Quote:
Originally posted by xo_kathy
I watched bits of a really interesting TV program last night about the games. Hitler was actually the one who started the tradition of the torch relay. There was also something about the rings - the Germans planted some in Greek soil and had their archeologists "discover" them as a link to the original Olympics (don't know if the rings were in use before the Munich games or if it was another Hitler invention) and he also was the first to make such a production of the opening ceremonies. I was surprised that some of the traditions we now love were started by Hitler and that no one has put up a stink about it...
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In days of old, the Olympic salute to the head of state during the opening ceremonies was very similar to the
Deutscher Grüss ("German greeting", aka the Nazi salute), that ended after the 1936 Olympics.
The torch relay was introduced in the 1936 Berlin games.
The modern Olympic ring design and flag was designed by Baron Pierre de Coubertin. Originally, the flag had the motto of the Olympics -
Citius Altius Fortius - (Faster, Higher, Stronger) below the rings but that was dropped from the flag in the 1920s.
After the Nazi-engineered spectacle of the 1936 Olympics stricter controls were placed on the opening ceremony after World War II.
(On a semi-related topic, Hitler drove the first Volkswagen Beetle off the assembly line (originally known as the KdF-Wagen (
Kraft durch Freude "Strength through Joy" - the Nazi-controlled travel and entertainment industry for workers), but the Bug (and Volkswagen) endures today.)
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