1936 Summer Olympics torch relay

[1] Carl Diem used the idea of the torch relay devised for the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin by a Jewish archaeologist and sports official, Alfred Schiff.

[2] Diem and the organizing team realized that there would need to be very detailed plans in order to successfully complete the relay to a standard that would satisfy both themselves and the ruling Third Reich.

[3] Adolf Hitler saw the link with the ancient Games as the perfect way to illustrate his belief that classical Greece was an Aryan forerunner of the modern German Reich.

[10] It was designed with two fuses to help it cope with different weather conditions and could stay alight for ten minutes, longer than each section of the route.

[4] The National Olympic Committees (NOCs) of the countries along the route all agreed to support the relay which would pass through Greece, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria, and Czechoslovakia and then Germany.

[2] In Austria, a country that would be annexed into the Third Reich less than two years after the relay, the torch was met by major pro-Nazi public demonstrations.

Much of the route was split into kilometre-long sections and it was anticipated that each runner would traverse that distance in five minutes, though some leeway was given to allow for difficult terrain and sparsely populated areas.

Fritz Schilgen, a three time 1500m champion, was suggested by former German athletics president Karl Ritter von Halt as the final runner.