The Nazi Olympics was held in 1936 in Berlin, Nazi Germany. Berlin won the right to host the Summer Olympics over Barcelona on 26 April 1931. Two years later, Adolf Hitler the
Nazi party leader turned Germany’s democracy into a one-party dictatorship that persecuted Jews, Gypsies and all political opponents. Adolf Hitler saw the olympics as an opportunity to promote his government and used it for propaganda purposes. While trying to camouflage its violent racist policies and targeting of Jewish, the Nazis promoted an image of an united Germany, that is new and strong. They for example removed temporarily most of the anti-Jewish signs.
An ”Aryan only” policy came to power in all German athletic organizations in April 1933.
They promoted …show more content…
For
Germany no other Jewish athlete competed in the Olympic Games in Berlin. There were still other Jewish athletes competing in the Olympics, but they were from other countries.
Nine of them won medals, including Helene Mayer. Many of the Jewish athletes were pressured by Jewish organizations to boycott the Olympic Games but some of them also chose to do so.
The Nazi Olympics was the first Olympics in the history of the modern Olympic Games where people in the United States and Europe called for a boycott of the Olympics because of human rights abuses. The boycott movement failed and Germany had its propaganda coup, where the spectacle offered in Berlin left visiting athletes and spectators in awe and they went home with warm impression of the host country. The countries that had movements to boycott the Olympics were Great Britain, France, Sweden,
Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands and the United States.
The Nazis had big preparations for the Summer Olympics in Berlin. They builded a huge sports complex that included a new stadium and Olympic village for housing the athletes.
The Nazis also made preparations to hide their persecution of the Jews. They