Hitler's Games: Berlin 1936 in Colour (2026) Movie Script
1
August 1936, the Berlin Olympics.
The world comes to Nazi Germany.
You had 100,000 people
in the stadium standing up as one
shouting, "Heil Hitler!"
These are the Olympics of record
breaking sprinter, Jesse Owens.
He said that, "You feel totally free
when you can run
"and think about nothing
but the wind
"in your face and the speed
of your feet."
Of medal winning amateurs...
My memories of her were as a gran,
who baked for us and we played
in her garden.
And to see her as an athlete,
it's fabulous.
..and of settling old scores.
He'd been shot
in the First World War
by a German bullet, and this,
perhaps, was his revenge.
For two weeks, cameras captured
the world's greatest
sporting spectacle.
But things were not
what they seemed.
They saw a sanitised,
idealised Germany.
The truth was buried.
Behind the scenes
a very different story
was unfolding.
There was a lot of
propaganda done to make
the concentration camp look like
not what it really was.
Using black and white
archive transformed
by cutting edge restoration
and colourisation,
this is the story of 16 days
that conned the world.
1st of August 1936.
Berlin.
Today is the start of
the Olympics...
..the 11th games of the modern era.
At the specially built stadium,
the opening ceremony
is about to begin.
For Berliners, sitting in
the stands here at
the opening ceremony must have
been incredibly impressive.
Shouting, singing the same things.
After years of feeling deflated
following the period of World War I.
Overhead, a dramatic symbol
of a revitalised Germany appears.
The Hindenburg airship...
..the largest flying machine
in the world.
But what the crowd really
want to see
is the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler.
There were Hitler Youth lined
up outside,
who were shouting, "Heil Hitler,"
as he arrived.
Those cheers were carried inside
the stadium...
..where 100,000 spectators
rose at one,
doing the Hitler salute
and shouting, "Heil Hitler!"
The Olympic bell tolls.
BELL TOLLS
And the flags of the 49 competing
nations are raised.
Then the athletes arrive,
eager to compete
on the world stage.
But first they must
greet their host...
..Hitler.
How do all these different
nationalities behave?
What do they do?
He is not your typical world leader.
So you have the Italians,
they come in,
they do the fascist salute,
obviously it's a fascist nation.
And then the French, they come in,
they give the Olympic salute.
Now that looks really like
the fascist salute.
And so all the fans
here are going wild.
They think maybe the French are
really supporting
our new form of government.
Following the French
were the British,
led out by 37-year-old
rower Jack Beresford.
As the winner of four
Olympic medals,
Jack was the obvious choice.
There's dad carrying the Union flag,
leading the British team into
the arena, and here's Hitler.
Interestingly, the British
team did not do
the Nazi salute, but they did
a sharp eyes, right?
Obviously now, knowing about Hitler,
there's a certain revulsion there,
but I feel immensely proud
that dad should have been
carrying the flag.
Marching behind the Stars
and Stripes
is the star of the USA team...
..22-year-old athlete Jesse Owens.
He already holds three
world records.
For my father, it must have been
awe inspiring to be a part
of such a spectacular event,
and to be measured against
the best athletes in the world.
The Berlin Olympics came close
to being cancelled.
Jesse Owens and many other athletes
had faced pressure not to come.
In 1931, the International
Olympic Committee,
had awarded the games to
the Democratic Weimar Republic.
But after Hitler came to power
two years later,
calls for a boycott began.
Jewish competitors had been thrown
off the German team.
Then the Nuremberg laws of
September 1935
stripped all German Jews
of their civil rights.
The influential
American Olympic Association,
under the leadership of
Avery Brundage,
did all it could to oppose
the boycott.
Avery Brundage, in essence,
felt that sports should stay out
of politics,
Should remain apolitical.
And he thought, "Why give
up those fabulous Games
"just for that small minority
of Germans
"that were suffering
under Nazi persecution."
As the clamour
for a boycott intensified,
a solution was found.
The Nazis cynically invited
the half-Jewish
fencer, Helena Mayer,
to join their team.
She was chosen as she looked Aryan
and might bring the Reich success.
She had been a two time Olympian
and a previous Olympic medallist,
so she was a very good athlete
and therefore
she's a good chance of winning
more medals.
Although Mayer's selection
was clearly political,
it was enough for the Americans.
They agreed to attend the Games,
ending the boycott movement.
With the United States
participating,
then it was very hard
for any other country around
the world to really have a boycott
movement take hold.
But many of the Olympic
athletes still
had reservations about
competing in Berlin.
23-year-old Audrey Brown
was representing Britain
in the 4x100 metre relay.
She definitely felt uneasy,
and I think felt obvious to her
that this was clearly
Nazi propaganda,
but the decision to go
and the unease
she had was outweighed
by one, her desire
to represent Great Britain,
and two,
to represent female athletes
as a whole.
The spectacular opening ceremony
was part of the Nazis'
attempt to make their Olympics
the biggest yet,
and outdo the games held in Los
Angeles four years earlier.
The Americans had laid on
an impressive spectacle,
but the venues
were often almost empty.
The Germans felt they could
do better.
For Hitler, a lot is riding
on the next 16 days.
Since he became Chancellor in 1933,
he had crushed any opposition
and dismantled many
democratic institutions.
But public opinion still mattered.
Hitler was firmly in the saddle
in 1936,
so there weren't any opponents
any more
that could have overthrown him.
But nevertheless, showing to
his own population
that the country was being admired
by putting on those
Games clearly also had
an effect
on his support at home.
Hitler was also keen to impress
a wider audience...
..the international community.
He threw the power of the
Nazi state behind the games.
When Hitler visited the stadium
in 1933
and it was just in the process
of being built,
he was actually quite
disappointed with
the scale and size of it,
and he immediately said,
"No, we must demolish this
and build
"a much bigger one capable
of seating 100,000 people,"
so that when the entire world
comes to Germany,
he can really showcase
the resurgent strength
and also the economic recovery
of the country.
For Hitler, the Olympics would
be an elaborate
two week confidence trick.
What the games did was to give
an idealised false vision
of what Germany looked like.
The truth was buried.
Once all the athletes had lined
up on the pitch,
Hitler announced the official
start of the Games.
Then a first for the Olympics...
..an athlete named Fritz Schilgen,
chosen for his graceful
running style, brings in
a flaming torch.
The flame had been lit 12 days
earlier at Olympia
in Greece, using the rays
of the sun.
Its main purpose was to advertise
the Games.
3,000 runners, 12 days,
seven states through which the torch
relay went
with torches made by Krupp,
the German arms producer.
But at the same time there was
a meaning behind it as well,
whereby the Germans were the true
inheritors of ancient Greece.
It still works as a PR instrument.
It advertises the games in the most
brilliant fashion.
But nobody remembers that
it was invented
on occasion of the Nazi Games.
There is one final ritual
before the Games can begin,
but it doesn't go to plan.
A crucial part of the ceremony is
for one of the athletes to take
the Olympic oath, and to do so,
they have to clutch
the Olympic flag.
It's almost like a religion, this.
The job is given to the German
weightlifter Rudolf Ismayr,
and he clutches a flag,
but not the Olympic flag,
but the swastika flag.
So if you want a metaphor for how
the Nazis are going to take over
the Olympics, you got
it right there.
On Sunday, the 2nd of August,
the Olympic sporting events began.
