The Berlin Olympics was a hstoric event. It took place during Nazi occupied Germany and the reign of Hitler. It was three after he got into power and three years before Germany invaded Poland and the beginning of World War II (WWII). The main talking point of this event was the feats that Jesse Owens achieved. These achievements upset Hitler and his "Aryan" views.
In April 1933, the Nazis’ sports office ordered all public athletic organisations to implement an “Aryans-only” policy. The policy sparked global outrage. Just two years earlier, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had awarded the 1936 Summer Olympics to Berlin and now Olympic organisers in the United States and Europe were considering pulling out of the Berlin Olympics altogether.
The Berlin Olympics officially opened on August 1, 1936. Eighteen African American athletes competed. Jesse Owens was the most successful athlete, of any race.
Between 3 August and 9 August, the 22-year-old won four gold medals in the 100m; the 200m; the 4x100m relay and the long jump. All this made him a track and field great. Those achievements came under the gaze of Hitler, who had initially planned for the Olympics held in Nazi Germany to showcase what he believed to be the racial superiority of White, so-called "Aryan" athletes, openly denigrating Black American participants as "non-humans."
The image of Owens, one of 18 Black athletes on the US team, atop the podium and surrounded by individuals giving the Nazi salute has become part of Olympic lore. Now, after 88 years, Owens' grandson, Stuart Owen Rankin, has spoken about his grandfather's legacy. He believes that the achievements were a, "thumb in the eye" to Hitler.
He said, "My grandfather’s legacy continues to prosper. When people do find out and it’s not often that I discuss it outwardly, but people do eventually find out, for example, perhaps through watching interviews like this, their response is always positive. Their response is one that fills me with pride. Again, their response speaks to my grandfather’s accomplishments and the enduring quality of what he did in ‘36 and sort of the timelessness of those accomplishments."
Another highlight was the connection Owens made with fellow long jumper, Luz Long. Owens and Long were seen as the two favourites to compete for the gold medal in the long jump at the Berlin Games.
The two men came from very different backgrounds. Owens was a Black American and Long was a White German living in Nazi Germany.
Given the circumstances of the 1936 Olympics, a level of hostility might have been expected between the long jumpers. In fact, the opposite was true. According to Rankin, Owens said Long offered him advice on how to not overstep, which was an issue that the U.S. athlete was having in the long jump qualifying competition.
Following Long’s advice, Owens said he put down a towel at a mark to help him perfect his run-up and in doing so, the American was able to successfully book his spot in the long jump final. Owens went on to claim gold, while Long secured the silver.
"It took a lot of courage for [Long] to befriend me in front of Hitler," Owens later said of his friendship with Long. "You can melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn’t be a plating on the 24-carat friendship I felt for Long at that moment."
Owens and Long were seen as the two favourites to compete for the gold medal in the long jump at the Berlin Games. The two men came from very different backgrounds. Owens was a Black American and Long was a White German living in Nazi Germany.
Given the circumstances of the 1936 Olympics, a level of hostility might have been expected between the long jumpers. In fact, the opposite was true.
According to Rankin, Owens said Long offered him advice on how to not overstep, which was an issue the US athlete was having in the long jump qualifying competition.
Following Long’s advice, Owens said he put down a towel at a mark to help him perfect his run-up and in doing so, the American was able to successfully book his spot in the long-jump final. Owens went on to claim gold, while Long secured the silver. Long was killed fighting for Nazi Germany in WWII but the families of the Americn and German still remain in contact, bonded through their grandfathers’ friendship, according to Rankin.
Owens also failed to attract the endorsements and sponsorship deals enjoyed by White athletes and was reduced to running exhibition races against motorbikes and horses to make ends meet. It wasn't until the 1950's, 20 years after his Berlin triumph, that he finally achieved a measure of financial security, opening a public relations firm and becoming a highly successful public speaker.
Owens later received the two highest civilian honours the US can bestow. In 1976, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Gerald Ford, and in 1990, a decade after his death from lung cancer, President George H.W. Bush presented his widow a posthumous Congressional Gold Medal.
In perhaps the most fitting memorial to his achievements, a street in Berlin was renamed in his honor in 1984.
After the Olympics ended, stories claiming that Owens had been “snubbed” by Hitler circulated widely. As the most common variant of the story goes, after Owens won his first medal, Hitler, not wanting to acknowledge a non-Aryan athlete’s ability, left the stadium. Although Owens himself initially insisted that it was not true (he later claimed it was), the report appeared in newspapers around the world.
