# Jessie Owens wins! Hitler is humiliated? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 4, 2019, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jessie-owens-wins-hitler-is-humiliated/834997 "2019-06-04T03:46:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Mcmechanic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@Mcmechanic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mcmechanic)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2019, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jessie-owens-wins-hitler-is-humiliated/834997/1 "2019-06-04T03:46:49Z")
I’m not sure if this is the correct forum and this may have been discussed before, in which case I apologize. I like a good history documentary and since there’s quite a bit about nazis, I’ve seen quite a few. But one thing always made me think. Was Hitler really embarrassed/pissed about Jessie Owens performance at the ‘36 Berlin Olympics? The documentaries I’ve seen always use the angle that Owens’ performance was a sort of “in your face for diversity” to Hitler, and Hitler was sullen and pissed afterward. But wouldn’t Owens’ performance been more of a proof of concept for Hitler in regards to Eugenics? ---
**Author:** ![Mcmechanic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@Mcmechanic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mcmechanic)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2019, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jessie-owens-wins-hitler-is-humiliated/834997/2 "2019-06-04T03:57:00Z")
Sorry, Just googled JESSE Owens, my spelling was incorrect. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2019, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jessie-owens-wins-hitler-is-humiliated/834997/3 "2019-06-04T04:17:19Z")
> [@Mcmechanic](#): > > But wouldn’t Owens’ performance been more of a proof of concept for Hitler in regards to Eugenics? I’m not sure what you mean by this. Jesse Owens is what everybody remembers nowadays about the 1936 Olympics, but they were more of a success for Hitler than you might think just from the Jesse Owens angle. Germany won more medals than anybody else. And Hitler was apparently successful in keeping Jewish athletes from participating. > [@Wikipedia](#): > > Hitler saw the Games as an opportunity to promote his government and ideals of racial supremacy and antisemitism, and the official Nazi party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, wrote in the strongest terms that Jews should not be allowed to participate in the Games. German Jewish athletes were barred or prevented from taking part by a variety of methods and Jewish athletes from other countries seem to have been side-lined in order not to offend the Nazi regime. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2019, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jessie-owens-wins-hitler-is-humiliated/834997/4 "2019-06-04T04:26:45Z")
False premise. Hitler never snubbed Owens. It was a bit of fake news from the era - which Owens himself denied. Hitler didn’t congratulate \*any \*non-German Olympians. On the first day of the games he personally shook the hands of German winners (but no one else), after which the president of the Olympic committee told him he had to congratulate everyone or nobody. Hitler chose “nobody”, although Owens later said Hitler had shook his hand in private before leaving the stadium. It was an American newspaper that later made up the story of Hitler snubbing Jessie Owens specifically. FDR, for his part, didn’t invite Owens at the White House after the games. Didn’t even bother sending a congratulations telegram. ETA : oh, but Hitler _was_ a bit miffed at the performance of the black athletes in general and according to Speer he opined that blacks should be excluded from future games on account of having a genetic advantage over white athletes. I mean, you didn’t think Hitler temporarily stopped being a cunt for the games, did ya ? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2019, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jessie-owens-wins-hitler-is-humiliated/834997/5 "2019-06-04T04:31:57Z")
Wasn’t Owens’ victory actually touted by some Nazis as proof that blacks were inferior to whites, on the grounds that “primitive” people were physically dominant while superior people were intellectually dominant? ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2019, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jessie-owens-wins-hitler-is-humiliated/834997/6 "2019-06-04T04:55:10Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Wasn’t Owens’ victory actually touted by some Nazis as proof that blacks were inferior to whites, on the grounds that “primitive” people were physically dominant while superior people were intellectually dominant? Yes and no. The Nazis didn’t necessarily look down on blacks in the way American racism did/does (although they did hate jazz). For example, while in Germany Owens and his black team mates were housed in the same hotel as white athletes - which wasn’t the case in the US. They _did_ believe blacks were “more primitive”, that is correct. But at the same time the Nazis had a whole quasi-self loathing Thing about civilization making men weak and trying to return to a “golden age” of barbarity/primal strength which Hitler reckoned the successes of black athletes proved. They had lots of stupid ideas like that - I take it you’ve heard of the recently sensationalized [Nazi killer cows](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/05/devon-farmer-forced-offload-nazi-bred-super-cows) ? That’s another drop from that font of brilliance : trying to recreate the prehistoric aurochs, deemed \*à priori \*superior to civilized cows - and the more violent the better. Hitler reportedly dreamed of one day releasing herds of those in the wilds of rural Germany so that they could be hunted, like in the good old days of 8000 BC. ---
