Latest / Revisionist History / Hitler’s Olympics, Part 5: The Amateur’s Hour

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Hitler’s Olympics, Part 5: The Amateur’s Hour · Revisionist History

0:06
Speaker 1: Pushkin.
0:13
Speaker 2: My name is Margaret Lambert. I was born a name
0:21
Speaker 2: that I hate, Gretel it's too Teutonic. I hate that
0:25
Speaker 2: name and Gretel Bergmann. And I was born i Bohn twelfth,
0:30
Speaker 2: nineteen fourteen in a very small town in the south
0:34
Speaker 2: of Germany. And it was a great life.
0:39
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety six, Margaret Lambert sat down for an
0:42
Speaker 3: interview with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. She was
0:46
Speaker 3: eighty two years old. She looked at least fifteen years younger.
0:50
Speaker 3: Being an Olympic level athlete will do that to you.
0:54
Speaker 3: She started out talking about her childhood in a little
0:56
Speaker 3: German town called Laupim.
0:59
Speaker 2: That was this club in that town. You just went there.
1:04
Speaker 2: I could go there and unescorted because it was close
1:08
Speaker 2: to my house. And I'm as happy as a lark.
1:11
Speaker 2: What did you like about sports? I just loved it,
1:15
Speaker 2: and you were good at it, and that was good
1:17
Speaker 2: at it. There was nothing different at that stage about
1:21
Speaker 2: being a Jewish athlete, none whatsoever.
1:25
Speaker 3: By the nineteen thirties, Lambert's sport of choice was the
1:28
Speaker 3: high jump, one of the more graceful Olympic sports. You've
1:31
Speaker 3: probably seen it. It's the one where the jumper runs
1:34
Speaker 3: up to an impossibly high bar and then rises effortlessly
1:37
Speaker 3: above it.
1:39
Speaker 2: Great success in it thanks to my long legs and
1:42
Speaker 2: my big feet, I suppose.
1:45
Speaker 3: In nineteen thirty three, the year Hitler came to power,
1:48
Speaker 3: she jumped a little higher than one and a half
1:50
Speaker 3: meters that's like four feet and nine inches. It was
1:53
Speaker 3: one of the highest jumps in the country. She would
1:57
Speaker 3: be a shoe in for the German Olympic team.
1:59
Speaker 2: Except once Hitler became chancellor. You started to worry a
2:04
Speaker 2: little bit, you know, But everybody thought this is going
2:08
Speaker 2: to blow over. He's not going to last.
2:12
Speaker 3: But it soon became very clear that this was not
2:15
Speaker 3: going to blow over. Four days after becoming chancellor, Hitler
2:19
Speaker 3: was already censoring the press. Things developed quickly from there,
2:23
Speaker 3: and then later that year Lambert got a letter from
2:26
Speaker 3: her sports club.
2:29
Speaker 2: You are no longer welcome here because you're Jewish, hil Hitler,
2:35
Speaker 2: and that was the end of that. So they just
2:37
Speaker 2: threw me out of the club and everybody commiserated, you know,
2:41
Speaker 2: what are we going to do? What's going to happen here?
2:43
Speaker 2: And it was a horrible life.
2:47
Speaker 3: But there was still one way that Margaret Lambert might
2:50
Speaker 3: have a chance to compete at the nineteen thirty six
2:53
Speaker 3: Olympic Games. The chance that had a lot to do
2:56
Speaker 3: with one man, Avery.
3:05
Speaker 1: Welcome to Revisionist History, my show about things overlooked and misunderstood.
3:10
Speaker 1: I'm Malcolm Gladwell. Today on the show, Ben the daf
3:14
Speaker 1: Haffrey and I are back with Avery Brundage, the apostle
3:18
Speaker 1: of Olympia, the kingpin of cognitive dissonance, the man who
3:22
Speaker 1: made the modern Olympic Games happen. Brundage believed above all
3:27
Speaker 1: in the values of the Olympic religion, amateurism, total equality
3:32
Speaker 1: of opportunity, the only true meritocracy. Brundage wanted to become
3:37
Speaker 1: an Olympic official, and by nineteen thirty four he had
3:40
Speaker 1: almost done it. He was up for a seat on
3:42
Speaker 1: the International Olympic Committee, something he must have wanted more
3:46
Speaker 1: than anything else. And then Adolf Hitler got in the way.
3:52
Speaker 1: So Avery Brundage had to make a choice to resolve
3:55
Speaker 1: the dissonance of whether his pure games could be held
3:59
Speaker 1: in an impure place. Today in the show Avery Brundage's
4:04
Speaker 1: very consequential.
4:05
Speaker 3: Resolution, things started changing for Margaret Lambert and the rest
4:14
Speaker 3: of Germany's Jewish population. As soon as Hitler came to.
4:17
Speaker 2: Power, you were banned for more public places. No theaters,
4:22
Speaker 2: no restaurants, no swimming pools. You couldn't go any place,
4:27
Speaker 2: and you could not associate with non Jewish people.
4:31
Speaker 3: Fitness was really important to the Nazi project, so important
4:35
Speaker 3: that eventually, in the elite Adolf Hitler schools, students would
4:38
Speaker 3: spend about as much and sometimes even more time playing
4:41
Speaker 3: sports than they did on academics. Sports had a military function.
