All language subtitles for Hitlers Olympics (2016)

In 1931, the

city of Berlin was awarded
the auspicious task

of hosting the 1936 Summer Olympic Games.

What no one could have predicted
was that these games would be

used as a tool
for some of the slickest propaganda

by one of the most tyrannical regimes
the world has ever seen.

By the early 1930s
and before Hitler came to power,

the world was very willing
to try and embrace Germany once again.

The idea was that
the Olympics would bring people together.

Propaganda for the Nazis
was not just an instrument of government,

was the air they breathed.

It was the medium of governance.

From the moment
the Nazi Party assumed power in Germany,

a systematic persecution of Jews
took place, and no exception was made.

The persecution would stop, but only
for the two week duration of the games.

Whilst
the eyes of the world focused on Berlin.

What happens is

what's called an Olympic pause,
in which Berlin is cleaned up.

Anti-Jewish signs were removed.

Everything was done
to create the impression

that this was a hospital implement.

Such a policy was not necessarily
that inimical to many of the visitors

who shared the same prejudice
as the Nazis.

The African-American athlete Jesse Owens
would make Olympic history there.

He would win four gold medals
and become the most popular man

in Nazi Germany at the time, and win
the G.

Germany went wild for the Americans,
and it went particularly wild for Owens.

He was described by almost everyone
who saw him as beautiful.

His form was flawless,

as smooth as the West Wing.

It would be the first time a host nation

would project his political ideology
and power onto the world.

This stunning act of propaganda

would be emulated
by all subsequent Olympics.

It was an operatic production,
lavish in scale.

It really invented Olympic ritual
for all time to come.

The five Olympic rings being held
by the talons of the German Nazi eagle.

Never could you have a more obviously
symbolic depiction

of the German and Nazi
hold on the Olympic movement.

The 1936 Olympic Games gave the world

theater pageantry and excitement,
all under the banner of the swastika.

This was Hitler's Olympics.

World War

One had left Germany a ravaged nation.

It was shut out by the rest of Europe,
and its economic

and political situation was in tatters.

The people were broken,
and a whole generation of men

had effectively been wiped out.

Germany

in the 1920s was in a lot of turmoil.

There was a revolution.

There is fighting in the street
between the left and right.

Germany was in a parlous mess, frankly.

Of course, there was this

huge amount of war reparations
that Germany was made to pay for.

The Treaty of Versailles.

And this fundamentally
crippled the German economy.

The Weimar Republic

operated without the full mandate
from the people.

There was a lot of dissatisfaction
with the economic situation.

And then, of course, the great inflation

and the final hammer blow,
which was the Wall Street crash,

which created unemployment
of about 7 million in Germany.

Suddenly, even the most gilt edged
securities are practically valueless.

The stock market crash has come,
and the Great Depression

has begun.

The ranks of the unemployed grew, and
there are long lines for soup kitchens.

A lot of Germans were in despair
about the future.

It was.

It was a very, very difficult period.

The anti-German sentiment

was widespread throughout Europe
from the fallout of World War One.

This was manifest
in the banning of German participation

in the 1924 Olympic Games,
which were held in Paris.

The man who had the ultimate power
to sanction this ban was Pierre

de Coubertin, the founder
of the modern Olympic Movement.

It was his idea in the late 19th century,

to bring about a recrudescence
of this old idea of the Olympic Games.

They were founded on the idea that
they would foster international goodwill.

Until then, the only thing like
it had been the Olympic

with the K games up in Shropshire,
playschool, Much Wenlock.

He was also very,

very much a massive fan of the kind
of English public school system.

And he thought that these are
the Anglo-Saxon kind of white way of doing

things was the correct way to approach
sport as improving the soul and

the spirit of bringing people together
was the catalyst

for Berlin winning the Olympic bid.

The games were awarded to Berlin in 1931.

