A commemorative T-shirt on the Olympics online store marking the 1936 Games in Berlin under Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist, or Nazi, government drew attention in German media on Wednesday.
The shirt depicts a man wearing a laurel wreath, the quadriga chariot drawn by four horses atop the Brandenburg Gate, and core details like the dates and location of the Summer Games in Berlin. It is part of a collection of shirts for each modern-era Games but nonetheless references probably the most politically contentious edition. There are no references to Hitler’s government or Nazi symbols on the shirt.
The Games had already been awarded to Germany before the Nazis came to power, but hosting both the winter and summer events in 1936 gave Hitler’s regime a global stage. Technological advances such as television and radio allowed the propaganda-reliant government to amplify its image, with propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels focusing heavily on the event.
The 1936 Games included the first modern Olympic torch relay, a fact the International Olympic Committee (IOC) commemorated online in 2020 to public backlash after using Nazi propaganda footage in its recall of the relay.
Although the Nazis tried to present a respectable image for visitors—removing antisemitic slogans and graffiti from Berlin’s streets and shop windows, moving those they deemed “undesirables” out of the capital, and toning down rhetoric in the racist paper Der Stürmer—signs of looming repression and aggression were already visible. In the lead-up to the Olympics, Nazi Germany remilitarized the Rhineland, implemented the four-year plan to prepare economy and military for war, stripped Roma and Jews of voting rights that March, and appointed SS leader Heinrich Himmler as chief of German police. Internationally, Hitler’s government signed treaties with future Axis allies Japan and Italy in 1936 and supported General Francisco Franco’s nationalists in Spain’s civil war.
The Berlin Games were only a partial propaganda success for Hitler. Germany led the overall medal tally, but the United States dominated some of the highest-profile track-and-field events. Hitler had wanted to attend and personally award German winners, but after leaving the stadium to avoid shaking the hand of high jumper Cornelius Johnson—who won the first U.S. gold—the IOC warned him he could either congratulate all gold medalists or none. Hitler chose to honor none thereafter, meaning he never shook the hand of the Games’ most successful athlete, 22-year-old Black U.S. sprinter and long jumper Jesse Owens, who won gold in the 100 meters, 200 meters, the 4×100-meter relay and the long jump.
Edited by: Sean Sinico