Athletics at the 1936 Berlin Summer Games: Men's Long Jump | Olympics at Sports-Reference.com Athletics at the 1936 Berlin Summer Games: Men's Long Jump Venue(s): Olympic Stadium, Imperial Sports Field, Berlin Date Started: August 4, 1936 Date Finished: August 4, 1936 Gold: Naoto Tajima Summary In the qualifying, the heavy favorite, [Jesse Owens], fouled on his first two jumps. What happened next is now somewhat controversial. But the story has long been told that Germany’s [Luz Long], considered Owens’ biggest challenger went over to him and gave him some advice, helping to qualify easily. Some people now say that never occurred. The final was held later that day, and Owens led early, thanks to 7.74 (25-4¾) in round one and 7.87 (25-10) in round two. He then bettered that with 7.94 (26-0¾) in the fifth round and finished with 8.06 (26-5½). All the marks were considered wind-aided.

Long challenged in round five with 7.87 (25-10), after jumping 7.84 (25-8¾) in round three. But at the end of the competition, he was the first person to congratulate Owens, with Adolf Hitler watching from the stands. Whether the story of Long’s aiding Owens in front of Hitler is true or not, it is known that after the long jump, Owens and Long became close friends. Long showed Owens all around Berlin during the rest of the Olympics. After the Olympics they corresponded frequently, at least until Long was killed fighting with Rommel’s Northern African Corps. His last letter to Owens asked him to someday visit his young son in Berlin and tell him about the friendship between the blond Aryan hero, and the black son of an Alabama sharecropper. Which is how, in the early 60s, Jesse Owens came to stand besides Karl Long, as best man at his wedding. A Sports Reference Site : About SR/Olympics | Privacy Statement | Conditions & Terms of Service | Use of Data Data provided by OlyMADMen , led by Hilary Evans, Arild Gjerde, Jeroen Heijmans, and Bill Mallon.

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gold medalist Jesse Owens talks to German silver medalist Luz Long at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. Popperfoto/Getty Images The Track and Field World Championships begin Saturday in Berlin — and they're surrounded by symbolism. It's the first time an American team has returned to the German city for a major international championship since the infamous 1936 Berlin Olympics. American team members will wear a patch honoring Jesse Owens, the star of the '36 games. Owens is remembered for his dramatic duel in the Olympic long jump against Germany's Luz Long. The story of that competition and the men's friendship has been passed down over the years. But it may be more myth than reality. The shorthand version of the story that generations of Americans have learned over the past 73 years is Jesse Owens was good, while Nazi Germany was evil. Owens, who was black, won four gold metals and made a mockery of the Nazis' theory of Aryan supremacy. And this is what made the story of Owens and Luz Long so captivating. In 1964, Olympic filmmaker Bud Greenspan made the movie Jesse Owens Returns To Berlin.

In the film, Owens explains to Luz Long's son, Kai, what happened during the long jump: In the qualifying round, Owens failed on his first two attempts. A third miss, Owens tells Kai, and he wouldn't make it to the final. Article continues after sponsorship "And your father came to my assistance," Owens says in the film. "And he helped me measure a foot back of the takeoff board — and then I came down and I hit between these two marks. And therefore I qualified. And that led to the victory in the running broad jump." It's a stereotype-busting story — the image of the blond, blue-eyed German supremacy helping his black competitor. It's a story that was included in recent press releases from track and field governing bodies to help promote the events in Berlin honoring Owens and Long. And it's a story, according to one Olympic historian, that never happened. Tom Ecker, author of Olympic Facts and Fables, says he asked Owens in 1965 point-blank about the story. Ecker had noticed inconsistencies in how Owens told the tale. He had read Grantland Rice's account of the Olympic long jump.

Rice, the pre-eminent sports journalist at the time, had binoculars trained on Owens during the qualifying round and never saw him talk to Long. And so it was that Ecker and a colleague asked Owens in 1965. "Jesse Owens admitted to us that he had not met Luz Long until after the competition was over," Ecker says. So why hadn't Owens told the real story in his many public speaking appearances? "He once was quoted as saying, 'Those stories are what people like to hear, so you tell 'em,' " Ecker says. Even Marlene Dortch, Owens' granddaughter, learned about his Olympic story through school and books. She says she regrets not having talked to her grandfather about his experiences in Berlin. But she says she believes her grandfather's story. "I know what my grandfather has shared throughout the years. So, to me, that's the truth of the story," she says. Dortch plans to travel to Berlin to join Kai Long for the celebrations. Dortch notes one part of the story on which everyone agrees — including Ecker — is that after Owens beat Luz Long in the finals, the two men embraced in front of Adolf Hitler.

"The hug, the camaraderie, the friendship of those two men at that time in history, that's all the truth I need," Dortch says. Luz Long died in 1943 while fighting for Germany in World War II. A final letter he wrote to Jesse Owens reads, in part, "Someday find my son ... tell him about how things can be between men on this Earth." The 1936 Berlin Olympics The 1936 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XI Olympiad, were held in 1936 in Berlin, Germany. Berlin won the bid to host the games, with the International Olympic Committee choosing Berlin over Barcelona in April, 1931. Although the bid was won before the Nazi Party gained power in Germany, some leaders in the government saw the Olympics as an opportunity to promote their Nazi ideology. Hitler was convinced by Josef Gï¿½bbels to allow the games to take place in Germany. Preparation for the games started in the early 1930s. Hitler used the Olympics as a tool for propaganda.

Film-maker Leni Riefenstahl, a favorite of Hitler, was commissioned by the International Olympic Committee to film the Games. The film, titled "Olympia", originated many of the techniques now commonplace to the filming of sports. By allowing only members of the "Aryan race" to compete for Germany, Hitler further promoted his ideological belief of racial supremacy. Although Germany won most of the medals in the Olympics, other athletes, such as African-American athlete Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals, showed great athleticism through performance. Hitler removed signs stating "Jews not wanted" and similar slogans from the main tourist attractions. Hitler desired to clean up Berlin, the German Ministry of Interior authorized the chief of Berlin Police to arrest all gypsies and keep them in a special camp. Nazi officials ordered that foreign visitors should not be subjected to the criminal strictures of anti-homosexual laws. Total ticket revenues were 7.5 million Reichsmarks, with a profit of over 1 million marks.

The official budget did not include outlays by the city of Berlin (which issued an itemized report detailing its costs of 16.5 million marks) or the German National Government (which did not make its costs public, but is estimated to have spent US$30 million in mostly capital outlays) Dispute over boycott of the Olympics in the U.S During the 1936 summer Olympics, there were many different views on whether the games should be allowed or discontinued. The people who voiced their opinions on the debate included Americans Avery Brundage, Ernest Lee Jahncke, and Judge Jeremiah Mahoney. The United States considered boycotting the Olympic games, since participating in the festivity might be considered as support for the Nazi Germany regime and its anti-Semitic policies. However, others argued that the Olympic Games should not be a reflection of political views but strictly a contest of the greatest athletes. Avery Brundage, President of the American Olympic Committee was against the boycott, stating that the Jewish athletes were being treated fairly and that the games should continue. Brundage believed that politics played no role in sports, and they should be considered two different entities during the controversial Olympics.