However, they were first awarded to Berlin

in 1912, to be held in 1914,

and even though at the time
it was felt, as in ancient Greece,

that the Olympics would continue despite
the fact that countries were at war.

The invention of mustard gas
and so on and so forth

put paid to this idea of a civilized war.

There was a great chance of rehabilitating

Germany into the community of nations and,

civilizing it, taming it,

giving it something to be pleased about.

After all the years of horror.

One of the key figures
for securing the Olympic Games for Berlin

was a German sports
official, Doctor Theodore Lowveld.

He would become the chairman
of the organizing committee for the games,

a position that would soon be dramatically
compromised.

Peter Lawford was a pillar
of the German sports community.

He was a very capable administrator,
and he was well known

because going all the way back to the 1904
Olympics in Saint Louis,

he had been a representative of Germany.

He was someone well respected
in the international Olympic community.

He's a tremendously powerful
figure in German sport,

and it's him and his protege, Carl Diem,
who are successful

in lobbying the Olympic movement
to get the Olympics to Berlin.

He was a member
of the International Olympic Committee,

and they wanted to give the games back,
in a sense, to the ball.

And that's one reason why they chose
Berlin as the host city in 1931.

However, Laval has a problem that will
manifest when Hitler comes to power,

and that's the fact
that his maternal grandmother was Jewish.

His father had become a practicing
Christian at 110 years earlier.

Obviously he dated from the Weimar regime,
but he was in a particularly invidious

position because, of course, he was under
enormous pressure from the Nazis.

Laval had secured the Olympics
for Weimar Germany,

but the rise of the National Socialist
Party was suddenly,

although many Germans supported them,
the Nazi regime

capitalized on a nation
who seemed weary of politics.

In early 1930s Germany.

I think the key issue was not so much
that everyone was a Nazi.

They never got a majority of votes,
but that

everyone
had ceased to believe in democracy.

So the society was, split between right
and left

with no kind of center anymore.

Adolf
Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany

in January of 1933.

He was not elected to office, but

he quickly worked to assume greater
powers.

The Enabling Act is a key
piece of legislation.

It cements Hitler's power

into this absolutely dominant position.

Hitler
had the country and with it, the Olympics.

However, he did not view the games
in an altogether favorable light,

and he would require some persuasion
in order for the games

to go ahead.

The modern Olympic Games,

founded on the idea that they would foster
international goodwill,

and this was about as diametrically
opposed

to the ultranationalist Nazis
as you could get.

Goebbels
saw clearly straight from the start.

He was in no doubt at all.

You merely pointed
out the propaganda potential.

Goebbels and Hitler was visiting
the Olympic Stadium.

Goebbels was able to show him
this is going to be a fantastic arena

to celebrate.

That is going to just do
so much for our prestige hits.

Then suddenly
you saw in the natural clarity

what actually could be achieved
for Germany,

for its international reputation,
for its projection and for its diplomacy.

If it did indeed host the Olympics.

It was the Nazis Germany in 1936

who really saw it for the first time.

The Berlin Olympics had been hijacked
with Hitler's backing.

The Olympics, like every other aspect
of German life, would be Nazi fied.

And as the world looked on
at the injustices of this regime,

the Olympic values of friendship
and respect would be used

as a false facade for a terrifying,
sinister and deadly cause.

After World War One, Germany

had been ostracized
from the rest of Europe, but in 1931,

the International Olympic Committee
would reach out to a name Berlin,

as the host nation for the 1936 Summer
games.

The Germany
to which the games were bestowed would,

however, be very different to the Germany
that would end up hosting them

once the Nazi Party had assumed power
in March 1933.

Their anti-Semitic
rhetoric was put into action.

All books of Jewish authors are ordered
burned and the public squares.

Other scientists
artists are driven from Germany.

Soon after Hitler took power, Jews began

to be excluded
from many different areas of German life.

And this included sports
with the Nuremberg Laws,

which were 1935
Jews, became non citizens of Germany.