**Author:** ![Mcmechanic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@Mcmechanic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mcmechanic)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2019, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jessie-owens-wins-hitler-is-humiliated/834997/7 "2019-06-04T05:00:20Z")
The documentaries I’ve seen either portrayed Hitler as snubbing Owens or being congratulatory toward Owens, but secretly pissed. But was this accurate or just the modern view of that time? Don’t get me wrong, slavery and the holocaust were absolute atrocities. However, Owens’ success seems it would be, in hitlers fucked up mind, a triumph of breeding humans for a specific purpose and he might of recognized that in congratulating or snubbing Owens? ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2019, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jessie-owens-wins-hitler-is-humiliated/834997/8 "2019-06-04T05:15:48Z")
> [@Mcmechanic](#): > > The documentaries I’ve seen either portrayed Hitler as snubbing Owens or being congratulatory toward Owens, but secretly pissed. But was this accurate or just the modern view of that time? Don’t get me wrong, slavery and the holocaust were absolute atrocities. However, Owens’ success seems it would be, in hitlers fucked up mind, a triumph of breeding humans for a specific purpose and he might of recognized that in congratulating or snubbing Owens? This only makes sense if we think that Hitler believed that Jesse Owens has been bred for a specific purpose, and we have no reason to think that Hitler believed anything of the kind. ---
**Author:** ![Mcmechanic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@Mcmechanic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mcmechanic)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2019, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jessie-owens-wins-hitler-is-humiliated/834997/9 "2019-06-04T06:07:37Z")
True. But I can only assume that making broad generalizations was perfectly acceptable to the leader of the nazis. Then again, I don’t have any evidence on Hitlers thoughts about Owens that I’ve seen on tv documentaries. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2019, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jessie-owens-wins-hitler-is-humiliated/834997/10 "2019-06-04T06:09:53Z")
Like a lot of racists, believing that black people may be physically superior does not keep them from believing their race is superior overall. They’ll either tout intellectual superiority, or argue that slavery selected for the more athletic individuals, and that their race could do even better under those circumstances. You can never rule out cognitive dissonance in racists. They aren’t thinking logically and rationally. ---
**Author:** ![nelliebly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nelliebly/32/5422_2.png) [@nelliebly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nelliebly)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2019, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jessie-owens-wins-hitler-is-humiliated/834997/11 "2019-06-04T06:35:38Z")
As devastating to Hitler as Owens’ four gold medals, I think, was German athletic superstar’s Luz Long’s friendship with Owens. There’s a [famous photo](https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/jess-owens-anniversary-luz-long-rio-2016-olympics-berlin-1936-nazi-games-7166831.html)of the two of them lying on the field, chatting. Owens said Long gave him a tip just before his last attempt at the long jump, and Owens won. They became fast friends and stayed in touch until Long died during WWII. Hitler couldn’t have been pleased that German’s blonde-and-blue-eyed star athlete became friends with a black athlete. > [@](#): > > ‘That business with Hitler didn’t bother me,’ Owens later wrote. ‘I didn’t go there to shake hands. What I remember most was the friendship I struck up with Luz Long’ ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2019, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jessie-owens-wins-hitler-is-humiliated/834997/12 "2019-06-04T12:45:44Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > The Nazis didn’t necessarily look down on blacks in the way American racism did/does (although they did hate jazz). For example, while in Germany Owens and his black team mates were housed in the same hotel as white athletes - which wasn’t the case in the US. The Nazis’ policies towards blacks [weren’t quite as benign](http://theconversation.com/what-happened-to-black-germans-under-the-nazis-53599) as you seem to be suggesting. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2019, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jessie-owens-wins-hitler-is-humiliated/834997/13 "2019-06-04T15:43:27Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Like a lot of racists, believing that black people may be physically superior does not keep them from believing their race is superior overall. They’ll either tout intellectual superiority, or argue that slavery selected for the more athletic individuals, and that their race could do even better under those circumstances. > > You can never rule out cognitive dissonance in racists. They aren’t thinking logically and rationally. Incorrect and harmful, yeah, but I don’t see what’s illogical or irrational _per se_ about such a belief. I believe that horses are physically superior to humans in at least some ways (horses can outrun humans, for example), but I still think humans are superior overall. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2019, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jessie-owens-wins-hitler-is-humiliated/834997/14 "2019-06-04T21:59:02Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > The Nazis’ policies towards blacks [weren’t quite as benign](http://theconversation.com/what-happened-to-black-germans-under-the-nazis-53599) as you seem to be suggesting. Sorry if I was misleading - of course they weren’t _benign_. Nazis are gonna…err… naze ? They deemed blacks inferior the way they deemed everybody else inferior. But they didn’t have a specific hate-on for blacks the way they had for Roma, Jews or Slavs and AFAIK didn’t go out of their way to persecute them. I.e. black POWs weren’t treated worse than others, etc… Of course as your article implies, it’s probably also that there weren’t all that many black Germans to begin with, owing to the fact that in the words of Blackadder the German colonial empire amounted to a small sausage factory in Tanganyka. I’m sure if they had made up a more sizable/visible portion of the population, they would have been singled out as “polluting the race” or similar, and persecuted worse. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2019, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jessie-owens-wins-hitler-is-humiliated/834997/15 "2019-06-04T22:45:30Z")
[The first genocide of the 20th century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_genocide) ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2019, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jessie-owens-wins-hitler-is-humiliated/834997/16 "2019-06-04T23:03:10Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > [The first genocide of the 20th century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_genocide) Kind of hard to pin that on the Nazis, given that it started in 1904. **Kobal** ’s point, I think, is not that the Nazis were particularly enlightened when it came to black people. They were still super racist against blacks, just not notably more so than other contemporary European powers - or the US, of course. ---
**Author:** ![pool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pool/32/4152_2.png) [@pool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pool)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2019, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jessie-owens-wins-hitler-is-humiliated/834997/17 "2019-06-04T23:07:17Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > [The first genocide of the 20th century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_genocide) Never heard of this till now thanks for some historical education. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2019, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jessie-owens-wins-hitler-is-humiliated/834997/18 "2019-06-04T23:12:16Z")
[This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szten4iypCM) contains eyewitness testimony from an unusually reliable source that Hitler shook Owens hand in congratulations. I apologize but can’t remember when in this wonderful one hour video it occurs, but it definitely is an eyewitness statement made by a still-living witness - a remarkable man, whose life is history: [Eric ‘Winkel’ Brown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Brown_(pilot)). ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2019, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jessie-owens-wins-hitler-is-humiliated/834997/19 "2019-06-05T00:48:36Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Kind of hard to pin that on the Nazis, given that it started in 1904. Only if you want to quibble. It’s really not that hard to draw a straight line between this travesty and later ones committed by the same people. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2019, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jessie-owens-wins-hitler-is-humiliated/834997/20 "2019-06-05T01:16:30Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > Only if you want to quibble. It’s really not that hard to draw a straight line between this travesty and later ones committed by the same people. Except most other European colonial powers did similar (and worse) things, and didn’t end up being run by Nazis. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jessie-owens-wins-hitler-is-humiliated/834997.md?page=2)