NAZI OLYMPICS, BERLIN 1936: INAUGURATION OF THE OLYMPIC TORCH RELAYOn May 13, 1931, the International Olympic Committee, headed by Count Henri Baillet-Latour of Belgium, awarded the 1936 Summer Olympics to Berlin.
On August 1, 1936, Hitler opened the Games of the 11th Olympiad. Musical fanfares directed by the famous composer Richard Strauss announced the dictator's arrival to the largely German crowd. Hundreds of athletes in opening day regalia marched into the stadium, team by team in alphabetical order. Inaugurating a new Olympic ritual, a lone runner arrived bearing a torch carried by relay from the site of the ancient Games in Olympia, Greece.
The 1936 Games were the first to employ the torch run. Each of 3,422 torch bearers ran one kilometer (0.6 miles) along the route of the torch relay from the site of the ancient Olympics in Olympia, Greece, to Berlin. Former German Olympian Carl Diem modeled the relay after one that had been run in Athens in 80 B.C. It perfectly suited Nazi propagandists, who used torch-lit parades and rallies to attract Germans, especially youth, to the Nazi movement. The torch itself was made in 1936 by Krupp, a German company better known for its production of steel and armaments.
1 comment:
Interesting tidbit of history... thanks! I've always been a WWII buff, but I didn't know this one.
Who knows, may come in handy in my next game of Trivial Pursuit. ;-)
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