Sidebar: 'Day of Shame'

The 1936 Berlin Olympics may be best remembered for Hitler's refusal to acknowledge the gold medals won by track star Jesse Owens, and for the last-minute exclusion of Jewish track stars Sammy Stoller and Marty Glickman from the American Olympic track team, lest the presence of Jewish athletes offend their Nazi hosts.

Less familiar is the manner in which the American Olympic Committee, headed by Avery Brundage, insisted that the games be played in Berlin despite the virulent anti-Semitism that was endemic in Germany, and the previous year's enactment of the Nuremberg Laws, which deprived Germany's Jews of their citizenship.

Bending to world opinion in reaction to Germany's exclusion of its Jewish Olympic athletes, however, the International Olympic Committee gained a minor concession from the Reich. Fencer Helene Mayer was to be allowed to participate on the national team. This concession was, at best, a technicality: Mayer's mother was an "Aryan," and, under the Nuremberg Laws, she could still be considered a German citizen — as long as she did not subscribe to Judaism, had no contact with Jewish organizations, and did not think of herself as Jewish. This was Nazi Germany's response to the "pressure" exerted by the IOC. Nevertheless, a leading IOC official who had gone to Germany "for the purpose of getting at least one Jew on the German Olympic team," felt that having secured Mayer's place on the team meant that his "job was finished."

David Clay Large, a historian of modern German history, has written a riveting and comprehensive account of not only the Olympic competition but the context in which the games were played. Readers will learn that actually there were two Olympics held in Germany in 1936: the winter games held in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in February, and the summer games in Berlin. Despite Brundage's refrain that "politics must not disrupt the Olympics," the reality was that Hitler viewed the games as an opportunity to promote the Nazi ideology of racial supremacy.

Large describes the widespread anti-Semitism in Garmisch and the Nazi government's efforts to remove from public view anti-Semitic signs and Jules Streicher's virulently anti-Jewish newspaper Der Sturmer lest the thousands of visitors coming to the games receive the wrong impression of Hitler's "New Germany." As the author writes:

"The signs finally came down just as the games opened. The difficulty encountered by the Hitler regime in getting the citizens of ‘Gapa' to desist, even for a short period, from open displays of anti-Semitic sentiment can serve to remind us of how deeply entrenched racial intolerance was among ordinary Germans in many parts of the Reich…. Once the games were over, the anti-Semitic signs returned, along with open anti-Semitic oppression."

Large notes that despite the fact that the vast majority of visitors to the Olympics saw little evidence of Nazi persecution of the Jews as the government tempered public expression of racial bigotry and open violence, it nevertheless existed, albeit more subtly.

For example, days before the games opened, the regime ordered Jewish doctors to stop treating "Aryan" patients, and without letup continued the "aryanization" of Jewish businesses. In other areas, Nazi authorities actually increased measures of repression in order to preempt any possible disruption of the games. Thus the atmosphere of peace and harmony praised by so many visitors was a product of draconian measures enforced by the Nazis that were invisible to the average visitor.

The author details the efforts of American-Jewish organizations to boycott the Olympics. Brundage led the opposition to these efforts, joined by many American admirers of Hitler, who charged that "the Jews" were attempting to create a rift between the United States and Germany. Having defeated the boycott movement, Brundage, in a consummate act of chutzpah, attempted to capitalize on his victory by squeezing contributions out of the American-Jewish business community, arguing that "the Jews would do well to be generous, now that their efforts to sabotage the German games have failed."

Large cites a letter from Brundage to advertising magnate Albert Lasker advising him that the best way for the "Jews to atone for their sins and to combat anti-Semitism at home was to get on board financially for Berlin…. If the record showed contributions from $50,000 to $75,000 from Jewish sources, it might be useful in the future." This is the same Brundage who, on the day after the memorial service for the Israeli athletes murdered by Arab terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics, said that the IOC could not buckle to Arab terrorism, and declared that "The Games Must Go On."

As for the Stoller and Glickman controversy, Large does not have much that is new to say about the shameful move that prevented the only two Jews on the American Olympic track team from competing — even after their coach personally assured them they would run. Although for the rest of his life Glickman was convinced that Brundage had pressured the American coaches to drop him and Stoller so as not to embarrass the Germans, Large concludes, "Even at this date it is impossible to know for certain why Glickman and Stoller were removed from the relay team."

Large has written what should become the standard work on the 1936 Olympics. Comprehensive as a chronicle of a shameful episode in Germany's sports and national history, Nazi Games also reveals the indifference to Hitler's persecution of the Jews — if not outright anti-Semitism — that prevailed among many important American sports and political figures.

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