Out of almost 4,000 competitors,
only 331 were women.
Among the British female contingent
was Tom Wenham's grandmother,
Audrey, competing in one of
the first events,
the 4x100 metre relay.
Before the Games, the British
Olympic Association
gave her this tracksuit top
and the individual letters that
make up the team name.
I think the fact that they had
to sew the letters
on themselves is a clear indication
of the nature
of amateur sport at the time,
and the, "can do make it
happen yourself,
"get stuck in," nature of
what she was required to do.
The most famous amateur in the world
took the stage
on that first day, competing
in the heats of
what was then known
as the 100 metre dash.
His name was Jesse Owens.
He loved running, and even
as a child he ran through
the cotton fields.
He said that you feel totally free
when you can run
and think about nothing
but the breeze
and the wind in your face
and the speed of your feet.
Jesse reached the final with ease.
63 competitors narrowed down
to the six
fastest men in the world.
Hitler watched keenly from
the stands.
Four years earlier in Los Angeles,
Germany came ninth
in the medal table.
That humiliation must
not be repeated.
The final was about medals...
..but it was also about race.
Hitler needed the German star,
Erich Borchmeyer, to win.
We know that Hitler has no time
for black people in Mein Kampf.
He talks about
the Rhineland bastards,
who are these 500
or so children born
to white German women who have
been fathered by
French colonial soldiers.
And of course, he regards this sort
of interbreeding
as being very, very destructive
to German society.
To the Nazis' disgust, Jesse Owens
had been a hit
as soon as he arrived
in Germany.
He was loved by the Berlin public.
So the Gestapo issued, I think,
52 warnings
to German females not to approach
black athletes
in an unseemly manner because they
feared racial mixing
might result from it.
At 5:00 pm, the 100 metre
athletes lined up at the start.
Today, this track is blue, but back
in 1936 it was a very deep red.
It was known as a cinder track,
and it was made out of bits
of crushed up volcanic rock, crushed
up bricks and also ash.
And the athletes
didn't have starting blocks,
and instead they had trowels
that they had
to use to dig little holes
into the ground.
And that's how they started.
The stadium went silent.
All eyes were on Jesse Owens.
I'm right at the beginning
of the 100m,
exactly where Jesse was standing,
and Hitler was just over there,
no more than 60m away.
I mean, these two men would
have been able
to see each other's expressions.
And so you realise when you're
here in the stadium,
just how connected these
two men must have felt.
Owens' trainer told him to run
as if he was on hot coals.
STARTING GUN
Jesse Owens starts so quickly out
of the block that actually,
the cameraman isn't sure
whether to focus on him
or the rest of the field.
Jesse wins gold in 10.3 seconds...
..just outside the world record.
His team-mate, Ralph Metcalfe,
is second.
Look at the strain on the other
athlete's faces.
And you look at Owens and he's
in control,
he's graceful, he's masterful.
I think primarily it was
God given talent.
He was a beautiful runner.
Hitler didn't congratulate Jesse.
The day before, he'd shaken the
hands of German gold medallists,
but then snubbed the winner
of the high jump...
..Owen's team-mate
Cornelius Johnson.
He was then told by the IOC...
"If you shake hands with
one athlete,
"You have to shake hands
with every athlete."
And he then decided not
to shake hands with any athlete.
The following day was the long
jump competition.
Hitler was hoping that the
23-year-old German star,
Lutz Long would be victorious.
But Jesse Owens was also competing.
It pitted the two best athletes
in the world,
and the expectations were high
for both of them.
In their minds, it was athletic...
..but in the world's minds,
it was political.
Jesse Owens had a secret weapon
Lutz Long didn't have...
..a few days earlier
in the Olympic Village,
an ambitious Bavarian
shoemaker named
Adi Dassler had given him a pair
of handmade running shoes.
Owens' endorsement transformed
the fortunes of his company,
now known as Adidas.
Despite Owens' special shoes,
there was little between him
and Lutz Long.
That long jump final
is really nail biting
because Long and Owens
are really evenly matched.
And then eventually Owens
does this enormous jump,
his speed alone makes him
a brilliant long jumper.
And he wins gold!
Yet another gold.
And the first man
to congratulate him, Lutz Long.
This photograph went
round the world.
I think they had the same values.
I guess that was the chemistry
between them.
They saw the world
in the same kind of way.
Why can't we just get along,
you know?
Nazi propaganda minister
Joseph Goebbels,
was livid at Owens' victory.
He writes in his diary, "This
is a disgrace.
"White humanity should be ashamed."
The fact that fencer, Helene Meyer,
the token Jewish member of
the German team,
only won silver didn't
improve Goebbels mood.
To the surprise of many, Mayer gave
the Nazi salute on the podium.
She at the time argued that this was
in order to protect her mother
and her brothers.
How credible that is
is questionable.
She always wanted, I think,
to be a part of Germany.
Goebbels couldn't control
the results,
but he could control the propaganda.
For the regime, the Olympics
were about deception,
creating a sanitised
version of Germany,
and in particular what the 100,000
foreign tourists saw in Berlin.
This photograph captures a moment
where this street,
Unter den Linden,
would have been bustling,
full of people,
really cheerful atmosphere.
Thousands of men
and women lining the streets.
The regime encouraged Berliners
to create a positive atmosphere
for the tourists.
They were really keen to make sure
that this would be
"a week of laughter," as
they put it,
so there would be a lot of smiling,
a lot of being
really friendly towards
the foreign visitors coming here
and towards the tourists.
This was also supposed to be a land
that was economically recovering,
so there couldn't be any shortages
or supply problems.
So Berliners were even asked
to eat fewer eggs than
they would normally do,
so that there would be enough
for the visitors to have breakfast.
Secret police patrolled the streets
looking out
for any anti-Nazi protests.
And away from the crowds,
Nazi racial policies
were ruthlessly enforced.
Berlin's Sinti and Roma
communities were arrested
and taken to a camp outside
the city.
Over 600 men, women and children
were rounded up.
They wanted to present the society
that was purely German
and Aryan in the way that they
imagined it would be in the future.
20 miles away, in a forest
near the town of Oranienburg,
that Nazi future
was becoming reality.
A group of prisoners
were clearing trees,
making space for
a concentration camp
to imprison the regime's
political opponents.
It will become known
as Sachsenhausen.
I guess the prisoners were,
of course,
aware what was going on in Berlin,
that they were doing hard,
physical labour while the regime
was presenting itself
as a very open-minded,
friendly state...
..only a few kilometres away.
The slogan "Arbeit macht frei,"
"work sets you free," was fixed
to the entrance gate.
It was a message directed to
the people outside the camp,
not to the prisoners inside,
to tell them
work freely, work good then you
will be liberated.
There was a lot of propaganda done
to make
the concentration camp look like
a very hard but fair site,
where you could trust in rules
and orders and not
what it really was.
One of the first buildings
constructed shows
the cruel reality
of Sachsenhausen,
a cell block set apart from
the rest of the camp,
used as a Gestapo
interrogation centre.
Always places the more remote,
the more isolated there are the more
sheltered conditions they offer
for extreme violence.
And this cell block was one of them.
The idea was to give the Gestapo
a chance
of interrogating these prisoners
whenever they wanted.
Sachsenhausen slowly expanded.
In 1940, a track was built,
a chilling echo of the Olympic
athletic track.
It was built to test artificial
leather for shoes.
