Hitler’s Games: Berlin 1936 in Colour

Overview

In 1931, Germany was awarded the Olympic Games in the hope this would draw them into the international community and world peace would be promoted through sport. For two weeks in August 1936 cameras captured the world’s greatest sporting spectacle, including the Gold Medal triumphs of record-breaking sprinter Jesse Owens. The Berlin Olympics were groundbreaking – many innovations introduced in 1936 such as television coverage and the torch relay became part of every subsequent Games. Hitler’s Games in Colour tells the story of the remarkable amateurs who excelled, but also how Hitler used the Games as propaganda for his brutal regime, to show the Nazis as benign and their military ambitions as modest. Using black and white archive, transformed by cutting-edge restoration and colourisation, this is the story of 16 days that fooled the world…

Keywords

Cast

Stephen Mangan

Narrator (voice)

Guy Walters

Self - Historian

Katja Hoyer

Self - Historian

Kay Schiller

Self - Historian

Heather Dichter

Self - Sports Historian

Marlene Owens Rankin

Self - Daughter of Jesse Owens

John Beresford

Self - Son of Jack Beresford

Tom Wenham

Self - Grandson of Audrey Brown

Astrid Ley

Self - Sachsenhausen Memorial