The Nazi Olympics

“Besides being a success, the 1936 Olympics were also a vast razzle-dazzle that blurred the outlines of a threat to Western Civilization”.

1936. The Nazis control Germany.

And the Olympic Games are coming to Berlin.

The Olympic Games of 1936 were an important episode in the development of Nazi Germany.

Much of the success of the 1936 Olympics was due to the pursuit by the Nazis of supremacy in mass pageantry.

Richard D. Mandell has written a brilliant and chilling expose of the most bizarre festival in the history of sports.

Tracing the modern Olympics from their modest beginnings to their ironic climax in Berlin in 1936, he describes the staging of a fantasy-drama that was, in essence, a superbly engineered piece of Nazi “realpolitik”.

Over 5,000 athletes from 28 nations fought as political gladiators. Hundreds of pampered foreigners, journalists, businessmen, and diplomats abandoned themselves — and their judgment — to the extravaganza.

Even Jew-baiting was temporarily halted.

The athletes became de-individualized “acolytes of a special kind of temple prostitution”.

Black, beautiful, and innocent Jesse Owens

Helen Stephens, “the fastest woman in the world”

Kitei Son, a Korean running the marathon under the hated Japanese flag

The statuesque, half-Jewish fencing champion, Helene Mayer, who became a “cause célèbre” by competing under the swastika.

Have many people fully understood the grim lessons of 1936? Richard Mandell opens The Nazi Olympics to public scrutiny.

Richard D. Mandell (1929-2013) was a professor of history at the University of South Carolina. He was also the author of Sport: A Cultural History, The First Modern Olympics. and The Nazi Olympics