The prisoners were the guinea pigs.
For the shoe industry, it was a
perfect chance to set up
this shoe testing track here,
because outside in the free world,
you would not find 100 persons
who would be willing
to walk all day long in circles,
in every weather.
They were given different shoes
made from different
materials, and they had to
wear it all day.
And then the shoes were compared
in the evening.
They had to carry backpacks
with stones on their backs
in order to get a little
bit of weight,
because these prisoners,
they were not very well fed.
Between the Olympic year of 1936
and the end of the war
nine years later,
over 200,000 prisoners were held
at Sachsenhausen.
It's estimated that tens
of thousands were murdered
or died in the camp from disease
or malnutrition.
Just 20 miles from Sachsenhausen,
the Games entered their final week.
The Nazi Olympic deception was
about to go even further.
By Sunday the 9th of August,
the eighth day of the competition,
the Berlin Games were in full swing.
For the Nazis, they were an
opportunity to show
the world a sanitised version
of Germany...
..and it was going well.
Crowds packed the specially
built Olympic swimming pool...
..and the gymnastics arena.
In the stadium, it was the last
day of the athletics.
Jesse Owens won a fourth gold
in the 4x100 metre relay,
having won the 200m four
days earlier.
A plaque in the stadium records
his triumphs.
Jesse Owens' achievements here
really meant something both to
the people at the time,
but also throughout history.
They transcended sports
in many ways.
Here was a black American stealing
the show effectively
and being not only victorious
in the Games,
but also incredibly popular with
the crowds here
and across the world.
British runner Audrey Brown
was competing
that day and could watch
Owens in action.
Gran's reflections on Jesse Owens
were that he was something
of a rock star.
And I know she took great delight
in seeing black athletes
from every nation,
but particularly Jesse Owens
being so impactful.
When that was so clearly contrary
to the Nazi worldview.
And she took an almost
delicious delight
in seeing how that played out.
Today is a big day for Audrey...
..and her brother Godfrey.
Both are competing in relay finals.
Their brother, Ralph, is also
a runner
but missed the Olympics due
to injury.
Audrey's build up to the Games was,
by modern standards, rudimentary.
Her training is as simple
as describing runs around
the park with her brothers
and really no more complex
than that.
I find that hard to believe.
I feel I must have been more
to it than that,
but those were certainly the stories
she told of just running
in the park.
Audrey's handmaid running
shoes have been repaired
and look, as they did
in August 1936.
These are obviously designed
to be on your toes
because the leather at the back
and the heel
is almost nonexistent.
Some fairly robust and significant
spikes give you good grip,
running on a cinder track
and designed to be
as close fitting as possible.
I know that Gran talked of
feel with the track
and that real closeness.
We're talking about a matter
of millimetres between
her bare feet and the running track.
When we inherited them,
they were small scraps of leather,
so it's incredibly evocative,
enormously meaningful to be able
to see these
in the condition that Gran
would have run in them.
Audrey was running the third leg
for Britain
in the 4x100 metre relay.
Hitler assumed the home
team would win
and help put Germany on top of
the medal table.
Gran felt that they were
somehow an embodiment
of the German regime at
the time, who,
frankly were expected
to dominate from start to finish.
It was a foregone conclusion.
STARTER GUN
The Germans were soon in
the lead.
As Audrey waited for the baton,
Hitler sensed victory.
For me, seeing Hitler watching...
..is a very jarring mixture
of emotions.
It's the normality of Hitler
watching a sporting event.
Audrey, in the inside lane,
successfully passes the baton.
But then a shock...
..the Germans drop theirs.
American, Helen Stephens
storms to victory.
The Brits win silver.
In her copy of the
official programme,
Audrey recorded their triumph.
My memories of her were as a gran
who baked for us and we played
in her garden
and built bonfires and do
all the things you do with a gran.
To see her as an athlete,
doing what she loved doing
and obviously being very,
very good at it is fabulous.
All the drama on the track
was captured
by female film director
Leni Riefenstahl,
who had been commissioned by Hitler
to make
the official film of the Games.
The Nazis wanted to show Berlin as
the most impressive host city yet.
After the war, she claimed
that she was just an artist,
but it was very clear that
there was an inert
drive within herself to try
and produce
the best propaganda results as well.
There was certainly a conviction
there in the work itself.
No-one was allowed to get
in Riefenstahl's way...
..and money was no object.
She employed a crew of 200...
..including 45 cameramen.
She had a clear sense of
what she wanted to capture
and not just the sport
and the excitement,
but the grace and the beauty
of the human body.
She used completely
new filming techniques.
She put cameras on tracks.
She had them hanging
down from balloons.
These kinds of things really made
the film that she produced,
in the end, unique and impressive.
Riefenstahl's film crews competed
with a new technology...
..television.
Large cameras relayed pictures
from the stadium
to special viewing booths.
Television was still very new
technology in the 1930s.
These weren't just TVs
in people's homes,
people would have seats and be lined
up in rows to watch the Games
broadcast on TV.
It was an exciting
opportunity to be able
to see what was happening live...
..not something that was being
filmed from inside a studio.
The 9th of August was a busy day
for the British media.
After Audrey Brown's success,
Dorothy Odam won silver
in the high jump.
Then it was Audrey's brother
Godfrey's turn...
..in the men's 4x400 metre relay.
Two days earlier, he won silver
in the 400m,
narrowly beaten by
American, Archie Williams.
Gran always spoke more openly
and glowingly
of Godfrey's achievements than
she did of her own.
She felt that he was the far
more capable athlete.
Hopes of a British win
in the relay were high.
The pressure was on Godfrey to bring
the baton over the line.
STARTING PISTOL
It's an enormously
exciting race,
a really compelling
sporting spectacle.
We see Rampling being chased down,
being challenged...
..holding off pressure from
the American athlete.
The handover to my great uncle...
..and then him being able to come
over the line
and win that gold medal,
it's fabulous to watch.
Godfrey, having reached the pinnacle
of his sporting career,
celebrates with the smallest,
most inconsequential little leap
in the air.
It's somehow very British.
"It's not about me," it's just this
small little celebration of
what must have been the biggest
moment of his sporting life.
To have brother and sister
winning medals
on the same day at the
same Olympics,
I think is still unique
in that regard.
And it still holds to this day.
Soon after the British relay team
was awarded their gold medals,
there was another reminder that
the Berlin Olympics
were not all they seemed.
The marathon was won
in world record time
by a runner from Korea, named
Sohn Kee-chung.
Korea had been annexed by Japan
in 1910,
and Sohn was forced to compete
as a Japanese runner
and with the Japanese
spelling of his name.
Sohn was a Korean nationalist
who hated the idea
that he was actually winning a medal
for a country
that had subjugated his own.
He stood on the podium along with
the third place runner,
who was also from Korea,
and they were looking
down in defiance
of Japan having occupied
their country.
In 1988, when South Korea hosted
the Olympics,
Sohn was able finally to celebrate.
He was asked to bring the famous
torch that had been part
of the torch relay, invented
in 1936, into the stadium.
This is a wonderful way, I think,
for him to conclude his career
as an athlete.
The Berlin Games were entering
the final few days.
Germany and the United States
were tied
at the top of the medal table.
Hitler was determined to see
a Nazi triumph.
On the first day of
the Berlin Olympics,
with the eyes of the world on
the city,
this vast building was opened.