It's as simple as that.

But specifically
they banned Jewish leaders

from all sports clubs and forced them
into the Jewish sports organization.

They could no longer do sports
training with non-Jews.

If you're not Aryan, you're to be excluded

from sports grotesque anti-Semitism,
which totally flies

in the idea of the Olympic movement,
which suggests

that all sportsmen and women
should have an equal chance to compete.

Clearly the Jews of Germany did not.

Many German sportsmen
and women at the time were Jews,

and all found that their professional
and personal lives were being affected

by the persecution of the Nazis.

One of these athletes
was Margaret Lambert.

She was born Gretel Bergmann in 1914,

in Lough Pine, southern Germany.

She was a promising young athlete

and would go on to become Germany's
leading high jumper.

It was for the

everybody knew everybody else
and everybody was agreeing

with everybody else.

We had friends all over the place.

There was really no difference

between Jews and non-Jews.

For friends.

I just loved sports.

I did everything.

My parents were a little bit

upset about my sports career.

I was one of the few Jewish kids

who hated life in sports.

At 18 years

old, Margaret would witness the Nazi Party

assuming power in Germany.

Where the Nazis came in.

It wasn't any fun. Hang in there.

You win a medal.

Friends know how, though.

They testify.

They came the house party

to visit us

because they were not supposed to see us.

We. They do that immediately.

I had friends to the

Irish. Friends that were Jewish.

I have friends all over the place.

And all of a sudden, they were not allowed
to talk to us anymore.

We were upstairs in our house

and dances to dancing to a machine

and seeing a kid in his shoes.

So that was 25 dresses.

As Margaret
found her life changed beyond recognition.

The Olympics loomed on the horizon.

Athletic groups and political parties
in many different countries

started questioning whether it would be
morally right to compete

in the Olympics
in a Germany under Nazi rule.

The United States of America

was pivotal in
whether the games would go ahead or not.

If the country with the strongest,
fastest, most successful athletes

were not going to show, then
the games would not be worth putting on.

The fate of the games would rest on the
arguments of two men in the United States.

You have a figure called Avery Brundage
of the American Olympic Committee.

He sees a lot in the Nazi creed

that he sees well as marrying
into his own personal philosophies.

As a self-made millionaire in Chicago,
a kid with nothing who turned himself

into an Olympic athlete
and a millionaire construction magnate.

Brundage is not a member
of the American Olympic Committee.

He's also a member of the A.U.,
the American athletics union.

He then decides to resign.

The party's over leadership
to a man called Judge Jeremiah Mahoney,

who is passionately anti-Nazi.

Jeremiah Mahoney was a New York
Athletic Club guy,

and he was particularly concerned
not only about the Jews,

but about the anti-Christian policies.

He saw the issue with astonishing
moral clarity, saying

that this would be to really legitimize
the most appalling, tyranny.

In a bid to convince the U.S.

to participate.

Avery Brundage was invited to Berlin
in 1934 on a fact finding mission

to investigate
the treatment of Jewish athletes.

It was a very tightly controlled
inspection.

His purpose was to see
if there was discrimination

against Jewish athletes, or how Olympic

fair play was in place.

The Germans wheeled out a couple
of very pliable Jewish athletes

to say that everything was going
well for them.

This was complete nonsense,
and Third Reich was marvelous

at laying on the compared to Reich Marshal
Goering was amazing.

New charming.

Hitler could, from time to time,
listen politely.

Brundage had no desire to come back
to the United States

and create any difficulties
for the Germans.

The decision was made in December of 1935.

You had these Brundage rights
who said, Germany's not so bad,

and you also had most of the athletes,
including the African-American

athletes, who said,

how can you ask us not to go

to Germany
because of the way they're treating Jews?

When we're treated, the way
we're treated here in the U.S.?

And they had a point.

Brundage was successful,

and with the inclusion of America,
the rest of the world followed.

The games would go ahead.

