1936 Summer Olympics: History and Background

The 1936 Summer Olympics (German: Olympische Sommerspiele 1936), officially the Games of the XI Olympiad (Spiele der XI. Olympiade) and branded as Berlin 1936, were an international multi-sport event held from 1 to 16 August 1936 in Berlin, Germany. Berlin won the right to host the Games over Barcelona at the 29th IOC Session in 1931. The 1936 Games were the second and last occasion on which the International Olympic Committee (IOC) chose a host by a ballot in which the bidding cities themselves could vote; later rules barred cities that voted from being selected.

The Games had been awarded to Germany during the Weimar Republic, but by 1936 the country was governed by the Nazi regime, and Adolf Hitler's government treated the Olympics as an opportunity for propaganda. To project an image of a peaceful, tolerant Germany, the authorities temporarily removed antisemitic signage and softened the most visible forms of persecution for the duration of the Games. At the same time, the German Olympic authorities barred nearly all Jewish and Romani athletes from the national team; the fencer Helene Mayer, who had one Jewish parent, was the only such athlete to represent Germany. A movement to boycott or relocate the Games developed in several countries—Czechoslovakia, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States—but it ultimately failed. Forty-nine nations competed, the largest number at any Olympics to that point.

These were the first Games to be televised and the first to feature a torch relay carrying the Olympic flame from Olympia to the host city—a ceremony devised for Berlin that became a permanent Olympic tradition. The filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl recorded the Games for her two-part film Olympia, which pioneered techniques still used in sports cinematography.

Jesse Owens of the United States won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events, and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin, while Germany was the most successful country overall with 101 medals (38 of them gold); the United States placed a distant second with 57 medals. These were the final Olympic Games under the IOC presidency of Henri de Baillet-Latour. For the next 12 years, no Olympic Games were held due to the immense world disruption caused by the Second World War. The next Olympic Games were held in 1948 (the Winter Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland, and then the Summer Games in London, England).

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