The classic example in many ways
of Nazi era architecture.
It's huge, it's monumental in size.
It projects power,
symmetry, order.
It was part of a Nazi con trick...
..during its two year construction,
it was described
as their new transport ministry.
But when the building opened
in August '36,
its true intention was revealed.
It was the new Air Ministry...
..the HQ for the Luftwaffe.
Despite restrictions placed
upon Germany
after the First World War, the
Nazis were rearming.
In 1935, Germany had already
reintroduced conscription,
which was illegal under the terms.
Hitler had begun to build up
a Luftwaffe in air force again,
even though he wasn't
supposed to have one.
He had begun to rebuild
a naval force.
Britain agreed, actually to
Germany's Navy
to be 35% of its own size.
This new military was not
just for show.
Hitler was intent on
expanding his territory.
First in his sights...
..the Rhineland.
Under the Versailles Treaty,
no military was allowed
in this buffer zone between
Germany and France.
For the Fuhrer,
this was intolerable.
Five months before the Olympics,
on the 7th of March,
1936, the German army marched
into the Rhineland.
And what does the world do?
What does France do?
What does Britain do?
Nothing.
When the international community did
not really respond
or penalise him, or try to impose
any sanctions,
that gave him more confidence
into perhaps being bolder
in his endeavours later on.
By the start of the Olympics,
it was becoming clear
the Nazis wanted a larger Germany.
But Hitler didn't want the Western
powers to take fright
and kerb his ambitions.
So the Olympics had a second
part to play
in his elaborate confidence trick.
Not only to show Germany wasn't
as repressive as many feared...
..but also that despite rearming,
it was a peace-loving nation.
The new Luftwaffe HQ even held
a garden party for Olympic tourists.
The idea was that visitors would
come away thinking,
"We don't really care whether
Germany goes back to having
"an Air Force or not, because we
now believe
"that this is a peace-loving,
if stronger nation."
By the 13th of August, the Olympics
were entering
the final few days.
At the top of the medals table,
it was neck and neck between
the United States and Germany.
Focus moved to the rowing events
on the Langer See
on the outskirts of the city,
where the Germans were prepared
to do almost anything to win.
Britain's hopes lay
in the double sculls
and team-mates 37-year-old
Jack Beresford,
who led the British
at the opening ceremony
and 29-year-old Dick Southwood.
Dad and Dick Southwood had
been training
pretty rigorously for ten months,
which in those days was an unusually
long period.
They were determined to win.
Beresford and Southwood had a new,
lighter boat
built especially for them.
But when they arrived in Berlin it
had mysteriously disappeared.
The boat was eventually found
in a railway siding
just in time for the regatta.
The mischief continued after dark.
The Germans tried to disturb
the British rowers' sleep.
Here's the police school
that they'd stayed in.
The Germans would carry out
night manoeuvres,
marching up and down the road,
making a lot of noise
and flashing lights.
Many of the teams felt at
the Olympic Village
that their military chaperones, who
seemed to be following
them around all day, were basically
recording their training regimes,
their times, and giving all this
vital sporting intelligence
back to the German
Olympic Committee.
I bet there was some sneaky
stuff going on.
Beresford and Southwood made it to
the final of the double sculls.
Their big rivals were the Germans,
Kaidel and Pirsch.
The Nazis were so confident the pair
would triumph,
they put them on a stamp even before
the Games started.
The Fuhrer came to watch the final.
It could be Hitler witnessing
Britain beating Germany, you know.
And so for the Brits, it's
an opportunity
to stick one in the eye of Hitler.
In the heats, the British pair
had spotted that once again,
the Germans weren't playing
by the rules.
But Beresford and Southwood reckoned
they could use it to
their advantage.
They realised that the technique
the Germans were using,
which was actually cheating,
was that they were starting
before the go.
Because the umpire had a big
megaphone that came out
in front of him,
which meant he couldn't actually
see the crews,
particularly the Germans and dad.
So Dick Southwood said,
"Jack, the moment the Germans go,
we're going too."
The Germans went before
the umpire said, "Go..."
..and dad and Dick were
with them.
Despite the good start,
the Brits were soon trailing
Kaidel and Pirsch,
but they'd been given
some valuable Intel.
The Germans often tired
towards the end
of the 2,000 metre course.
They piled on the pressure
and stroke-by-stroke
they caught up the Germans.
This is the 1,900 metre...
..and they were actually level.
And it was at this point
that the Germans cracked.
One of the men basically
gave up rowing.
Beresford and Southwood won
by two and a half lengths.
Dad commented
that the air was electric
and it was the "Sweetest
race I'd ever rode."
And you could argue that there
was a certain irony about this,
that he'd been shot
in the First World War
by a German bullet,
and this, perhaps,
was his revenge against the Germans.
Jack's mother sent a brief
congratulatory telegram.
The Games had only a few days to go,
and the Germans were now trailing
the United States
in the medal table.
They were desperate for gold.
Then their horse riders came
to the rescue.
During all those equestrian events,
the Germans
win every single individual event...
..every single team event.
And it's thanks to their brilliant
horse riding
that they now top the
medal table.
By the 16th of August,
with all the events completed,
the British had only managed
10th overall.
They joined the triumphant Germans
and the other teams
in the Olympic Stadium
for the closing ceremony.
It was massively spectacular.
You had not only the Olympic
flame being extinguished,
but also dozens of searchlights,
creating the illusion
of a light dome
above the stadium.
And this was something that people
talked about
afterwards for years
and years to come.
At the same time, though,
there was already a hint
of the fact that this wasn't
an entirely
peaceful nation any more.
Those were flak searchlights
that were later on used in war.
And so that technology was deployed
still in a peaceful context,
but giving a little bit of
a hint of the things to come.
The star of the games had been
Jesse Owens,
who returned home a hero
with his four gold medals.
But he found that Olympic fame
only went so far.
When he came back and had
such difficulty
finding employment...
..he discovered that you can't eat
four gold medals.
And so after many years he didn't
talk much about
the gold medals any more.
But what he did say
when he would be making
a presentation or something,
he would refer to his four
gold medals,
but they were me and my sisters
and my mother.
The friendship between Jesse Owens
and the German
long jumper Lutz Long continued
after the Olympics
and into the Second World War.
Lutz was sent to the front...
..where he died.
But they had corresponded.
In one of those letters
he had asked my father,
"If I don't make it,
"would you promise to go
see my son?"
Because he had only seen him
as an infant...
"..and tell him what kind
of person I was?"
Years later, my father did go back
to Germany
and found Kai Long...
..who was Lutz's son...
..and the families have had
a relationship ever since.
The Berlin Olympics
were ground-breaking.
Many innovations introduced
in 1936
became part of every
subsequent Games.
The media coverage...
..the beginnings
of commercialisation.
And the torch relay...
..it's an ingenious
PR instrument which
no other Games afterwards wanted
to do without.
The fact that a government
threw its support behind
a Games also for the very
first time.
For Hitler, the Olympics
were a triumph.
He had attempted an audacious
deception to show
the regime as benign
and its military
ambitions as modest...
..and had succeeded.
The 1936 games were the showcase
for the Nazi regime.
In fact, you could see
what happened here
in those two weeks
as the high point of Nazism.
These weren't the Olympic Games,
these were Hitler's games.
The regime had completely fooled
the world.
This was a Germany preparing
for another type of game.
