1936 Berlin Olympics open with Nazi provocations as Hitler inspects troops, lays wreath at war memorial

Hitler on the grandstand of the Berlin Olympic Stadium during the Games. Source: Getty Images/Fox Photos

On August 1, 1936, Adolf Hitler opened the Summer Olympic Games in Berlin. At the "Reichssportfeld"—which had been the subject of fierce dispute beforehand—spectators celebrated US star Jesse Owens. The Nazi regime, in contrast, staged provocations.

A Calculated Double Affront

The "Festival of Peace" of the world began on August 1, 1936, with a deliberately calculated double affront, revealing what the host truly thought of the unifying idea of the peoples it had offered to celebrate: absolutely nothing.

• First, the prescribed daily schedule forced officials of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to inspect the front of an honor battalion consisting of two companies of infantry and one company each of the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine—before the official opening of the XI Summer Games of the modern era. This took place in front of the Berlin Zeughaus on Unter den Linden, at that time an army and war museum.
• Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels later wrote mockingly in his diary: "The Olympians look like the directors of flea circuses."

Even more provocative was that the "Führer and Reich Chancellor" Adolf Hitler, shortly thereafter and accompanied by Reich War Minister Werner von Blomberg, laid a wreath in the "Langemarckhalle" under the honor grandstand of the Reichssportfeld. This cult site glorified the senseless, symbolically exaggerated sacrificial death of thousands of German reservists and war volunteers near the town of Langemarck in Flanders in early November 1914. Beginning the Olympic Games in this way was a deliberate humiliation of the guests from England, France, Belgium, and the USA.

The official poster of the 1936 Olympic Games. Source: picture-alliance/dpa/Repro

Weather and Crowds

The sky seemed to agree: Saturday began with steady drizzle. However, this did not prevent more than two million Berliners from celebrating the opening of the Games in their city. They were rewarded: Just before the start of the actual opening ceremony in the Olympic Stadium, the clouds cleared.

"Berlin has never experienced such a day, not even in the past years of National Socialist rule with its directorial art geared towards grand scales," commented the notoriously sober Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

Team Entries and Salutes

The ceremonial entry of the teams was marked by military strictness.

• The Italian team was particularly celebrated, and surprisingly, the French.
• The French had resorted to a trick: They saluted in an ancient manner with raised and extended right arm, which the audience interpreted as the Hitler salute now common in Germany.
• In contrast, the reception of the British team was cool—a fact that even Goebbels found "somewhat embarrassing."

Background: Berlin's Bid for the Games

The Reich capital had applied to host the Games in a different era. In 1930, Berlin "most respectfully" requested the IOC to be allowed to host the 1936 competitions. In May 1931, the sports officials agreed. At that time, the Olympics were not yet a multi-billion dollar business, but an investment with an uncertain outcome.

Just a year later, at the X Olympic Games in Los Angeles, dark clouds had gathered over the project in view of the political problems in Germany. IOC President Henri de Baillet-Latour indirectly inquired with Hitler how the NSDAP would view the Games if it came to power. The answer sounded reassuring: They would consider the "question of implementation with great interest."