Nazi Games: The Olympics of 1936

David Clay Large

apr 2007 · W. W. Norton & Company

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Athletics and politics collide in a critical event for Nazi Germany and the contemporary world. The torch relay—that staple of Olympic pageantry—first opened the summer games in 1936 in Berlin. Proposed by the Nazi Propaganda Ministry, the relay was to carry the symbolism of a new Germany across its route through southeastern and central Europe. Soon after the Wehrmacht would march in jackboots over the same terrain.

The Olympic festival was a crucial part of the Nazi regime's mobilization of power. Nazi Games offers a superb blend of history and sport. The narrative includes a stirring account of the international effort to boycott the games, derailed finally by the American Olympic Committee and the determination of its head, Avery Brundage, to participate. Nazi Games also recounts the dazzling athletic feats of these Olympics, including Jesse Owens's four gold-medal performances and the marathon victory of Korean runner Kitei Son, the Rising Sun of imperial Japan on his bib.

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David Clay Large is a professor at the Fromm Institute, University of San Francisco, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute of European Studies, U.C. Berkeley. A specialist on the history of Modern Europe, especially Germany and Austria, Large is the author of ten books including Berlin, Where Ghosts Walked: Munich’s Road to the Third Reich, and Nazi Games.