Jesse Owens in Berlin: Four Gold Medals in Hitler's Stadium

Adolf Hitler had spent three years preparing for the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

The Games were his showcase — proof of Aryan supremacy, German efficiency, and the new order he was building. The torch relay was invented for these Games, the concept of the Olympic flame first realized here, the ceremonies designed to overwhelm visitors with the scale and order of the Nazi state.

What happened instead: a Black man from Oakville, Alabama won four gold medals and became the most celebrated athlete in the world.

The Man Before Berlin

James Cleveland Owens was born in 1913 to a sharecropper family in rural Alabama. The family moved to Cleveland, Ohio when he was nine, part of the Great Migration of Black Americans leaving the South. A teacher mishearing his initials "J.C." recorded his name as "Jesse," and it stuck.

He was discovered as a runner in Cleveland's public schools and recruited to Ohio State University — where, despite his athletic gifts, he could not live in the dormitories, eat in the campus cafeteria, or stay in the same hotels as his white teammates when the team traveled.

In May 1935 — a year before Berlin — Owens produced the greatest single day in track and field history. At the Big Ten Championships in Ann Arbor, in the space of 45 minutes, he tied the world record in the 100-yard dash and set world records in the long jump, the 220-yard dash, and the 220-yard hurdles. Four world records in less than an hour, while reportedly running with a back injury.

He arrived in Berlin as the most dangerous athlete in the world.

Hitler's Games

The Nazi regime had initially resisted hosting the Olympics, viewing the participation of Black and Jewish athletes as a contamination of the Games' purposes. But propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels convinced Hitler that the Games, televised live for the first time and attended by journalists from around the world, offered an unmatched stage for German prestige.

The plan required German dominance. German athletes were expected to win. The few Black athletes admitted — American, mostly — were to be seen as inferior, the symbolic exceptions that proved the rule of white supremacy.

Owens had other ideas.

Four Days, Four Gold Medals

The 100 meters: Owens won in 10.3 seconds, tying the world record. Six sprinters in the final; Owens finished a meter ahead of the next man.

The long jump: This is where the story gains its most famous subplot. Owens fouled on his first two attempts and was at risk of not qualifying for the final. His German rival, Luz Long — the reigning European champion and a model of Aryan athleticism that Nazi propaganda had celebrated — walked over and gave him advice on adjusting his takeoff point to avoid fouling. Owens qualified. In the final, he broke the Olympic record. Long finished second. The two men embraced in front of 100,000 people in the Olympic stadium, including Hitler.

Owens later said: "You can melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn't be plating on the 24-karat friendship I felt for Luz Long at that moment."

Long was killed fighting for Germany in 1943. He and Owens had stayed in correspondence until the war made it impossible.

The 200 meters: Owens won in 20.7 seconds, an Olympic record.

The 4×100 relay: Owens and his teammates — substituted in at the last minute, in a decision that remains controversial — won in 39.8 seconds, a world record.

Four events. Four gold medals. Four world records or Olympic records. In nine days.

Did Hitler Snub Owens?

The popular story — that Hitler refused to shake Owens's hand, snubbing him after his victories — is more complicated than it's usually told.

Hitler had shaken hands with German and Finnish gold medalists on the first day of competition. The IOC then instructed him to congratulate all gold medalists or none, to avoid the appearance of favoritism. Hitler chose none.

Owens himself addressed this directly: "Hitler didn't snub me — it was FDR who snubbed me. The President didn't even send me a telegram."

He was right. Franklin Roosevelt never acknowledged Owens's achievement. When a ticker-tape parade was held in New York, Owens was made to enter the reception at the Waldorf-Astoria through the back entrance. He never received a White House invitation.

Coming Home

Owens returned to America to a complicated reception. He was celebrated in New York, cheered in parades — and then largely abandoned by the country that had just watched him win on the world's stage.

He struggled financially for years. He raced against horses and motorcycles at exhibitions to earn money. He filed for bankruptcy. For a period in the 1950s he worked as a gas station attendant.

President Eisenhower eventually named him an "Ambassador of Sports" in 1955, and his reputation slowly recovered. President Ford gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1976. President Carter gave him the Living Legend Award in 1979. He died of lung cancer in 1980 — four years after being awarded the medal, 44 years after Berlin.

What It Meant

The story of Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Olympics is often told as a simple triumph of humanity over ideology. It's more complicated than that. Nazi propaganda found ways to minimize his victories for German domestic audiences. The German press dismissed the track events as "the black auxiliary helping America." Hitler's ideology did not collapse upon seeing a Black man win four gold medals.

What did happen: 100,000 people in the Olympic stadium watched Jesse Owens run. Millions across Europe and America watched in newsreels and read in newspapers. The humanity of the performance — its beauty, its power, the friendship between Owens and Long — was impossible to entirely contain or dismiss.

Jeremy Schaap's Triumph tells the full story of what those nine days in Berlin looked like from every angle. It remains one of the best sports books ever written.

Jesse Owens won four gold medals in Hitler's stadium. He shook hands with his German rival in front of the Führer. He came home to an ungrateful country and made his way anyway.

The 250th anniversary of that country is worth celebrating. It's also worth remembering clearly.