IOC’s 1936 Berlin Olympics Shirt Draws Backlash (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Why is this Olympic shirt creating so much controversy? Well, it's because Adolf Hitler used the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin to promote Nazi ideology. Now the official International Olympic Committee is selling merchandise commemorating those 1936 Games. So if you look at the Olympics website, its heritage collection includes a men's t-shirt commemorating the 1936 Berlin Games. At first it just looks like any vintage Olympic t-shirt, but this is what people are reacting to. The 1936 Berlin Olympics were staged just three and a half years after the Nazis came to power, and Hitler used it as a global spectacle to showcase his regime and to promote so-called Aryan racial superiority. Jewish German athletes were largely blocked from competing and anti-Semitic violence was hidden from international visitors. So what is the IOC saying about this? Well, in a statement to CNN, they defended their decision to sell this merch. It said its heritage collection celebrates 130 years of Olympic art and design and includes all previous Games. The IOC acknowledged the historical issues tied to Nazi propaganda, but they pointed out that nearly 4,500 athletes from 49 countries competed in 1936, including Jesse Owens, the black American track star who won four gold medals, stunning the world and undercutting Hitler's message of racial superiority. The IOC says the t-shirt was produced in limited quantities and is now sold out. But the debate continues.