4:47
Speaker 3: If Germany wanted to go to war again, a strong,
4:49
Speaker 3: healthy population was going to be really important. Strength also
4:53
Speaker 3: matters if you're trying to prove you're the master race,
4:56
Speaker 3: so just emphasizing the weakness of outsiders you could make
5:00
Speaker 3: week in part by denying them access to the same
5:03
Speaker 3: training the arians had.
5:05
Speaker 2: But sports, for me, of course, was the thing I
5:09
Speaker 2: wanted the most. Next to the Jewish school there was
5:14
Speaker 2: a yard, and we tried to straighten that out, but
5:17
Speaker 2: we had to fight the teacher's chickens, and they used
5:23
Speaker 2: that same place for their activities and it was not
5:26
Speaker 2: very appetizing, so we gave up on that pretty fast.
5:30
Speaker 3: While Margaret Lambert was chasing chickens around a bumpy field.
5:34
Speaker 3: The Nazis were realizing just how badly they wanted the
5:37
Speaker 3: Olympics for money and propaganda power are sure, but also
5:42
Speaker 3: I think for a much stranger reason they worshiped the
5:46
Speaker 3: ancient Greeks. When Gebels Hitler's fame Nazi minister of Propaganda,
5:51
Speaker 3: goes to Sparta in the nineteen thirties, he says that
5:54
Speaker 3: to him, it was just as if he were in
5:57
Speaker 3: a German city. It's why leading brand and of German
6:00
Speaker 3: sunscreen was called Sparta Crown. As the scholar Helen Rosch writes,
6:05
Speaker 3: Nazi fascism was seeking the rebirth of a past so
6:09
Speaker 3: mythic and so ancient that it predates the nation entirely.
6:15
Speaker 3: So what better way to prove your connection to that
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Speaker 3: mythic in ancient past than to host the Olympic Games.
6:23
Speaker 2: Adolf Hitler tried to use these Olympics as his propaganda
6:28
Speaker 2: vehicle to show the world how powerful he was, to
6:32
Speaker 2: show the world how unified a Germany was, And I
6:40
Speaker 2: think he tried to scare the world into not standing
6:46
Speaker 2: up against him somehow. And he wanted, of course, the
6:49
Speaker 2: United States and all the big nations to be there.
6:52
Speaker 3: So the crucial question for our purposes is, well, Hindsight's
6:56
Speaker 3: twenty twenty, how much of all this could Avery Brandage
6:59
Speaker 3: in the IOC have really known in nineteen thirty three.
7:03
Speaker 3: The answer is not everything, but enough.
7:07
Speaker 4: The news parade goes forward.
7:12
Speaker 3: I mean, this is a national radio broadcast in the
7:15
Speaker 3: US from March nineteen thirty three. That's just two months
7:19
Speaker 3: after Hitler became Chancellor.
7:21
Speaker 4: At prosodies not being enacted daily in Germany by the Nazis.
7:24
Speaker 4: Domed troops of Hitler, numerous Jewish citizens have been brutally
7:28
Speaker 4: taut us. Horrified citizens in America look on in astonishment
7:32
Speaker 4: as ruthless adult Hitler continues a savage campaign of anti
7:36
Speaker 4: submitting brutality.
7:38
Speaker 3: That summer, a New York Times journalist read a report
7:41
Speaker 3: on Germany put out by the American Jewish Committee and wrote,
7:45
Speaker 3: it is impossible to read it without carrying away the
7:48
Speaker 3: conviction that the Nazi leaders are guilty of something more
7:52
Speaker 3: than employing violence and terror. Meanwhile, the Consul General for
7:58
Speaker 3: the United States in Berlin was writing back home to
8:01
Speaker 3: the State Department about how Germans were pushing an anti
8:04
Speaker 3: Jewish sport agenda, how Berlin wasn't safe, and how even
8:08
Speaker 3: if the Nazis had told Charles Cheryl they'd give the
8:11
Speaker 3: Jews equal opportunity, they really weren't doing that. A movement
8:16
Speaker 3: for the US to boycott the thirty six Olympics began
8:19
Speaker 3: to gather momentum. Other countries were thinking about boycotting too.
8:23
Speaker 3: But by then Avery Brandage was the president of the
8:26
Speaker 3: US Olympic Committee, and he'd grown fond of saying things
8:30
Speaker 3: like this.
8:31
Speaker 5: All the participants are equal before the starter's pistol, and
8:35
Speaker 5: there are no social distinctions or family distinctions.
8:41
Speaker 3: That same year, he wrote to a colleague that the
8:44
Speaker 3: very foundation of the modern Olympic revival will be undermined
8:48
Speaker 3: if individual countries are allowed to restrict participation by reason
8:52
Speaker 3: of class, creed, or race. The very foundation. So by
8:58
Speaker 3: this logic, Mark A. Lambert that German Jewish high jumper
9:02
Speaker 3: should have been Avery Brandage's ideal athlete, right, unpaid, highly skilled,
9:07
Speaker 3: and obsessed with sport. If someone like her wasn't going
9:10
Speaker 3: to get a fair shot at the Nazi Olympics, then
9:13
Speaker 3: surely Avery Brundage would have to try and stop the
9:16
Speaker 3: Nazi Olympics. But first he had to figure out if
9:20
Speaker 3: the rumors about Germany were true. We'll be right back.
