How Jesse Owens Foiled Hitler’s Plans for the 1936 Olympics

In 1933, shortly after assuming power as Germany’s chancellor, Adolf Hitler moved forward with plans to turn the 1936 Summer and Winter Olympics into showcases for his regime. He ordered the construction of a massive new stadium in Berlin and channeled funds toward completing an airport to welcome international visitors.

The Summer Games were also meant to be the first to reach audiences around the world via television, as well as the first to feature the now-traditional Olympic torch relay.

Of course, while the Olympics are ostensibly designed to bring people of many nations and cultures together through competition, Hitler had little use for such notions of unity. In fact, he deliberately hurt his country’s chances of Olympic success by excluding Jews from athletic clubs and competitions, eliminating potential medalists like high jumper Gretel Bergmann.

Meanwhile, Jesse Owens had emerged as a track and field sensation in the United States. He tied the world record in the 100-yard dash while still in high school, and his performance at the 1935 Big Ten Championships, when he established three world records and matched a fourth over a span of 45 minutes, remains one of the most extraordinary accomplishments in collegiate sports history.

He wasn’t the only Black American athlete making waves. Ralph Metcalfe won the silver medal in the 100-meter dash at the 1932 Olympics and at one point shared the world record in the 100-meter dash.

Temple University sprinter Eulace Peacock also emerged as a formidable rival to Owens, beating him multiple times in head-to-head competition in 1935 before suffering a hamstring injury that ended his hopes of competing in the 1936 Olympics.

Owens nearly didn’t get the chance to make Olympic history. With American decision-makers aware of Hitler’s discriminatory policies against Jews—but not yet aware of the scope of the horrors to come—a fierce debate arose over whether to boycott the 1936 Games.

Amateur Athletic Union President Jeremiah Mahoney argued that participation amounted to support for the Third Reich, but he was opposed by American Olympic Committee President Avery Brundage, who insisted that the Games were for the athletes, not the politicians.

Like other elite Black athletes who grew up in an unequal society, Owens considered the moral stance against Germany to be hypocritical and wasn’t inclined to surrender the chance to shine on a global stage. He eventually said he wanted to compete, a position that drew criticism from African American publications and NAACP Executive Secretary Walter White.

From almost the get-go, Owens seized the reins as the star of the 1936 Summer Olympics. He coasted to a gold medal in his first event, the 100-meter dash, and followed with a highly publicized victory over German champion Luz Long in the long jump—an event long embellished by the myth that Long offered Owens advice to help him win.

After setting an Olympic record in the 200-meter dash to earn a third gold medal, Owens put the exclamation point on his performance by running the opening leg of a record-setting U.S. 4x100-meter relay team. He became the first American to win four track-and-field gold medals at a single Olympics, an achievement that stood alone until Carl Lewis matched it in 1984.

Although many reports claimed that Hitler “snubbed” Owens for upstaging his prized Aryan athletes, the historical record is more complicated. After the first day of competition, Hitler stopped personally congratulating medalists after Olympic officials told him he had to greet either all winners or none. Other reports indicated that Hitler acknowledged Owens from afar, possibly influenced by the enthusiastic reception the athlete received from fans.

As with the so-called Hitler snub, the narrative of the 1936 Olympics has been softened and simplified over the years. Despite the accomplishments of Owens and his teammates, Germany could still claim athletic superiority by winning the most medals.

More crucially, the Games succeeded as a propaganda tool, portraying the Nazi regime as welcoming and orderly even as it laid the groundwork for another war and the systematic murder of millions of Jews.

On a personal level, the spotlight of the Olympics was an outlier in the career of Owens, who returned to the cold reality of being a Black man in Depression-era America. When commercial opportunities failed to materialize, he was forced to race against horses and take on other demeaning jobs for years before finally catching a break as a goodwill ambassador for the U.S. government in the 1950s.

Still, the story of his triumphant performance at those Games endures. While he didn’t halt the machinations of the Nazi regime, Owens undoubtedly became the defining figure of the Olympics, eclipsing the host country’s zealous leader.

Furthermore, he showed that a Black man could thrive with the eyes of the world upon him, helping pave the way for future African American sports stars, including Jackie Robinson, while contributing to the broader momentum that fueled the Civil Rights Movement.