Hitler’s forgotten attempt to build the world’s largest Olympic stadium

George Dvorsky

On September 7, 1937, German construction workers laid the cornerstone for what was to become the world's largest stadium — one that would hold over 400,000 spectators. Designed by Hitler's close adviser Albert Speer, the monumental structure drew as much inspiration from the Greek Panathenaic Stadium of Athens as it did from Hitler's brazen megalomania. But in the end, it was simply not meant to be, a project cut short by the demands of World War II and the eventual demise of the Third Reich.

‘An entire nation in sympathetic wonder'

During the groundbreaking ceremony, Hitler unveiled a two-meter high model of the Deutsches Stadion ("German Stadium") to an excited crowd of 24,000 people. He described it as "words of stone" that were to be stronger than anything that could ever be spoken. And indeed, Nazi architecture was grandiose and domineering for a reason — a way to make the German volk feel insignificant and small, while showcasing the unbridled power of the regime.

At the same time, however, the Nazi architects wanted the structure to emphasize a sense of community, and to create a bond between the competitors and spectators. Writing in 1937, Wolfgang Lotz wrote:

As in ancient Greece, the elite and most experienced men chosen from the mass of the nation will compete against each other here. An entire nation in sympathetic wonder is seated on the tiers. Spectators and competitors merge in one unity.

In addition to serving as a sports complex, Hitler was also planning to use it for Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg — what would have undoubtedly engendered similar feelings among the spectators.

‘It is we who will determine how the sporting field is measured'

There's no doubt that the completed horseshoe-shaped stadium would have been impressive.
The designs called for a structure 800 meters (2,625 feet) in length and 450 meters (1,476 feet) wide. Its external façade would have been 90 meters (295 feet) high, equipped with several express elevators that could take 100 spectators at a time to the upper levels. Each end of the horseshoe shaped stadium was to be joined by two gigantic towers featuring enormous eagles with wing spans of 15 meters (50 feet).

Earlier, while Speer and Hitler were putting the designs together (the Nazi duo often collaborated on their megaprojects), Speer realized that the playing fields did not match official Olympic dimensions. Hitler responded by saying, "That's totally unimportant. The 1940 Olympics will be taking place in Tokyo. But after that they will be held for all eternity in Germany — and in this stadium. And it is we who will determine how the sporting field is measured."

It's a very telling statement — a remark that not only expressed Hitler's overconfidence in winning the war, but also an admission that his ultimate goal was global domination. He also spoke of launching the "Aryan Games" at some future point.

Speer also expressed concern about the project's cost. Again, Hitler dismissed his reservations saying, "That's less than two Bismarck class battleships. Look how quickly an armored ship gets destroyed, and if it survives it becomes scrap metal in 10 years anyway. But this building will still be standing centuries from now."

Hitler hoped to see the stadium completed by 1945 in time for the Reich Party Congress.

Proof of concept

Prior to the groundbreaking ceremony, Speer and Hitler decided that it would be prudent to construct a test stadium to get a better sense of the final version's sightlines and acoustics. To that end, they brought in 400 workers to construct a 1:1 scale model of the stadium — but in a section measuring 27 meters (88 feet) wide, 76 meters (250 feet) deep, and 82 meters (270 feet) high. And to do so, they had to clear an entire hillside of trees near the town of Achtel.

After the cement was laid, the construction workers erected wooden grandstands across the five levels. And though spectators sitting at the top would have been over 80 meters (260 feet) away from the playing field, Speer said that the view was "more positive" than he anticipated.
It took the workers 18 months to achieve this "proof of concept."

At the end of the war, Achtel was almost totally destroyed as the Germans put up a bitter resistance against advancing American troops. But remnants of the test stadium are still intact today, what the locals now call ‘Stadium Mountain.' The objects have had the vegetation removed and is now placed in monument protection — a permanent symbol of Nazi hubris.

Sources: Much of what we know from this episode comes from Speer's personal memoirs written after the war, including Errinerungen and Architektur: Arbeiten 1933-1942. Other sources: Haaretz and Spiegel.

Images: Dokumentationszentrum Reichsparteitagsgeländ via Spiegel; Lencer via Haaretz.

THE OLYMPIC STADIUM IN BERLIN

Like Mussolini, Hitler used the power of architecture to further the Third Reich, building the Olympic stadium in Berlin. This powerful venue designed by Albert Speer would hold the Olympic Games and was intended to show the world the supremacy of the master race. Many of the forced laborers died during its construction. It was the essence of totalitarian design in the service of power, fitted to stage many Nazi rituals and rallies, something Hitler loved.

International sporting event that Hitler presented to the world as a showcase for the achievements and the glories of the Nazi regime. The eleventh Olympiad, held in Berlin in 1936, had actually been awarded in 1933 to the German capital, before Hitler’s accession to power, and at first the Nazis denounced it as “a festival dominated by Jews.” But Hitler did a volte-face and decided to use the Olympics as a public relations opportunity for his regime. There was a three-week moratorium on the anti-Semitic campaign, and Richard Strauss and Carl Orff were commissioned to compose music for the occasion, while artists worked on massive illustrative paintings and statues. For the first time a relay of runners carried the Olympic flame from Greece to Germany, and from the German border all the way to Berlin the roads were lined with children waving Nazi flags, creating, for the benefit of the press, a strong impression of a happy citizenry enthusiastic for the Nazi regime. The opening ceremony provided the opportunity for Hitler to parade with 40,000 SA men while a choir of 3,000 sang Nazi songs. Although shot-putter Hans Woelke won the first gold medal of the games for Germany, subsequently public attention and adulation shifted to the black U.S. sprinter Jessie Owens, who won four gold medals, somewhat tarnishing the luster of supposed Aryan superiority.

