Determined to rewrite history, Berlin's bid for the 2040 Games aims to showcase a new era of inclusivity, diversity, and democratic values. City officials are focusing on presenting Berlin as a vibrant, forward-looking metropolis, committed to erasing the dark memories of the past. "We want to host an Olympics that represents unity, peace, and the progress we have made as a society," said a spokesperson for the Berlin 2040 bid committee.

The 1936 event became a significant propaganda tool for the Nazi regime, as documented in numerous works, including the audiovisual documentary "The Triumph of the Will," which profoundly impacted the career of filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. Despite the regime's propaganda efforts, one of the standout winners of those Games was Jesse Owens, an African American athlete from the USA, who famously defied the Nazi ideology of racial superiority by winning four gold medals.

When planning everything that involves preparing a candidacy for the Olympic Games, a key is the date. The German Government has preferred that date to not be 2036, which would be exactly the centenary of the National Socialist Games with Hitler.

Instead, he has postponed his aspirations for an entire Olympics (the period between two games) and has found a date on which the calendar plays more symbolically in his favour: Berlin, 1940.

That is, fifty years after the German reunification after the fall of the wall that separated the country and the German capital itself, a historic fact that has left trace in cultural creations such as the song ‘Winds of change’ of Scorpions or the film ‘Good bye Lenin’. Neither did later appointments go better: in Munich 72 there was a hostage crisis and a subsequent massacre of Israeli athletes.

It is not the first time that a sporting event has been linked to the moment when West and East Germany were reunited: nothing more happened, the reunified national team won the Italian Football World Cup, breathing collective spirit to a whole country that lived with uncertainty those years and that process.

The German government itself acknowledged last Wednesday the intentionality of avoiding one date and betting on the other, which allows it to show “what values our liberal democracy represents,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said.

Germany is serious: it has already signed a memorandum of understanding with the German Olympic Sports Federation and the regions and cities concerned, such as Berlin, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Leipzig and Munich, as well as the North Rhine-Westphalia and Bavaria regions.

And it enhances its ability to organise major international sporting events, such as the recent European men's football championships. True to their practical sense, they point out as an advantage that "they would use the existing sports facilities in several cities without building new stadiums for a lot of money", while proposing an investment of €7 million ($7.6m) over the next three years.

Dialogue

In July 2023, the German Olympic Committee (DOSB) launched the dialogue initiative 'YOUR IDEAS. YOUR GAMES' to discuss why it would be beneficial to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Germany. The German Sports Confederation (DSB) has created various formats for dialogue with society. In addition to an ongoing digital dialogue with nine thematic discussions, public dialogue forums were organised after visits to Leipzig, Hamburg, and Munich.