And as the U.S.

team would prepare to make the voyage
from New York to Berlin,

Hitler and Goebbels made preparations
for welcoming the globe

to a liberal Nazi Germany.

Berlin's parks and playgrounds are filled

with groups of plain, cheerful people
who show no signs of dissatisfaction

with the fascist dictatorship
which controls their life.

What happens largely under

Goebbels is stewardship
is what's called an Olympic pause.

Anti-Jewish signs were removed
for many streets or anywhere

close to Olympic venues.

Shops have to be let out at a very cheap
rate in order to show

that there is a thriving economy.

Everybody on certain streets in Berlin
is forced to hang up either

a swastika flag or an Olympic flag.

Everywhere is whitewashed along the train
lines, from lines going through Germany

to Berlin.

All the houses are back on to the train.

Lines have to be repainted

to show that everything's
spick and span and all very rich and tidy.

So there was this big,
tidy up of buildings and people

during the big clean up in Germany.

The world's greatest athletes

would be journeying to Berlin,
and following them would be a hungry

press, hopeful politicians and excited
spectators.

On July the 15th, the US team set sail
from New York Harbor on the S.S.

Manhattan.

They left a fanfare and cheers
and would be met in Berlin with the same.

It was very much the Olympic grandees
were, you know, in first class

and the athletes were in steerage,
but apparently everybody had a good time.

It took nearly ten days to reach Berlin.

So you have these super fit, young
and very beautiful people together

from ten days and say
there was a certain amount of scandal.

We do know that Eleanor Home was
one of these athletes who, maddeningly,

could just smoke and drink all night,
and then we can go medals the next day.

If she
had been in a flirting ostentatiously

and ingratiating with the first class
passengers, getting frightfully drunk

and ignoring everyone
and ignoring every Olympian ideal,

Avery Brundage, of course, hate that
and and booted her off the team.

What's also remarkable
is that the American Olympic athletes

weren't segregated.

And so actually, for the first time,
you have a lot of white athletes,

especially from the South,

who've never actually shared a meal
with a black person before, even, you

know, you know, gone to the same lavatory
or shared the same sort of dorm.

And actually, what's very interesting

is that there was no problem that

on their way to the Olympic Games
in Berlin,

on the USS Manhattan,
are the best of American athletes on deck.

Glenn Cunningham and Jesse Owens

anticipate stiff competition
in this greatest of all sport to land.

The U.S.

team were a collection of world
class athletes.

Many would be favorites for podium
finishes.

One athlete who the entire world
would be eager to watch was Jesse Owens.

Many thought he would go on to win
three gold medals,

but very few thought he would surpass
that.

Jesse Owens was born

in rural Alabama in 1913.

His father was a sharecropper.

His grandparents had been slaves.

He came from the most humble beginnings
imaginable.

Certainly,
people were aware of Jesse Owens.

Wherever people were running and jumping
because he was breaking world records.

So particularly among his fellow
African-Americans,

he was a great hope.

Blacks could not play in the baseball
major leagues.

Blacks could not play
in the National Football League.

There not been a black
heavyweight champion since 1915.

So he was someone that, in particular,
the African American community,

pinned a lot of its hopes on.

As athletes
began to arrive from all over the globe,

so did many spectators.

Eric Brown was a 17 year old boy
at the time when his father,

a former Air Force pilot,
received an invitation from Germany

for previous combatants
to attend the games.

Eric and his father made the decision
to see this once in a lifetime spectacle.

We were welcomed.

I must say, enthusiast,

the way over your gravesite
because the young man

I love derives from my childhood,
as was not a quiet event

very means.

Berlin's stage was set,

and the next two weeks would be a festival
of athletic and sporting prowess.

Under Hitler's supervision, spectators
would witness men and women

performing faster, higher
and stronger than ever before.

The advanced technology
that Germany had been developing

made sure that this high drama
would be played out to the globe.

The 11th Olympiad was almost underway.

