German Sports Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) said on Friday she could “imagine” hosting the 2036 Olympics in Berlin, 100 years since the 1936 Summer Olympics hosted by the Third Reich.
Then Chancellor Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party had attempted to use the 1936 games as a propaganda tool for the regime, three years before the outbreak of World War Two.
Speaking with online news site ‘The Pioneer’, Faeser said it was “conceivable that you deal with it in a special way at the place where it happened, where exclusion and this terrible disregard for humanity took place.”
“The 1936 games were terrible. The Nazis organised the games as a means of promoting themselves.”
The Social Democrat said the country would have “to do a lot of work” to highlight the nature of the 1936 games while promoting human rights in Germany and across the globe.
“If we demand these criteria (human rights), then I think we have to set a good example and allow a major sporting event in Germany again.
During the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, Germany was very critical of the host country and respect for human rights in the wealthy gas state.
The minister said she felt “it would be the right step to apply to host the games again. I’m promoting it very strongly.”
The 2028 Summer Olympics have been awarded to Los Angeles, with the following in Brisbane (2032).
According to the principle of rotating the games between continents, a return to Europe is probably in 2036.
Germany last hosted the Olympics in Munich in 1972.
The German Olympic Committee (DOSB) will meet at the end of 2023 to decide whether to apply for upcoming games and in which regions/cities they should be held.
