Berlin in the summer of 1936 becomes the stage for the most elaborate propaganda exercise the Olympics had ever hosted. The film traces how Hitler's regime, after initially dismissing the Games, seized on them to project an image of a modern, tolerant Germany to the world, quietly suspending public persecution of Jewish citizens and papering over anti-Jewish signage until the last foreign visitor left. Archival footage shows the vast stadium built for the occasion, Leni Riefenstahl's cameras capturing the spectacle for her film Olympia, and Jesse Owens winning four gold medals in front of the regime that had built the Games to prove Aryan superiority. Historians and interviewees walk through the diplomatic pressure that nearly produced an American boycott, the athletes caught between sport and politics, and what happened to the persecution the Games had only paused once the flags came down and the cameras left Berlin.