This chapter explores the experiences of American athletes at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, emphasizing the warm reception they received from German hosts amidst the racial segregation in the United States. It examines the complex dynamics of race, as seen through the interactions of African American athletes and the Nazis' ironic obsession with American race relations, set against the chilling backdrop of emerging Nazi ideology.
In the early 1930s, a young German law student spent a year in Arkansas, studying American “race law.” The fight over the 1936 Games provided Americans with a chance to study Nazi Germany. But it turns out the Nazis were studying us too.
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