And a far more deadly game at that.
August 1936, the Berlin Olympics.
The world comes to Nazi Germany.
You had 100,000 people
in the stadium standing up as one
shouting, "Heil Hitler!"
These are the Olympics of record
breaking sprinter, Jesse Owens.
He said that, "You feel totally free
when you can run
"and think about nothing
but the wind
"in your face and the speed
of your feet."
Of medal winning amateurs...
My memories of her were as a gran,
who baked for us and we played
in her garden.
And to see her as an athlete,
it's fabulous.
..and of settling old scores.
He'd been shot
in the First World War
by a German bullet, and this,
perhaps, was his revenge.
For two weeks, cameras captured
the world's greatest
sporting spectacle.
But things were not
what they seemed.
They saw a sanitised,
idealised Germany.
The truth was buried.
Behind the scenes
a very different story
was unfolding.
There was a lot of
propaganda done to make
the concentration camp look like
not what it really was.
Using black and white
archive transformed
by cutting edge restoration
and colourisation,
this is the story of 16 days
that conned the world.
1st of August 1936.
Berlin.
Today is the start of
the Olympics...
..the 11th games of the modern era.
At the specially built stadium,
the opening ceremony
is about to begin.
For Berliners, sitting in
the stands here at
the opening ceremony must have
been incredibly impressive.
Shouting, singing the same things.
After years of feeling deflated
following the period of World War I.
Overhead, a dramatic symbol
of a revitalised Germany appears.
The Hindenburg airship...
..the largest flying machine
in the world.
But what the crowd really
want to see
is the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler.
There were Hitler Youth lined
up outside,
who were shouting, "Heil Hitler,"
as he arrived.
Those cheers were carried inside
the stadium...
..where 100,000 spectators
rose at one,
doing the Hitler salute
and shouting, "Heil Hitler!"
The Olympic bell tolls.
BELL TOLLS
And the flags of the 49 competing
nations are raised.
Then the athletes arrive,
eager to compete
on the world stage.
But first they must
greet their host...
..Hitler.
How do all these different
nationalities behave?
What do they do?
He is not your typical world leader.
So you have the Italians,
they come in,
they do the fascist salute,
obviously it's a fascist nation.
And then the French, they come in,
they give the Olympic salute.
Now that looks really like
the fascist salute.
And so all the fans
here are going wild.
They think maybe the French are
really supporting
our new form of government.
Following the French
were the British,
led out by 37-year-old
rower Jack Beresford.
As the winner of four
Olympic medals,
Jack was the obvious choice.
There's dad carrying the Union flag,
leading the British team into
the arena, and here's Hitler.
Interestingly, the British
team did not do
the Nazi salute, but they did
a sharp eyes, right?
Obviously now, knowing about Hitler,
there's a certain revulsion there,
but I feel immensely proud
that dad should have been
carrying the flag.
Marching behind the Stars
and Stripes
is the star of the USA team...
..22-year-old athlete Jesse Owens.
He already holds three
world records.
For my father, it must have been
awe inspiring to be a part
of such a spectacular event,
and to be measured against
the best athletes in the world.
The Berlin Olympics came close
to being cancelled.
Jesse Owens and many other athletes
had faced pressure not to come.
In 1931, the International
Olympic Committee,
had awarded the games to
the Democratic Weimar Republic.
But after Hitler came to power
two years later,
calls for a boycott began.
Jewish competitors had been thrown
off the German team.
Then the Nuremberg laws of
September 1935
stripped all German Jews
of their civil rights.
The influential
American Olympic Association,
under the leadership of
Avery Brundage,
did all it could to oppose
the boycott.
Avery Brundage, in essence,
felt that sports should stay out
of politics,
Should remain apolitical.
And he thought, "Why give
up those fabulous Games
"just for that small minority
of Germans
"that were suffering
under Nazi persecution."
As the clamour
for a boycott intensified,
a solution was found.
The Nazis cynically invited
the half-Jewish
fencer, Helena Mayer,
to join their team.
She was chosen as she looked Aryan
and might bring the Reich success.
She had been a two time Olympian
and a previous Olympic medallist,
so she was a very good athlete
and therefore
she's a good chance of winning
more medals.
Although Mayer's selection
was clearly political,
it was enough for the Americans.
They agreed to attend the Games,
ending the boycott movement.
With the United States
participating,
then it was very hard
for any other country around
the world to really have a boycott
movement take hold.
But many of the Olympic
athletes still
had reservations about
competing in Berlin.
23-year-old Audrey Brown
was representing Britain
in the 4x100 metre relay.
She definitely felt uneasy,
and I think felt obvious to her
that this was clearly
Nazi propaganda,
but the decision to go
and the unease
she had was outweighed
by one, her desire
to represent Great Britain,
and two,
to represent female athletes
as a whole.
The spectacular opening ceremony
was part of the Nazis'
attempt to make their Olympics
the biggest yet,
and outdo the games held in Los
Angeles four years earlier.
The Americans had laid on
an impressive spectacle,
but the venues
were often almost empty.
The Germans felt they could
do better.
For Hitler, a lot is riding
on the next 16 days.
Since he became Chancellor in 1933,
he had crushed any opposition
and dismantled many
democratic institutions.
But public opinion still mattered.
Hitler was firmly in the saddle
in 1936,
so there weren't any opponents
any more
that could have overthrown him.
But nevertheless, showing to
his own population
that the country was being admired
by putting on those
Games clearly also had
an effect
on his support at home.
Hitler was also keen to impress
a wider audience...
..the international community.
He threw the power of the
Nazi state behind the games.
When Hitler visited the stadium
in 1933
and it was just in the process
of being built,
he was actually quite
disappointed with
the scale and size of it,
and he immediately said,
"No, we must demolish this
and build
"a much bigger one capable
of seating 100,000 people,"
so that when the entire world
comes to Germany,
he can really showcase
the resurgent strength
and also the economic recovery
of the country.
For Hitler, the Olympics would
be an elaborate
two week confidence trick.
What the games did was to give
an idealised false vision
of what Germany looked like.
The truth was buried.
Once all the athletes had lined
up on the pitch,
Hitler announced the official
start of the Games.
Then a first for the Olympics...
..an athlete named Fritz Schilgen,
chosen for his graceful
running style, brings in
a flaming torch.
The flame had been lit 12 days
earlier at Olympia
in Greece, using the rays
of the sun.
Its main purpose was to advertise
the Games.
3,000 runners, 12 days,
seven states through which the torch
relay went
with torches made by Krupp,
the German arms producer.
But at the same time there was
a meaning behind it as well,
whereby the Germans were the true
inheritors of ancient Greece.
It still works as a PR instrument.
It advertises the games in the most
brilliant fashion.
But nobody remembers that
it was invented
on occasion of the Nazi Games.
There is one final ritual
before the Games can begin,
but it doesn't go to plan.
A crucial part of the ceremony is
for one of the athletes to take
the Olympic oath, and to do so,
they have to clutch
the Olympic flag.
It's almost like a religion, this.
The job is given to the German
weightlifter Rudolf Ismayr,
and he clutches a flag,
but not the Olympic flag,
but the swastika flag.
So if you want a metaphor for how
the Nazis are going to take over
the Olympics, you got
it right there.
On Sunday, the 2nd of August,
the Olympic sporting events began.
Out of almost 4,000 competitors,
only 331 were women.