9:36
Speaker 5: I always start all my speeches with the statement that
9:41
Speaker 5: the Olympic moment today is the most important social force
9:47
Speaker 5: in the world. The word Olympic is the magic word.
9:52
Speaker 3: The year after Hitler came to power, Avery Brandage had
9:55
Speaker 3: almost made it to the International Olympic Committee, his ticket
9:59
Speaker 3: back to the most rarefied part of Olympia where he
10:02
Speaker 3: could rub shoulders with all the princes and aristocrats in
10:04
Speaker 3: that particular gentleman's club. And this is something I think
10:09
Speaker 3: Avery Brandage really wanted.
10:11
Speaker 1: Why does he want to hang out with these kind
10:14
Speaker 1: of Pots's.
10:17
Speaker 3: Malcolm and I once again psychoanalyzing Avery Brandage talking about
10:21
Speaker 3: a letter he wrote to the IOC. There's one moment
10:24
Speaker 3: that's quite telling in one of these when he's writing
10:26
Speaker 3: to Edstrom, one of the members of the IOC, and
10:29
Speaker 3: you see his typewritten note, anything may happen in these
10:33
Speaker 3: perilous days, and then he crosses out perilous and he
10:36
Speaker 3: handwrites in parlous, And there's a kind of like for Avery.
10:40
Speaker 3: Brundage is not saying the word parless like he's second
10:43
Speaker 3: guessing his own vocabulary to fit in with these guys.
10:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that is the world of the IOC, right.
10:49
Speaker 1: The IOC is a fundamently nineteenth century institution. It's just
10:53
Speaker 1: one count and baron after another kind of living out
10:56
Speaker 1: the glory days of there. And then Brundage comes along
11:00
Speaker 1: and he is an entirely different animal.
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Speaker 3: He's like, yes, I may have done all these things
11:05
Speaker 3: that you guys can never even dream of. I built
11:07
Speaker 3: these buildings, I made my own fortune. I trained in
11:09
Speaker 3: a ditch until I was good enough to compete in
11:12
Speaker 3: the Olympics. But I still think Princess rock and I'll
11:17
Speaker 3: go on the record as saying as much.
11:19
Speaker 5: And what kind of a world is this when it's
11:22
Speaker 5: come to the point where being a prince is a
11:24
Speaker 5: handicapped I ask.
11:25
Speaker 1: You, it's very gruteal MUCKs. I don't want to belong
11:29
Speaker 1: to a club that would happen.
11:32
Speaker 3: But like he knows that the only way he's going
11:34
Speaker 3: to get in that club is if he, as the
11:36
Speaker 3: president of the American Olympic Committee, brings the Americans to
11:40
Speaker 3: the Games.
11:41
Speaker 1: So why is that so?
11:43
Speaker 3: He he is at that point the most powerful man
11:46
Speaker 3: in amateur sport in America, so he really like he
11:49
Speaker 3: holds the cards, and the United States is both the
11:52
Speaker 3: most significant participant in the Olympics. They're going to bring
11:55
Speaker 3: a huge team. There's going to be a medals race
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Speaker 3: between them and the Germans that will be extremely dramatic
12:01
Speaker 3: and make for really good viewing. But also they have
12:04
Speaker 3: a lot of moral authority, and if the United States
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Speaker 3: substains from the Olympics, it majorly undermines the Olympic project.
12:11
Speaker 1: Has it been made explicit to Brundage that his future
12:15
Speaker 1: in the IOC is contingent on him bringing Americans to Berlin.
12:19
Speaker 3: I haven't seen anything that states it explicitly, but I
12:22
Speaker 3: think it is very clear that the members of the
12:25
Speaker 3: IOC want the Olympics to happen. They want them to
12:28
Speaker 3: happen in Germany. But as Americans learn more about what
12:32
Speaker 3: the Nazis were up to, as the last traces of
12:35
Speaker 3: Weimar Democracy vanished, the pressure in the US to boycott
12:39
Speaker 3: the Games got really intense, and avery Rundage was right
12:44
Speaker 3: in the middle of it. Publicly, he was pro going
12:47
Speaker 3: to the Games, but he expressed at least some concern
12:50
Speaker 3: about what was happening in Germany. And yet in his archives,
12:54
Speaker 3: I've found private letters to the IOC from as early
12:58
Speaker 3: as nineteen thirty three, and in them he frames the
13:02
Speaker 3: boycott campaign as a Jewish plot to sabotage the Olympics,
13:06
Speaker 3: and from the beginning he knew what crowd he was
13:09
Speaker 3: playing to the President of the International Committee, count Enri
13:13
Speaker 3: de bayer LeTour wrote to Avery Brundage saying they should
13:18
Speaker 3: work together hand in hand while we are handling this
13:20
Speaker 3: difficult question. I am not personally fond of Jews and
13:24
Speaker 3: of the Jewish influence, but I will not have them molested.
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Speaker 3: So that's a clue. But then there's also the matter
13:32
Speaker 3: of Brandage's lengthy correspondence with Siegfried Edstrom. Edstrom was sort
13:37
Speaker 3: of like the Swedish Avery Brundage, an engineer who'd made good.