He explained stating, ï¿½The very foundation of the modern Olympic revival will be undermined if individual countries are allowed to restrict participation by reason of class, creed, or race.ï¿½ Brundage also believed that there was a ï¿½Jewish-Communist conspiracyï¿½ that existed to keep the United States out of competing in the Olympic games. Unlike Brundage, Jeremiah Mahoney was against the Olympics and supported a boycott against the games. Mahoney, president of the Amateur Athletic Union, led newspaper editors and anti-Nazi groups to protest against an American team participating in the Berlin Olympics. Mahoney contested that discrimination went against Olympic rules and participation showed support for Hitlerï¿½s Reich. African Americans and Jewish Americans also expressed their opinions for or against American participation. Most African American newspapers supported the Olympics. "The Philadelphia Tribune" and "The Chicago Defender" both agreed that Black victories would undermine Nazi views of Aryan supremacy. They believed it would spark more Black pride at home. American Jewish organizations opposed the Olympics. The American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee staged rallies and supported the boycott of German goods to show their disdain for American participation.

Eventually, Avery Brundage won the debate, manipulating the Amateur Athletic Union to close a vote in favor of sending an American team to the Berlin Olympics, winning by only two and a half votes. Mahoneyï¿½s efforts to incite a boycott of the Olympic games in America failed. President Roosevelt demanded the participation of the United States in the Olympics, intending to keep the tradition of America being void of outside influence intact. The 1936 summer Olympics had the largest representation of nations participating than any other previous Olympics. These nations included the United States which, despite the debate, decided to send an Olympic team to Berlin, although some American competitors (including Milton Green and Norman Canners, both Jewish athletes) decided to abstain from participating and boycotted the Olympic games.

Hitler Opens the Berlin Olympic Games in 1936 New York Herald Tribune, European Edition 2 August 1936 BERLIN ï¿½ In a riot of color and music and ceremonial splendor that could not be dimmed by leaden skies and occasional showers, the sixteen-day period of the Berlin Olympic Games, celebrating the eleventh Olympiad of modern times, was inaugurated today under the patronage of Chancellor Adolf Hitler, leader of the German people, with royalty and nobility and diplomats and commoners and athletes of fifty nations participating in a Germanized festival that overshadowed the sports pageant itself. Into the Olympic Stadium, jammed with a crowd estimated at 110,000, the 5,000 athletes and their leaders of fifty nations, garbed in dress uniforms of many colors, marched behind their national flags.

The signal of Hitlerï¿½s appearance through the wide Marathon Gate and his descent from the broad concrete stairway to the field, flanked on his right by Comte de Baillet-Latour, the International Olympic Committee president, and on his left by Theodore Lewald, the German Olympic president, with a party of 100 including the black-uniformed SS bodyguard of Der Fï¿½hrer trailing, touched off an explosive roar of three Heils to the leader. Homage to Hitler all through the ceremony stood out boldly against the setting of the Olympic opening ritual. Hitlerï¿½s arrival, signalled by a trumpet solo from the huge towers that form the Marathon gateway to the stadium was taken up by a hundred-piece symphony orchestra, which burst into ï¿½Deutschland ï¿½ber Allesï¿½ï¿½ and the ï¿½Horst Wessel Lied,ï¿½ anthems of the country, as the entire crowd sang the refrains.

With Richard Strauss conducting the orchestra and a chorus of 2,000 men and women in the Olympic hymn he composed for this occasion, a runner in track uniform bearing the lighted torch aloft suddenly appeared at the West Gate, raced down the concrete, loped down the cinder path and up again to the West Gate, where a simple metal basin stands. France perhaps stole the cheers of the day, for the French, in blue coats, white flannels and blue berets, nearly 250 strong, did something that none had expected from them. The flag bearer dipped the Tricolor to Hitler, and the entire French section raised their outstretched arms in the Nazi salute. For one moment there was silence as the French marched past the reviewing stand; the next moment the two-tiered stand rocked with an ovation that continued in rippling volume all around the track as the French proceeded to their places on the field. There was mild applause when the American team appeared through the Marathon Gate, but nothing to compare with the ovations to Bulgaria, France and later, Austria. As the Americans were marching past Hitler, the German array appeared on their heels, and the Americans were promptly and completely ignored.

Home Page The story most repeated about Hitler and the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, which were unquestionably put on as a political showcase for Nazi Germany, is that Hitler refused to shake the hand of the American Black athlete Jesse Owens after the latter had won a race. This myth is extremely widespread: the "Encarta Encyclopedia", issued by Microsoft (1998 edition) states the following in its entry under Jesse Owens: "Owens, Jesse (1913-80), one of the greatest track-and-field athletes of all time . . . A member of the U.S. track team in the 1936 Olympic Games, held in Berlin, Owens won four gold medals. He won the 100-m dash in 10.3 sec, equaling the Olympic record; set a new Olympic and world record of 20.7 sec in the 200-m dash; and won the running broad jump with a leap of 26 ft 5I in., setting a new Olympic record. He was also a member of the U.S. 400-m relay team that year, which set a new Olympic and world record of 39.8 sec.

Despite Owens' outstanding athletic performance, German leader Adolf Hitler refused to acknowledge his Olympic victories because Owens was black. Owens went on to play an active role in youth athletic programs and later established his own public relations firm. His autobiography, 'The Jesse Owens Story', was published in 1970". -- Microsoft Encarta, 98 Encyclopedia. 1997 Microsoft Corporation. The reality was in fact substantially different: what happened was that Hitler personally attended the first day of the track and field competition on 2 August 1936, and did personally congratulate the German athlete Hans Wï¿½llke, who became the first German to win a gold medal in the Olympics since 1896. Throughout the rest of the day, Hitler continued to receive Olympic champions, German and non German, in his VIP box. The next day, 3 August, the chairman of the International Olympic Committee, Comte Baillet-Latour, approached Hitler early in the morning and told the German leader that he had violated Olympic protocol by having winners paraded to his box. Hitler apologized and gave an undertaking that he would from then on refrain from publicly congratulating any winners, German or otherwise.

During this day, Owens won his gold medals - and in line with the Olympic Committee's ruling, Hitler did not shake his hand, or anybody else's for that matter, at the games again. It is therefore utterly false to claim that Hitler deliberately chose to ignore Owens. In fact, in the very autobiography that the "Encarta Encyclopedia" extract above refers to, "The Jesse Owens Story", Owens himself recounted how Hitler had stood up and waved to him: "When I passed the Chancellor he arose, waved his hand at me, and I waved back at him. I think the writers showed bad taste in criticizing the man of the hour in Germany". ~ Jesse Owens, "The Jesse Owens Story", 1970. Another common story about the 1936 Olympic games is that Owens' victory "disproved the Nazi master race theory" - in fact the Olympic games as a whole were won by the German team with 89 medals, compared to the 56 medals won by the second placed USA team. Hitler was pleased with the outcome. In what was to become an act of extreme irony, the American president of the time, Franklin D.

