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Racism At The 1936 Olympics Summary

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In the journal article titled “The issue of Racism at the 1936 Olympics,” in the Journal of Sport History Vol. 3 no. 3, D.A. Kass presents the history of the potential American boycott of the Berlin Olympics and arguments that were both for and against the boycott. One side of the argument presented was that the Americans should have boycotted the Olympics because attending the games would have been seen as enabling or being okay with the ideologies of the Nazi regime. Several prominent groups, such as the NAACP, thought that the lack of presence by one of the major powers in the world would have a major impact on Germany and their image. The other argument was that the Americans were right to attend the Olympics. If the Americans attended and were to outperform the …show more content…

Kass himself believes that the Americans attending the Olympics proved to be huge. This was proven most of all by American star Olympian Jesse Owens, as he won four gold medals and it reflected very badly upon the Germans to be defeated by an African American. Adolf Hitler further proved this point by not congratulating Owens, as he did most athletes. Kass effectively brought in the backgrounds and involvement of people such as Avery Brundage, George Sherrill, Hitler, and Dr. Paul Goebbels to further ad more effectively develop his point of just how significant it was for the Americans to participate in the Berlin Olympics and make a dent in the idea of Aryan supremacy.
In the book titled The Nazi Olympics, Dr. Richard Mandell looked at the 1936 Olympics through the scope of society. He wrote about the role of sports and specifically the role the Olympics had in politics and on certain social issues such as race. He also looks at athletics and the modern Olympic

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