It's true that Hitler didn't shake hands with Owens. In fact, he didn't congratulate any gold medalists after the first day of competition on 2 August1936. On the first day, Hitler met and shook hands with all the German gold medalists. He also shook hands with a few Finnish athletes. That night, Hitler left the stadium before African American high jumper, Cornelius Johnson, won his first gold medal; Hitler’s staff maintained that he had a pre-scheduled appointment. Hitler was reprimanded and the head of the IOC, Henri de Baillet-Latour, told him that he could either congratulate all the gold medalists or none. Hitler chose to honour no one.
The next day, on 3 August 1936, Owens won his first gold medal in the 100m dash. Hitler didn't meet or shake hands with Owens. That said, there are several reports of a salute or wave. According to sports reporter and author, Paul Gallico, writing from Berlin, Owens was "led below the honour box, where he smiled and bowed, and Herr Hitler gave him a friendly little Nazi salute, the sitting down one with the arm bent." Owens himself later confirmed this, claiming that they exchanged congratulatory waves.
So, Owens wasn't personally snubbed by Hitler. However, Owens did feel that he had been snubbed by someone: U.S. president, Franklin D. Roosevelt. A month after the Olympic Games, Owens told a crowd, "Hitler didn’t snub me, it was [Roosevelt] who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram." Roosevelt never publicly acknowledged Owens’ triumphs or the triumphs of any of the 18 African Americans who competed at the Berlin Olympics. Only white Olympians were invited to the White House in 1936.
A number of explanations have been offered for the president’s actions. Most likely, Roosevelt didn't want to risk losing the support of Southern Democrats by appearing overly soft on the race issue. The Black Olympians who competed in Berlin were not recognised by the White House until 2016, when president, Barack Obama, invited the athletes’ relatives to an event in celebration of their lives and accomplishments.
In connection to this, is the ongoing 2024 Euros. The showpiece final, likely to attract a worldwide television audience in excess of 300 million people, will be played on 14 July at the Olympiastadion in Berlin, a stadium originally built and funded on the orders of Europe’s most notorious dictator. 88 years have passed since the 1936 summer Olympic Games were also staged there.
Since 1945, Germany has grappled with its history in a thoughtful way. Being Germany, there is a word for it: vergangenheitsaufarbeitung, which translates to mean ‘working from the past.’
Hitler’s bunker in Berlin was filled in with concrete to avoid it becoming a commemoration site and the Spandau prison, where his deputy, Rudolf Hess, committed suicide, was destroyed. German children are taught in schools about Nazi atrocities and those training to become police officers are taught the history of the Holocaust and taken to the sites of former concentration camps to understand the gravity. The vast Holocaust memorial is located at the heart of a reunified Berlin.
The Olympiastadion, however, is a listed building, preserved since 1966, albeit its history is vividly detailed by tour guides and via a small museum. On a cold, wintery, grey day, the eeriness is all-consuming; swathes of vast space and haunting relics. The colonnades remain intact, so too, the Olympic cauldron, located just inside the Marathon Gate, with that cold, ageless, durable design that is in keeping with the architecture of the Third Reich.
The Nazi swastikas have long since been torn down, but nothing quite prepares you for the chilling moment an Olympiastadion tour guide points to a balcony and explains that you are metres away from where Hitler once took pride of place, receiving ‘Heil’ salutes from crowds and athletes alike.
Dotted around the stadium are bronze statues, venerating the perceived power and splendour of the Aryan race. Its own website explains that construction companies were ordered to hire only “complying, non-union workers of German citizenship and Aryan race” to build this edifice of Nazism, meaning Jews in particular were not to be involved.
In the aftermath of the WWII, when Germany was divided into West and East, much of the wider Olympic Park was occupied by British forces between 1945 and 1994, using the grounds at times for polo events, and sometimes for parades to honour the birthday of Queen Elizabeth II.
I applaud everything that has happened. I despise everything about Hitler. He was a disgusting human being. In acomplishing what he did, Jesse Owens stood up against Hitler and his views. No race is superior to the other. Every race is equal. I must admit that I am thrilled that Germans are taught about the atrocities that Hitler performed and are taught not to repeat the actions.