Roosevelt, then involved in an election and concerned about the reaction in the USA's southern states, refused to see Owens at the White House: Owens was later to remark that it was Roosevelt, not Hitler, who snubbed him. This is a good example of one of the more outstanding distortions which have sprung up around Nazi Germany, all as a result of a political agenda linked to Nazi Anti-Jewishness. It is also true that it is the victors' prerogative to write the historical account of events: this too has served to cloud the issue of the Third Reich and to make it into the political hot potato that it remains over fifty years after it vanished. All Americans (at least) have heard it. In the Berlin Olympics of 2 - 16 August 1936, Adolf Hitler refused to shake hands with an American runner named Jesse Owens, who was what we now call African-American in politically correct parlance, making headlines around the world, as Hitler's racial policies towards non-Aryans were quite well-known. First, to clear up the story of Jesse Owen's name.

His real name was James Cleveland Owens, which when he drawled (he was from the dirt-poor South) to a Northern schoolteacher, "J.C" turned into Jesse. The Berlin Olympics of 1936 took place in an atmosphere where sport and international politics were no longer separate, despite the ostensible purpose of the Olympics: ... a backdrop of momentous world events. Just a year earlier Benito Mussolini had announced the annexation of Ethiopia ... in the early spring of of 1936 Hitler's army moved into the previously demilitarized Rhineland... Further: ... In the wake of the furious debate over the participation of athletes from Western democratic nations in Nazi Germany, an alternate games -- "the People's Olympics" -- were planned for July 19 -- 26 in Barcelona, Spain. ... On the very morning of the opening ceremonies, reactionary forces led by General Francisco Franco plunged Spain into a civil war. Born of political idealism, the People's Olympics were the victim of a political crisis. The "Baltimore Afro-American" (8 August 1936) and other newspapers spread the story that Hitler refused to shake Jesse Owens's hand or congratulate other Black medalists.

In fact, during the very first day of Olympic competition, when Owens did not compete, Olympic protocol officers implored Hitler to receive either all the medal winners or none, and Hitler chose the latter. Whether he did this to avoid shaking hands with "non-Aryans" is unclear. Privately, Minister of Propaganda Gï¿½bbels called the victories by Blacks "a disgrace." Ignoring censors' orders to avoid offending foreign guests with racist commentaries, the radical Nazi newspaper "Der Angriff" (The Attack) wrote on August 6: "If the American team had not brought along Black auxiliaries ... one would have regarded the Yankees as the biggest disappointment of the Games." The Berlin Olympics reeked of politics -- of Hitler's designs and calculations, of the hopes and fears of the German people, and of the anti-Nazi bloc throughout the Western world. Little wonder that the first day of athletic competition produced a controversial episode that within the week would turn into a most memorable as politically useful myth: Hitler's legendary "snub" of Jesse Owens. In truth, the yarn was a fabrication that originally had nothing whatsoever to do with Owens.

On the first afternoon of the games, Hitler excitedly watched two German athletes, Tilly Fleischer and Hans Wï¿½llke, win gold medals, and summoned them to his box for personal, public congratulations. Shortly thereafter, he did the same for a Finnish victor. Then late in the afternoon, as drops of rain began to fall from a darkened sky, Cornelius Johnson barely beat his teammate, David Albritton, for the gold in the high jump. Just before the playing of the American national anthem announced the awarding of Johnson's medal, Hitler and his entourage left the stadium. (there are other accounts that Hitler "stormed out" of the stadium in a tantrum) Did they make the hasty exit so Hitler would not have to shake hands with the black Johnson? Maybe they did. A Nazi spokesman explained that Hitler's party always entered and left the stadium on an exact prearranged schedule, but it is difficult to imagine Der Fï¿½hrer publicly congratulating a black man, whom he considered only slightly less odious than a Jew. But if he snubbed any black American athlete, it was Cornelius Johnson rather than Jesse Owens.

Not until the next day did Owens win his first gold medal. By then the president of the International Olympic Committee, Henri de Baillet-Latour of Belgium, had gotten word to Hitler that as the head of the host government he must be impartial in his accolades -- congratulating all or none of the victors. Hitler stopped inviting winners to his box. He was much to sensitive to world opinion to leave himself open to negative publicity. But Hitler had not banked on the ingenuity of the American press. "Hitler greets all medalists except Americans," the front page of the "New York Times" announced the day after the first competitive events; "Hitler ignores Negro medalists," ran the headlines the next day. Not by coincidence, the "New York Times" had earlier led the movement to boycott the Berlin Games. Still, after those initial barrages, the "Times" largely ceased mentioning the "snub" story. Other newspapers picked it up with a new twist. "HITLER SNUBS JESSE," read the huge, bold headlines of a black Cleveland paper, "Call and Post", the day after Owens had won his first medal.

Ignorant of Baillet-Latour's instructions and confident of its ability to read Hitler's motives, the American press shifted the focus away from Cornelius Johnson and to Jesse Owens. Every new medal won by Owens enhanced his appeal as the target of Hitler's supoosed insult. Yet Jesse denied it to interviewers at Berlin and to reporters on his return home. He would soon find, however, that the constant denial was too much bother and that to claim the "snub" for his own would work to his advantage. "And then," as Bob Greenspan says simply, "Jesse kept on using the story." Especially in his postwar public addresses, newspaper articles, and ghosted books, he would make much of Hitler's refusal to shake his hand, and his "leaving the stadium in a tantrum." Of Jesse's experience in Berlin: "German spectators gave him the warmest ovation of his life. Just before he entered the stadium, Larry Snyder (his coach) warned him to be ready for a hostile reception: "Don't let anything you hear from the stands upset you. Ignore the results and you'll be alright." Little did Snyder know that German admiration for athletic achievement transcended race prejudice.

From the moment that Owens first appeared on the track, curious German athletes and coachs milled around him. ... One German coach, seemed, to Snyder, intensely interested in Jesse's graceful legs, studying them "like a scientist studying a rare species of fauna". Then, after Jesse won his first heat, the entire stadium burst out in thunderous applause. From then on he received a loud ovation every time he walked out on the track". Owens was besieged by autograph seekers throughout his stay in Germany. He was cheered loudly every time he entered the stadium by the mostly German audience. Owens had been prepared for a hostile reception; a coach had warned him in advance not to be upset by anything that might happen in the stands. "Ignore the insults," Owens was told, "and you'll be all right." Later Owens recalled that he had gotten the greatest ovations of his career at Berlin. So much for the "Germans were unified in their hatred of non-Aryans" routine. We may safely conclude: F. Adolf Hitler refused to shake hands with Jesse Owens in the Berlin Olympics of 1936, intentionally snubbing him. T.

Hitler didn't shake hands with any athletes after the first day of competition, and Jesse didn't win anything until the second. Hitler did, however, snub another black American athlete, Cornelius Johnson. But the myths don't end here. Another myth is that a few African-American athletes ran off with all of the medals. Jesse did walk off with four gold medals, no mean achievement. However: In the unofficial point system devised by the American Olympic Committee (ten points for first place, and five, four, three, two and one for the next five finishes, the American male track and field team scored 203 points. Owens alone scored 40, almost two-thirds of the entire German teams total. Outside of track and field, however, the Germans dominated: 87 - 1 in gymnastics, 65 - 6 in equestrian events, 43 - 4 in canoeing, 34 - 9 in boxing, 28 - 10 in weightlifting, 27 - 0 in cycling, 20 - 2 in yachting, and 19 - 10 in fencing.