Boycott movements had come to nothing.

A planned People's Olympics, due
to be held in Barcelona

as a protest to the Berlin Games,
had to be canceled

due to the outbreak
of the Spanish Civil War.

For two weeks,
all eyes would be on Germany

as the world's greatest athletes
and scores of excited spectators

traveled to the Olympic Stadium
to attend the opening ceremony.

The Olympic flame was making the final leg
of its journey

from Olympia in Greece to Berlin,

the Berlin Games.

I think in many ways
represent the beginning

of the Olympic Games as we now see them.

The torch relay was invented
for these games.

It's invented by the Nazis,

but they give the impression
that it's actually an ancient Greek thing

that always happened.

It shows the element of complete imagining
and the fantasy

representation of Greece
as the seed of Germanic civilization.

It works very well.

Frankly, that's
why people do it still today.

But the irony, of course, about
the Olympic torch, it's made out of steel.

That same steel is going to go south

in about four years time, as German
steel tanks made by Krupp

invade the Balkans and Greece.

So it's in many ways
the kind of the reverse prophecy of

what's going to happen.

Crowds lined the streets of Berlin
to witness

the arrival of Hitler
and his dramatic entry into the stadium.

The lighting of the Olympic flame
would signal the beginning of the games,

but this act of pageantry
was just one of many highly choreographed

set pieces
which made up the opening ceremony of

the opening ceremony.

It's the first Olympic
opening ceremony of modern time.

To me, it was very exciting.

We stood beside Germans

and everyone has to say their role
impressed

in various ways.

On August 1st, the last of the relay teams
spread out into Berlin

and into the 325 acre Reich Sports,
being an overflow crowd of 105,000

people, stood at attention
for the historic moment.

It really invented Olympic ritual
for all time to come.

It is full of artillery fire.

It is full of Nazi flags and Olympic flags
put together swastikas everywhere

for their share,
carrying swastikas around the arena.

I made a very different version.

You have the marches of the teams.

You have the great entry of Hitler.

And then finally you have the arrival
of the Olympic torch on the Nazis,

of course, understood the power of silence
as well as the power of noise.

The lithe athlete charges
through the stadium months and steps,

and then suddenly
he pauses before he lights the flame.

That pulls is quite extraordinary.

They release 20,000 pigeons into the air.

All well and good
until bang is his great big

artillery
barrage goes out at the same time.

Net result. Pigeons get frightened.

Frightened pigeons
do what frightened pigeon do.

And the heads
and hair of the American team

largely are splattered in guano.

This is highly comic moment, and it shows
that underneath all the sophisticated

pageantry,
things aren't entirely brilliant.

It is a absolutely huge, deafening event.

And it's all about one man, Adolf Hitler.

He is at the epicenter of these games
at the ceremony,

and he will be for the next two weeks.

The astonishing thing was,

you realize right away

that Hitler had this lot in his hand.

After the euphoria
of the opening ceremony,

the competition would finally commence.

Yet it would be a competition
that would be missed by many Jewish

athletes.

Margaret Lambert had managed to escape
the persecution and relocate

to England in April 1933,
but was ordered by the Nazi Party

to move back to Germany in a bid
to highlight their liberal attitude.

Refusal would jeopardize her family's
safety.

Reluctantly, she moved back.

And in a Pre-Olympic competition,
she equaled the German record of jumping

one meter 60cm just two weeks
before the start of the games.

Margaret was stripped

of all her achievements
and was told she would not be participate.

There
were only two people instead of three.

This was supposed to be the third one.

And they came that I was injured
and I couldn't compete.

They wouldn't let me.

I was crushing my head off.

I mean, I never got to Berlin.

I was in the prime and I was to take shot.

But they did tell me

they set out at the official level
so I didn't make it.

But you, who now have a standing

room, take it.

And you get a set.

