Nazi Games: Revisiting 1936 Olympics in Berlin

As the Olympic Games in Paris attract world attention this week, I would like to bring to your attention a unique and historically interesting book on the most infamous Olympic Games of all, the Berlin Olympics of 1936.

In close to 400 pages, “Nazi Games” by Dr. David Clay Large, an acclaimed and accomplished historian of modern Germany, deals extensively with the history of just about everything about the events and personalities of the 1936 games, with Hitler and his Nazi stooges ruling Berlin.

Large introduces us to the heroes and anti-heroes of those games, picturing the bigotry, antisemitism and otherwise indifference of prominent Americans who turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to what Hitler represented.

Led by Avery Brundage, the villain of this epic, the Olympic leadership simply could not care less as to the rancid nature of Hitler’s Germany and the PR boost the Berlin games would provide to fascism and its followers. Large describes the hateful inner thoughts and mouthings of Brundage and members of the Roosevelt administration both toward Jews and toward those in sympathy with the Jews’ plight.

The myths of that era that Large exposes the regard that American athlete Jesse Owens, who was black and a darling of civil rights advocates, had toward Adolph Hitler. At best, we can describe Owens’ perspective as “clueless.”

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Owens had no inkling of the Fuhrer’s animosity toward him, Large reports, and never claimed to have been snubbed by Hitler. On the contrary, on his return to America after the Games, he told an audience of 1,000 black people in Kansas City that it was President Roosevelt and not Hitler who had shown him disrespect at his moment of triumph in Berlin.

“Hitler didn’t snub me — it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.”

Owens also said that while he managed not to meet Hitler in Berlin, he had once caught the Fuhrer’s eye at the stadium and that Hitler had gracefully acknowledged him. Later Owens described Hitler as a “man of dignity.”

Now that’s a mouthful that flies directly in the face of one of the greatest myths of the ‘36 games.

Another myth that is questioned was whether it was bigotry and antisemitism that blocked the participation of American athlete Marty Glickman, a Brooklyn (Borough Park) native, from the games. Large claims that contrary to all the protestations by Glickman, who went on to become a prominent sportscaster to several generations of sports fans, there is no evidence in writing that antisemitism was a factor in the blocking of Glickman from the games. This fact even extended to the private files of Brundage who was long suspected by many, including Glickman, to have been behind his exclusion. They provide no mention of this sad episode.

Large’s book describes in detail how the Nazis went to great pains to remove all antisemitic signs, posters and other bigoted displays throughout Germany during the games.

The book deal with the role played by Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler’s favorite movie film producer, in the filming the Olympics at the Nazi government’s behest, and confirms her deep Nazi sympathies (which she later denied).

Also of interest is the role that American aviation hero Charles Lindbergh played in the propaganda hype on behalf of his Nazi hosts before and during the games. His treason was to become one of the great and true legends of the pre-war era. The Olympics in Berlin provided for him just another venue to display his hatred for our people.

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Historically, Jews were no strangers to the Olympic scene. They played in previous Games and were destined to play continuously in just about every Olympic game after the war. Here are just a couple of examples for your edification.

• In a sensitive article in the Jewish Week, Steve Lipman relates the saga of Attila Petschauer, a native of Budapest, who won gold and silver medals in fencing at the 1928 and 1932 Olympics. He would die a gruesome death in a slave labor camp in Ukraine during the Shoah.

Petschauer’s legacy is memorialized by a distant cousin, Richard Markowitz of Hewlett, with the in 2008 establishment of the Petschauer Sabre Open at Vassar College.

• Carrie Kahn relates the participation of her grandfather, Sam Balter. Although he did not actually play in any basketball game at the Berlin Olympics, his team did win — and as a member of that team, he, too, won a gold medal, the only Jewish-American gold medalist in 1936.

Kahn relates how her then 26-year old grandfather marched in front of Hitler and flaunted his gold medal to the world. In later life he developed a successful career as a sportscaster.

A version of this column was published in 2008.

Also see: Olympics mockery  goes beyond hurt feelings, By Jonathan S. Tobin