num_pages: 320
description: This short book takes us through the sixteen days in August 1936 when the Olympic Games were staged in Berlin. With a chapter dedicated to each day it describes the events in the German capital through the eyes of a select cast of characters  Nazi leaders and foreign diplomats athletes and journalists writers and actors nightclub owners and socialites.While the competition inside the Olympic Stadium provides the focus and much of the drama  from the triumph of Jesse Owens to the scandal when an American tourist breaks through security and kisses Hitler  Oliver Hilmes also takes us behind the scenes and into the lives of ordinary Berliners: the woman with a dark secret who steps in front of a train the transsexual waiting for the Gestapos knock on the door and the Jewish boy hoping that Germany may lose in the sporting arena.During the Games Nazi oppression was temporarily lifted and the book offers us a last glimpse of the vibrant and diverse life in the German capital in the 1920 and early 1930s which the Nazis set out to destroy: it evokes the novels of Christopher Isherwood and Fassbinders Berlin Alexanderplatz  but we are already entering the dark world of Falladas Alone in Berlin.
language: English
title: Berlin 1936: Sixteen Days in August
publisher: Other Press (NY)