Only in wrestling and basketball did American athletes make a decent showing. When the president of the International Olympic Committee, Henri Baillet-Latour, finally proclaimed the closing of the Berlin games, both German and American scoring systems gave the Germans a decisive victory over the United States. The other European fascist power, Italy, finished a distant third in team point totals. In "Legends, Lies, and Cherished Myths of American History", by Richard Shenkman, there is an abbreviated account of the above, and Shenkman concludes with: "It is forgotten that Germany managed to pick up more medals that all of the other countries combined. Hitler was pleased with the outcome". Of some independent interest is the fact that after the Berlin games, the once peaceful Olympic village became an infantry training center. The largest restaurant and music hall were transformed into military hospitals. Foreign athletes who hung out as little as two days after the end of the Berlin games could hear the rattle of machine-gun fire from nearby training fields.

"The army had done its best to help make the Olympic show a success," an American reporter commented, "but it now is resuming its real job." A couple more well-known Jesse Owens stories: One concerns the story of Jesse Owens and Lutz Long. This story has some truth to it, which makes it dangerous, 'cuz most of it is false. To qualify for afternoon finals in the long jump, Jesse had to leap 23 feet 5 inches, something that he had bettered in his senior year in high school. In fact, Jesse was favored to win the gold. Notably, in a competition in Ann Arbor, he had leaped 26 feet, 8 1/4 inches, which was still a world record at the time. There are myths about the qualifying jumps. From the main text: "His own later accounts sadly misrepresent the facts. Tacitly playing on Hitler's snub, in 1960 Owens recounted that he was so upset by Hitler's master race theories that he angrily leaped "from several inches beyond the take-off board" on his first jump, then "fouled even worse" on his second try.

Later he claimed that Hitler had walked out on him just before he jumped, making him so "mad, hate-mad" that he lost his self-control. Both stories are less than credible. The athlete's utterances in 1936 contain nothing to indicate Hitler's "master race theories" were of concern to Jesse Owens at the time, and Hitler was not even in the stadium for the morning preliminaries. Even when Owens dropped Hitler from his account of his difficulties, he still got the facts wrong. In his favorite version of the event, he stepped across the front edge of the take-off board on his first attempt, then was so careful not to scratch on his second try that he made a mediocre leap, too short to qualify". In Arthur Daley's account of Jesse's qualifying attempts at the long jump from the "New York Times" we have: "Owens strolled over to the runway and, still in his pullover, raced to the pit and ran right through, a customary warm-up gesture. But the red flag was raised in a token greatly to the Buckeye Bullet's astonishment. That counted as one of his three jumps. "Apparently this practice run through the pit was only customary in the US".

Daley continues: "On his second try, which he made in earnest, Jesse hit the take-off board cleanly and sailed through the air. Again the red flag was raised. "Owens had stepped over the front edge of the take-off board. "One more 'scratch' would disqualify him, placing the world's greatest long-jumper on the sidelines for the afternoon finals. The American press reported widely on the friendship that developed between Owens and his German competitor in the long jump, Carl Ludwig ("Luz") Long. As Owens later told the story with various embellishments and varying degrees of consistency, his reveries of self-disgust were interrupted by a German competitor, Lutz Long, who came to his rescue with words of consolation and advice. An inch or two taller than Owens, Long was blond, lean, and blue-eyed, a walking advertisement for Hitler's Aryan ideal. According to Owens's reminiscences, Long initiated a conversation. ... Then Long reportedly suggested that Jesse make a mark 6 inches back off of the take-off board (as one version of the story has it) or that he place the towel 6 inches back of the board (according to another of Owens's accounts) in order to avoid fouling.

If Long did, in fact, make the helpful suggestion, no one but Owens heard it. No one else even observed the two men in conversation at the time. The doyen of American sports writers, Grantland Rice, was in the press box with binoculars trained on Owens between his second and third attempts to qualify. ... (Rice saw) only a calm mask of a face as Jesse walked down the sprint path to the take-off board, re-traced his steps, then "anteloped" down the path to make his final jump. ... left the ground with half-foot clearance at the take-off and went past 25 feet to safety. So Jesse qualified for the long jump. Jesse had the gold locked up before his final jump, but on the final jump: "As he hurled himself through space," noted Rice, ... "... seemed to be jumping clear out of Germany". "That final majestic jump, captured memorably by Leni Riefenstahl's cameramen, carried to a new Olympic record of 8.06 meters (26 feet, 5 1/4 inches).

(the text is fuzzy, but I believe that Long came in second) "Lutz Long's response, however, was most unexpected: Long rushed up to congratulate him. Years later, for select audiences, Owens indicated that this was, in fact, the first time Long and he ever spoke to each other". The text further comments that when speaking before large groups, Owens would give the other version, complete with Long's advice in the preliminaries, and, as Jesse told it, after his final jump, Long took Owens's hand, held it high, and shouted to the crowd, "Jesse Owens! Jesse Owens!" and the entire stadium thundered with a chanting of "Jaz-ee-ooh-wenz." According to those who actually saw it, all that the two men did was walk arm-in-arm off of the field toward the dressing rooms. The truth can be *so* dull, but this is alt.folklore.urban. Eighteen Black athletes represented the United States in the 1936 Olympics. African-Americans dominated the popular track and field events. Many American journalists hailed the victories of Jesse Owens and other Blacks as a blow to the Nazi myth of Aryan supremacy.

Gï¿½bbels's press censorship prevented German reporters from expressing their prejudices freely, but one leading Nazi newspaper demeaned the Black athletes by referring to them as "auxiliaries". The continuing social and economic discrimination the Black medalists faced upon returning home underscored the irony of their victory in racist Germany It is true that Owens and Long became good friends during their time in Berlin. Owens explained their "unique friendship" as "simply two uncertain young men in an uncertain world." "Uncertain it was. Long died in combat fighting for the Third Reich in Sicily. As an aside, the quaint story of Owens meeting Long's son in Berlin in 1951 and autographing a photo of his father may actually be true. Owens claims that Hitler glared angrily at the sight of his Aryan athlete shaking hands with Owens. However, Hitler virtually ignored the incident, and I know of no solid evidence that Hitler intentionally had Long sent to the front lines to be killed in action for congratulating Owens". Jesse OWENS - Olympic Athletics | United States of America Jesse OWENS Jesse Owens became a sporting legend for his achievements at the 1936 Berlin Games.

Sporting history In 1935, Jesse Owens made sporting history when he broke five world records and equalled a sixth in the space of 45 minutes. One of these world records, 8.13m in the long jump, would last for 25 years. Berlin 1936 At the 1936 Berlin Games, Owens won four gold medals, in the 100m, 200m, 4x100m relay and the long jump. He managed to break or equal nine Olympic records and also set three world records. One of those world records was in the 4x100m relay. The quartet set a time that wouldn’t be bettered for 20 years. Defying Hitler Adolf Hitler hoped that the 1936 Berlin Games would prove his theory of Aryan racial superiority. Instead, Owens’ achievements led the people of Berlin to hail him, an African-American, as a hero. Posthumous honours Jesse Owens died of lung cancer in 1980.

