1936 Olympics Dbq

Section 1: Identification and Evaluation of Sources

The 1936 Berlin Olympic Games stand out as a critical affair in history around the world. Specifically to the United States, there was much contention over the participation of the USA team during the Games due to Germany’s aggressive behavior towards Jewish people. Two men were vital in leading the debate on both sides: Jeremiah Mahoney and Avery Brundage. This investigation focuses on one crucial question: why did the debates on the 1936 Olympic boycott in the United States ultimately lead to American participation in the Games?

Judge Jeremiah T. Mahoney, the Amateur Athletic Union, and the Olympic Games is a journal article written by John Lucas in 2008. The article focuses on the views

Brundage found ways to appeal his claims to a wider range of people. Also, with America still in the midst of the Great Depression, people sought a way to bring success back into the country. Germany tried to persuade the US not to boycott the Olympics, and at the time was not demonstrating as much brutality to Jewish people as it would in the future. As a result, German Anti-Semitism was not as much of a concern as people may have originally assumed. All of these factors contributed immensely to the decision to participate in the 1936

During my research, I focused on only one individual from both sides of the argument. While this strategy allowed me to focus in more specifically on those two people, it downplayed the complexity of the actual debates. Many of the sources that only focused on one individual were partial only to that person, and may have excluded important details about the contributions of others. This strategy was also employed in Marvin’s Avery Brundage and American Participation in the 1936 Olympic Games, which focuses primarily on Avery Brundage’s side of the argument. By focusing exclusively on Avery Brundage, Marvin is leaving out other important sides to the dispute. After imitating this strategy, I learned that historians must be able to narrow down the information they are provided and choose only the specific details that is most valuable to the topic under investigation. However, this may come at an expense. It is difficult to decide what is valuable and what is insignificant, and there will always be some useful details that may be left