1936 Summer Olympics torch relay

Games of the XI Olympiad

1936 Summer Olympics torch relay on a German stamp
Host city	Berlin, Germany
Countries visited	Greece, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany
Distance	3,187 km
Torch bearers	3,331
Start date	20 July 1936
End date	1 August 1936
Torch designer	Walter Lemcke
No. of torches	3,840

The 1936 Summer Olympics torch relay was the first of its kind, following on from the reintroduction of the Olympic Flame at the 1928 Games. It pioneered the modern convention of moving the flame via a relay system from Greece to the Olympic venue. Leni Riefenstahl filmed the relay for the award-winning but controversial 1938 film Olympia.

The Olympic Flame was introduced to the modern Games in 1928 when it burnt atop a pillar above the stadium in Amsterdam. Four years later the same was repeated in Los Angeles. At both of these events the flame was lit on site at the stadium.

Carl Diem devised the idea of the torch relay for the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin that was organized by the Nazi Party under the guidance of Joseph Goebbels. The process was ratified by the International Olympic Committee and has been repeated at all the Games that have followed.

Diem and the organizing team realized that there would need to be very detailed plans in order to successfully complete the relay to a standard that would satisfy both themselves and the ruling Third Reich. At the time they were unsure about exactly how they could use the sun's rays to start the fire as well as how to create a torch that would remain alight whatever the conditions. Research was therefore required into the specialist technologies that would be needed. The route itself would need development and the path down from Olympia was deemed too difficult to access. The organising committees therefore agreed that new roads would be built to ensure that the relay got off to the best possible start.

Adolf Hitler saw the link with the ancient Games as the perfect way to illustrate his belief that classical Greece was an Aryan forerunner of the modern German Reich.