Since then a street and a school have been named after him in Berlin, two US postage stamps have been issued in his honour, and a memorial park has been opened in Alabama, amongst other tributes. The Nazi Olympics (August 1936) | Jewish Virtual Library Tweet For two weeks in August 1936 , Adolf Hitler's Nazi dictatorship camouflaged its racist, militaristic character while hosting the Summer Olympics. Soft-pedaling its antisemitic agenda and plans for territorial expansion, the regime exploited the Games to bedazzle many foreign spectators and journalists with an image of a peaceful, tolerant Germany. Having rejected a proposed boycott of the 1936 Olympics, the United States and other western democracies missed the opportunity to take a stand that — some observers at the time claimed — might have given Hitler pause and bolstered international resistance to Nazi tyranny. With the conclusion of the Games, Germany's expansionist policies and the persecution of Jews and other “enemies of the state” accelerated, culminating in World War II and the Holocaust .

Germany From 1933 to 1936 On May 13, 1931, the International Olympic Committee, headed by Count Henri Baillet-Latour of Belgium, awarded the 1936 Summer Olympics to Berlin. The choice signaled Germany's return to the world community after defeat in World War I. Two years later, Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany and quickly turned the nation's fragile democracy into a one-party dictatorship. Police rounded up thousands of political opponents, detaining them without trial in concentration camps. The Nazi regime also put into practice racial policies that aimed to “purify” and strengthen the Germanic “Aryan” population. A relentless campaign began to exclude Germany’s one-half million Jews from all aspects of German life. Nazification of Sport The Nazification of all aspects of German life extended even to sport. A staunch Nazi close to Hitler, Hans von Tschammer und Osten , headed the Reich Sports Office, which oversaw all sports bodies and clubs, including the German Olympic Committee planning the 1936 Games.

“German sport has only one task: to strengthen the character of the German people, imbuing it with the fighting spirit and steadfast camaraderie necessary in the struggle for its existence.” — Joseph Goebbels , Minister of Propaganda, April 23, 1933 The government harnessed sport as part of its drive to strengthen the “Aryan race,” to exercise political control over its citizens, and to prepare German youth for war. “Non-Aryans” — Jewish or part-Jewish and Gypsy athletes — were systematically excluded from German sports facilities and associations. They were allowed marginal training facilities, and their opportunities to compete were limited. Indoctrination German sports imagery in the 1930s promoted the myth of Aryan racial superiority and physical power. Artists idealized athletes' well-developed muscle tone and heroic strength and accentuated so-called Aryan facial features — blue eyes and blond hair. Such imagery also reflected the importance the Nazi regime placed on physical fitness. Hitler initially held the Olympics in low regard because of their internationalism, but he became an avid supporter after Joseph Goebbels , his Minister of Propaganda, convinced him of their propaganda value.

The regime provided full financial support for the event, 20,000,000 Reichsmarks ($8,000,000). Exclusion of Jews Soon after Hitler took power, the drive began to exclude Jews from German sport and recreational facilities. The German Boxing Association expelled amateur champion Eric Seelig in April 1933 because he was Jewish. Seelig later resumed his boxing career in the United States. Another Jew, Daniel Prenn, Germany's top-ranked tennis player, was removed from Germany's Davis Cup Team. Gypsies, including the Sinti boxer Johann “Rukelie” Trollmann, were also purged from German sports. In June 1933, Trollman, the German middleweight boxing champion, was banned from boxing for “racial reasons.” Jewish athletes, barred from German sports clubs, flocked to separate Jewish associations, but Jewish sports facilities were no match for those of the well-funded German groups. Gretel Bergmann was a world-class high jumper who was expelled from her sports club in Ulm in 1933.

Afterwards, she trained briefly with the Stuttgart branch of Der Schild (The Shield), a sports association organized under the auspices of the Jewish Association of War Veterans. Deciding Whether to Boycott Soon after Hitler took power in 1933, observers in the United States and other western democracies questioned the morality of supporting Olympic Games hosted by the Nazi regime. Responding to reports of the persecution of Jewish athletes in 1933 , Avery Brundage, president of the American Olympic Committee, stated: “The very foundation of the modern Olympic revival will be undermined if individual countries are allowed to restrict participation by reason of class, creed, or race.” Brundage, like many others in the Olympics movement, initially considered moving the Games from Germany. After a brief and tightly managed inspection of German sports facilities in 1934 , Brundage stated publicly that Jewish athletes were being treated fairly and that the Games should go on, as planned. Debate over participation in the 1936 Olympics was greatest in the United States, which traditionally sent one of the largest teams to the Games. By the end of 1934, the lines on both sides were clearly drawn.

Brundage opposed a boycott, arguing that politics had no place in sport. “The Olympic Games belong to the athletes and not to the politicians.” He wrote in the AOC's pamphlet Fair Play for American Athletes that American athletes should not become involved in “the present Jew-Nazi altercation.” As the Olympics controversy heated up in 1935, Brundage alleged the existence of a “Jewish-Communist conspiracy” to keep the United States out of the Games. Brundage's rival, Judge Jeremiah Mahoney, president of the Amateur Athletic Union, pointed out that Germany had broken Olympic rules forbidding discrimination based on race and religion. In his view, participation would mean an endorsement of Hitler's Reich. Judge Mahoney was one of a number of Catholic leaders supporting a boycott. Al Smith, governor of New York, and James Curley, governor of Massachusetts, also opposed sending a team to Berlin .

The Catholic journal The Commonweal (November 8, 1935) advised boycotting an Olympics that would “set the seal of approval upon the radically anti-Christian Nazi doctrine of youth.” Beginning in 1933, the American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee, joined by the non-sectarian Anti-Nazi League, staged mass rallies to protest Nazi persecution of Jews, political opponents, and others. These groups supported the boycott of the 1936 Games as part of a general boycott of German goods. Other Jewish groups, such as the American Jewish Committee and B'nai B'rith, did not formally support a boycott, in part because they feared that such a posture might trigger an antisemitic backlash in both the United States and Germany. Individual Jewish athletes made their own decisions. For example, Milton Green, captain of the Harvard University track team, took first place in the 110-meter high hurdles in regional pre-Olympic trials. His teammate, Norman Cahners, also Jewish, qualified for the final Olympics trials as well. Both chose to boycott the national Olympic trials.

Many of the liberal and left-wing political groups that denounced Hitler's fascist dictatorship linked their opposition to the Berlin Olympics with the wider economic boycott of Germany. Blacks Battle Hypocrisy After concerns about the safety of Black athletes in Nazi Germany were put to rest by the International Olympic Committee, most African American newspapers opposed a boycott of the 1936 Olympics. Black journalists often underscored the hypocrisy of pro-boycotters who did not first address the problem of discrimination against Black athletes in the United States. Writers for such papers as The Philadelphia Tribune and The Chicago Defender argued that athletic victories by Blacks would undermine Nazi racial views of “Aryan” supremacy and foster a new sense of Black pride at home. In the end, 18 African Americans — 16 men and 2 women — went to Berlin, triple the number who had competed for the United States in the 1932 Los Angeles Games. That all of these athletes came from predominantly white universities demonstrated to many Black journalists the inferiority of training equipment and facilities at black colleges where the vast majority of African American students were educated in the 1930s.

