Torch bearers and Olympic torch, an invention of Berlin 1936

The arrival of the last torchbearer with the flaming Olympic torch that lights the brazier is the strongest and most universal image of the games, well before the athletic and competitive feats destined to make the history of sport. The first time was on August 1, 1936, in Berlin, and since then the ceremony has never been without it, celebrating a scenic invention that is most likely due to director Leni Riefenstahl for what went down in history as Hitler’s Olympics, delivered in 1938 to the cinema with the grandiloquent blockbuster “Olympia” which made the XI edition a manifesto of Nazi Germany.

The Führer who did not want the sporting event was convinced by Goebbels

Everything was markedly grandiose for Berlin 1936, which the Führer initially didn’t even want, having inherited a situation established with the awarding of the International Olympic Committee in May 1931, when Germany was a republic. In 1933 Hitler had triumphed at the polls and immediately transformed his country of choice into a totalitarian regime, and this immediately appeared not to be in line with the Olympic principles.

Several national committees had pushed for a change of location but the IOC had continued. In the meantime, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels had managed to overcome the dictator’s reluctance to stage the Olympic Games, proposing that he could transform the sporting event into a global sounding board for the Third Reich and the efficiency of the Nazi system.

The grandeur and the muting of anti-Semitism, but only one Jewish athlete

No expense was spared at the time to present to the world what brown-shirted Germany was, even silencing the state anti-Semitism already delivered in 1935 to the Nuremberg Laws. Naturally, there were no Jews among the ranks of German athletes, with the exception of foil player Helene Mayer who won a silver, failing to repeat the gold in Amsterdam 1928.

He had left Germany in 1933 and settled in the USA, but had agreed to compete with German colours. The Austrian Jewish swimmers had instead refused to participate: their country would be incorporated with the Anschluss in 1938, extending the Nazi persecution which had been toned down and hidden during the Olympics.

German triumph with 33 golds and first medal for an Italian woman with Ondina Valla

More than 120,000 spectators were present at the inaugural ceremony, cheering Hitler and letting out an impressive triumphal scream as the torchbearer entered the Olympiastadion, after the torch had traveled, changing hands with the relays, over three thousand kilometres. Everything worked perfectly during those games of unprecedented grandeur, the image of the Nazi regime was strengthened as Goebbels wanted.

The German triumph will be confirmed by the medal table with 33 gold, 26 silver and 30 bronze; second to the USA with 24 golds, third to Hungary with 10 and fourth to Italy with 8, including the medal of Ondina Valla, the first Italian woman to win an Olympics in the 80 meter race resolved in a photo finish.

Legends and truths about Jesse Owens also celebrated in the 1938 film “Olympia”

It is a legend that on August 4th Adolf Hitler refused to reward and shake hands with record holder Jesse (the name came from the pronunciation of the initials James Cleveland) Owens, with 4 gold medals, because he had beaten local idol Luz Long in the long jump. The truth was that he had greeted him with a hand gesture that was promptly reciprocated. And the sincere friendship that was established between the African American and the Aryan German is equally true, but much less known. Long had publicly complimented the black athlete who had beaten him in the stadium.

He died in the Wehrmacht uniform in July 1943, during the fighting in Sicily and is still buried in the German military cemetery of Motta Sant’Anastasia. He had the rank of private. After the war, Owens helped his family in Germany, which was in serious economic difficulty. The same champion was the protagonist of many memorable sequences in the film “Olympia” by Leni Riefenstahl, who also managed to escape the suffocating control of Minister Goebbels.

Leni Riefenstahl, regime cinema and innovations

The innovative shooting techniques and editing have made the history of cinema, far beyond the political and propaganda imprint. At the time, in 1938, the director was awarded the Mussolini Cup in Venice. The Olympic village that had amazed the guests and made the regime proud, during the Second World War, will become a concentration camp.

Leni Riefenstahl, who before “Olympia” had signed “Triumph of the Will” which celebrated Nazism, will carry the imprint of having been “Hitler’s director” throughout her long life (she died at the age of 101 in 2003). She survived two plane crashes and these events made a caustic Indro Montanelli write that not even the devil had wanted her.