usual racism and chauvinism on hiatus. Jazz, which was previously maligned as an immoral force, was allowed in nightclubs.99 But the swastika was ubiquitous, often hanging on banners next to the Olympic flag.100 Hitler himself took full advantage. Time magazine reported, “Most conspicuous in the gigantic crowds, mostly composed of provincial Germans, who stared at all these doings, was Realmleader Adolf Hitler. Suddenly become an omnivorous sports enthusiast, Herr Hitler hardly missed a day’s attendance.”101
Hitler loomed large in the Olympic stadium, but US track star Jesse Owens ruled the athletics oval, winning four gold medals. Owens, the son of an African-American Alabama sharecropper who moved his family north to Cleveland, Ohio, in search of opportunity, was the indisputable superstar of the Berlin Games. He dominated in the 100-meter race, setting a world record. He also smashed the Olympic records in the 200-meter run and the long jump. And he ran a leg in the 400-meter relay team that set a world record. Shirley Povich noted in the Washington Post that Owens’s success had stark political implications: “Hilter declared Aryan supremacy by decree, but Jesse Owens is proving him liar by degrees.” Owens was more conciliatory, and his focus was on political relations at home. In an open letter to the Pittburgh Courier he wrote, “I am a proud that I am an American. I see the sun breaking through the clouds when I realize that millions of Americans will recognize now that what I and the boys of my race are trying to do is attempted for the glory of our country and our countrymen.” He concluded, “Maybe more people will now realize that the Negro is trying to do his full part as an American citizen.” But in general, Owens was partial to the bromide that politics and sports competitions shouldn’t mix.102
Yet, Owens’s fourth gold medal, as part of the 400-meter relay squad, sparked political controversy as much as racial reconciliation. In a last-minute coaching decision, Owens and fellow sprinter Ralph Metcalfe were inserted into the relay team, replacing two Jewish athletes, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, who had been training expressly for the event and who were expected to win gold. Glickman openly chalked up the eleventh-hour rebuff to anti-Semitism, pointing a finger not only at the track coaches but at Avery Brundage, too. The athlete claimed they did not wish to make the German hosts uncomfortable by having to witness two Jews standing triumphant on the medal stand. Stoller was so distraught that he vowed to quit track altogether.103
The grandeur of the Games was captured and magnified by Leni Riefenstahl’s iconic Olympia. The film prominently featured Jesse Owens, despite Goebbels’s demands that Riefenstahl leave footage of Owens on the cutting room floor.104 Riefenstahl, famous for her pro-Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will, was enraptured by Owens, noting in her memoir that he was “the athletic phenomenon of the Games.”105 Hitler may have told Riefenstahl that he “was not very interested” in the Olympics and would “rather stay away,” but he largely supported her artistic autonomy with Olympia, sometimes shielding her from the cretinous Goebbels and his thuggish attempts to thwart the film. Riefenstahl had also secured special permission from the IOC to film the Games. She used groundbreaking film techniques to produce a cinematic masterpiece that, in her words, aimed to “combine the Olympic idea with the most important Olympic contests.” Owens apparently approved. When the filmmaker and the athlete reunited in Munich at the 1972 Games, the meeting was “deeply emotional,” full of hugs, kisses, and near tears, according to Riefenstahl.106 Olympia also had an admirer in Avery Brundage. When theaters in the US refused to publicly screen the film, he went ballistic, fuming to one German journalist that “unfortunately the theaters and moving picture companies are almost all owned by Jews.”107
At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Owens received friendly greetings from everyday Germans as well as German Olympic officials—Jeremy Schaap goes as far as to assert that the Germans in attendance “embraced him as if he were one of its blond, blue-eyed Teutons.”108 But the Gestapo secretly tailed him and his fellow African American athletes to ensure they didn’t have too much contact with Germans. Of particular concern to the German secret police was African Americans’ interaction with German women. During the Games, police cited more than fifty German women for approaching the foreigners “in an unseemly manner.”109 Meanwhile, back at home, Southern newspapers minimized the athletic feats of Owens and other African Americans—the Atlanta Constitution failed to run a single photo of Owens or his black teammates. In fact, Owens resented President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who never sent him a note of congratulations, more than Hitler. Owens called Hitler “a man of dignity.” Later, when campaigning for Republican candidate Alf Landon in the 1936 US presidential election against Roosevelt, part of Owens’ stump speech mentioned that “Hitler didn’t snub me—it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.”110
In the wake of the Games, American athletes were expected to travel through Europe competing in various exhibitions. Meanwhile, big-money offers came pouring in to Owens from the United States. Part way through the tour he decided to ditch the exhibition circuit and head home to cash in. He had the full-throated support of his college coach, Larry Snyder, who helped him to Olympic glory in Berlin. With the possibility of Owens earning $100,000, Snyder said, “Jesse has a chance to make more money now than he may earn the rest of his life through ordinary channels.” He added, “I cannot conscientiously advise Owens not to seize what may be the chance of his lifetime.” The AAU, headed by Brundage, promptly suspended Owens, prompting the athlete to lash out at the organization, calling it “one of the great rackets of the world” and accusing it of “trying to run the Olympics on strictly business lines.” He added, “Somebody’s making money somewhere” and that the AAU was “trying to grab all they can” while athletes couldn’t even afford souvenirs. Coach Snyder said the athletes were being treated “like cattle.” He was blunt: “You wouldn’t ask the poorest show troupe to work the way these boys worked immediately after the games—all without a cent of spending money with which to brighten an otherwise drab picture.”111
Unfortunately for Owens, the lucrative offers to capitalize on his Olympic glory evaporated upon his return to the United States. Most of the overtures were mere publicity ploys. Owens tried to make a living off his notoriety, starting an unsuccessful dry-cleaning chain before ultimately declaring personal bankruptcy in 1939. Later he became owner of a Negro League baseball team in Portland, Oregon—the Portland Rosebuds—which only lasted a year. He even resorted to racing horses. He reportedly stated, “People said it was degrading for an Olympic champion to run against a horse, but what was I supposed to do? … I had four gold medals, but you can’t eat four gold medals.” Eventually Owens became a successful motivational speaker, but achieving financial stability was a long road. Although Owens struggled to cash in, memorabilia collectors did not—in 2013 one of Owens’s gold medals from 1936 was auctioned off for $1.47 million to a Los Angeles billionaire investor.112
At the close of the Berlin Games, Coubertin hailed them as “powerful and diverse,” and said, “I thank the German people and their leader for what they have just accomplished.”113 Most commentators also hailed the Games as a success. In an article titled “Olympics Leave Glow of Pride in the Reich,” the New York Times asserted that the Games contributed nothing less than “the undoubted improvement of world relations and general amiability.” The newspaper also reported that visitors left the Olympics with the impression that “this is a nation happy and prosperous almost beyond belief; that Hitler is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, political leaders in the world today, and that Germans themselves are a much maligned, hospitable, wholly peaceful people who deserve the best the world can give them.”114 Brundage echoed such high praise: “No country since ancient Greece has displayed a more truly national public interest in the Olympic spirit in general than you find in Germany.” He added: “We can learn much from Germany. We, too, if we wish to preserve our institutions, must stamp out communism. We, too, must take steps to arrest the decline of patriotism.”115 So much for staying out of politics. In his personal notes, he even wrote: “An intelligent, beneficent dictatorship is the most efficient form of government. Observe what happened in
