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Olympic symbols have a dark Nazi connection
The torch relay, which culminated in the lighting of the flame, was a creation of Hitler, who tried to turn the 1936 Berlin Games into a celebration of the Third Reich.
The most beloved emblems of the modern Olympics have a decidedly dark past.
The torch relay, which culminated in the ceremonial lighting of the flame, was a creation of Adolf Hitler, who tried to turn the 1936 Berlin Games into a celebration of the Third Reich. So are the Olympic rings -- they were promoted by Hitler.
But historians say neither had much to do with the Games born centuries ago in Ancient Olympia.
"The torch relay is so ingrained in the modern choreography that most people today assume it was a revival of a pagan tradition - unaware that it was actually concocted for Hitler's Games in Berlin," author Tony Perrottet writes in a new book, The Naked Olympics.
"Ironically, considering its repellent origins, the torch race has come to symbolise international brotherhood today, and remains a centerpiece of our own pomp-filled opening ceremonies." A sacred flame did burn 24 hours a day at Olympia, and at some other ancient festivals, relay racers passed a torch to light a sacrificial cauldron. But the ancient Greeks opened their Olympics by word of mouth, not fire, sending heralds - not torchbearers - running through the streets.
The modern tradition of spiriting the Olympic torch to the main stadium didn't become a fixture of the games until 1936, when a 12-day run opened the Games in Berlin. The torch relay, memorialised in Leni Riefenstahl's film "Olympia," was part of the Nazi leader's elaborate attempt to add myth, mystique and glamour to an Olympics intended to intimidate pre-World War II Europe. In Hitler's eyes, the torch symbolised the victory of the German nation.
He didn't pull it off - black American runner and long-jumper Jesse Owens made a mockery of the notion of a blue-eyed, golden-haired master race by winning four gold medals in Berlin.
In his book The Modern Olympics: A Struggle for Revival, American historian David C. Young says the torch relay was invented by Carl Diem, a German who planned the 1916 Berlin Games before World War I forced their cancellation and returned to organise the 1936 Games. "Hitler took considerable personal interest in the ritual, and pumped funds into its promotion," Perrottet says. "The Nazi propaganda machine covered the torch relay slavishly, broadcast radio reports from every step of the route, and filled the Games with the iconography of ancient Greek athletics."
The Olympic rings, another universally recognised symbol of the Games since they made their debut at the 1920 Games in Antwerp, have their own Nazi connection. Originally, they were designed in 1913. They were supposed to symbolise the first five Olympics. Riefenstahl, the "Olympia" filmmaker who also chronicled Hitler's rise, had the rings at the ancient city of Delphi, spawning the myth that they were a symbol dating back more than two millennia.