13:40
Speaker 3: He was a member of the IOC. The two were friends.
13:44
Speaker 3: He's the one who wrote the letter we talked about
13:46
Speaker 3: in the last episode, suggesting that he nominate Brundage for
13:49
Speaker 3: a seat on the IOC, and Brundage of course responded enthusiastically.
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Speaker 3: But how did he begin that letter accepting this most
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Speaker 3: precious of all prizes. He didn't lead with his enthusiasm. Instead,
14:04
Speaker 3: he started by complaining about the boycotts. Undoubtedly, the International
14:09
Speaker 3: Olympic Committee will be swamped with protests from Jews and
14:13
Speaker 3: Jewish organizations from many different countries. I assume that the
14:17
Speaker 3: IOC will take the same stand as the American Olympic
14:20
Speaker 3: Committee will, to it that it is concerned with athletic
14:23
Speaker 3: affairs only and that it will not be drawn into political, religious,
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Speaker 3: sociological or racial controversies of any kind. Then he said
14:34
Speaker 3: how much he'd like to be on the IOC.
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Speaker 1: Inside, deep inside that kind of engineer, self made man's
14:42
Speaker 1: brain is this romantic streak. I want to be part
14:47
Speaker 1: of this grand you know, sporting amateur enterprise. And it's
14:53
Speaker 1: beautiful and it speaks to me, and it's you know,
14:55
Speaker 1: it's this pure thing in an impure world. I really
14:58
Speaker 1: do think that what how happens to him in nineteen
15:01
Speaker 1: twelve at the Olympics, that failure remains with him for
15:06
Speaker 1: the rest of his days. It's the thing that drives
15:10
Speaker 1: him to save in his own mind, save the Olympics.
15:14
Speaker 1: That is, he had failed once to live up to
15:18
Speaker 1: the Olympic spirit, and he's not going to fail again.
15:22
Speaker 3: But the concerns weren't going away. Hitler had already made
15:25
Speaker 3: himself a dictator, Germany was re arming, and war was
15:30
Speaker 3: once again on the horizon in Europe. So the American
15:33
Speaker 3: Olympic Committee decided they needed to send someone to Berlin
15:36
Speaker 3: to figure out for themselves what was going on. They chose,
15:40
Speaker 3: of course, Avery Brandage. On September twelfth, nineteen thirty four,
15:49
Speaker 3: two days after the Nuremberg rally that year, Avery Brandage
15:52
Speaker 3: arrived in eastern Germany. His plan was to meet with
15:56
Speaker 3: Jewish sports officials to suss out just how bad things
15:59
Speaker 3: had actually gotten. There was, however, one problem. He didn't
16:03
Speaker 3: speak German, so he did this whole trip with Nazi interpreters,
16:08
Speaker 3: including the head of all Nazi sports, the Reichschportfior, Hans
16:13
Speaker 3: von Schamer and Austin von Schamer. And In Austin was
16:17
Speaker 3: a rather severe looking Nazi official, a small man with thinning,
16:21
Speaker 3: slit hair and a paralyzed right hand. He was meant
16:25
Speaker 3: to assure every Brandage that the Nazis weren't discriminating against
16:28
Speaker 3: Jewish athletes, which maybe would have been easier had all
16:31
Speaker 3: the sports clubs in Nazi Germany not recently received a
16:34
Speaker 3: copy of a book called the Spirit of Sport in
16:38
Speaker 3: the National Socialist Ideology, which included passages like this, there
16:44
Speaker 3: is no room in our German land for Jewish sports
16:47
Speaker 3: leaders and their friends infested with the Talmud, for pacifists,
16:51
Speaker 3: political Catholics, pan Europeans and the rest. They are worse
16:55
Speaker 3: than cholera and syphilis, much worse than famine, drought and
16:59
Speaker 3: poison gas. Do we want them in the Olympic Games
17:03
Speaker 3: in Germany? Yes, we must have them. We think they
17:07
Speaker 3: are important for international reasons. There could not be better
17:11
Speaker 3: propaganda for Germany. What does it mean? It means they
17:16
Speaker 3: would pretend that Jews could be allowed at the Games
17:19
Speaker 3: in hopes that it would help the Nazis hoodwink the
17:21
Speaker 3: world about how they were actually treating the Jews. You'd
17:25
Speaker 3: think that Avery Brandage, champion of Olympic ideals like no
17:28
Speaker 3: politics in sport, would hate to see the Olympics used
17:31
Speaker 3: that way. Instead. Here's our second warning sign about this trip.
17:37
Speaker 3: Brundage quickly saw von Schamer and Austin as a friend.
17:42
Speaker 3: He spent six days exploring Germany with his various Nazi counterparts.
17:47
Speaker 3: I have to imagine that he also visited the Reichs Sportsfeld,
17:50
Speaker 3: the site of the giant new stadium being built for
17:53
Speaker 3: the Games. Brundage new construction, after all, it was his
17:56
Speaker 3: business in This stadium would be epic, big enough to
18:00
Speaker 3: fit more than one hundred thousand people.
