Brundage’s biographer asserts that Brundage “continued obstinately to see a conspiracy of Jews and Communists” and that he was blinded by his anti-Semitism.90
Edström had his own issues. In response to Brundage he wrote: “As regards the Jewish population in Germany, there are strong anti-Jewish tendencies, as you know. This is owing to the fact that the Jews have taken a too prominent position in certain branches of German life and have—as the Jews very often do when they got in the majority—misused their positions. This is the main reason of the Arian [sic] movement in Germany.” Lest anyone mistake him for an anti-Semite, Edström pointed out, “I have, myself, Jews in my service. You met Mr. Eliash, yourself. I saw him the other day in Berlin and he was satisfied and happy. I have heard that the treatment of the Jews in Germany is better during the last months.”91 Previously Edström noted, “When I last visited Berlin I was assured … that there are several Jewish athletes on the preparatory team for the German participation in the Olympic Games.”92 After his epistolary exchange with Edström, Brundage traveled to Germany. There he drank wine from a historic goblet that previously had only been presented to German leaders like Bismarck and Hitler.93
The deference Brundage and his IOC counterparts showed the Nazis allowed them to manufacture an Olympic experience that would place them in a positive light. A German sports official, Carl Diem, came up with the Olympic torch relay, a tradition that would become a staple of the Games. The Berlin Games were the first in which a flame lighted at Mount Olympus wended its way to the host city’s main stadium, where it ignited the Olympic cauldron. The relay chimed with Nazi propaganda identifying German Aryans as the true and worthy heirs of the ancient Greeks. The route from Olympia to Berlin also allowed Hitler to swing Nazi propaganda though central and southeastern Europe, key areas of future Nazi ambitions. During the final days of the relay, those chosen by the regime to carry the torch through Germany were exclusively blond and blue-eyed, perfect exemplars of the Nazis’ Aryan “master race.”94 The torch relay, which Coubertin called “gallant and utterly successful,” was a Nazi creation that seamlessly became part of Olympic tradition.95 Another innovation had sticking power; the Berlin Games, for the first time ever, provided live TV coverage of the Olympics, as seventy-two hours were telecast to public viewing booths in Berlin and Potsdam.96 Also, the opening ceremony for the 1936 Games in Berlin featured the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, “Ode to Joy,” a favorite of Coubertin. After Berlin 1936 it was woven into many subsequent Olympic ceremonies, from the closing ceremony at the Mexico City Games of 1968 to the 1980 Moscow Olympics to the Cultural Olympiad at the London 2012 Summer Games.97
To keep up the right appearances, the Nazi regime gave Berlin a makeover that scrubbed away blatantly anti-Semitic advertising and signage. The notorious Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer was not sold on the streets during the Olympics. Moreover, Goebbels instructed the German press that “the racial aspect must not be remarked upon in the reporting” on the Games.98 The press obeyed and put its usual racism and chauvinism on hiatus. Jazz, which was previously maligned as an immoral force, was allowed in nightclubs.99 But the swastika was ubiquitous, often hanging on banners next to the Olympic flag.100 Hitler himself took full advantage. Time magazine reported, “Most conspicuous in the gigantic crowds, mostly composed of provincial Germans, who stared at all these doings, was Realmleader Adolf Hitler. Suddenly become an omnivorous sports enthusiast, Herr Hitler hardly missed a day’s attendance.”101
Hitler loomed large in the Olympic stadium, but US track star Jesse Owens ruled the athletics oval, winning four gold medals. Owens, the son of an African-American Alabama sharecropper who moved his family north to Cleveland, Ohio, in search of opportunity, was the indisputable superstar of the Berlin Games. He dominated in the 100-meter race, setting a world record. He also smashed the Olympic records in the 200-meter run and the long jump. And he ran a leg in the 400-meter relay team that set a world record. Shirley Povich noted in the Washington Post that Owens’s success had stark political implications: “Hilter declared Aryan supremacy by decree, but Jesse Owens is proving him liar by degrees.” Owens was more conciliatory, and his focus was on political relations at home. In an open letter to the Pittburgh Courier he wrote, “I am a proud that I am an American. I see the sun breaking through the clouds when I realize that millions of Americans will recognize now that what I and the boys of my race are trying to do is attempted for the glory of our country and our countrymen.” He concluded, “Maybe more people will now realize that the Negro is trying to do his full part as an American citizen.” But in general, Owens was partial to the bromide that politics and sports competitions shouldn’t mix.102
Yet, Owens’s fourth gold medal, as part of the 400-meter relay squad, sparked political controversy as much as racial reconciliation. In a last-minute coaching decision, Owens and fellow sprinter Ralph Metcalfe were inserted into the relay team, replacing two Jewish athletes, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, who had been training expressly for the event and who were expected to win gold. Glickman openly chalked up the eleventh-hour rebuff to anti-Semitism, pointing a finger not only at the track coaches but at Avery Brundage, too. The athlete claimed they did not wish to make the German hosts uncomfortable by having to witness two Jews standing triumphant on the medal stand. Stoller was so distraught that he vowed to quit track altogether.103
The grandeur of the Games was captured and magnified by Leni Riefenstahl’s iconic Olympia. The film prominently featured Jesse Owens, despite Goebbels’s demands that Riefenstahl leave footage of Owens on the cutting room floor.104 Riefenstahl, famous for her pro-Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will, was enraptured by Owens, noting in her memoir that he was “the athletic phenomenon of the Games.”105 Hitler may have told Riefenstahl that he “was not very interested” in the Olympics and would “rather stay away,” but he largely supported her artistic autonomy with Olympia, sometimes shielding her from the cretinous Goebbels and his thuggish attempts to thwart the film. Riefenstahl had also secured special permission from the IOC to film the Games. She used groundbreaking film techniques to produce a cinematic masterpiece that, in her words, aimed to “combine the Olympic idea with the most important Olympic contests.” Owens apparently approved. When the filmmaker and the athlete reunited in Munich at the 1972 Games, the meeting was “deeply emotional,” full of hugs, kisses, and near tears, according to Riefenstahl.106 Olympia also had an admirer in Avery Brundage. When theaters in the US refused to publicly screen the film, he went ballistic, fuming to one German journalist that “unfortunately the theaters and moving picture companies are almost all owned by Jews.”107
At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Owens received friendly greetings from everyday Germans as well as German Olympic officials—Jeremy Schaap goes as far as to assert that the Germans in attendance “embraced him as if he were one of its blond, blue-eyed Teutons.”108 But the Gestapo secretly tailed him and his fellow African American athletes to ensure they didn’t have too much contact with Germans. Of particular concern to the German secret police was African Americans’ interaction with German women. During the Games, police cited more than fifty German women for approaching the foreigners “in an unseemly manner.”109 Meanwhile, back at home, Southern newspapers minimized the athletic feats of Owens and other African Americans—the Atlanta Constitution failed to run a single photo of Owens or his black teammates. In fact, Owens resented President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who never sent him a note of congratulations, more than Hitler. Owens called Hitler “a man of dignity.” Later, when campaigning for Republican candidate Alf Landon in the 1936 US presidential election against Roosevelt,