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Hitler took considerable personal interest in the ritual, and pumped funds into its promotion," Perrottet said. "The Nazi propaganda machine covered the torch relay slavishly, broadcast radio reports from every step of the route, and filled the Games with the iconography of ancient Greek athletics

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The Olympic rings, another universally recognized symbol of the Games since they made their debut in 1920 at Antwerp, Belgium, have a Nazi connection.

They were designed in 1913 by the French baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the International Olympic Committee and father of the modern Olympic movement, for a 1914 World Olympic Congress in Paris.

They were supposed to symbolize the first five Olympics, but the congress disbanded when Archduke Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo, resulting in World War I.

Riefenstahl, the filmmaker who also chronicled Hitler's rise to power, had the rings carved into a stone altar at the ancient Greek city of Delphi, spawning the myth that they were a symbol dating back more than two millennia.

With Hitler's influence, the rings became part of the Nazi pageantry at Berlin, and they have come to symbolize the Olympics.

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Originally posted by bedstor:

So the Modern IOC (and their Politics) is a carry on of the Nazi Movement?