A detailed, illustrated account of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games which ranges from the early planning from 1933 on to all key events of the games themselves, and covers the political and ideological factors involved. In August 1939, the Nazis audaciously achieved a propaganda triumph by staging the Olympic Games. Massive efforts had been undertaken to camouflage the evil nature of the regime from the visitors who streamed into the capital: anti-Semitic slogans were removed from walls and roadsides, and orders were issued to everyone to treat all guests civilly, "even if they look like Jews." Every sign of racial, religious, or political persecution was temporarily hidden. Not one visitor in a hundred realized that even as the Olympics were taking place, the concentration camp at Oranienburg, scarcely half an hour's journey from the splendid new Olympic stadium, was filled with Jews, socialists, Roman Catholics, Freemasons, and other anti-Nazis. This absorbing account skillfully evokes the social and political tensions of the period leading up to the Games and then dramatically re-creates, day by day, the events themselves. Heated debate had raged on both side of the Atlantic as to whether or not the Olympiad should be boycotted. But warnings about the true nature of Hitler's actions and intentions were consistently ignored both by governments and by the National Olympic Committees. At the games, eruptions of nationalistic fervor, the overtly militaristic nature of the ceremonies, and crowning all, the impact made by the magnificent 22-year-old Jesse Owens--all these are vividly described, with much hitherto unknown detail. The 1936 Olympic Games were the first (though unfortunately not the last) to be deliberately exploited for political ends. It is sobering to remember that three years later the youthful athletes who can still be seen in Leni Riefenstahl's famous film were facing each other on the battlefields of history's most destructive war. -- Publisher description