Sonya Brunner
Ms. Lane
English 10
17 April 2023
The 1936 Summer Olympics Effect on the Holocaust
The 1936 Summer Olympics, located in Berlin, Germany, encouraged the values and ideals of the Nazis through antisemitic propaganda, failure of a proposed boycott of the Games, and Jewish athlete limitations. With the Holocaust following just a few years later in 1945, the 1936 Olympics foreshadowed the incoming terror of the Third Reich. During the Games, the International Olympic Committee strongly advised Hitler to remove antisemitic posters and signs around Berlin, and to also downplay public discrimination of the Jews. These measures improved the chance of inviting other countries to participate in these Olympics, so that Germany would be viewed
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“During the games, overt evidence of hostility was hidden in Berlin. Signs banning Jews from public places had disappeared (Berkes).” These motions pushed towards other nations’ acceptance of Germany, even with its reputation of strict uniformity. However, this hidden propaganda succeeded, as other nations observed and approved the atmosphere of the upcoming Olympics. "Even a political reporter for The New York Times, Frederick Birchall, comes out after the games saying the games put Germans back in the fold of nations and even made them more human again (Berkes).” Because of this propaganda, Nazi ideals were dispersed throughout the Games; however, they were secretive in this matter, hiding obvious evidence of segregation between Jews and other …show more content…
Throughout these particular Games, politics “mixed the Olympic five rings, a symbol of international cooperation and peace, with the Nazi swastika, a symbol even then of Aryan superiority (Berkes).” This peculiar blend of antisemitic, racist, and other issues caused Germany to strain the values of the Olympics, cloaking Hitler’s discriminated laws and deceiving other nations in the process. As athletes and world leaders remembered the 1936 Summer Olympics farther in the future, they would come to realize that “Germany’s expansionist policies and the persecution of Jews and other "enemies of the state" accelerated, culminating in the Holocaust (Holocaust Memorial Museum writers).” The intimidating power and unfazed determination of the Third Reich cast a shadow on the 1936 Olympics, foregoing the attempted extermination of the Jews in the