In 1930, Germany was awarded the privilege of hosting the 1936 Olympic Games. However, that gesture to bring Germany back into the world community became problematic when the Nazis took over the nation in 1933, both domestically and internationally. However, a reticent Hitler was persuaded to let the event proceed for his own purposes even as the international sporting world wrestled with the moral choice of attending. What followed from those moral struggles was a tournament originally intended to foster international brotherhood being twisted into a nationalistic celebration of supposed German Aryan superiority that even the legendary athletic triumphs of African-American Olympic great Jesse Owens could not puncture completely. Written by Kenneth Chisholm ([email protected])
