1996 May Family National Writing and Art Contest on the Holocaust

A project of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

During 1934-35, the call for a boycott of the Berlin games gained widespread support, particularly in the United States. The boycott campaign, however, was not able to change the decision of the American Olympic Committee (AOC) and the IOC to hold the Olympics in Berlin.

The Nazi government took unprecedented control of the games to build political support at home and to improve Germany's image in the world. Nazi leaders had already learned how to use public spectacles such as mass rallies and parades to build support for their government; likewise, they wanted to use the Olympic Games to showcase Germany as a politically unified, tolerant, and prosperous nation.

The persuasive propaganda of the 1936 Olympics attempted to cover up the Nazi drive to create a dominant, homogeneous "Aryan" state. By 1936, German militarism was on the rise. The Nazi regime had broken the post-World War I Versailles treaty, invaded the Rhineland region with military forces, and continued to mobilize German youth in military-type organizations.

Racism and antisemitism were basic elements of the Nazi state and were evident at the games. In September 1935, just months before the start of the Winter Games at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in Germany, the Nazis proclaimed the Nuremberg racial and citizenship laws, which made antisemitism legal throughout the nation. As the games proceeded, Nazi teachers in school classrooms continued to apply the "principles" of racial science -- measuring skull size and nose length, and recording the color of their pupils' hair and eyes to determine whether students belonged to the so-called "Aryan race." The Nazi program to sterilize handicapped persons and Gypsies (Sinti and Roma) was also underway. Finally, a network of concentration camps was functioning to imprison and persecute political opponents and other people identified by the Nazis as "enemies of the state." Meanwhile, Hitler presented German Olympic athletic achievement as proof of Aryan racial superiority.

The demand for equal treatment of Jewish athletes by the IOC and the threat of a boycott compelled the Nazi regime to temporarily suspend obvious antisemitic activities. The Nazi Olympics propaganda effort was designed to calm international concern about Nazi Germany. It succeeded to the extent that powerful amateur sports leaders chose to disregard the Nazi government's racist and antisemitic practices in order to justify participation in the Berlin games.

While the U.S. government remained silent, the boycott debate raged in newspapers throughout the United States, in both small towns and large cities. The Atlanta Constitution said that the boycott would show Germany that "...the world does not approve of her campaign of terrorism." But the Los Angeles Times argued "...the boycott is thoroughly un-American .... Athletics have nothing to do with race or politics." The Minneapolis Star stated that America should go to Berlin and "...swamp the Germans, cleanly and sportingly, in every event of the program."

Contest Question:

Imagine that you are living in the United States in 1936. Do you think that American athletes should participate in the Olympic Games in Berlin?