3 August 1936: Jesse Owens wins an Olympic medal and ruins Hitlers day.

Jesse Owens was born in Oakville, Alabama in 1913. By the 1936 Olympic Games, he was already one of the USs most impressive athletes. Hed won an unprecedented four gold medals two years in the NCAA championships and had set four different world records in track and field in a 45-minute period on 25 May 1935.

But it was at the 1936 Olympic Games that Owens put himself in the history books forever.

If you didnt already know, the 1936 Games took place in Berlin during the Nazi regime.

Adolf Hitler wanted to use the games as an opportunity to promote the Nazi ideology across the world. Jewish German athletes were banned from entering the games. Hitler hoped that Germany would put on a show of Aryian prowess, proving to the world the strength of the White race.

As a Black American, Owens clearly didnt fit into Hitlers image of a Third Reich that would rule the world for a thousand years. Hed even questioned whether the US should participate in an Olympics in a country where minorities were being discriminated against.

Owens went to the Olympics anyway and was greeted by masses of German fans. Clearly the message of racial hatred hadnt permeated entirely through Germany.

If Hitler wanted to witness all non-White and non-German athletes trounced, he was in for a rude awakening when it came time for Owens to hit the track. Already a phenomenon, Owens greatest performance was at the Olympics.

First on this day in 1936, Owens won gold in the 100m dash with a time of 10.3 seconds. The next day, he won the long jump. The day after that he won the 200m sprint. Four days later, Owens won his fourth and final gold medal as part of the 4x100m sprint relay team. At the time, four gold medals in a game was a record in itself.

Hitler wasnt best pleased.

Hed already refused to shake the hands of any athletes that werent German.

After Olympics Committee president Henri de Baillet-Latour insisted that Hitler shake the hands with victors from all countries or none, Hitler objected to shaking anyones hand.

Its been widely reported that Hitler snubbed Owens. However, by Owens own account, Hitler did wave at Owens to acknowledge his achievement. Still, the most stark image of the whole Olympics is Owens stood atop winners podium, his hand to his head saluting the US flag as those around him stretch their arms out in salute to Hitler.

Owens legacy is one of destroying what was meant to be a crowning moment in Hitlers propaganda machine. In an Olympics entirely devoted to celebrating the ability of the Aryan race, a Black man from America showed up all of Hitlers White Germans.

For Owens though, the power of his achievement was marred by the country he returned to. The US was a segregated country. During his time in Europe, hed been allowed to stay in hotels with White athletes, a level of equality not available to him at home.

Owens continued to face racism throughout his life. Despite his achievements, President Franklin D. Roosevelt never invited him to the White House.

Hitler didn't snub me it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram, Owens once told a crowd.

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Culture Re-View: The day Jesse Owens ruined Hitler's Olympic Games - Euronews

Content warning: This article contains examples of bigoted and violent rhetoric.

While allegedly suspended from streaming on Rumble for two weeks after violating the platforms incitement to violence policy, white nationalist Nick Fuentes uploaded a Rumble video that featured extremely racist and violent rhetoric. During the video, Fuentes fantasized that me and Hitler would team up to kill a Black man he alleged had littered in his neighborhood, and called on his followers to prepare to catch an aggravated battery charge if you see this in your society.

On July 16, Fuentes livestreamed a rally on Rumble during which he launched into overt antisemitism, ranting to his followers that we need to eradicate Jewish stranglehold over the United States of America and claiming of his perceived opponents, We will make them die in the holy war. According to Fuentes, Rumble removed two videos of the rally and suspended him from streaming on the platform for two weeks because it considered his holy war rhetoric an incitement to violence. He later revealed that hed spoken to Rumble, which he said reassured us that my account is safe and won't be deleted, adding, They have no plans to ban me.

Less than two weeks later, while still allegedly suspended from streaming on Rumble, Fuentes uploaded a new July 29 episode of his America First show, which featured extremely racist and antisemitic rhetoric as well as additional calls for violence.

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On Rumble, Nick Fuentes fantasizes about teaming up with Hitler to ... - Media Matters for America

This photograph was taken on April 20, 1945, just ten days before his death. Public Domain

Much speculation and mystery surrounds the last photograph taken of Adolf Hitler who committed suicide on April 30, 1945. Records show that no photographers were in the Berlin bunker after March 20 and therefore confirming the Nazi dictators final picture is complicated.

