Hindenburg

The Hindenburg is an airship that appears twice as the 1936 Olympic story moves from the American team’s departure to the opening ceremony in Berlin. Its night flight from New Jersey, marked by swastikas on its tail fins, is followed by a slow, flag-bearing circuit over the German capital: the same aircraft is at once a distant silhouette and part of the Games’ public display.

The Night Flight from New Jersey

As the American athletes settled into the Alpha Delta Phi Club for their last night’s sleep before leaving New York, the Hindenburg cast off from its mooring at Lakehurst, New Jersey. It lumbered out over the Atlantic, heading home to Germany. Against the night sky, its tail fins carried large black swastikas. The airship’s departure unfolded fifty miles south of the sleeping team, placing its marked silhouette in the same night as the Americans’ imminent journey, though the two parties were traveling in opposite directions.

The Airship over Berlin

On August 1, while Joe Rantz and the rest of the American team waited on the Maifeld at the Reichssportfeld for the opening of the Eleventh Olympiad, the Hindenburg appeared over central Berlin with an Olympic flag trailing behind it. It droned through a lazy loop, then turned and slowly approached the stadium. The athletes had already been standing in ordered ranks for more than two hours; light rain had spattered their straw hats, and the clouds were beginning to clear. As the airship came nearer, young German women in uniform moved among the waiting athletes, handing out cookies and orangeade. The Americans were tired of waiting, and some wandered away from their ranks to look at the stadium grounds.

A Presence in the Olympic Spectacle

The two appearances give the Hindenburg a small but distinct part in the passage from transatlantic travel to Olympic ceremony. At Lakehurst, its swastika-marked tail fins are visible against the darkness as it heads toward Germany. Over Berlin, the Olympic flag makes its passage part of the spectacle gathering at the stadium. The contrast is concrete rather than resolved: the airship bears the Nazi emblem in one scene and an Olympic flag in the other, while its slow approach accompanies the Americans’ long, uncomfortable wait for the ceremony to begin.