The People's Olympiad: Alternate Olympics During the 1936 Berlin Boycott

So many controversial stories exist within the history of the Olympics that most of them have been forgotten within the decades of mostly memorable Winter and Summer Games etched positively in people's minds. The U.S. has a history of only slipping up once when it comes to handling the Olympics with the usual aplomb of diplomacy and athletic skill. Long before our 1980 boycott bungle against the Moscow Summer Olympics, we wisely decided to attend the 1936 Summer Games set up by Hitler. We proved that the Olympics should be a separate entity that overcomes all tyranny or evil regimes. Most other countries agreed with that idea in 1936. However, we almost boycotted those 1936 Olympics in Berlin via the influence of some American groups who didn't think we should celebrate the process of brotherhood and sport with a German political movement who were intent on taking over the world.

And we weren't the only ones in the world who thought that one over before making an ultimate decision.

Consider Spain to be a tad ingenious in how they worked out their ultimate decision to boycott the 1936 Games. Instead of just sitting at home and folding their arms, they decided to create their own Olympics to send the prescient message that the Nazis wouldn't hijack the true meaning of what an Olympics should be. It wasn't lost on nations of the world that the Nazis considered themselves to be superior and would do anything it took to lead in the medal count (which they did). In that act of defiance to remind us the Olympics shouldn't exist to glorify one race, Spain's newly-elected leftist government concocted an Olympics called the "People's Olympiad" that would be held in Barcelona a couple of weeks before the ones in Berlin. Spain put out the invitations to all the countries of the world to send a strong message to Germany how they felt about The Third Reich.