Most historians argue that Hitlers last known photograph was taken on April 20, 1945, just ten days before his death. The picture was captured during a ceremony on his 56th birthday at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin.

It shows Hitler standing alongside his longtime associate, Martin Bormann, as they decorate members of the Hitler Youth with the Iron Cross for their bravery. The photo is often referred to as Hitlers last birthday photo.

However, another contender as the last known picture of Hitler is the one believed to be taken two days prior to his death as he stands outside his Berlin bunker entrance surveying the devastating bomb damage.

With Germany lying in ruins after six years of war, and with defeat imminent, Hitler decided to take his own life.

But before doing so, he married Eva Braun and then penned his last will and testament. The next day in the afternoon on April 30, 1945, Braun and Hitler entered his living room to end their lives. When Hitler asked his physician to recommend a reliable method of suicide his doctor suggested combining a dose of cyanide with a gunshot to the head.

Later that afternoon the remaining members of the bunker community found Hitler slumped over, and blood spilled over the arm of the couch. Eva was sitting at the other end.

Hitler had killed himself by biting down on a cyanide capsule while shooting himself in the head. Eva only used the cyanide capsule. Hitler committed suicide two days before the surrender of Berlin to the Soviets on 2 May, and just over a week before the end of World War II in Europe on 8 May.

Yet another theory suggests that Hitlers last photo is the one below, where Hitler decorates General Theodor Tolsdorff taken on March 20 1945 more than a month before Hitlers death.

In Berlin, Tolsdorff received the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds. He was promoted to General lieutenant (major general) and appointed commander of the LXXXII Army Corps, which was stationed in Bavaria.

On 8 May, he surrendered in Austria to Lt. Carwood Lipton and Robert F. Sink of the 101st Airborne Division. Tolsdorffs convoy of 31 vehicles drove down from the mountains loaded with his personal baggage, liquor, cigars, cigarettes, and his girlfriends.

As I did not consider that I could take responsibility, during the years of struggle, of contracting a marriage, I have now decided, before the closing of my earthly career, to take as my wife that girl who, after many years of faithful friendship, entered, of her own free will, the practically besieged town in order to share her destiny with me. At her own desire, she goes as my wife with me into death. It will compensate us for what we both lost through my work in the service of my people.

What I possess belongs in so far as it has any value to the Party. Should this no longer exist, to the State; should the State also be destroyed, no further decision of mine is necessary.

My pictures, in the collections which I have bought in the course of years, have never been collected for private purposes, but only for the extension of a gallery in my hometown of Linz on Donau.

It is my most sincere wish that this bequest may be duly executed. I nominate as my Executor my most faithful Party comrade, Martin Bormann. He is given full legal authority to make all decisions. He is permitted to take out everything that has a sentimental value or is necessary for the maintenance of modest simple life, for my brothers and sisters, also above all for the mother of my wife and my faithful co-workers who are well known to him, principally my old Secretaries Frau Winter, etc. who have for many years aided me by their work.

I myself and my wife in order to escape the disgrace of deposition or capitulation choose death. It is our wish to be burnt immediately on the spot where I have carried out the greatest part of my daily work in the course of twelve years service to my people.

Given in Berlin, 29th April 1945, 4:00 a.m. Signed: A. Hitler Signed as witnesses: Dr. Joseph Goebbels Martin Bormann Colonel Nicholaus von Below

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Is this Hitler's Last Photograph? - Greek Reporter

On the face of it, writer Peter Clenotts grandfather was guilty of committing the ultimate betrayal.

He was a Harvard graduate, a World War One veteran, a decorated airbase commander in Iceland during the Second World War; and then in the years following, the chief prosecutor overseeing the conviction of 15 Nazis at the Dora Trial, held at Dachau concentration camp in Germany in 1947.

William Bermans achievements were notable, but he was also harbouring a secret. During his time overseas the leading American-Jewish lawyer had an affair with a German woman, resulting in an illegitimate daughter.

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The child and her mother were shunned by Bermans family and Clenott admits having no connection to or knowing the whereabouts of his half-aunt, who by now would be in her mid-70s if she were still alive.

