August 1: When the broadcast first served the regime

On August 1, 1936, Adolf Hitler opened the Berlin Olympics, the first Games ever televised, staged by the Nazi regime as a propaganda spectacle. Tonight's film: Rollerball (1975).

There is a thought that always catches me on a day like this. The bad news always arrives, only the uniform changes. Tonight the date and the film lined up in a way I did not expect, because both are about the same gesture.

On Saturday, August 1, 1936, Adolf Hitler opened the Games of the XI Olympiad at Berlin’s Reichssportsfeld. About 100,000 spectators, more than 5,000 athletes from 51 nations. Richard Strauss conducted the Olympic Hymn. That day also gave birth to a ritual we still know: the torch relay, a single runner carrying a flame from Olympia into the stadium. The torch itself was made by the Krupp steel and arms conglomerate.

But it is not the torch that grips me, it is the cameras. The Berlin Games were the first Olympics ever broadcast on television. The regime set up some 25 to 28 Fernsehstuben, public viewing rooms and fitted beer halls, across Berlin, Potsdam, and Leipzig, each showing projected images eight to ten feet high over coaxial cable. On the order of 150,000 people, in one count exactly 162,228, watched the competitions live. This was the first live televised sporting event in history. Leni Riefenstahl was filming Olympia at the same time. The broadcast advertised modernity, and the audience’s job was to watch, awed.