Nazi Propaganda In The 1936 Olympics

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In 1931, the International Olympic Committee awarded the 1936 Summer Olympics to Berlin. Adolf Hitler who was the Chancellor and the Nazi Party Leader turned the nation’s fragile democracy into a one party dictatorship which had control of all aspects of German life which also extended to sports. To a large extent, Hitler and the use of propaganda during the 1936 Olympics was successful in promoting Nazi Ideology both nationally and internationally. The Nazis made elaborate preparations for the August Summer Games by skilfully promoting the Olympics with spectacular eye-catching sculptures of German athletes specifically built for the Berlin Games. Source A shows tall, strong and superhuman athletes - known as the Aryan race - displaying the…show more content…
Tourists had felt welcomed and left with happy memories because of the courtesy extended to them and the extreme tolerance which was offered to all foreign visitors by the Nazis and the German people. Source D mentions how “Hundreds of international journalists acknowledged that Germany had put on the most lavish and biggest Olympics ever.” - With Germany having built the world’s largest Olympic Stadium which could seat up to “100 000 spectators” (Source I) and having 51 countries participating in the Berlin Games. “Overall, the Berlin Olympics was a big success for the Nazis.” (Source D). Not only was the overall exhibition of the Games by Germany a success but the amount of medals won by Germany throughout the Games was triumphant too. German Athletes had captured the most medals (Source G), making the Olympic Games even more successful for them than what it already was. Hitler and the Nazis emerged victoriously. Winning 33 Gold medals - more than any other country - reinforced the German myths of invincibility and the “rightness” of German ideology. Germany had done what they needed to do and they had conquered. The winning medals contributed to the national and international propaganda allowing for Germany to be put back in the fold of nations. Hitler, the Nazis and the medals won contributed to making the tourists…show more content…
Being an expert in this field, Source C mentions how Brundage flatters himself in saying that he is, “old and experienced enough to be able to detect attempts to ‘pull the wool’ over [his] eyes...” This source concludes that majority of the people visiting Berlin - for the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games- were not all experts in Olympics therefore majority of the people could not detect the attempts for the wool to be “pulled over their eyes.” Although the creator of the “photomontage”( John Heartfield) in Source E is no expert in Olympics, he is however an expert in anti-Nazism. Heartfield is an anti-Nazi German who protested against German nationalism. In Source E the opinion which Heartfield has towards the Nazi regime is clearly shown. His negative opinion is shown by portraying Hitler’s partner, Joseph Goebbles as an undesirable person with one leg as a hoof symbolising how he is an animal because of his inhuman beliefs and how he takes control of the athletes in a barbaric way. By illustrating that Goebbles is undesirable, it therefore also implies that he is hypocritical because he himself looks nothing like the Aryan race advocated by the Nazi regime. Source E comments on Nazi propaganda in a
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