Among the British female contingent
was Tom Wenham's grandmother,
Audrey, competing in one of
the first events,
the 4x100 metre relay.
Before the Games, the British
Olympic Association
gave her this tracksuit top
and the individual letters that
make up the team name.
I think the fact that they had
to sew the letters
on themselves is a clear indication
of the nature
of amateur sport at the time,
and the, "can do make it
happen yourself,
"get stuck in," nature of
what she was required to do.
The most famous amateur in the world
took the stage
on that first day, competing
in the heats of
what was then known
as the 100 metre dash.
His name was Jesse Owens.
He loved running, and even
as a child he ran through
the cotton fields.
He said that you feel totally free
when you can run
and think about nothing
but the breeze
and the wind in your face
and the speed of your feet.
Jesse reached the final with ease.
63 competitors narrowed down
to the six
fastest men in the world.
Hitler watched keenly from
the stands.
Four years earlier in Los Angeles,
Germany came ninth
in the medal table.
That humiliation must
not be repeated.
The final was about medals...
..but it was also about race.
Hitler needed the German star,
Erich Borchmeyer, to win.
We know that Hitler has no time
for black people in Mein Kampf.
He talks about
the Rhineland bastards,
who are these 500
or so children born
to white German women who have
been fathered by
French colonial soldiers.
And of course, he regards this sort
of interbreeding
as being very, very destructive
to German society.
To the Nazis' disgust, Jesse Owens
had been a hit
as soon as he arrived
in Germany.
He was loved by the Berlin public.
So the Gestapo issued, I think,
52 warnings
to German females not to approach
black athletes
in an unseemly manner because they
feared racial mixing
might result from it.
At 5:00 pm, the 100 metre
athletes lined up at the start.
Today, this track is blue, but back
in 1936 it was a very deep red.
It was known as a cinder track,
and it was made out of bits
of crushed up volcanic rock, crushed
up bricks and also ash.
And the athletes
didn't have starting blocks,
and instead they had trowels
that they had
to use to dig little holes
into the ground.
And that's how they started.
The stadium went silent.
All eyes were on Jesse Owens.
I'm right at the beginning
of the 100m,
exactly where Jesse was standing,
and Hitler was just over there,
no more than 60m away.
I mean, these two men would
have been able
to see each other's expressions.
And so you realise when you're
here in the stadium,
just how connected these
two men must have felt.
Owens' trainer told him to run
as if he was on hot coals.
STARTING GUN
Jesse Owens starts so quickly out
of the block that actually,
the cameraman isn't sure
whether to focus on him
or the rest of the field.
Jesse wins gold in 10.3 seconds...
..just outside the world record.
His team-mate, Ralph Metcalfe,
is second.
Look at the strain on the other
athlete's faces.
And you look at Owens and he's
in control,
he's graceful, he's masterful.
I think primarily it was
God given talent.
He was a beautiful runner.
Hitler didn't congratulate Jesse.
The day before, he'd shaken the
hands of German gold medallists,
but then snubbed the winner
of the high jump...
..Owen's team-mate
Cornelius Johnson.
He was then told by the IOC...
"If you shake hands with
one athlete,
"You have to shake hands
with every athlete."
And he then decided not
to shake hands with any athlete.
The following day was the long
jump competition.
Hitler was hoping that the
23-year-old German star,
Lutz Long would be victorious.
But Jesse Owens was also competing.
It pitted the two best athletes
in the world,
and the expectations were high
for both of them.
In their minds, it was athletic...
..but in the world's minds,
it was political.
Jesse Owens had a secret weapon
Lutz Long didn't have...
..a few days earlier
in the Olympic Village,
an ambitious Bavarian
shoemaker named
Adi Dassler had given him a pair
of handmade running shoes.
Owens' endorsement transformed
the fortunes of his company,
now known as Adidas.
Despite Owens' special shoes,
there was little between him
and Lutz Long.
That long jump final
is really nail biting
because Long and Owens
are really evenly matched.
And then eventually Owens
does this enormous jump,
his speed alone makes him
a brilliant long jumper.
And he wins gold!
Yet another gold.
And the first man
to congratulate him, Lutz Long.
This photograph went
round the world.
I think they had the same values.
I guess that was the chemistry
between them.
They saw the world
in the same kind of way.
Why can't we just get along,
you know?
Nazi propaganda minister
Joseph Goebbels,
was livid at Owens' victory.
He writes in his diary, "This
is a disgrace.
"White humanity should be ashamed."
The fact that fencer, Helene Meyer,
the token Jewish member of
the German team,
only won silver didn't
improve Goebbels mood.
To the surprise of many, Mayer gave
the Nazi salute on the podium.
She at the time argued that this was
in order to protect her mother
and her brothers.
How credible that is
is questionable.
She always wanted, I think,
to be a part of Germany.
Goebbels couldn't control
the results,
but he could control the propaganda.
For the regime, the Olympics
were about deception,
creating a sanitised
version of Germany,
and in particular what the 100,000
foreign tourists saw in Berlin.
This photograph captures a moment
where this street,
Unter den Linden,
would have been bustling,
full of people,
really cheerful atmosphere.
Thousands of men
and women lining the streets.
The regime encouraged Berliners
to create a positive atmosphere
for the tourists.
They were really keen to make sure
that this would be
"a week of laughter," as
they put it,
so there would be a lot of smiling,
a lot of being
really friendly towards
the foreign visitors coming here
and towards the tourists.
This was also supposed to be a land
that was economically recovering,
so there couldn't be any shortages
or supply problems.
So Berliners were even asked
to eat fewer eggs than
they would normally do,
so that there would be enough
for the visitors to have breakfast.
Secret police patrolled the streets
looking out
for any anti-Nazi protests.
And away from the crowds,
Nazi racial policies
were ruthlessly enforced.
Berlin's Sinti and Roma
communities were arrested
and taken to a camp outside
the city.
Over 600 men, women and children
were rounded up.
They wanted to present the society
that was purely German
and Aryan in the way that they
imagined it would be in the future.
20 miles away, in a forest
near the town of Oranienburg,
that Nazi future
was becoming reality.
A group of prisoners
were clearing trees,
making space for
a concentration camp
to imprison the regime's
political opponents.
It will become known
as Sachsenhausen.
I guess the prisoners were,
of course,
aware what was going on in Berlin,
that they were doing hard,
physical labour while the regime
was presenting itself
as a very open-minded,
friendly state...
..only a few kilometres away.
The slogan "Arbeit macht frei,"
"work sets you free," was fixed
to the entrance gate.
It was a message directed to
the people outside the camp,
not to the prisoners inside,
to tell them
work freely, work good then you
will be liberated.
There was a lot of propaganda done
to make
the concentration camp look like
a very hard but fair site,
where you could trust in rules
and orders and not
what it really was.
One of the first buildings
constructed shows
the cruel reality
of Sachsenhausen,
a cell block set apart from
the rest of the camp,
used as a Gestapo
interrogation centre.
Always places the more remote,
the more isolated there are the more
sheltered conditions they offer
for extreme violence.
And this cell block was one of them.
The idea was to give the Gestapo
a chance
of interrogating these prisoners
whenever they wanted.
Sachsenhausen slowly expanded.
In 1940, a track was built,
a chilling echo of the Olympic
athletic track.
It was built to test artificial
leather for shoes.
The prisoners were the guinea pigs.
