00:00Did the Nazis invent the Winter Olympics?
00:02Well, no, but according to the International Olympic Committee's own archives,
00:06they did turn them into a propaganda machine.
00:09The Winter Olympics as we know them today began in 1924 in Chamonix, France,
00:13at an event called the International Winter Sports Week.
00:16Two years later, the IOC retroactively said,
00:19uh, yeah, that's ours now.
00:21That was actually the first Winter Olympics.
00:23Jumped to four games later in 1936,
00:26the Winter Olympics were slated to be hosted in Garmisch,
00:28Partenkirchen, Nazi Germany.
00:31According to the U.S. Holocaust Museum,
00:33the regime used the games to sanitize Hitler's image,
00:36banning anti-Jewish signs, choreographing crowds,
00:39and turning athletes into symbols of Aryan strength.
00:42The 1936 Winter Games and the televised Summer Games in Berlin
00:45weren't seen as propaganda-filled by the public.
00:47In fact, they ran so smoothly that they were widely praised as organizational successes.
00:51The outrage didn't erupt until after World War II exposed everything the regime had been carefully hiding.
00:57Only in hindsight did the 1936 Olympics become known as the most politically manipulated games in history.
01:03And that's the part worth remembering now,
01:05because the IOC has always insisted the games are apolitical,
01:08both in 1936 and today.
01:10But historians, including those cited by the IOC's own Olympic Studies Center,
01:15point out that the Olympics don't need speeches or protests to be political.
01:18Who hosts, who's allowed to compete,
01:21what the cameras show, and what the cameras don't,
01:23are all choices that have always shaped that story.
01:26In 1936, many people who enjoyed the games genuinely believed Germany was run perfectly fine.
01:32It wasn't ignorance, it was information control.
01:34So when people today argue over whether the Winter Olympics have become too political,
01:39or whether what we're seeing now is just more transparency,
01:42history suggests something uncomfortable.
01:44The Olympics didn't suddenly change overnight,
01:47our access to information and opinions did.
01:49That's not a left-wing claim, that's not a right-wing claim.
01:53That's what happens when the truth stops waiting decades to come out.
01:56But of course, we want to know where you land.
01:58Did you think of the Olympics like this?
01:59Let us know in the comments, check out our website, and follow us here for more.
Comments