When the games were over

Germany declared itself the winner with 89 German medals to 56 for the Americans.

Nazis efforts were successful. Visitors left with the impression that Germany was prosperous, well run, and hospitable. NY Times was announcing that Germany was back among the civilized nations and reporters called the event "the greatest publicity stunt in history". 

Hitler got the thing he needed most : Respectability, and there would be no more Olympic Games for the next dozen years.

Instead of competing with each other on athletic fields, the youth of many countries wound up killing each other on fields of battle in a new world war – a war Adolf Hitler was already planning.

Top Medalists

Jesse Owens (The United States of America)

American athlete won 4 gold medals.
 

Konrad Frey (Germany)

 

 

German athlete won 3 gold, 1 silver and 2 bronze medals.

Hendrika Mastenbroek (The Netherlands)

 

Dutch swimmer won 3 gold and 1 silver medals.

Leni Riefenstahl and Olympia

In August 1936, film-maker and photographer Leni Riefenstahl was commissioned to document Berlin Olympics.

Riefenstahl's directorial efforts i n Olympia, which captured with haunting effectiveness the images of the the Games in Berlin. It was for Olympia that Riefenstahl pioneered numerous cinematographic techniques, such as filming footage with cameras mountedon rails.

Olympia's forceful blend of aesthetics, sports, and propaganda again won Riefenstahl accolades and awards, including Best Foreign Film honors at the Venice Film Festival and a special award from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for depicting the joy of sport. 

Riefenstahl's directorial efforts in Olympia, which captured with haunting effectiveness the images of the the Games in Berlin. It was for Olympia that Riefenstahl pioneered numerous cinematographic techniques, such as filming footage with cameras mounted on rails (commonly known today as tracking shots).

The Heroes of Berlin Summer Olympics

Adolf Hitler hoped that the 1936 Berlin Games would prove his theory of Aryan racial superiority. Instead, Owens’ achievements led the people of Berlin to hail him, an African-American, as a hero.

At the 1936 Berlin Games, Owens won four gold medals, in the 100m, 200m, 4x100m relay and the long jump. He managed to break or equal nine Olympic records and also set three world records. One of those world records was in the 4x100m relay. The quartet set a time that wouldn’t be bettered for 20 years.

The long jump was Jesse Owens best event. Owens, who held the world record in the long jump, foot-faulted on his first two qualifying jumps. If he fouled again, he’d be eliminated. According to Owens, Luz Long, the only man who had a chance to beat Owens, introduced himself and suggested that Owens play it safe by making a mark a foot before the takeoff board to assure he could qualify. It worked, and Owens advanced to the finals to compete against Long. This decision to help a competitor is still viewed as one of the great acts of sportsmanship but the fact that Long was Germany’s premier long-jumper and made the act even more extraordinary.

 
In 1942, Long wrote this letter to Owens:
My heart is telling me that this is perhaps the last letter of my life. If that is so, I beg one thing from you. When the war is over, please go to Germany, find my son and tell him about his father. Tell him about the times when war did not separate us and tell him that things can be different between men in this world. Your brother, Luz.

Years later Jesse Owens said “You could melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn’t be a plating in the 24 carrot friendship I felt for Luz Long at that moment.”  Owens and Long remained friends. Luz Long was killed in the battle of St. Pietro on July 14th, 1943. 

Young Olympians

Thirteen-year-old Marjorie Gestring of the US won the gold medal in springboard diving. She remains the youngest female gold medallist in the history of the Summer Olympic Games. 

Twelve-year-old Inge Sorensen of Denmark earned a bronze medal in the 200m breaststroke, making her the youngest medallist ever in an individual event.

Helene Mayer

As a token gesture to mollify the West, German authorities allowed the half-Jewish fencer Helene Mayer to represent Germany in Berlin.

She won a silver medal. Controversially, she wore a swastika and extended her right arm in the Nazi salute on the medal stand during the medal ceremony. This rankled many, but others explained that she was trying to protect her family. 

Although her Jewish father had died in 1931, her mother and two brothers had continued to live in Germany. Mayer considered herself German and wanted to represent her country, but she was not accepted back into German society. 

After the Olympics, Mayer returned to the United States. No other Jewish athlete competed for Germany. Still, nine Jewish athletes won medals in the Nazi Olympics, including Mayer and five Hungarians. Seven Jewish male athletes from the United States went to Berlin.

Gender Controversy 

Historically, sport's first encounter with disorders of sex development (DSD) was in 1936 at the infamous Berlin Olympics. Controversy during the games was most notably in the women's 100-metre sprint. Stella Walsh, a Polish-born athlete with US citizenship, and Helen Stephens, an American sprinter had competed in previous competitions – Walsh won the 100 meter sprint in 1932 and therefore attended Berlin as defending champion. Stephens finished just in front of Walsh, posting a world record time of 11.5 seconds; Walsh completed the sprint in 11.7 seconds.

Walsh publicly accused Stephens of being male after she won the 100-metre sprint in 1936. Since no formal gender verification program existed at this time, the Olympic committee felt compelled to perform a sex check on Stephens. It confirmed Stephens possessed female external genitalia.

Decades later following Walsh's murder a post-mortem examination confirmed that Walsh possessed ambiguous genitalia and abnormal sex chromosomes, although the exact DSD was not established.  