IOC Accepts No Dissent “Neither Americans nor the representatives of other countries can take part in the Games in Nazi Germany without at least acquiescing in the contempt of the Nazis for fair play and their sordid exploitation of the Games.” — Ernest Lee Jahncke, American member of the IOC, in a letter to Count Henri Baillet-Latour, President IOC, November 25, 1935 Ernest Lee Jahncke, a former assistant secretary of the Navy, of German Protestant descent, was expelled from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in July 1936 after taking a strong public stand against the Berlin Games. The IOC pointedly elected Avery Brundage to fill Jahncke's seat. Jahncke is the only member in the 100-year history of the IOC to be ejected. World Response Short-lived boycott efforts surfaced in Great Britain, France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and the Netherlands. German Socialists and Communists in exile voiced their opposition to the Games through publications such as Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung (The Worker Illustrated Newspaper). Some boycott proponents supported counter-Olympics.

One of the largest was the “People's Olympiad” planned for summer 1936 in Barcelona, Spain; it was canceled after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936, just as thousands of athletes had begun to arrive. Individual Jewish athletes from a number of European countries also chose to boycott the Berlin Olympics. America Decides to Go On December 8, 1935, the Amateur Athletic Union defeated the proposal to boycott the Olympics by two-and-a-half votes. Avery Brundage maneuvered the vote to achieve a victory. At no time did President Franklin D. Roosevelt become involved in the boycott issue, despite warnings from high-level American diplomats regarding Nazi exploitation of the Olympics for propaganda. Roosevelt continued a 40-year tradition in which the American Olympic Committee operated independently of outside influence. Once the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States voted for participation in December 1935 , however, the other countries fell in line. Forty-nine teams from around the world competed in the Berlin Games, more than in any previous Olympics. Germany had the largest team at the Berlin Games with 348 athletes. The United States had the second largest team with 312 members.

The Soviet Union did not participate in the Berlin Games or any Olympiad until the 1952 Helsinki Games. The Propaganda Games The Olympics were a perfect arena for the Nazi propaganda machine, which was unsurpassed at staging elaborate public spectacles and rallies. Choreographed pageantry, record-breaking athletic feats, and warm German hospitality made the 1936 Olympic Games memorable for athletes and spectators. Behind the facade, however, a ruthless dictatorship persecuted its enemies and rearmed for war to acquire new “living space” for the “Aryan master race.” Germany skillfully promoted the Olympics with colorful posters and magazine spreads. Athletic imagery drew a link between Nazi Germany and ancient Greece. These portrayals symbolized the Nazi racial myth that superior German civilization was the rightful heir of an “Aryan” culture of classical antiquity. The Nazis reduced their vision of classical antiquity to ideal “Aryan” racial types: heroic, blue-eyed blonds with finely-chiseled features. From February 6 to February 16, 1936, Germany hosted the Winter Olympics at Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the Bavarian Alps.

Yielding to international Olympic leaders' insistence on “fair play,” German officials allowed Rudi Ball, who was half-Jewish, to compete on the nation's ice hockey team. Hitler also ordered anti-Jewish signs temporarily removed from public view. Still, Nazi deceptions for propaganda purposes were not wholly successful. Western journalists observed and reported troop maneuvers at Garmisch. As a result, the Nazi regime would minimize the military's presence at the Summer Olympics. In August 1936 Olympic flags and swastikas bedecked the monuments and houses of a festive, crowded Berlin. Most tourists were unaware that the Nazi regime had temporarily removed anti-Jewish signs. Neither would tourists have known of the “clean up” ordered by the German Ministry of Interior in which the Berlin Police arrested all Gypsies prior to the Games. On July 16, 1936, some 800 Gypsies were arrested and interned under police guard in a special Gypsy camp in the Berlin suburb of Marzahn. Also in preparation for the arrival of Olympic spectators, Nazi officials ordered that foreign visitors should not be subjected to the criminal strictures of the Nazi anti-homosexual laws.

The Reich Press Chamber under Joseph Goebbels's Ministry of Propaganda exerted strict censorship over the German press, radio, film, and publishing. The Chamber issued numerous directives regarding coverage of the Olympic Games, limiting the scope and content of reporting by German journalists. “German newspapers will print -- at their own risk -- reports from the Olympics released prior to the official press report.” July 22, 1936 “Press coverage should not mention that there are two non-Aryans among the women: Helene Mayer (fencing) and Gretel Bergmann (high jump and all-around track and field competition).” July 16, 1936 'The racial point of view should not be used in any way in reporting sports results; above all Negroes should not be insensitively reported. . . .

Negroes are American citizens and must be treated with respect as Americans.“ August 3, 1936 “No comments should be made regarding Helene Mayer's non-Aryan ancestry or her expectations for a gold medal at the Olympics.” February 19, 1936 The northern section of the Olympic village, originally utilized by the Wehrmacht [German army], should not be referred to as 'Kasernel' (the barracks), but will hereafter be called `North Section Olympic Village.'” July 27, 1936 The Games Begin On August 1, 1936, Hitler opened the XIth Olympiad. Musical fanfares directed by the famous composer Richard Strauss announced the dictator's arrival to the largely German crowd. Hundreds of athletes in opening day regalia marched into the stadium, team by team in alphabetical order. Inaugurating a new Olympic ritual, a lone runner arrived bearing a torch carried by relay from the site of the ancient Games in Olympia, Greece. Eighteen Black athletes represented the United States in the 1936 Olympics. African American athletes won 14 medals, nearly one-fourth of the 56 medals awarded the U.S.

team in all events, and dominated the popular track and field events. Many American journalists hailed the victories of Jesse Owens and other Blacks as a blow to the Nazi myth of Aryan supremacy. Goebbels's press censorship prevented German reporters from expressing their prejudices freely, but one leading Nazi newspaper demeaned the Black athletes by referring to them as “auxiliaries.” The continuing social and economic discrimination the Black medalists faced upon returning home underscored the irony of their victory in racist Germany. African-American Olympic Medalists in 1936 David Albritton John Woodruff 800-meter run, gold The Baltimore Afro-American (August 8, 1936) and other newspapers spread the story that Hitler refused to shake Jesse Owens's hand or congratulate other Black medalists. In fact, during the very first day of Olympic competition, when Owens did not compete, Olympic protocol officers implored Hitler to receive either all the medal winners or none, and the Fuhrer chose the latter. Whether he did this to avoid shaking hands with “non-Aryans” is unclear.

Privately, Minister of Propaganda Goebbels called the victories by Blacks “a disgrace.” Ignoring censors' orders to avoid offending foreign guests with racist commentaries, the radical Nazi newspaper Der Angriff (The Attack) wrote on August 6: “If the American team had not brought along Black auxiliaries . . . one would have regarded the Yankees as the biggest disappointment of the Games.” Olympics Aren't For Jews Two weeks before the Olympics began, German officials informed Gretel Bergmann, a Jewish athlete who had equaled the German women's record in the high jump, that she was denied a place on the team. As the winning jump at the Olympics had been attained by Bergmann earlier, the Germans sacrificed a chance for a gold medal with this action. As a token gesture to mollify the West, German authorities allowed the half-Jewish fencer Helene Mayer to represent Germany in Berlin. No other Jewish athlete competed for Germany. Mayer claimed a silver medal in women's individual foil and, like all other medalists for Germany, gave the Nazi salute on the podium.