18:03
Speaker 1: This is what I can't get over. Every one of
18:05
Speaker 1: the characters we've met so far have a meeting with
18:09
Speaker 1: the Nazis. It's like Dorothy Thompson goes, you know, Charles
18:14
Speaker 1: Cheryl has this big meeting with Hitler. Each makes this
18:17
Speaker 1: pilgrimage to the Promised Land.
18:19
Speaker 2: Right.
18:20
Speaker 1: We don't know in thirty four exactly what Brundage is thinking.
18:25
Speaker 1: He's playing his cards pretty close to his chest.
18:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, we actually not a lot is known about these meetings,
18:32
Speaker 3: but we did find an archival account from a dentist
18:37
Speaker 3: and Jewish sport official who is president at one of
18:40
Speaker 3: these meetings at the hotel Kaiserhoff in nineteen thirty four.
18:43
Speaker 3: We had it translated.
18:45
Speaker 1: Kaiserhoff. I would point out the same hotel where Dorothy
18:48
Speaker 1: Thompson interviewed Adolf Hitler. Oh Man, I missed that this
18:53
Speaker 1: is where it's all happening in Berlin. This is where
18:54
Speaker 1: you when you have to do your Nazi meet and greets,
18:58
Speaker 1: you go to the kaiser Off.
19:00
Speaker 3: The point is this was not friendly territory for the
19:03
Speaker 3: Jewish sports officials. The Hotel kaiser Off was a grand
19:09
Speaker 3: luxury hotel on Wilhelm Plotz, directly opposite the Chancellor's office.
19:13
Speaker 3: Remember Hitler once had an office there. There were marble floors,
19:17
Speaker 3: a dining room in a three story glass roofed atrium.
19:22
Speaker 3: Brundage is in the lap of luxury at the seat
19:24
Speaker 3: of Nazi power. Sigfried Edge from Brundage's IOC friend is
19:28
Speaker 3: there with them. They were joined by a Nazi German
19:31
Speaker 3: Organizing Committee member who was already a friend of Brundage's
19:34
Speaker 3: from the nineteen twelve Olympics. The Deputy reichs sportsfure was
19:38
Speaker 3: also there, dressed in full SS black boots and all.
19:45
Speaker 1: So what do we know about what happens at the meeting?
19:48
Speaker 3: So he begins to ask them a series of questions
19:50
Speaker 3: about Jewish participation in sport. So he asks, are Jewish
19:55
Speaker 3: boys allowed to play sport in large numbers? And the
19:59
Speaker 3: right sport funer says yeah, absolutely, and the Jewish leaders
20:04
Speaker 3: have to sit there and nod but then they say
20:07
Speaker 3: they make a caveat. They're like, well, you know, maybe
20:10
Speaker 3: they can play in large numbers, but there's a problem.
20:12
Speaker 3: We don't actually have any municipal sports fields. And Brandage
20:15
Speaker 3: immediately dismisses this and says, well, in the US, we
20:18
Speaker 3: don't have municipal sports fields either. We just have our
20:20
Speaker 3: own fields for each each athletic association. If you imagine
20:25
Speaker 3: this from the perspective of the Jewish sports leaders, it's
20:28
Speaker 3: a high wire act. Here sitting before them is Brandage
20:32
Speaker 3: the man best position to put pressure on the Nazis
20:35
Speaker 3: who are also seated at the table. But the Jewish
20:38
Speaker 3: sports leaders have no sense really a Brandage's position on
20:41
Speaker 3: all this. How could they?
20:43
Speaker 6: So?
20:44
Speaker 3: What do they do? They have to try and read
20:47
Speaker 3: between the lines of every question he's asking. Then he
20:51
Speaker 3: asks can Jews join the associations? They say yes, but
20:56
Speaker 3: only if they're Jewish associations, and he's like, well, in
20:59
Speaker 3: my club back in Chicago, we don't allow Jews either.
21:02
Speaker 3: Next question, they say like, oh, well, you know, we
21:06
Speaker 3: have our own sports fields, but they keep getting closed
21:09
Speaker 3: down because the Nazi party is shutting down our sports fields.
21:12
Speaker 3: They're breaking into our games. They're beating people up, and Brandage,
21:15
Speaker 3: according to this account of the meeting, which I have
21:18
Speaker 3: to believe is reliable, just seems kind of bored by
21:21
Speaker 3: this and doesn't ask follow up questions about this this report.
21:25
Speaker 3: But this dentist rites of Brandage is that it was
21:28
Speaker 3: clear that Brundage wanted to save the Olympics in Berlin.
21:32
Speaker 3: And there's one sort of glimmer of hope towards the
21:35
Speaker 3: end where Brandage asks if a Jewish athlete runs one
21:39
Speaker 3: hundred meters in ten point three seconds, would he then
21:42
Speaker 3: be able to participate in the Olympics? And the Jewish
21:46
Speaker 3: sport leaders reply, how is he supposed to do that
21:49
Speaker 3: without having had the opportunity to train the rex sport?
21:52
Speaker 3: Fewer says, we'll allow him to compete. Brandage sort of
21:54
Speaker 3: times and then says, but how can he compete if
21:56
Speaker 3: he doesn't have an opportunity to train the right sport?
