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“It provided Hitler with a showcase,” Burstin says. “It was a propaganda bonanza for him.”
Adolf Hilter, who had effectively become Germany’s dictator in 1933, had instituted an “Aryans-only” policy throughout all German athletic organizations, sparking global outrage, especially among American athletes. Only one German-Jewish athlete was permitted to play in the games—fencer Helene Mayer—because only her father was Jewish. Even her position wasn’t guaranteed; TIME reported in 1935 that Charles Hitchcock Sherrill, a U.S. member of the International Olympic Committee, had traveled to Germany prior to the Olympics to ensure Mayer would receive her rightful spot on the team.
Some athletes and Olympics organizers in the United States and Europe considered pulling out of the Olympics altogether to compete elsewhere. The debate on whether to pull out on the American end was particularly heated, as the boycott began with the U.S. team. Avery Brundage, then the president of the American Olympic Committee, opposed a boycott, arguing that “the Olympic Games belong to the athletes and not to the politicians.”
Some academics, including Burstin, now believe that Brundage was complicit in the Nazi’s anti-Semitism in the Olympics, and that he even attempted to paint American Jews as unpatriotic and misguided for supporting a boycott. Meanwhile, the Nazis, seeing the negative reaction to what was supposed to be a great moment for Germany, temporarily took down anti-Jewish propaganda and did what they could to clean up Germany’s image prior to the games. In the end, the U.S. would send several Jewish athletes to the games, and many journalists covered the games with a degree of positivity, with TIME reporting in 1936 that most newspapers focused on “the ceremonious procession” of the Olympics’ first modern Torch Relay rather than “other doings in Berlin.”
Though Hitler’s attempt to see Aryan athletes triumph was not a complete success—most famously due to the medal sweep brought by U.S. track star Jesse Owens—German athletes did walk away with the most Olympic medals. Some thought the games showed Germany had successfully crawled out of the economic ditch it had fallen into post-WWI, and had ultimately acted as a great host.
And so those Olympics would have repercussions that went far beyond the world of sports.
“It kind of dulled the opposition to [Hitler] that clearly had been quite evident up to 1936,” Burstin says. “A lot of people felt he was clearly heading in the wrong direction, and by going to the Olympics we gave him the opportunity to appear sane, rational and tolerant.”
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