International Turmoil and the Olympic Games
August 1936 - Lighting the Olympic Flame
The 2021 Summer Olympics kicked off on July 23rd in Tokyo (a holdover from 2020 and remain branded as the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games). The events have been held without public spectators due to the on-going effects of the international pandemic. The controversies surrounding the games extend beyond safety precautions and reflect the tangled connection between politics and international sporting events embedded in Olympic history. Even in 2021, Imperialist echoes led to controversy over the use of Japan’s rising sun flag, the IOC has banned political protest by athletes, and concerns were sparked on social media due to the displacement of the poorest among Tokyo’s citizens in building the Olympic stadium. [LM1] The games, however, are no stranger to political turmoil during international competition.
In 1936, Hitler and the Nazi government inherited the Olympic games from the Weimar Republic and used them to promote their anti-Semitic, racist, and totalitarian regime. The games were to be a display of Aryan superiority to the world. Political emissaries from other nations raised concerns over Nazi treatment of Jewish citizens and the removal of Jewish athletes from the games. The Nazi government tried to quell concerns by removing all public displays of anti-Semitism and instructing the nation to welcome all visitors to the games.
Discussions of boycotts were prevalent in many nations, including the United States, which at the time was facing its own issues with racism and anti-Semitism. Some athletes, such as hurdler Milton Green, refused to participate in the games as a demonstration against the Nazi regime and Hitler. Others made the journey to Berlin to prove Hitler and the idea of Aryan superiority wrong.
One of the most well-known elements of the Olympic games is the lighting of the torch and the relay to get the flame to its intended destination. This tradition is a product of the Nazi propaganda machine under the direction of Joseph Goebbels and the first torch was created by Krupp steel, which supplied the Nazi regime with weapons in violation of the Versailles Treaty. [LM2]
Today, some of the most well-known events of the 1936 Berlin Olympics include African American runners Jesse Owens and John Woodruff winning a combined five gold medals. Woodruff would later explain, "There was very definitely a special feeling in winning the gold medal and being a black man. We destroyed [Hitler's] master race theory whenever we started winning those gold medals."[i] For many Jewish athletes in Germany, they never got their chance to compete at the highest level in their sport either. Margaret Bergmann-Lambert was Germany’s top high jumper and was invited to participate in the games to avoid a potential boycott but was dismissed two weeks prior to competition. Years later she recalled "I would have been a loser either way, because had I won, there would have been such an insult against the German psyche: 'How can a Jew be good enough to win the Olympics?' And had I lost, I would have been made as a joke: 'See. We knew the Jew couldn't do this.”[ii]
Our collective memories hold onto the idea of Owens, and other athletes, winning in the face of Hitler’s theories of the master race during the 1936 Olympics. Those anecdotes, however, are not the entire story. The overt display of hostility ceased during the games and the stories that returned with athletes were those of a welcome and peaceful nation. The Nazi government won support from the international community after the games and were invited to host the 1940 Olympics by the IOC, but these games would not take place.
In 1939, Germany invade Poland igniting the second World War and the solidifying Hitler’s control over much of Europe. The face of a nation had masked the brutality and violence that was building in Germany under the Nazi government. It was a mask that the world took as true and ignored the growing isolation and hostility toward groups that were deemed inferior by Hitler. Among the millions of the people that were killed in the Holocaust, 11 were athletes from the 1936 games. The spirit of the Olympics is to bring the international sports community together in a display of competition and camaraderie, but they are never without controversy. The injustices that are highlighted when you bring the world together cannot be ignored or explained away in the name of competition. Sports and politics have been weaved together throughout history and it is important to remember the power of our collective voices to recognize and fight injustice when we come together on an international stage.
[i] Historical research and quotes U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum website
[ii] U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum website