The International Olympic Committee faces mounting criticism from German officials for marketing T-shirts featuring designs from the controversial 1936 Berlin Olympics, widely recognized as a propaganda vehicle for Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime. The apparel, currently listed as out-of-stock in the official Olympic online shop, displayed the original poster artwork by Franz Würbel depicting a laurel-wreathed male figure above the Brandenburg Gate with the inscription “Germany Berlin 1936 Olympic Games.”
Klara Schedlich, sports policy spokesperson for the Green Party in Berlin’s House of Representatives, condemned the commercialization as historically insensitive, stating to German press agency DPA that “the 1936 Olympic Games were a central propaganda tool of the Nazi regime.” She accused the IOC of insufficient historical reflection and criticized the imagery selection as fundamentally problematic without proper contextualization.
The IOC defended the items as part of its Heritage Collection, which commemorates 130 years of Olympic art and design spanning all editions of the Games. A spokesperson acknowledged the historical issues of Nazi propaganda while emphasizing the athletic achievements of the 1936 event, particularly highlighting Jesse Owens’ four gold medals that challenged Nazi ideologies of Aryan supremacy. The Committee noted that contextual information is provided at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne and that production of the 1936 designs was strictly limited.