he modern convention of moving the Olympic Flame via a relay system from Olympia to the Olympic venue began with the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany. The relay, captured in Leni Riefenstahl's film, "Olympia", was part of the Nazi propaganda machine's attempt to add myth and mystique to Adolf Hitler's regime. 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.[1]
One of my favorite pictures is Jesse Owens receiving his gold medal at the 36 Olympics, standing above the German and Japanese. He was the man.