The 1936 Berlin Olympics Race Power And Sportswashing

When Adolf Hitler hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, he used the Games to rally political support in Germany and abroad for his white supremacist worldview. In doing so, Hitler not only ruptured the myth that politics and sports do not mix, but he also initiated the first major instance of sportswashing: hosting a sports mega-event to launder one’s stained reputation on the world stage. The 1936 Berlin Olympics: Race, Power, and Sportswashing situates these controversial Games in the longer political history of the Olympics and examines the behind-the-scenes machinations that led to the International Olympic Committee handing these Games to Germany in the first place. In the United States, the Berlin Olympics catalyzed a raucous, if ultimately unsuccessful, boycott campaign that raised serious concerns about racialized repression in the host country. The Berlin Games furnished a high-profile testing ground for racial theories rooted in white supremacy—the marrow in the Nazis’ ideological bones—where Black athletes like Jesse Owens thrived. The Games also brought innovations—like the Olympic Torch Relay—that were subsequently woven into Olympic tradition. Sportswashing is a significant concern in modern-day sports studies; this book demonstrates how the Olympic Games have long been both a potential pedestal for autocrats to boost their unsavory regimes and a flashpoint for human-rights criticism. Although history does not gift the present moment with crisp facsimiles from the past, thinking through history illuminates patterns and possibilities that can help make sense of the whirling swirl of today.

While attention is on Olympic triumphs and tribulations, there is much that goes on behind the scenes that is deeply troubling. Boykoff tells us that radical steps are required if the Games are to be fixed and only then will they be truly ‘athletes first’.

The 1936 Olympic Games played a key role in the development of both Hitler’s Third Reich and international sporting competition. The Nazi Olympics gathers essays by modern scholars from prominent participating countries and lays out the issues--sporting as well as political--surrounding the involvement of individual nations. The volume opens with an analysis of Germany’s preparations for the Games and the attempts by the Nazi regime to allay the international concerns about Hitler’s racist ideals and expansionist ambitions. Essays follow on the United States, Great Britain, and France--top-tier Olympian nations with misgivings about participation--as well as Germany's future Axis partners Italy and Japan. Other contributions examine the issues involved for Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Throughout, the authors reveal the high political stakes surrounding the Games and how the Nazi Olympics distilled critical geopolitical issues of the time into a spectacle of sport.

The Berlin Olympic Games, more than 70 years on, remain the most controversial ever held. This book creates a vivid account of the disputes, the personalities, and the events which made these Games so memorable. Ironically, the choice of Germany as the host national for the 1936 Olympics was intended to signal the return to the world community after defeat in World War I. In actuality, Hitler intended the Berlin Games to be an advertisement for Germany as he was creating it, and they became one of the largest propaganda exercises in history. Two German Jews competed in the Games while the most memorable achievement was that of black American Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals. Ultimately, however, Germany was the overall biggest medal winner. The popular success of Owens allowed the Nazis to claim that their policies had no racial element and charges of antisemitism that did arise were leveled at the Americans.

'Compelling, suspenseful and beautifully done' Anna Funder, author of STASILAND A captivating account of the Nazi Olympics - told through the voices and stories of those who were there. For sixteen days in the summer of 1936, the world's attention turned to the German capital as it hosted the Olympic Games. Seen through the eyes of a cast of characters - Nazi leaders and foreign diplomats, athletes and journalists, nightclub owners and jazz musicians - Berlin 1936 plunges us into the high tension of this unfolding scene. Alongside the drama in the Olympic Stadium - from the triumph of Jesse Owens to the scandal when an American tourist breaks through the security and manages to kiss Hitler - Oliver Hilmes takes us behind the scenes and into the lives of ordinary Berliners: the woman with a dark secret who steps in front of a train, the transsexual waiting for the Gestapo's knock on the door, and the Jewish boy hoping that Germany may lose in the sporting arena. During the sporting events the dictatorship was partially put on hold; here then, is a last glimpse of the vibrant and diverse life in Berlin in the 1920s and 30s that the Nazis aimed to destroy.

NOlympians: Inside the Fight Against Capitalist Mega-Sports in Los Angeles, Tokyo and Beyond investigates the intersection of the global rise of anti-Olympics activism and the declining popularity of hosting of the Games. The Olympics were once buoyed by myths of luminous prosperity and upticks in tourism and jobs, but in recent years these assurances have been debunked. Now more than ever, it’s clear that the Olympics have transmogrified into a political-economic juggernaut that arrives with displacement, expanded policing, and anti-democratic backroom deals. Jules Boykoff – a former professional soccer player who represented the US Olympic soccer team – zooms in on Los Angeles, where the Democratic Socialists of America have launched the NOlympics LA campaign ahead of the 2028 Summer Games. Boykoff shows how DSA-LA’s anti-Olympics activism fits with the resurgence of socialism in the US and beyond. Boykoff’s research, based on more than 100 interviews with anti-Olympics activists, personal experiences at protests in Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, London, and Tokyo, academic research, mass- and alternative-media coverage, and Olympic archives, is the backbone for this story of activists fighting against the odds and embracing the transformative politics of democratic socialism.

The twelve years of the Third Reich casts a dark shadow over history. Fierce debates still rage over many of the hows, whys and wherefores of this perplexing period. Leading expert on German history, Martin Kitchen, provides a concise, accessible and provocative account of Nazi Germany. It takes into account the political, social, economic and cultural ramifications, and sets it within the context of the times, while pointing out those areas that still defy our understanding. This lively account addresses major issues such as the reasons for Hitler’s extraordinary popularity, his hold over the German people even when all seemed lost, the role of ideology, the cooption of the elites, and the descent into war for race and space, culminating in the horrors of the holocaust.

Do the Olympic Games really live up to their glowing reputation? As the biggest global sport mega-event, the Olympic Games command public and media attention, while Olympic mythology and ritual obscure their underlying function as a profit-making business enterprise.