Margaret's

replacement in the German team
was an athlete named Dora Rochon,

who only managed to jump one
meter 58cm, finishing fourth in 1939.

After complaints from other athletes,
Dora was found to be

working as a waiter
under the name of Hermann.

An investigation was launched and it was
found that Strachan was actually male.

Olympic games have begun.

The best athletes in the world
have come to Berlin.

Although highlighted by their absence,
the persecution of Jewish

athletes was eclipsed
by the presence of Jesse Owens.

When he stepped into the arena,
the anticipation was palpable.

I saw him

when all four of his events
the title of World's

Fastest Man, goes to the 100 meter
Olympic champion.

If he won the 100 meter dash,
it almost wouldn't matter

what happened in the others.

He wanted to hear something
big and thinking.

He powered through the competition and

won the gold medal
without having to work for too hard.

He ain't got no.

The 200 meter dash
was an even easier competition for Jesse.

The silver medalist, Mac Robinson from
the US wasn't close.

Nobody could touch him at 200m,

Owens really made a huge impact.

And major realized that this Aaron

Chevrolet Origin maybe wasn't

quite where it seemed to be.

With two gold medals, one.

The third gold seemed a mere formality.

Jesse, however, would run into difficulty
during the heats of the long jump.

The conclusion of which would be the start
of an unlikely friendship

that would go down in Olympic history.

Jesse was close
to falling out of the competition.

You get three attempts
in the preliminary round,

and he had misunderstood
the European rules.

He'd overshot the mark
he had fouled on his second attempt.

Now Jesse Owens, who is the world record
holder in the broad jump,

is this close
to being out of the competition?

And his most formidable

opponent takes it upon
himself to offer some advice.

According to the story,

Lutz Long goes over to him and says,
take a towel.

Put it half a foot back.

Jump from where your towel is.

And then you know
you're still going to qualify,

even if you jump two meters
behind the board.

And Jesse does this qualifies

and then goes on to beat Lutz
Long in the final.

Hey, I was very disappointed

when there was nobody left that stadium

and didn't think I under all those.

That's a guy.

The long jump
secured Owens his third gold medal.

He'd won all his events with ease.

A twist of fate would offer
Jesse the chance to compete for a fourth

gold medal.

There was a sudden anxiety
around the American team

as to who they should pick for their four
by 100 meter relay.

Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalf replaced
sandstone and Marty Glickman.

Speculation ensued as to
whether the move was anti-Semitic.

As both Stoller and Glickman were Jewish.

But the fact remained that Owens
and Metcalf, with a stronger athletes,

the relay team went on to win
and set a new world record.

Jesse Owens had four gold medals.

The single handedly
crushed Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy.

One of the great stories

everybody knows from my school days
is how Hitler snubbed Jesse Owens.

And now Jesse Owens stopped two fingers up
at the Nazis and their racial theories.

This is an enormous myth.

Hits, began
the Olympics taking quite a lot of hits.

But was it advised that
what he should do is is restricted?

Probably just to German athletes.

It had to be either everybody or nobody.

In fact, Owens was claimed
that Hitler waved at him.

We shall never know the truth.

But it's certainly not true
that he stormed out.

Hitler had a right to run.

He couldn't be there the whole time.

He had to go and do his go and do his pure
airing for the rest of the day.

The Olympic Games could not have been
going better

for Hitler,
despite the success of Jesse Owens.

Germany were leading the medal table.

But it was not just Germans sporting
endeavor that was being showcased.

They also gave the opportunity
for the regime

to show off their expertise
in technology and militaristic venture.

Spectators were enraptured by the games

ritualistic ceremony,
coupled with the greatest athletic

pursuit, was so intoxicating
that all the debates of Nazi

oppression were momentarily forgotten.

The Nazi regime capitalized
on this feeling by a constant stream

of receptions and galas
that orbited the main attraction, making

sure it was not just Germany's
sporting prowess on display,

but the entire breadth
of German enterprise.

