The film chronicles the story of how the Nazis and the IOC turned, to their mutual benefit, a small sports event into the modern Olympics. The grand themes and controversial issues from the 1936 Games have continued to this day: Monumentality, budget overruns, collusion with authoritarian regimes, corruption and sometimes even bribery.
Featuring never before seen archival footage and new research, The Nazi Games reveals how the Olympics as we have come to know them were shaped by the collaboration of interests between Hitler and ambitious Olympic gentlemen. After initial distrust, both the IOC and the Nazis found common ground in turning the 1936 Games into the biggest Olympic show the world has ever seen.
To this aim, Hitler officially promised that Jews would not be excluded from Germany’s Olympic team, and the IOC decided not to control it. At the same time, western democracies began doubting the morality of Olympic Games hosted by the Nazi regime. To go or not to go? That was the question. But the president of the American Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage, successfully discredited the boycott movement as a “Jewish conspiracy.” Thus, a first large-scale Olympic boycott was avoided.