For the shoe industry, it was a
perfect chance to set up
this shoe testing track here,
because outside in the free world,
you would not find 100 persons
who would be willing
to walk all day long in circles,
in every weather.
They were given different shoes
made from different
materials, and they had to
wear it all day.
And then the shoes were compared
in the evening.
They had to carry backpacks
with stones on their backs
in order to get a little
bit of weight,
because these prisoners,
they were not very well fed.
Between the Olympic year of 1936
and the end of the war
nine years later,
over 200,000 prisoners were held
at Sachsenhausen.
It's estimated that tens
of thousands were murdered
or died in the camp from disease
or malnutrition.
Just 20 miles from Sachsenhausen,
the Games entered their final week.
The Nazi Olympic deception was
about to go even further.
By Sunday the 9th of August,
the eighth day of the competition,
the Berlin Games were in full swing.
For the Nazis, they were an
opportunity to show
the world a sanitised version
of Germany...
..and it was going well.
Crowds packed the specially
built Olympic swimming pool...
..and the gymnastics arena.
In the stadium, it was the last
day of the athletics.
Jesse Owens won a fourth gold
in the 4x100 metre relay,
having won the 200m four
days earlier.
A plaque in the stadium records
his triumphs.
Jesse Owens' achievements here
really meant something both to
the people at the time,
but also throughout history.
They transcended sports
in many ways.
Here was a black American stealing
the show effectively
and being not only victorious
in the Games,
but also incredibly popular with
the crowds here
and across the world.
British runner Audrey Brown
was competing
that day and could watch
Owens in action.
Gran's reflections on Jesse Owens
were that he was something
of a rock star.
And I know she took great delight
in seeing black athletes
from every nation,
but particularly Jesse Owens
being so impactful.
When that was so clearly contrary
to the Nazi worldview.
And she took an almost
delicious delight
in seeing how that played out.
Today is a big day for Audrey...
..and her brother Godfrey.
Both are competing in relay finals.
Their brother, Ralph, is also
a runner
but missed the Olympics due
to injury.
Audrey's build up to the Games was,
by modern standards, rudimentary.
Her training is as simple
as describing runs around
the park with her brothers
and really no more complex
than that.
I find that hard to believe.
I feel I must have been more
to it than that,
but those were certainly the stories
she told of just running
in the park.
Audrey's handmaid running
shoes have been repaired
and look, as they did
in August 1936.
These are obviously designed
to be on your toes
because the leather at the back
and the heel
is almost nonexistent.
Some fairly robust and significant
spikes give you good grip,
running on a cinder track
and designed to be
as close fitting as possible.
I know that Gran talked of
feel with the track
and that real closeness.
We're talking about a matter
of millimetres between
her bare feet and the running track.
When we inherited them,
they were small scraps of leather,
so it's incredibly evocative,
enormously meaningful to be able
to see these
in the condition that Gran
would have run in them.
Audrey was running the third leg
for Britain
in the 4x100 metre relay.
Hitler assumed the home
team would win
and help put Germany on top of
the medal table.
Gran felt that they were
somehow an embodiment
of the German regime at
the time, who,
frankly were expected
to dominate from start to finish.
It was a foregone conclusion.
STARTER GUN
The Germans were soon in
the lead.
As Audrey waited for the baton,
Hitler sensed victory.
For me, seeing Hitler watching...
..is a very jarring mixture
of emotions.
It's the normality of Hitler
watching a sporting event.
Audrey, in the inside lane,
successfully passes the baton.
But then a shock...
..the Germans drop theirs.
American, Helen Stephens
storms to victory.
The Brits win silver.
In her copy of the
official programme,
Audrey recorded their triumph.
My memories of her were as a gran
who baked for us and we played
in her garden
and built bonfires and do
all the things you do with a gran.
To see her as an athlete,
doing what she loved doing
and obviously being very,
very good at it is fabulous.
All the drama on the track
was captured
by female film director
Leni Riefenstahl,
who had been commissioned by Hitler
to make
the official film of the Games.
The Nazis wanted to show Berlin as
the most impressive host city yet.
After the war, she claimed
that she was just an artist,
but it was very clear that
there was an inert
drive within herself to try
and produce
the best propaganda results as well.
There was certainly a conviction
there in the work itself.
No-one was allowed to get
in Riefenstahl's way...
..and money was no object.
She employed a crew of 200...
..including 45 cameramen.
She had a clear sense of
what she wanted to capture
and not just the sport
and the excitement,
but the grace and the beauty
of the human body.
She used completely
new filming techniques.
She put cameras on tracks.
She had them hanging
down from balloons.
These kinds of things really made
the film that she produced,
in the end, unique and impressive.
Riefenstahl's film crews competed
with a new technology...
..television.
Large cameras relayed pictures
from the stadium
to special viewing booths.
Television was still very new
technology in the 1930s.
These weren't just TVs
in people's homes,
people would have seats and be lined
up in rows to watch the Games
broadcast on TV.
It was an exciting
opportunity to be able
to see what was happening live...
..not something that was being
filmed from inside a studio.
The 9th of August was a busy day
for the British media.
After Audrey Brown's success,
Dorothy Odam won silver
in the high jump.
Then it was Audrey's brother
Godfrey's turn...
..in the men's 4x400 metre relay.
Two days earlier, he won silver
in the 400m,
narrowly beaten by
American, Archie Williams.
Gran always spoke more openly
and glowingly
of Godfrey's achievements than
she did of her own.
She felt that he was the far
more capable athlete.
Hopes of a British win
in the relay were high.
The pressure was on Godfrey to bring
the baton over the line.
STARTING PISTOL
It's an enormously
exciting race,
a really compelling
sporting spectacle.
We see Rampling being chased down,
being challenged...
..holding off pressure from
the American athlete.
The handover to my great uncle...
..and then him being able to come
over the line
and win that gold medal,
it's fabulous to watch.
Godfrey, having reached the pinnacle
of his sporting career,
celebrates with the smallest,
most inconsequential little leap
in the air.
It's somehow very British.
"It's not about me," it's just this
small little celebration of
what must have been the biggest
moment of his sporting life.
To have brother and sister
winning medals
on the same day at the
same Olympics,
I think is still unique
in that regard.
And it still holds to this day.
Soon after the British relay team
was awarded their gold medals,
there was another reminder that
the Berlin Olympics
were not all they seemed.
The marathon was won
in world record time
by a runner from Korea, named
Sohn Kee-chung.
Korea had been annexed by Japan
in 1910,
and Sohn was forced to compete
as a Japanese runner
and with the Japanese
spelling of his name.
Sohn was a Korean nationalist
who hated the idea
that he was actually winning a medal
for a country
that had subjugated his own.
He stood on the podium along with
the third place runner,
who was also from Korea,
and they were looking
down in defiance
of Japan having occupied
their country.
In 1988, when South Korea hosted
the Olympics,
Sohn was able finally to celebrate.
He was asked to bring the famous
torch that had been part
of the torch relay, invented
in 1936, into the stadium.
This is a wonderful way, I think,
for him to conclude his career
as an athlete.
The Berlin Games were entering
the final few days.
Germany and the United States
were tied
at the top of the medal table.
Hitler was determined to see
a Nazi triumph.
On the first day of
the Berlin Olympics,
with the eyes of the world on
the city,
this vast building was opened.