But his interest was piqued by those post-war events and he wanted to understand how his grandfather came to be in a relationship with a German woman. The 72-year-old author began reading more books about the period, including on the Holocaust, the Third Reich and the aftermath of the Second World War, inspiring him to pen his latest work.

Clenott, who has written screenplays, short stories and full-length novels for the best part of 50 years, credits his grandfathers secret as the starting point for his historical mystery thriller The Unwanted.

A key theme of the novel, which revolves around two teenage girls who become embroiled in the murders of an American official and a fleeing SS officer, is that not all Germans were willing participants of Nazism and in fact many suffered at the hands of the brutal policies instituted by Hitler.

The keen writer, who lives just outside of Boston and works for a non-profit organisation helping people facing homelessness, explains: I learned that after the war ended, the situation worsened for many German women two million of them were raped after the war by the Russians, but also by American, British and French soldiers. There were hundreds of thousands of children born out of rape.

And it wasnt unusual for German women wanting to avoid the poverty that existed after the Second World War or coming under the leadership of a communist regime, intentionally trying to strike up relationships to escape that.

My grandfather was around 53 at the time, an attractive man, an attorney and officer. I dont really know the details about what happened, but you can perhaps understand some of the reasons why it did.

During the course of his research, Clenott also came across chilling detail about the Nazis Euthanasia Programme the systemic murder of institutionalised patients with physical and mental disabilities which began in 1939. The aim of it was to restore the racial integrity of the German nation and it was in many ways a forerunner to the Nazis systemic murder of Jews in Europe as part of the Final Solution.

Clenott explains: The Nazis took a popular eugenics idea at the time sterilisation and went a step further. They wanted to create a pure race. They didnt want Jews, but they also didnt want gypsies or homosexuals. They didnt want people who were bipolar or had manic depression or any other mental or physical disability that would be a burden on the German state. The Nazis came up with a phrase: Life unworthy of life. People were encouraged to voluntarily give up their child to one of these euthanasia centres in Germany and Austria for treatment.

The author poignantly acknowledges that his son, who is autistic and gay, would almost certainly have been a candidate for such centres during the Nazi era, excluding the fact that he is also Jewish. An estimated 10,000 physically and mentally disabled children were murdered out of 250,000 individuals overall as part of Nazi Germanys euthanasia programme. Clenott based one of his main characters, 14-year-old Hana Zigler, against this scenario. As a result of her obsessive-compulsive tendencies, and because of suspicions that her mother had an affair with a Jewish man, Hana is taken by her merciless grandfather to an institute to be euthanised.

Despite the novels dark opening, theres a twist ahead in the guise of Silke Hartenstein, a 16-year-old member of the Bund Deutsch Madel, the girls wing of the Hitler Youth movement. With her blonde hair and blue eyes, Silke looks every inch the archetypal Aryan, but beneath the surface she is becoming increasingly disillusioned with the Nazis, especially when she is pressured to have a child as a way of passing on her perfect genes.

I wanted her to be someone who is sympathetic, someone who was appalled by the Nazis. When she meets Hana shes horrified by what she sees at the euthanasia centre and is drawn to help her. Silke is heroic in many ways, because she is unafraid to stand up to the Nazis and comes from a family that raised her to be a decent human being.

At the core of the page-turning murder mystery is the close bond that develops between Silke and Hana and their impetus to survive against the odds.

Having widened his knowledge around the Holocaust, has Clenott changed his thoughts at all on Germany society at that time?

My perspective definitely changed, he admits. They werent all Nazis, they werent all bad. Many good people suffered. We learn at school that wars have a start date and an end date, but in actual fact they dont. The Second World War didnt end with the Allies victory, because the suffering continued for many years after, particularly for women. The rapes, the violence, the threat of hunger and starvation, displacement and homelessness, the arrival of the Communists and so forth. It was a nightmare for millions that went on for years.

For Clenott, perhaps the biggest lesson he learned in writing his novel is that the terrifying events of the past on which his story is based could, he believes, absolutely happen all over again. Only recently we had neo-Nazis marching down the street saying, Jews will not replace us and Trump telling everyone those are nice people. We have to learn what could happen even in a democracy. It really could happen again, so its important that we have good people who come together and are brave enough to fight the darkest side of humanity.

The Unwanted by Peter Clenott is published by Level Best Books, 13.99

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What happened to Germans who didn't support Hitler? - Jewish News

An Indiana County man is among 18 Pennsylvanians who lost their lives during Operation Tidal Wave, which is regarded as the costliest Allied air raid, proportionally, of World War II.

