The 1936 Olympic Games played a key role in the development of both Hitler&;s Third Reich and international sporting competition. This volume gathers original essays by modern scholars from the Games&; most prominent participating countries and lays out the issues -- sporting as well as political -- surrounding individual nations&; involvement. The Nazi Olympics opens with an analysis of Germany&;s preparations for the Games and the attempts by the Nazi regime to allay the international concerns about Hitler&;s racist ideals and expansionist ambitions. Essays follow on the United States, Great Britain, and France -- three first-class Olympian nations with misgivings about participation -- as well as German ally Italy and future ally Japan. Other essays examine the issues at stake in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands, which opposed Hitler&;s politics, despite embodying his Aryan ideal. Challenging the view of sport as a trivial pursuit, this collection reveals exactly how high the political stakes were in 1936 and how the Nazi Olympics distilled many of the critical geopolitical issues of the time into a contest that was anything but trivial.