"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
Hitler's premier Nazi architect, Albert Speer, designed the above model as the location where Hitler believed Germany would hold the Olympic Games for "all time to come". Indeed, the German victory of the 1936 Games, with its compelling display of Berlin and the German nation as a whole, gave Adolf Hitler the ego boost to brazenly assume he could take over the sacred Games indefinitely, and hold them in Speer's 400,000 person capacity super-stadium.
Ironically, both the 1940 and 1944 Olympic Games would cease to exist, for it seems Hitler's momentum from the Olympics carried his nation not into a competition on the athletic field, but into a war on the battlefield. When the Second World War began, any plans for the Olympic Games returning to Germany seemed to morph into a more extreme plan for Hitler's empire to take over the globe.
It is interesting to dwell on the theory that the 1936 Olympics, and Germany's victory, gave Hitler's Regime the confidence to move forward and invade Poland to start the war. Similarly, did Hitler and Goebbel's spread of Nazi Propaganda give them the idea that the world was prepared for a Nazi takeover? It is certainly plausible that had the Olympics not occurred in Berlin in 1936, Germany's accelerated takeovers and atrocities throughout the globe would not have occurred.
It is interesting to dwell on the theory that the 1936 Olympics, and Germany's victory, gave Hitler's Regime the confidence to move forward and invade Poland to start the war. Similarly, did Hitler and Goebbel's spread of Nazi Propaganda give them the idea that the world was prepared for a Nazi takeover? It is certainly plausible that had the Olympics not occurred in Berlin in 1936, Germany's accelerated takeovers and atrocities throughout the globe would not have occurred.