21:58
Speaker 3: Fewer says, Oh, don't worry, will definitely have Jewish people
22:02
Speaker 3: on the teams, which is just kind of just like
22:04
Speaker 3: blanket assurance that everything has shown is nonsense. It's a whitewash, Yeah,
22:08
Speaker 3: it's a whitewash. And Brundage accepts this and moves on
22:12
Speaker 3: from the meeting and declares that there's no problem. Soon
22:16
Speaker 3: after that meeting, Avery Brendage heads back to the United
22:19
Speaker 3: States with his verdict all good. So the day after
22:24
Speaker 3: he gets back, the American Olympic Committee meets and votes
22:29
Speaker 3: unanimously to go to Berlin. Brundage stuck to his guns.
22:36
Speaker 6: Participation in these games must not be construed to be
22:40
Speaker 6: an endorsement of the policies or practices of the Nazi government.
22:45
Speaker 6: Measures have been adopted to ensure that there will be
22:48
Speaker 6: no violation of the fundamental principles of fair play and
22:51
Speaker 6: good sportsmanship, all the Olympic standards of freedom and equality
22:56
Speaker 6: to all.
22:58
Speaker 3: Later. Margaret Lambert Hewish high jumper had this to say
23:02
Speaker 3: about Avery Brandage's trip.
23:05
Speaker 2: He just let himself being lulled into some false security
23:10
Speaker 2: by these Nazis saying everything is fine, We're doing everything
23:14
Speaker 2: we would saying we said we would do. And he
23:16
Speaker 2: came back to the United States and said everything is
23:19
Speaker 2: fabulous over there, and we'll be going.
23:23
Speaker 3: We'll be right back. There are two ways of understanding
23:37
Speaker 3: what Avery Brandage did in nineteen thirty four. The first
23:40
Speaker 3: in a chain of his actions that would lead irrevocably
23:43
Speaker 3: to us participation in the Berlin Games. The most charitable
23:47
Speaker 3: interpretation is basically what Margaret Lambert, the high Jumper said,
23:51
Speaker 3: He let himself be lulled into some false security picture Brandage,
23:56
Speaker 3: the hoodwinked idealist who maybe just believed so firmly that
23:59
Speaker 3: the Olympics were a world apart from the universe of
24:01
Speaker 3: politics and money that it didn't matter if they were
24:04
Speaker 3: held in Nazi Germany. But another way to understand what
24:09
Speaker 3: he did is to consider that his visit to Germany,
24:12
Speaker 3: and his time with the Nazis, it may all have
24:15
Speaker 3: seemed a little familiar to him. Remember Dorothy Thompson's nineteen
24:21
Speaker 3: forty one essay Who Goes Nazi? The first time we
24:24
Speaker 3: read it, we recognized Charles Cheryl as her mister B.
24:28
Speaker 3: But Avery Brundage is the perfect incarnation of Thompson's mister C, do.
24:36
Speaker 1: You have in front of you? Her description of his
24:38
Speaker 1: kind of fascist?
24:40
Speaker 3: Here we go. Mister C is a brilliant and a
24:43
Speaker 3: bittered intellectual. He was a poor white, trash Southern boy,
24:47
Speaker 3: or in our case, Midwestern boy, a scholarship student at
24:52
Speaker 3: two universities, where he took all the scholastic honors, but
24:55
Speaker 3: was never invited to join a fraternity. He has always
24:58
Speaker 3: moved among important people, and all always been socially on
25:01
Speaker 3: the periphery. His colleagues have admired his brains and exploited them,
25:05
Speaker 3: but they have seldom invited him or his wife to dinner.
25:08
Speaker 3: He is a snob, loathing his own snobbery, that's brandage.
25:12
Speaker 3: He despises the men about him. He despises, for instance,
25:15
Speaker 3: mister b because he knows what he has had to
25:18
Speaker 3: achieve by relentless work. Men like Bee have won by
25:21
Speaker 3: knowing the right people. But his contempt is inextricably mingled
25:24
Speaker 3: with envy. Even more than he hates the class into
25:27
Speaker 3: which he has insecurely risen does he hate the people
25:29
Speaker 3: from whom he came. He hates his mother and his
25:32
Speaker 3: father for being his parents. He loaths everything that reminds
25:36
Speaker 3: him of his origins and his humiliations. He is bitterly
25:39
Speaker 3: anti Semitic because the social insecurity of the Jews reminds
25:43
Speaker 3: him of his own psychological insecurity hity. He is utterly
25:47
Speaker 3: erased from his nature and enjoy He has never known.
25:50
Speaker 3: He has an ambition bitter and burning. It is to
25:53
Speaker 3: rise to such an eminence that no one can ever
25:55
Speaker 3: again humiliate him. Not to rule, but to be the
25:58
Speaker 3: secret ruler. He is courteous, the commands a distant in
26:01
Speaker 3: cold respect, but he is a very dangerous man. Where
26:04
Speaker 3: he primitive and brutals, he would be a criminal, a murderer,
26:06
Speaker 3: but he is subtle and cruel. He would rise high
26:09
Speaker 3: in a Nazi regime. It would need men just like him,
26:12
Speaker 3: intellectual and ruthless.
26:13
Speaker 1: That's him, that is him.