Dora Ratjen

Dora Ratjen was a German athlete who competed for Germany in the women's high jump at Berlin, finishing fourth, but was later discovered to be male.

In 1966, Time magazine reported that, in 1957, Dora had presented as Hermann, a waiter in Bremen, "who tearfully confessed that he had been forced by the Nazis to pose as a woman 'for the sake of the honor and glory of Germany'. Sighed Hermann: 'For three years I lived the life of a girl. It was most dull.

Firsts of the Olympics

The 1936 Games were the first to be broadcast on television. Twenty-five television viewing rooms were set up in the Greater Berlin area, allowing the locals to follow the Games free of charge.

The whole event was televised, the broadcasts being watched by as many as 150,000 members of the public.

Basketball, canoeing and field handball all made their first appearances. 

Halet Çambel and Suat Fetgeri Așani (fencing), the first Turkish and Muslim women athletes to participate in the Olympics.

 

The Olympic Flame

The modern convention of moving the Olympic flame via a relay system from Greece to the Olympic venue began in 1936. Carl Diem devised the idea of the torch relay for the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin that was organized by the Nazis under the guidance of Joseph Goebbels. 

Siegfried Eifrig helped to carry the torch that lit the flame at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. To the Nazi regime he personified the Aryan race – tall, blond, blue-eyed and athletic.

 

Eifrig took the torch at the beginning of Unter den Linden – Berlin’s main boulevard – before handing it over so that others could carry it to the Olympic stadium. Though he was a talented sprinter, Eifrig did not get into the German Olympic squad. But he ran with distinction for the Charlottenburg Athletic Club and as a result was given the opportunity to carry the Olympic torch into the stadium.

Hindenburg at the Olympics

Nazi officials were very much aware of the symbolic value of the huge and impressive airship, and frequently called on Hindenburg for propaganda flights, often in company with the Graf Zeppelin.  Hindenburg made appearances at public events such as the 1936 Berlin Games.

Hindenburg demonstrated its propaganda value on August 1, 1936, when the ship flew over the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Spectators in the Olympic stadium and crowds of up to 3 million Germans and visitors in the streets of Berlin watched Hindenburg cruise above the city for more than an hour.

The Opening Ceremony

The opening ceremony of the XI Olympic Games was held on Saturday, August 1, 1936, inside the Olympic Stadium. Over 5,000 athletes from 51 nations marched. 

There was some confusion over this issue, since the Olympic salute with right arm held out sideways from the shoulder could also be mistaken for the Hitler stiff-arm salute. Most countries gave either one or the other. Austrian athletes gave the Hitler salute. French athletes thrilled the German audience by giving the Hitler salute, although some French athletes later claimed it was the Olympic salute. The Bulgarians outdid everyone by goose-stepping past the Führer. The British and Americans chose a military style 'eyes right' with no arm salute. 

Richard Strauss composed an Olympic Hymn that premiered at the Summer Games.

Preparations

The vast Olympic stadium was completed on time and held 100,000 spectators. 150 other new Olympic buildings were completed on time for the event.

A carefully constructed tone developed and discourse against the Jewish people softened.
The anti-Semitic posters that had littered Germany before the games had disappeared. Signs that stated "Jews not welcome here" were not longer visible.

Police arrested all Gypsies prior to the Games. On July 16, 1936, some 800 gypsies were 

arrested and interned under police guard in a special Gypsy camp in the Berlin suburb of 

Marzahn.

Also in preparation for the arrival of Olympic spectators, Nazi officials ordered that foreign 

visitors should not be subjected to the criminal strictures of the Nazi anti-homosexual laws.

Sculptures 

Along the Unter den Linden, around the Olympic Stadium and outside the Reichs Chancellery appeared these great stone constructions which displayed the German athletes as almost superhuman in their strength and speed.

The statues and sculptures which appeared all over the city of Berlin in 1936 were intentionally similar to those of Greek and Roman classical sculpture.

The message to the world was that Germany was a great civilisation, similar to Ancient Greece and Rome.

Boycott the Games 

By 1936, the Nazis had control over Germany and had already begun to implement their racist policies. There was international debate as to whether the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany should be boycotted. The United States was extremely close to boycotting but at the last minute decided to accept the invitation to attend. 

 The Spanish government led by the newly elected left-wing Popular Front boycotted the Games and organized the People's Olympiad as a parallel event in Barcelona. Some 6,000 athletes from 49 countries registered. However, the People's Olympiad was aborted because of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War just one day before the event was due to start.

The Soviet Union had never participated in the Olympic Games and boycotted the 1936 summer Olympics.

Selection of Berlin

Berlin had the chance to host the Games in 1916 but then it was cancelled due to World War.
Berlin competed to hold the games with Alexandria, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Cologne, Dublin, Frankfurt, Helsinki, Lausanne, Nuremberg, Rio de Janeiro, and Rome.

The vote occurred in 1931 during the reign of the Weimar Republic, before Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party rose to power in 1933. None of the other cities except for Barcelona receive any IOC votes.

After the Nazis took control and began instituting anti-Semitic policies, the IOC held private discussions among its delegates regarding changing the decision for Berlin. However Hitler's regime gave assurances Jewish athletes would be allowed to compete in a German Olympic team.