The classic example in many ways
of Nazi era architecture.
It's huge, it's monumental in size.
It projects power,
symmetry, order.
It was part of a Nazi con trick...
..during its two year construction,
it was described
as their new transport ministry.
But when the building opened
in August '36,
its true intention was revealed.
It was the new Air Ministry...
..the HQ for the Luftwaffe.
Despite restrictions placed
upon Germany
after the First World War, the
Nazis were rearming.
In 1935, Germany had already
reintroduced conscription,
which was illegal under the terms.
Hitler had begun to build up
a Luftwaffe in air force again,
even though he wasn't
supposed to have one.
He had begun to rebuild
a naval force.
Britain agreed, actually to
Germany's Navy
to be 35% of its own size.
This new military was not
just for show.
Hitler was intent on
expanding his territory.
First in his sights...
..the Rhineland.
Under the Versailles Treaty,
no military was allowed
in this buffer zone between
Germany and France.
For the Fuhrer,
this was intolerable.
Five months before the Olympics,
on the 7th of March,
1936, the German army marched
into the Rhineland.
And what does the world do?
What does France do?
What does Britain do?
Nothing.
When the international community did
not really respond
or penalise him, or try to impose
any sanctions,
that gave him more confidence
into perhaps being bolder
in his endeavours later on.
By the start of the Olympics,
it was becoming clear
the Nazis wanted a larger Germany.
But Hitler didn't want the Western
powers to take fright
and kerb his ambitions.
So the Olympics had a second
part to play
in his elaborate confidence trick.
Not only to show Germany wasn't
as repressive as many feared...
..but also that despite rearming,
it was a peace-loving nation.
The new Luftwaffe HQ even held
a garden party for Olympic tourists.
The idea was that visitors would
come away thinking,
"We don't really care whether
Germany goes back to having
"an Air Force or not, because we
now believe
"that this is a peace-loving,
if stronger nation."
By the 13th of August, the Olympics
were entering
the final few days.
At the top of the medals table,
it was neck and neck between
the United States and Germany.
Focus moved to the rowing events
on the Langer See
on the outskirts of the city,
where the Germans were prepared
to do almost anything to win.
Britain's hopes lay
in the double sculls
and team-mates 37-year-old
Jack Beresford,
who led the British
at the opening ceremony
and 29-year-old Dick Southwood.
Dad and Dick Southwood had
been training
pretty rigorously for ten months,
which in those days was an unusually
long period.
They were determined to win.
Beresford and Southwood had a new,
lighter boat
built especially for them.
But when they arrived in Berlin it
had mysteriously disappeared.
The boat was eventually found
in a railway siding
just in time for the regatta.
The mischief continued after dark.
The Germans tried to disturb
the British rowers' sleep.
Here's the police school
that they'd stayed in.
The Germans would carry out
night manoeuvres,
marching up and down the road,
making a lot of noise
and flashing lights.
Many of the teams felt at
the Olympic Village
that their military chaperones, who
seemed to be following
them around all day, were basically
recording their training regimes,
their times, and giving all this
vital sporting intelligence
back to the German
Olympic Committee.
I bet there was some sneaky
stuff going on.
Beresford and Southwood made it to
the final of the double sculls.
Their big rivals were the Germans,
Kaidel and Pirsch.
The Nazis were so confident the pair
would triumph,
they put them on a stamp even before
the Games started.
The Fuhrer came to watch the final.
It could be Hitler witnessing
Britain beating Germany, you know.
And so for the Brits, it's
an opportunity
to stick one in the eye of Hitler.
In the heats, the British pair
had spotted that once again,
the Germans weren't playing
by the rules.
But Beresford and Southwood reckoned
they could use it to
their advantage.
They realised that the technique
the Germans were using,
which was actually cheating,
was that they were starting
before the go.
Because the umpire had a big
megaphone that came out
in front of him,
which meant he couldn't actually
see the crews,
particularly the Germans and dad.
So Dick Southwood said,
"Jack, the moment the Germans go,
we're going too."
The Germans went before
the umpire said, "Go..."
..and dad and Dick were
with them.
Despite the good start,
the Brits were soon trailing
Kaidel and Pirsch,
but they'd been given
some valuable Intel.
The Germans often tired
towards the end
of the 2,000 metre course.
They piled on the pressure
and stroke-by-stroke
they caught up the Germans.
This is the 1,900 metre...
..and they were actually level.
And it was at this point
that the Germans cracked.
One of the men basically
gave up rowing.
Beresford and Southwood won
by two and a half lengths.
Dad commented
that the air was electric
and it was the "Sweetest
race I'd ever rode."
And you could argue that there
was a certain irony about this,
that he'd been shot
in the First World War
by a German bullet,
and this, perhaps,
was his revenge against the Germans.
Jack's mother sent a brief
congratulatory telegram.
The Games had only a few days to go,
and the Germans were now trailing
the United States
in the medal table.
They were desperate for gold.
Then their horse riders came
to the rescue.
During all those equestrian events,
the Germans
win every single individual event...
..every single team event.
And it's thanks to their brilliant
horse riding
that they now top the
medal table.
By the 16th of August,
with all the events completed,
the British had only managed
10th overall.
They joined the triumphant Germans
and the other teams
in the Olympic Stadium
for the closing ceremony.
It was massively spectacular.
You had not only the Olympic
flame being extinguished,
but also dozens of searchlights,
creating the illusion
of a light dome
above the stadium.
And this was something that people
talked about
afterwards for years
and years to come.
At the same time, though,
there was already a hint
of the fact that this wasn't
an entirely
peaceful nation any more.
Those were flak searchlights
that were later on used in war.
And so that technology was deployed
still in a peaceful context,
but giving a little bit of
a hint of the things to come.
The star of the games had been
Jesse Owens,
who returned home a hero
with his four gold medals.
But he found that Olympic fame
only went so far.
When he came back and had
such difficulty
finding employment...
..he discovered that you can't eat
four gold medals.
And so after many years he didn't
talk much about
the gold medals any more.
But what he did say
when he would be making
a presentation or something,
he would refer to his four
gold medals,
but they were me and my sisters
and my mother.
The friendship between Jesse Owens
and the German
long jumper Lutz Long continued
after the Olympics
and into the Second World War.
Lutz was sent to the front...
..where he died.
But they had corresponded.
In one of those letters
he had asked my father,
"If I don't make it,
"would you promise to go
see my son?"
Because he had only seen him
as an infant...
"..and tell him what kind
of person I was?"
Years later, my father did go back
to Germany
and found Kai Long...
..who was Lutz's son...
..and the families have had
a relationship ever since.
The Berlin Olympics
were ground-breaking.
Many innovations introduced
in 1936
became part of every
subsequent Games.
The media coverage...
..the beginnings
of commercialisation.
And the torch relay...
..it's an ingenious
PR instrument which
no other Games afterwards wanted
to do without.
The fact that a government
threw its support behind
a Games also for the very
first time.
For Hitler, the Olympics
were a triumph.
He had attempted an audacious
deception to show
the regime as benign
and its military
ambitions as modest...
..and had succeeded.
The 1936 games were the showcase
for the Nazi regime.
In fact, you could see
what happened here
in those two weeks
as the high point of Nazism.
These weren't the Olympic Games,
these were Hitler's games.
The regime had completely fooled
the world.
This was a Germany preparing
for another type of game.
And a far more deadly game at that.