Two-time European champion Ilona Schacherer-Elek, a part-Jew from Hungary won the gold medal and the bronze went to Ellen Preis, an Austrian, who was also of Jewish descent. After the Olympics, Mayer returned to the United States. In 1937, she won the world championship in Paris, defeating Schacherer-Elek. During the war, Preis was forced to go into hiding to avoid arrest and deportation. [1] In the 1948 Olympics in London, Elek and Preis again won the gold and bronze medals respectively. Mayer returned to Germany in 1952 but died soon after of cancer. A controversial move at the Games was the benching of two American Jewish runners, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller. Both had trained for the 4x100-meter relay, but on the day before the event, they were replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe, the team's two fastest sprinters. Various reasons were given for the change. The coaches claimed they needed their fastest runners to win the race.

Glickman has said that Coach Dean Cromwell and Avery Brundage were motivated by anti-Semitism and the desire to spare the Führer the embarrassing sight of two American Jews on the winning podium. Stoller did not believe anti-Semitism was involved, but the 21-year-old described the incident in his diary as the “most humiliating episode” in his life. Thirteen Jews or persons of Jewish descent won medals in the Nazi Olympics, including six Hungarians. Many Hungarian Jews shared their fellow citizens' passion for sport and viewed participation as a means of assimilation. In the 1930s, however, the anti-Semitic views of the fascist Hungarian government that developed close ties to Hitler's regime also pervaded some fields of sport. Fencing officials openly disdained Jews, even champion fencers such as Endre Kabos, who won the gold medal for Hungary in the individual and team saber events. Jewish Olympic Medalists in 1936 Samuel Balter Discus Throw, silver Hitler Triumphant Germany emerged victorious from the XIth Olympiad. Its athletes captured the most medals overall, and German hospitality and organization won the praises of visitors.

Most newspaper accounts echoed Frederick Birchall's report in The New York Times that the Games put Germans “back in the fold of nations,” and even made them “more human again.” Some even found reason to hope that this peaceable interlude would endure. Only a few reporters, such as foreign correspondent William Shirer, regarded the Berlin glitter as merely hiding a racist, militaristic regime: “I'm afraid the Nazis have succeeded with their propaganda. First, the Nazis have run the Games on a lavish scale never before experienced, and this has appealed to the athletes. Second, the Nazis have put up a very good front for the general visitors, especially the big businessmen” (Shirer's diary, Berlin, August 16, 1936). As the post-Games reports were filed, Hitler pressed on with grandiose plans for German expansion. These included taking over the Olympics forever. “In 1940 the Olympic Games will take place in Tokyo.

But thereafter they will take place in Germany for all time to come, in this stadium” (Hitler, in conversation with Albert Speer , general architectural inspector for the Reich, spring 1937) Concerted propaganda efforts continued well after the Olympics with the international release in 1938 of Olympia, Leni Riefenstahl's controversial film documentary of the Games. The pause in the Germany's anti-Jewish campaign, however, was brief. William E. Dodd, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, reported that Jews awaited “with fear and trembling” the end of the Olympic truce. Two days after the Olympics, Captain Wolfgang Fürstner, head of the Olympic village, killed himself after he was dismissed from active military service because of his Jewish ancestry. In 1937 , German Jewish track star Gretel Bergmann emigrated to the United States to escape persecution. Jesse Owens's Inspiring History play At the Berlin 1936 Olympics, Hitler planned to show the world that the Aryan people were the dominant race, Jesse Owens proved him wrong and sealed his place in Olympic history by becoming the most successful athlete of the 1936 Games.

Owens also became the first american to win four track and field gold medals at a single Olympics (100m, 200m, 4x100m relay and long jump), a record that stood unbroken for 48 years. Jesse Owens (USA) - Athletics - Berlin 1936 100m, Athletics, Berlin 1936, long jump, OWENS, Jesse, United States of America, Men, Jesse Owens wins 4 gold medals at 1936 Summer Olympics | World History Project Aug 3 1936 to Aug 9 1936 Jesse Owens wins 4 gold medals at 1936 Summer Olympics In 1936, Owens arrived in Berlin to compete for the United States in the Summer Olympics. Adolf Hitler was using the games to show the world a resurgent Nazi Germany. He and other government officials had high hopes German athletes would dominate the games with victories (the German athletes achieved a top of the table medal haul). Meanwhile, Nazi propaganda promoted concepts of "Aryan racial superiority" and depicted ethnic Africans as inferior.

Owens surprised many and showed the fallacies of racial supremacy by winning four gold medals: On August 3, 1936 he won the 100m sprint, defeating Ralph Metcalfe; on August 4, the long jump (later crediting friendly and helpful advice from Luz Long, the German competitor he ultimately defeated); on August 5, the 200m sprint; and, after he was added to the 4 x 100 m relay team, his fourth on August 9 (a performance not equaled until Carl Lewis won gold medals in the same events at the 1984 Summer Olympics). Just before the competitions Owens was visited in the Olympic village by Adi Dassler, the founder of Adidas. He persuaded Owens to use Adidas shoes and it was the first sponsorship for a male African-American athlete. The long jump victory is documented, along with many other 1936 events, in the 1938 film Olympia by Leni Riefenstahl. On the first day, Hitler shook hands only with the German victors and then left the stadium. Olympic committee officials then insisted Hitler greet each and every medalist or none at all.

Hitler opted for the latter and skipped all further medal presentations. On reports that Hitler had deliberately avoided acknowledging his victories, and had refused to shake his hand, Owens recounted: "When I passed the Chancellor he arose, waved his hand at me, and I waved back at him. I think the writers showed bad taste in criticizing the man of the hour in Germany."" He also stated: "Hitler didn't snub me—it was FDR who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram." Jesse Owens was never invited to the White House nor bestowed any honors by Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) or Harry S. Truman during their terms. In 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower acknowledged Owens's accomplishments, naming him an "Ambassador of Sports." Hitler's contempt for Owens and for those races he deemed 'inferior' arose in private, away from maintaining Olympic neutrality.

As Albert Speer, Hitler's architect and later war armaments minister recollected in his memoirs Inside the Third Reich: "Each of the German victories and there were a surprising number of these made him happy, but he was highly annoyed by the series of triumphs by the marvelous colored American runner, Jesse Owens. People whose antecedents came from the jungle were primitive, Hitler said with a shrug; their physiques were stronger than those of civilized whites and hence should be excluded from future games. Despite Hitler's feelings, Owens was cheered enthusiastically by 110,000 people in Berlin's Olympic Stadium and later ordinary Germans sought his autograph when they saw him in the streets. Owens was allowed to travel with and stay in the same hotels as whites, an irony at the time given that blacks in the United States were denied equal rights. After a New York ticker-tape parade in his honor, Owens had to ride the freight elevator to attend his own reception at the Waldorf-Astoria. Source: Wikipedia Added by: Kevin Rogers It was the summer of 1936 and Nazism was running rampant throughout pre-World War II Eastern Europe.

