Readable and thought-provoking analysis of the 1936 Olympics

Martin Friis Andersen
PhD in history

The Sport & Society Teaching Pocketbook Series aims to introduce students and generally interested readers to different aspects of sport history and sport sociology. The third book in the series The 1936 Berlin Olympics: Race, Power, and Sportswashing meets the aim. With a sharpened pen, Jules Boykoff analyses and discusses the politics at and around the 1936 Olympics.

In the introduction to the book, Jules Boykoff sets the scene of the 1936 Olympic Games. By describing some of the key events at the opening day of the Games, Boykoff makes it clear to the reader how orchestrated and instrumentalized the 1936 Olympics was. Nazi banners and Olympic symbols side by side unified the Nazi regime and the Olympics in a way that was unmistakable for the public, according to Boykoff. Supporting the Olympics de facto also meant supporting the Nazis.

In the first chapter, Boykoff explores the early years of the Olympic Movement. The Movement tends to give Baron Pierre de Coubertin a lot of credit when writing the history of the early years of the Olympics. This is also Boykoff’s starting point, but instead of glorifying Coubertin’s role, he points out the fact that Coubertin did not actively do anything to prevent racial or sexual discrimination in the Olympic Movement. Boykoff also uses the first chapter to show how some Olympic traditions and symbols had one meaning as they were introduced, and how they later in history would get new connotations. As an example of this he points out how the first winner of the marathon race, Spyridon Louis, who in 1896 was instrumentalized to make a connection between ancient Greece and the modern Olympics, in 1936, by presenting an olive branch to  Hitler at the opening ceremony, made a connection between ancient Greece, the modern Olympics and the Nazi regime.

As a supplement to the book, a digital compendium of relevant resources is made available online. On more than one level, the curated online material is worth its own weight in gold.

In the next chapter, Boykoff explores the discussions of boycotting the Berlin Olympics. Focusing especially on the anti-Semitism at the time, he detects how influential Olympic leaders, like the President of the American Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage, fought against a boycott of the 1936 Olympics. Boykoff claims that Brundage was biased to believe the promise from the Nazi regime that Jews would not be discriminated. Like Coubertin, Brundage insisted on the illusion of keeping sport and politics apart. Perhaps therefore, he and other prominent figures within the Olympic movement willingly or unwittingly turned the blind eye to the sportswashing potential of the 1936 Olympics.

In chapter 3, “Race, Politics, and the Olympics”, the sportswashing potential is unfolded. With scientific racism and the studies of eugenics in the 1920’s and 1930’s as a starting point, Boykoff analyses how important the body is in establishing power. Modern sports science was closely related to racial and eugenic science, which made hosting the Olympics in 1936 extremely important to the Nazi regime. Showcasing Aryan supremacy at the Olympics became of uttermost importance for promoting Nazi ideology.

However, at the 1936 Olympics, black athletes were successful. Especially the American athlete Jesse Owens, who won 4 gold medals. Boykoff uses Owens’ victories as a prism to analyze how the Nazi regime, and the media, handled and controlled the narrative of the Olympics. Knowing that controlling the media meant power, and knowing that understated racial discrimination had a better effect in the media than explicit racism, the Nazi regime controlled the narratives, before, during, and immediately after the 1936 Olympics.

In the epilogue, Boykoff concludes that the 1936 Olympics can be seen as one of the first examples of sportswashing. Even after the Olympics, when the aggressions of the Nazi regime became obvious and even more destructive, conservative people within the Olympic Movement still claimed that allowing the Berlin Olympics was the right decision, because sports and politics can be kept apart. And Boykoff argues that the IOC today still acts hypocritically when allowing the Olympics to be hosted by China in 2008 and again in 2022.

Jules Boykoff is a writer who is not afraid of drawing forceful conclusions from his analysis. When something is hypocritical, he spells it out. I find the approach quite liberating. It leaves the impression that the author has a lot invested in his research. In my opinion, it makes it easier for the reader to relate to the discussions and conclusions and therefore also easier for the critic to comment on the text. It also makes the author more vulnerable to critique, and as a critic you should pay extra attention to criticizing the content rather than the person.

As a supplement to the book, a digital compendium of relevant resources is made available online. On more than one level, the curated online material is worth its own weight in gold. To teachers it is helpful in building the curriculum and planning lectures for a class in sport history, sport sociology, etc. To students it is the first step on the way to learn more about the specific topics and discussions introduced in the book and maybe get inspiration for a future project or paper. The general reader might not instinctively make use of the resources, but if some chapters caught their attention, more knowledge is easily accessible to them.

The book The 1936 Berlin Olympic: Race, Power, and Sportswashing is easy to read and well-argued. It is critical towards the decisions made by the leaders of the Olympic Movements, but the reader is also offered an explanation to why the leaders acted as they did. The book therefore crosses the line of just stating that the Nazi regime used the 1936 Olympics to promote Nazi ideology to explain why they did so, and why the Olympic Movement, and the American contingent, acted as they did.

Copyright © Martin Friis Andersen 2023