In our podcast “Minute Papillon!

», We find a new episode of our monthly series

Once upon a time in the history of sport

.

This time, we take a look back at a tradition of the Olympic Games: the course of the flame.

Where does this idea, which has become the symbol of the modern Olympics, come from? 

20 Minutes

looked into the subject as on Friday July 23, the conflagration of the cauldron in the Olympic stadium in Tokyo, Japan, will mark the start of the 32nd Olympiad.

Written by the Nazis

However, few spectators know to whom we owe this custom.

And for good reason, it is rarely recalled that it was the leaders of Nazi Germany who, during the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, scripted, for the first time, the route of this flame from the Greek city of Olympia, cradle of the ancient Olympic Games, to the host city.

Through this dark episode in the history of the Olympic Games, the sociologist Jean-Marie Brohm denounced, in his book

Olympic Games in Berlin

(Editions Complexe), the connivance of the International Olympic Committee and the Hitler regime, at the dawn of the Second world War.

Context of racism and belligerence

Our guest, the journalist and writer François Thomazeau, explains to us how the Olympic Games were able to take place in a context of racism and affirmed belligerence.

Author, in particular, of

The imposture of sport

(First editions), of

Secret history of sport

(The discovery) or of

Berlin 1936: France to the test of the Olympic Games

(Alvik), he analyzes these Olympic Games glorified by the press of the time, today considered "the games of shame".

" Wait a minute !

Is an original

20 Minutes

podcast

.

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  • Berlin

  • Olympic Games

  • Adolf Hitler

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  • Wait a minute

  • Sport

  • 20 Minutes Podcast

  • Nazi