As the first Olympic Torch Relay made its way from Olympia, Greece, through seven countries to Berlin for the opening ceremony of the 1936 Games, much of the world was in turmoil. Italy had conquered Ethiopia, Japan had invaded Manchuria and Spain was about to erupt in a civil war. Germany itself was a police state, with Adolf Hitler's storm troopers persecuting Jews, concentration camps flourishing, and the Roman Catholic Church forcibly suppressed. All non-Aryans were victims of racial hatred, and blacks were deemed as particularly inferior. Jews in various countries asked for a boycott of the Berlin Games, and in the United States the boycott proposal was only narrowly defeated. A total of 3738 male and 328 female athletes form 49 countries attended the Games, which are today remembered best for Hitler's failed attempt to prove his theories of Aryan superiority.

The man who did most to demolish Hitler's theories was black athlete Jesse Owens, son of an Alabama cotton picker and grandson of slaves. He won three individual gold medals - in the 100 and 200 metres sprints and the broad jump - and another in the 4x100metre relay (running with three other African American).