements” “are going to be.

” The Olympics were going
to be German forevermore, because it was going
to be a thousand-year Reich.

It was going
to have a hegemony of all the world.

The Olympics
would be forever after German, despite their Greek and, indeed,
English and even French paternity.

World War II stopped any chance
of a thousand years of Nazi-run Olympics.

However, the overt and aggressive tactics
of mixing sport and politics seems to have been adopted
by all subsequent games.

Governing sporting bodies
such as the IOC and FIFA go to great lengths to insist sport is
and should always be separate to politics.

However, looking at the spectacle
and ceremony of Hitler’s Olympics, it’s clear to see
that today’s sporting events are their direct descendants.

In many ways, the Nazi Olympics are the father of the Olympics
that we have today.

They were the first truly modern games.

The packaging, the organizing, the efficiency with the underlying aim
of the projection of nationhood and the myths of nationhood.

Well, that has become
the paradigm ever since.

Unsurprisingly, those innovations
were incorporated and sustained.

If you were in Beijing
in the Bird’s Nest in 2008, if you were in London in 2012, and you’d been in Berlin in 1936,
it would all seem very recognizable.

It is a vehicle
for the projection of national glory.

It has become what Hitler
intended it to be.

It is his Olympics.

 

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