Adolf Hitler's 1936 Olympics, Part 2: How Jesse Owens Embarrassed The Nazis

"The Americans should be ashamed of themselves, letting Negroes win their medals for them. I shall not shake hands with this Negro” - Adolf Hitler, 1936

In Part Two of the Adolf Hitler's 1936 Olympics trilogy, Mark Pougatch and Paul Hayward head to Berlin, 1936, as athletes from 49 nations arrive for the games. Determined to showcase Germany as a modern, powerful, and orderly nation, the Nazi regime orchestrated the most expensive Olympics in history, complete with a groundbreaking opening ceremony and a propaganda machine unlike anything the world had ever seen.

Hitler envisioned the Games as proof of Aryan supremacy - but one man shattered his myth. Jesse Owens, the grandson of a slave from Alabama, stunned the world by winning four gold medals, humiliating Hitler and cementing his place as one of the greatest athletes in Olympic history.

Behind the spectacle, however, foreign politicians and dignitaries were being courted by Nazi leaders, all while the regime escalated its brutal campaign of antisemitism, violence, and sportswashing.

This episode examines:

• How the 1936 Berlin Olympics rewrote the rulebook for opening ceremonies and global sporting events
• The propaganda machine of the Third Reich and its manipulation of international opinion
• Helene Mayer, Hitler’s token Jewish athlete, who controversially gave the Nazi salute on the podium
• How the world looked away as Nazi Germany used sport to mask persecution and murder on mass scale

Step inside the stadium where history, politics, and ideology collided - whilst the world watched and did nothing.

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