Although attended by many figures
from around the world

representing the wider political spectrum,
these events attracted many fascists

eager to ingratiate themselves
with the Third Reich.

It was seen by politicians

and diplomats and statesmen
the world around to have a get together.

And the Nazis knew this all too well.

All of the penitents of the Reich held

magnificent lavish dinners and ceremonies,
writes Marshall Goering,

topping them all with the production
of a complete funfair.

Later on in the evening.

There are also a lot of

links being made between fascists,
such as Oswald Mosley,

in the form of his about to be wife
going to see Goebbels

asking for the British Union of Fascists
to have lots of money.

And this is going on
during the burning of the games.

So when Jesse Owens is winning medals.

You know, you've got British fascist
trying to forge links with the Germans.

At the same time, all sorts of, you know,
things going on in the background

as the global far right mixed
in the melting pot of German fascism.

Hitler and Goebbels made sure the world's
press were reporting what was planned.

Global media outlets were treated
like VIPs and were given free access

to the pioneering communication
technology, which Germany had developed.

The games were also the subject
of the first live television broadcast,

although quality was low.

This would dictate
how future Olympics would be consumed.

The reporting
in Germany was totally controlled.

The reporting out of Germany
was controlled in a different way.

Hitler basically bribed
the international journalistic control

by treating them terribly well,
by using what Berliners

called butter propaganda,
because butter was in short supply.

But they got all they needed.

The games gave some very good
press to the Nazis globally.

They built six huge international

transmitters, giving journalists
incredible amount of access.

They didn't see the concentration camps.

They didn't hear from people
whose parents had been,

you know, locked up for their race.

They were blinded by the magnificence
of the ceremony, the ritual,

the outside
splendor of the Olympic Stadium itself.

What Germany was really doing
was advertising itself as a technologist,

the global leader
in technology, in organization.

The Herald of a new form of efficient

human civilization, a kind of prototype.

And people were taken in.

Technological
advancement meant the news coverage

coming out of Germany traveled fast,
and the actions of the German Jewish

fencer Helena Mayer would quickly spread
and enrage the global Jewish population.

So controversial was her action
that its motive and meaning

is still debated to this day.

She was a star fencer,
but because her father was Jewish,

she was drummed
out of her local fencing club

and not allowed to compete.

In Hitler's eyes, she looks the absolute,

you know, athletic, Nordic Aryan business

man who's training now in another country.

She was California,
but she was summoned back to Germany

by the implicit threat to her family.

Mayer was beaten by the Hungarian fencer

Ilona Elek,
and she would have to settle for silver.

It would be her actions on the podium
which would cement her place

in Olympic history.

She was

on the podium with the other medalists
and she did

give the Nazi salute, though
perhaps and slightly hesitating manner.

She was never forgiven
by the Jewish community.

I think the real explanation is
that she was terrified about her family

still in Germany,
and made this ostentatious gesture

of regime ingratiating,
sacrificing her moral scruples.

To that end, because of the terror,

the closing ceremonies found
the Olympic flame for untold centuries,

the symbol of international peace
being extinguished.

Germany led the medal table
as the games came to a close.

The Olympics were the success
of the Nazi regime,

but it would not take long for the tyranny
to return.

Captain Wolfgang Forster,

the commandant of the Olympic
Village, was the first to fall victim.

A brilliant young army captain
and very good administrator.

However, during the arrangements it was
discovered that he was partly Jewish.

It was quite clear that he couldn't
continue his meteoric rise

in the German army.
He was one of these people

who can envisage
no other life than outside the army.

First in the shot himself,
on August the 19th, 1936,

just three days
after the end of the Olympics.

The Nazis, of course, said this was a car
accident and very good at that.

The false fliers
and so forth were false turns.

It's what you did as a Nazi.

You had a false face.

For Margaret Lambert,
like all the Jews of Germany.

Life would become increasingly unbearable.

I had a friend that lives next door to me,

and she had warned me of,
you know, carrying on our.

