1936 Olympic Games
Highlights & Controversies
Though the Olympic flame was first introduced in the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, this was the first instance of the torch relay. The Nazis invented the concept of the torch run from ancient Olympia to the host city.
Thus as swimmer Iris Cummings Critchell later related, "once the athletes were all in place, the torch bearer ran in through the tunnel to go around the stadium".
A young man chosen for this task ran up the steps all the way up to the top of the stadium there to light a cauldron which would start this eternal flame that would burn through the duration of the games.
Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin while the host country was the most successful country overall with 89 medals total
A largely overlooked athlete, John "Long John" Woodruff, acheived one of the most dramatic comeback wins of the Games in what has been called one of the most dramatic 800-meter races in history. Woodruff made it through the qualifying heats with relative ease. In the final, on Aug. 4, he became boxed in on the inside about 300 meters into the race and appeared doomed.
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What happened next is a matter of some discussion. But Woodruff is clear on the subject: "I stopped."
In that instant, as other runners passed him by, Woodruff moved outside, to the third lane, and started up again. He didn't stop this time until he had beaten Mario Lanzi of Italy by six-tenths of a second.
His long legs and stride were a major reason he was so fast and lead to his nickname "Long John". But how did he win? According to one reporer the key factor was that once he realized he was boxed in by the other runners, he came to almost a complete stop, then moved to the middle of the track before sprinting past the field. It was unconventional and not usually a winning strategy, but one that also speaks to just how fast his closing sprint must have been.
The obverse (left) and the reverse (right) of John Woodruff's Gold Medal for the 800m race
Unfortunately, it was not all fun and games in Berlin in 1936.
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Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler saw the Games as an opportunity to promote his government and ideals of racial supremacy. The official Nazi party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, wrote in the strongest terms that Jews and Black people should not be allowed to participate in the Games.
However, when threatened with a boycott of the Games by other nations, he relented and allowed Black people and Jews to participate, and added one token participant to the German team—a German woman, Helene Mayer, who had a Jewish father.
At the same time, the party removed signs stating "Jews not wanted" and similar slogans from the city's main tourist attractions.
In an attempt to "clean up" the host city, the German Ministry of the Interior authorized the chief of police to arrest all Romani (Gypsies) and keep them in a "special camp," the Berlin-Marzahn concentration camp
After winning the middleweight class, the Egyptian weightlifter Khadr El Touni continued to compete for another 45 minutes, finally exceeding the total of the German silver medalist by 35 kg. The 20-year-old El Touni lifted a total of 387.5 kg crushing two German world champions, El Touni broke the then Olympic and world records, while the German lifted 352.5 kg. Furthermore, El Touni had lifted 15 kg more than the light-heavyweight gold medalist, a feat only El Touni has accomplished. El Touni's new world records stood for 13 years.
Fascinated by El Touni's performance, Adolf Hitler rushed down to greet this human miracle. Prior to the competition, Hitler was said to have been sure that Rudolf Ismayr and Adolf Wagner would embarrass all other opponents. Hitler was so impressed by El Touni's domination in the middleweight class that he ordered a street named after him in Berlin olympic village.
The Egyptian held the No. 1 position on the IWF list of history's 50 greatest weightlifters for 60 years, until the 1996 Games in Atlanta where Turkey's Naim SüleymanoÄŸlu surpassed him to top the list.
But in spite all the pomp and ceremony, and the glorification of Hitler, all did not go according to plan, and there was a rather humorous aspect in the opening ceremony. Distance runner Louis Zamperini, one of the athletes present, related it on camera:
"​They released 25,000 pigeons, the sky was clouded with pigeons, the pigeons circles overhead, and then they shot a cannon, and they scared the poop out of the pigeons, and we had straw hats, flat straw hats, and you could hear the pitter-patter on our straw hats, but we felt sorry for the women, for they got it in their hair, but I mean there were a mass of droppings, and I say it was so funny…​"
These were the final Olympics under the presidency of Henri de Baillet-Latour and the Final Olympic Games for 12 years because of World War II.
Quick Facts & Tidbits
Although he did not win a medal, future American war hero Louis Zamperini, lagging behind in the 5,000-meter final, made up ground by clocking a 56-second final lap. This effort caught the attention of Adolf Hitler who personally commended Zamperini on his speed.
The German Olympic committee, in accordance with Nazi directives, virtually barred Germans who were Jewish or Roma or had such an ancestry from participating in the Games. Helene Mayer was the only German Jew to compete at the Berlin Games (and was added as only a symbolic gesture of compliance.)
This decision meant exclusion for many of the country's top athletes such as shotputter and discus thrower Lilli Henoch, who was a four-time world record holder and 10-time German national champion, and Gretel Bergmann who was suspended from the German team just days after she set a record of 1.60 meters in the high jump.
Germany had a prosperous year in the equestrian events, winning individual and team gold in all three disciplines, as well as individual silver in dressage.
In the cycling match sprint finals, the German Toni Merkens fouled Arie van Vliet of the Netherlands. Instead of being disqualified, he was fined 100 marks and kept his gold.
German gymnasts Konrad Frey and Alfred Schwarzmann both won three gold medals.
A remarkable story from the track and field competition was the gold medal won by the US women's 4 × 100 m relay team. The German team were the heavy favourites, but dropped the baton at one hand-off.
Of notable interest on the US team was Elizabeth "Betty" Robinson Schwartz. She was the first woman ever awarded an Olympic gold medal for track and field, winning the women's 100 m event at the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam.
In 1931, Robinson was involved in a plane crash, and was severely injured. Her body was discovered in the wreckage and it was wrongly thought that she was dead. She was placed in the trunk of a car and taken to an undertaker, where it was discovered that she was not dead, but in a coma.
She awoke from the coma seven months later, although it was another six months before she could get out of a wheelchair, and two years before she could walk normally again. Due to the length of her recovery, she had to miss participating in the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, in her home country.
The games were the first to be televised, and radio broadcasts reached 41 countries.
Jack Lovelock of New Zealand won the 1500 m gold medal, coming through a strong field to win in world record time of 3:47.8.
The U.S. eight-man rowing team from the University of Washington won the gold medal, coming from behind to defeat the Germans and Italians with Adolf Hitler in attendance. If you would like to read more about this stunning victory, click here.