According to the nonprofit Stories Behind The Stars organization, the U.S. aerial bombardment of nine oil refineries around Ploesti, Romania, cost the lives of 310 out of 1,751 American airmen and 53 out of 178 B-24 Liberator bombers.

Volunteers in the Stories Behind The Stars organization also said more than 100 additional crew members were captured, and 55 additional aircraft were damaged.

Among the 18 killed was Robert Paul Kaufman, who was born to Wilmer E. and Ruth (Beck) Kaufman on July 22, 1921, in Indiana.

His father was employed as a roller helper in a steel mill in Indiana. Wilmer and Ruth also had another son and daughter, but neither of them survived.

Wilmer Kaufman then died in the Veterans Hospital in Aspinwall at the age of 29 when his son was 7 years old.

Robert Kaufman and his widowed mother moved in with her sister in Pittsburgh until returning to Indiana to live with his paternal uncle and aunt. Kaufman graduated from Indiana High School in 1939.

On Nov. 11, 1941 Robert Kaufman married Stella Ann Zeke in Homer City.

According to Stories Behind The Stars, the marriage lasted only four months as Stella Kaufman contracted a blood infection and died in April 1942.

On Aug. 22, 1942, Kaufman enlisted in the Army Air Force.

He received his basic and advanced training at Tyndall Field, Fla., and his radio training at Salt Lake City, Utah. Kaufman then completed training to become a ball turret gunner on the B-24 Liberator heavy bomber.

He was assigned to the 566th Bombardment Squadron, 389th Bombardment Group, Ninth Air Force as a technical sergeant on the crew of the Sand Witch.

Operation Tidal Wave began when 178 B-24 Liberators from the 98th and 376th Bomb Groups in North Africa and the 44th, 93rd, and 389th Bomb Groups in England took off from airstrips in Benghazi, Libya, for the 1,200 miles flight to Hitlers gas station. Because of the missions extreme danger, it was flown only by volunteers.

Romania was one of the worlds largest crude oil refiners, eventually supplying the Third Reich with almost 60 percent of its needs. As a result, Ploesti was more heavily defended than Berlin in 1943.

Hitler guarded the refineries with 300 flak guns, hundreds of machine guns, a deadly flak train, concealed emplacements, 120 German fighters and 200 Romanian Air Force fighters.

Of the original armada of Liberators, 165 reached Ploesti in the early afternoon of Aug. 1, 1943. There was no pre-mission reconnaissance flown. To avoid radar detection, the raid was conducted at low altitude with bombs to be dropped from 200 to 800 feet.

The attack lasted roughly 30 minutes and the enemy was ready and waiting.

Stories Behind The Stars said Kaufman was killed in action when he ejected from his B-24 Liberator Sand Witch that crashed from incoming enemy flak and exploded while returning from its mission at Ploesti.

The date of Operation Tidal Wave was later referred to as Black Sunday.

Stories Behind The Stars said those involved in the mission estimated that Ploestis refining capacity was reduced by 40 percent but capacity was restored within weeks, and there was no curtailment of overall product output.

The Allies considered Operation Tidal Wave a strategic failure. It was the last low altitude bombing raid by Allied heavy bombers during the war.

Five Medals of Honor were awarded to crew members of Operation Tidal Wave, the most for any single air action in history. Fifty-six Distinguished Service Crosses were awarded to mission airmen.

Kaufman was the posthumous recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross, the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal and the Purple Heart.

Kaufman was buried in the Ardennes American Cemetery and Memorial in Ardennes, Belgium. He is memorialized at the Oakland Cemetery and Mausoleum of Indiana and is honored with his crew at Fort McPherson National Cemetery in Maxwell, Neb.

Stories Behind the Stars memorials are accessible for free on the internet and via smart phone app at gravesites and cenotaphs. The nonprofit organization is dedicated to honoring all 421,000 fallen Americans from World War II, including 31,000 from Pennsylvania. To volunteer or to get more information, contact Kathy Harmon at kharmon@storiesbehindthestars.org or visit http://www.storiesbehindthestars.org.

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Local man's sacrifice recalled 80 years after bombing of 'Hitler's gas ... - Indiana Gazette