26:17
Speaker 3: And this is the key part quote. But mister c
26:21
Speaker 3: is not a born Nazi. He is the product of
26:24
Speaker 3: a democracy hypocritically preaching social equality and practicing a carelessly
26:30
Speaker 3: brutal snobbery. Averybrndage may have thought he had found himself
26:35
Speaker 3: in Stockholm in nineteen twelve at the Olympics, but I
26:39
Speaker 3: think he really found himself in nineteen thirty four at
26:42
Speaker 3: the kaiser Off Hotel. Hundreds of thousands of people protested
26:49
Speaker 3: the decision to go to the games. Avery Brandage didn't care.
26:54
Speaker 3: He became even more convinced that the whole boycott was
26:58
Speaker 3: just a Jewish plot to use the Olympics for their
27:00
Speaker 3: their own political purposes. He kept a file of antisemitic propaganda.
27:05
Speaker 3: It's labeled in his archives Jewish problem. Then, really, it's
27:09
Speaker 3: not that surprising, because we know now from reading his
27:12
Speaker 3: letters that while he was questioning Jewish sports leaders in
27:16
Speaker 3: front of the Nazis at the Kaiserhoff, Averyrundage knew that
27:19
Speaker 3: he was also being assessed by Sigfried Edstrom, the IOC
27:23
Speaker 3: official sitting in the room with him, who had earlier
27:27
Speaker 3: that year sent this note to Brundage. The Nazis' opposition
27:32
Speaker 3: to the influence of Jews can only be understood if
27:34
Speaker 3: you live over in Germany. In some of the more
27:37
Speaker 3: important traits, the Jews governed the majority and stopped all
27:40
Speaker 3: others from coming in. In the hospitals, most of the
27:43
Speaker 3: doctors were Jews, and the Jews had preference in the
27:47
Speaker 3: law courts. It was the same Many of these Jews
27:50
Speaker 3: were of Polish or Russian origin, with minds entirely different
27:54
Speaker 3: from the Western mind. An alteration of these conditions were
27:58
Speaker 3: absolutely necessary if Germany should remain a white nation. The
28:04
Speaker 3: only objection I have is that they made the alterations
28:07
Speaker 3: so rashly and thereby caused a great deal of opposition.
28:12
Speaker 3: I am not an anti Semite myself. On the contrary,
28:15
Speaker 3: some of my best friends are Jews. But I try
28:18
Speaker 3: to look upon the question from both sides. That is
28:23
Speaker 3: why I have written this letter to you. It was
28:26
Speaker 3: like Avery Brundage have been handed a script. A year
28:30
Speaker 3: after that trip, Brundage wrote his own letter to the
28:33
Speaker 3: president of the IOC quote, the picture of conditions in
28:38
Speaker 3: Germany obtained from reading our newspapers is entirely different from
28:42
Speaker 3: that gained by an inspection of the country. The great
28:45
Speaker 3: Jewish merchant advertisers may have something to do with this.
28:49
Speaker 3: The public mind has been poisoned against Germany, and highly
28:52
Speaker 3: organized minorities are extremely effective on questions which are decided
28:56
Speaker 3: by popular vote. Nobody fools, Avery Brandage. Avery Brandage knew
29:03
Speaker 3: exactly what he was doing. He'd gone Nazi. Margaret Lambert,
29:12
Speaker 3: the High Jumper, had been contacted again by the Nazis
29:15
Speaker 3: a few months before Brandage's visit. According to that interview
29:18
Speaker 3: she did with the Holocaust Museum, the Nazis had begun
29:21
Speaker 3: threatening her family, trying to force her to try out
29:25
Speaker 3: for the games so they could show how open they
29:27
Speaker 3: were to having Jews on the team.
29:29
Speaker 2: To compete in the Olympic Games is trill of a lifetime,
29:33
Speaker 2: I mean, and it doesn't happen to everybody. On the
29:36
Speaker 2: other hand, I was so afraid supposing I am allowed
29:42
Speaker 2: to compete, Supposing I win, and I was convinced that
29:47
Speaker 2: I would win a medal and possibly the gold. Supposing
29:50
Speaker 2: I do this, What do I do? I'm going to
29:53
Speaker 2: stand on that podium and say, hile Hitler like all
29:57
Speaker 2: the others, and this to do for Jewish girl would
30:00
Speaker 2: never do. I was scarce, stiff, and this was going
30:05
Speaker 2: around in my head day and night, day and night,
30:07
Speaker 2: day and night. Well, what's going to happen? Am I
30:10
Speaker 2: going to compete? Am I not going to compete? How
30:13
Speaker 2: do I conduct myself if I do compete? I was
30:17
Speaker 2: so torn apout about it. I didn't know what to do.
30:22
Speaker 3: The Nazis put Margaret Lambert, who was unnamed gretel Bergmann
30:25
Speaker 3: on the provisional Olympic team trying out for the Games.
30:28
Speaker 3: Vonshaimer Undastan wrote about this in a quite unconvincing letter
30:32
Speaker 3: to Charles Cheryl. You will find from this that we
30:36
Speaker 3: work entirely in the spirit of the Olympic statutes as before,
30:40
Speaker 3: Miss Bergmann is being treated like all Olympic candidates in
30:44
Speaker 3: spite of being a Jewish, in spite of being a Jewish,
30:47
Speaker 3: pretty much covers it. The invitation was nonsense, but the
30:52
Speaker 3: IOC knew that she had poor facilities to train in I.