The Olympics were coming to Berlin and Adolf Hitler viewed it as a golden opportunity to showcase his country and prove to the rest of the world that his Aryan race was superior. Not so fast, Adolf. Twenty-two-year-old American Jesse Owens didn't care much for Hitler's politics—or any politics for that matter. He just wanted to show off his immense skills and represent his country to the best of his abilities. Just over a year earlier, on May 25, 1935, Owens recorded one of the more mind-boggling performances in track and field history. He broke three world records and tied another at the Big Ten Track and Field Championships in Michigan—in just 45 minutes! Hitler viewed African-Americans as inferior and chastised the United States for stooping to use these "non-humans." Despite the endless racial epithets and the constant presence of the red and black swastika, Owens made Hitler eat his words with four gold medals. Owens Hits Gold The first gold was in the 100 meters, where Owens edged out teammate Ralph Metcalfe in a time of 10.3 seconds. Gold number two came in the long jump, where he fouled on his first two attempts.

One was just a practice run where he continued down the runway into the pit, but German officials didn't buy it and counted it as a jump. Top German long jumper Luz Long suggested Owens play it safe and jump a few inches before the usual take-off spot. He took his advice and qualified for the finals, where he won the gold with a leap of 26—5½. And Long was there to congratulate him. "It took a lot of courage for him to befriend me in front of Hitler," Owens would later say. "You can melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn't be a plating on the 24-karat friendship I felt for Luz Long at that moment." The third gold was in the 200-meter dash, where he defeated, among others, Jackie Robinson's older brother Mack and broke the Olympic record with a time of 20.7 seconds. Gold number four was a controversial one—not with the Germans, but with his fellow Americans. American Jews Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller were supposed to run for the United States on the 4x100 relay team.

At the last minute, they were replaced by Owens and Metcalfe and it was reported that Hitler asked U.S. officials not to embarrass him any further by having two Jews win gold in Berlin. Whether that's true or not, the Owens-led U.S. team rolled to victory in a world record time of 39.8 seconds and Owens' magical Olympics came to a close. While German officials denounced Owens, an overwhelming majority of the German fans treated him like a hero. In 1984, a street in Berlin was named in his honor. Source: Mike Morrison Added by: Kevin Rogers The Berlin Olympics of 1936 were held in Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany, and Hitler's Nazi Party used the event as a soapbox to promulgate the theory of "Aryan" racial superiority. Hitler was spectacularly shown up by Jesse Owens and other African American athletes, members of a so-called "inferior" race. Despite the hostile atmosphere, Owens triumphed in the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter dash and the broad jump. He replaced a Jewish-American member of the 400-meter relay team that went on to win the Gold Medal.

In three of his events, Owens -- who became the first American in the history of track and field to win four gold medals in a single Olympics, a feat not duplicated until 1984, when Carl Lewis won gold medals in the same events at the Warsaw Pact nations-free 1984 Summer Olympics) -- established Olympic records. Although Hitler did not shake his hand, by the end of the games, the German fans cheered for him. In fact, in his 1970 autobiography "The Jesse Owens Story", Owens claimed that the Fuhrer himself waved to him. Jesse Owens' gold medal won at the Berlin Olympics is sold for $1.46m | Sport | The Guardian Jesse Owens' gold medal won at the Berlin Olympics is sold for $1.46m • Highest ever price for Olympic medal at auction • Memorabilia will form part of an educational tour Jesse Owens jumps over 26ft to win the long jump gold medal at the 1936 Olympics.

Photograph: Corbis Associated Press Sunday 8 December 2013 16.33 EST First published on Sunday 8 December 2013 16.33 EST Close This article is 3 years old An Olympic gold medal won by Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Games has sold for a record $1.46m in an online auction in California. The Pittsburgh Penguins co-owner Ron Burkle paid $1,466,574, the highest price ever for a piece of Olympic memorabilia. "We just hope that it's purchased by an institution where the public could have access to it, a museum or something like that," Owens' daughter, Marlene Owens Rankin of Chicago, said before the sale. Burkle, who also owns William Faulkner's 1949 Nobel Prize for literature medal, has plans for an educational tour of the historic pieces. The Los Angeles billionaire investor's holdings embrace retail, food and entertainment companies, including the National Hockey League team.

Owens won gold in the 100m and 200m, 400m relay and long jump at the Games attended by Adolf Hitler, who used the Olympics to showcase his ideas of Aryan racial supremacy only to watch African-American athletes dominate the track and field events. The medal is unidentifiable to a specific event. Owens gave the medal to his friend, the dancer and movie star Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, as thanks for helping him find work in entertainment after he returned from Berlin. The medal was sold by the estate of Robinson's late widow. The Owens family confirmed the medal is original; the whereabouts of the other three are unknown. The record price for the Owens medal surpassed that of a silver cup awarded to the winner of the first modern-day Olympic marathon in 1896 that sold for $865,000 in April 2012. It also topped the highest price paid for a US Olympic item the "Miracle on Ice" jersey worn by the ice hockey team captain Mike Eruzione in 1980 that sold for $657,250 last February.

The auction, including more than 1,000 sports memorabilia items, brought in nearly $4.5m. Other top lots included Jackie Robinson's game-used bats from his historic 1949 National League Most Valuable Player season and the 1955 World Series, which sold for $183,500 and $128,617 respectively; and a Jackie Robinson single-signed baseball attracted a record bid of $104,765. Robinson became the first black player in US Major League Baseball when he made his debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Jesse Owens | 1936 Olympics Jesse Owens competes in the broad jump. The 1936 Olympics After the end of the spring quarter at Ohio State, Owens traveled to the Olympic tryout finals in New York, where he won all three of his events. He and the 381 members of the U.S. Olympic Team then boarded the SS Manhattan on July 15 for its voyage to Europe. Along the way, Owens, who had been getting a significant amount of press for his track achievements, signed hundreds of autographs for fellow shipmates.

After nine days of rough seas and stormy weather, the ship docked at the German port of Bremerhaven; the athletes were in Berlin enjoying the opening ceremonies barely a week later on August 1. Participating as a sprinter at the Olympic Summer Games of 1936 was a far different experience than it is today. There were no starting blocks, their shoes were made of heavy leather, and instead of running on a contemporary turf track, they sped down a course composed of cinder, which became uneven and messy when it rained. It was, in fact, raining intermittently during the first week of Olympiad XI, yet Owens won four Olympic gold medals. Along the way, he tied the world record of 10.3 seconds in the 100-meter dash; set new Olympic records of 20.7 seconds in the 200-meter race, and 26 feet, 5 1/4 inches in the long jump; and he ran the first leg in the finals of the 400-meter relay, an event in which his team set a new world and Olympic record of 39.8 seconds.

His triumphs before a worldwide audience were serendipitous; Germany's leader, Adolf Hitler, who had been widely condemned before the Games for his anti-Semitic policies, openly anticipated a great showing of Aryan athletic supremacy. With his victories in track and field, Owens had proved the Nazi dictator's racist theories wrong, and in doing so, had become not only an Olympic gold medal winner but an American hero. For more information on Owens' Story please see these sources .

Question: Who won the men’s long jump at the 1936 Olympics?
Answer: Jesse Owens