1930's Sports | Nazi Olympics

Germany Shows the World. Fascism had swept through Germany, Italy, and into Spain by 1936. Jews had been stripped of their citizenship and civil rights under the Nuremberg Laws. It was clear, even to the uninitiated, that Germany was preparing for war. Yet the predominant feeling in the United States was one of noninvolvement in European affairs. A few voices urged boycott of the games, but their efforts were repelled by an Olympic committee willing to overlook anything but the most overt kinds of anti-Semitism on the condition that Germany abide by Olympic guidelines and practices. Germany, to whom the games had been promised in 1931 before the rise of Hitler, would take the opportunity to show the world its sweeping accomplishments and display its Aryan ethic, which promised superior athletic demonstrations as expressions of German vitality and will.