References Bachrach, Susan D. The Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936. New York: Little, Brown. Krüger, Arnd, William Murray, and W. J. Murray, eds. 1972. The Nazi Olympics: Sport, Politics and Appeasement in the 1930’s. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Mandell, R. D. 1972. The Nazi Olympics. London: Souvenir Press.

The Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936 - Video Widget

1936 Olympics

The success of the Olympic games of 1936 was one of the Nazis’ greatest propaganda victories. The staging of the games, awarded to Germany in 1931, was threatened by Hitler’s seizure of power. The Nazis, it was well known, disliked internationalism and the participation of Jews and blacks in “healthy” sporting competition. But Hitler placed the anticipated diplomatic benefits and propaganda display above ideology. The German people would see how the world accepted and admired Nazi government. In June 1933 he informed the International Olympic Committee that Germany would adhere to its rules, and Jews would be allowed to compete. The threat of boycott increased after the passage of the Nuremberg Laws in September 1935, especially in the United States, but was headed off by the International Olympic Committee and Avery Brundage, chairman of the U.S. National Olympic Committee.

In the event, the weeks of the Olympics provided a brief respite for Germany’s Jews. Signs forbidding access to Jews were removed from Olympic areas and sites likely to be visited by tourists. But the games were used as a pretext for the rounding up of hundreds of Gypsies in Berlin and their transfer to a de facto concentration camp at Marzahn. The American liberal periodical The Nation (1 August 1936) reported that one “sees no Jewish heads being chopped off, or even roundly cudgeled. . . . The people smile, are polite and sing with gusto in beer gardens. Board and lodging are good, cheap, and abundant, and no-one is swindled by grasping hotel and shop proprietors.Everything is terrifyingly clean and the visitor likes it all.” But behind the scenes the Jewish high jumper Gretel Bergmann was excluded from the German team on a technical pretext, along with the part-Jewish fencing champion Helene Mayer. Only one Jew, the ice hockey player Rudi Ball, was allowed to compete for Germany.

The Winter Games were held at Garmisch-Partenkirchen from 6 to 16 February, with 756 competitors from twenty-eight countries; the Summer Games in Berlin from 1 to 16 August with 4,069 competitors from forty-nine countries. This represented the largest number of participants up to then, and the Winter Games broke all attendance records. The huge Olympic Stadium was completed in the nick of time, and Olympic rituals now considered “traditional,” such as the lighting of the flame and the carrying of the torch from Greece to the host city, were invented in keeping with the Nazis’ sense of pageantry.

German athletes were more successful than expected, winning more medals than either the United States or Italy. Hitler appeared almost daily as the patron of the games, rejoicing at German victories but ostentatiously ignoring black American winners, most famously Jesse Owens. Otherwise quite rational observers thought that whenever Hitler appeared, Germany won: the London Sunday Times reported on 9 August 1936 that “it is uncanny how often Adolf Hitler’s entrance coincides with a German win” (Welch 1983a, p. 118). For all the superficiality of the Nazis’ tolerant pose, the propaganda risk paid off, and Leni Riefenstahl’s visually adventurous film of the Olympiad provided a notable expression of Nazi ideals.

Suggestions for further reading:

Graham, Cooper C. 1986. Leni Riefenstahl and Olympia. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press.

Hart-Davis, Duff. 1986. Hitler’s Games: The 1936 Olympics. London: Century.

Mandell, Richard D. 1987. The Nazi Olympics. Urbana: University of Chicago Press.

Welch, David. 1983a. Propaganda and the German Cinema 1933–1945. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

GERMAN STADIUM AT NÜRNBERG

In 1937, Hitler inspected architect Albert Speer's design for a stadium at Nuremberg that would host the Olympics for all time. Speer's model for a colossal, 400,000-seat stadium satisfied the Führer's infatuation with monumental forms as a means of projecting German supremacy.

The SS founded Natzweiler near rare red granite quarries in order to supply stone desired by Albert Speer for this monumental building. The quarries were chosen despite the fact that they were known to be unprofitable and abandoned by private business. The stadium was to hold over 400,000 visitors and thus be the “largest in the world.”

After the Games

“I'm afraid the Nazis have succeeded with their propaganda. First, the Nazis have run the Games on a lavish scale never before experienced, and this has appealed to the athletes. Second, the Nazis have put up a very good front for the general visitors, especially the big businessmen.” —Foreign correspondent William Shirer in his diary, Berlin, August 16, 1936

"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." Adolf Hitler, in conversation with Albert Speer, general architectural inspector for the Reich, spring 1937

Germany emerged victorious from the XIth Olympiad. Its athletes captured the most medals overall, and German hospitality and organization won the praises of visitors. Most newspaper accounts echoed a report in the New York Times that the Games put Germans "back in the fold of nations," and even made them "more human again." Some even found reason to hope that this peaceable interlude would endure. Only a few reporters, such as William Shirer, regarded the Berlin glitter as merely hiding a racist, militaristic regime. As the post-Games reports were filed, Hitler pressed on with grandiose plans for German expansion. These included taking over the Olympics forever.

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