And she went out in the animal.

So be afraid.

I was outside my house, and she started
to talk to me, and I said, you know what?

Why you go to hell

and tell.

That was to me.

Salvation.

In 1937,
Margaret managed to emigrate to New York

and married a German Jewish doctor,
Bruno Lambert.

Recognition.

For her achievements would come in 1999,
when the stadium in La Pine,

from where she'd been banned,
was renamed after her.

I left Germany
and I didn't want to know anything.

The that I was I searching

go to have.

It was a tough life.

Later.

But I'm a tough lady.

Not all Jewish athletes,
however, were lucky

enough to be able
to find refuge in other countries.

Lili Hannah was a Jewish shot
putter and discus thrower.

She remained in Germany
throughout the 1930s, and in 1942

was taken with her mother to German
occupied Latvia and interned in a ghetto.

They were one of many Jewish athletes
who were victims of the Holocaust,

and they were taken on it together
at a certain moment and they were,

killed in a mass shooting operation

that was organized by the SS.

If you happen to be Jewish,
you were to be killed

as part of the Final Solution
to the Jewish question.

The games of the

11th Olympiad would bring diametrically
opposed fates for both Jesse Owens

and Avery Brundage, in an aim to exploit
promised sponsorship deals.

Owens was stripped of his amateur
athletic status by Brundage

even before stepping back on U.S. soil.

The superstar of the games returned
to the US and enjoyed a hero's welcome,

but none of the sponsorship deals
amounted to anything.

As America's
own discriminate at the time seemed

blind to Owens remarkable achievement.

He was forced to earn a living

by taking any employment opportunity
that came to him.

Brundage, on the other hand, returned home
with the Commission

for the construction of the German Embassy
in Washington and would also go on

to become the chairman
of the International Olympic Committee

for Adolf Hitler.

There was no uncertainty
about the fate of the Olympics.

It may have taken Goebbels
to convince him of their potential.

But once the games were over,
he was in no doubt about their importance.

His plans for subsequent
games were monumental.

Hitler was dissatisfied

with the scope
and the scale of the Berlin stadium.

It wasn't big enough.
It wasn't grand enough.

It wasn't what he wanted entirely.

His plan was to build a stadium

that would seat 400,000 people.

So he had a discussion with his favorite
architect, Albert Speer, about this.

And Speer pointed out that
the kind of stadium that Hitler had in

mind was not going to be allowed
by Olympic rules.

Track dimensions are correct.

They're not the right Olympic
measurements.

And Hitler says, well,
no matter about that,

because when we rule the world,
we'll be able to rule the Olympics

and just determine
what the new measurements are going to be.

The Olympics were going to be German
forevermore

because it was going to be a thousand year
Reich.

It was going to have the hegemony
of all the world

and the Olympics would be forever
after German,

despite their Greek and indeed English
and even French paternity.

World War Two

stopped any chance of a thousand years
of Nazi run Olympics.

But the overt and aggressive tactics
of mixing sport and politics

seems to have been adopted
by all subsequent games.

Governing sporting bodies such as the

IOC and FIFA go to great lengths to insist

sport is, and should always be, separate
to politics.

But looking at the spectacle
and ceremony of Hitler's Olympics,

it's clear to see that today's sporting
events

are their direct descendants.

In many ways the Nazi Olympics

or the father of the Olympics
that we have today.

They were the first truly modern games

the packaging, the organizing,
the efficiency with the underlying

aim of the projection of nationhood
on the myths of nationhood.

Well,
that has become the paradigm ever since.

So, unsurprisingly, those

innovations were incorporated
and sustained.

If you were in Beijing in the Bird's
Nest in 2008, if you're in London in 2012,

and you'd been in Berlin in 1936,
you'd all seem very recognizable.

It is a vehicle
for the projection of national glory.

It has become what Hitler intended
it to be.

It is his Olympics.