ABSTRACT
The Olympic Games of 1936 were the first to take place in a country run by a dictatorship. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) gave the Olympic Games of 1936 to Germany and it provided only an ‘Olympic pause’ in the brutality toward German Jewish citizens. But the IOC also transferred the Olympic Winter Games of 1940 to Germany, indicating that maybe the IOC was not even concerned about the political situation in the country. Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics movement, was asked in a press interview after the Berlin Olympics in Nazi Germany what he thought about them. When looking at the 1936 Olympics, we should put it into proper historical perspective. Coubertin spent a lot of time and thought on the beautification of the Games. Here we are at the heart of the political economy of John Ruskin as Coubertin followed the lead of this English philosopher.