30:56
Speaker 2: Still jew was not allowed to use any of this.
31:00
Speaker 3: But you could frame it as a kind of classic
31:02
Speaker 3: Olympic story, right, like poor young Avery Brandage practicing with
31:06
Speaker 3: his own discus in an abandoned lot, and Lambert didn't
31:09
Speaker 3: even have anybody to compete against to make her sharper.
31:12
Speaker 2: You don't have any competition. It's you have to only
31:15
Speaker 2: fight yourself.
31:17
Speaker 3: She made the nazison to her opponent. She pushed herself
31:20
Speaker 3: to beat an idea that was so much bigger than her,
31:23
Speaker 3: and at a meat just before the games.
31:26
Speaker 2: It worked, but it made me better because I was
31:30
Speaker 2: so full of rage. The madder I got, the better
31:33
Speaker 2: I jumped. When I was so mad that I equaled
31:36
Speaker 2: the German record. I must have cleared it by fifteen
31:40
Speaker 2: inches at the time.
31:41
Speaker 3: She left that meet and went home, waiting to hear
31:44
Speaker 3: whether she'd made the team, and wondering what would happen
31:47
Speaker 3: if she had.
31:48
Speaker 2: I looked for the mail every day. What's going to happen,
31:51
Speaker 2: you know? And I was really scared. An't they going
31:53
Speaker 2: to break my leg? What they gonna do to to
31:55
Speaker 2: eliminate me? But it was very simple. One day letter
32:00
Speaker 2: came and it said, in view of the fact that
32:04
Speaker 2: you have been doing very poorly lately, we did not
32:07
Speaker 2: select you for the Olympic team highlight. And that was
32:12
Speaker 2: the end of it.
32:16
Speaker 3: To be clear, Margaret Lambert had not been doing poorly.
32:20
Speaker 3: The Nazis were just keeping her off the team. I mean,
32:23
Speaker 3: just think about how it would have looked to have
32:25
Speaker 3: a Jewish woman win gold at the Nazi Olympics.
32:29
Speaker 2: And I sat I remember me sitting outside in the
32:32
Speaker 2: stoop and I got this letter, and I must have
32:36
Speaker 2: used every profanity I knew, and I knew a lot
32:40
Speaker 2: of them. I think that was the first time I
32:45
Speaker 2: really realized that my candidacy for as an Olympic athlete
32:53
Speaker 2: was really all a shame I was. It was just
32:55
Speaker 2: something that the Germans did to to fool the whole world.
33:03
Speaker 3: Of course, Avery Brundage hadn't needed fooling. I do believe
33:07
Speaker 3: that he loved the idea of the Olympics. Amateurism and
33:11
Speaker 3: pure competition, using sports to prove your worth a kind
33:15
Speaker 3: of utopia, protected from the corruption of the real world.
33:19
Speaker 3: But Margaret Lambert should have been his reality check. If
33:23
Speaker 3: someone like her couldn't win in Nazi Germany, that should
33:26
Speaker 3: have made him sit up and pay attention. Instead, in
33:30
Speaker 3: that room at the kaiser Off Hotel when the worst
33:33
Speaker 3: had come out, he just seemed bored. It's that indifference
33:39
Speaker 3: that got him his seat on the International Olympic Committee
33:43
Speaker 3: just a month before the Berlin Games. He took it
33:47
Speaker 3: from the only IOC member who'd resisted having the Games
33:50
Speaker 3: in Nazi Germany, who'd written in his last months on
33:54
Speaker 3: the IOC, if our committee permits the Games to be
33:58
Speaker 3: held in Nazi Germany, there will be nothing left to
34:02
Speaker 3: distinguish it from the Nazi ideal. He was forced to resign.
34:11
Speaker 3: On August first, nineteen thirty six, the Olympic torch was
34:14
Speaker 3: carried by relay for the first time ever from Olympia
34:17
Speaker 3: in Greece all the way to the Reichschwartzfeld in Berlin.
34:21
Speaker 3: When it got to the stadium, Avery Brandage was in
34:24
Speaker 3: the audience. The Olympic bell inscribed with the words I
34:28
Speaker 3: call the youth of the world rang out. Meanwhile, Margaret
34:32
Speaker 3: Lambert was applying for a visa that would allow her
34:35
Speaker 3: to leave Germany. She would never again live in her
34:38
Speaker 3: home country. Brundage had what he always wanted, a seat
34:43
Speaker 3: in the ruling class of his perfect Olympia, just in
34:47
Speaker 3: time to watch Adolf Hitler give the opening speech at
34:50
Speaker 3: the Olympic Games.
34:54
Speaker 4: To speed it from fire, Noel tide rag.
35:05
Speaker 2: Hit I announcing it opened.
35:07
Speaker 6: Now that old kiddy him and I hope pad of
35:09
Speaker 6: ragged the right Arm.
35:22
Speaker 3: Revisionist History is produced by me Bennattaphaffrey, Tolly Emlin, and
35:26
Speaker 3: Nina Bird Lawrence. Our editor is Sarah Nix. Fact checking
35:30
Speaker 3: by Arthur Gomberts and J. L. Goldfine. Original scoring by
35:34
Speaker 3: Luis Gara, Mastering by FLAONN Williams, Sarah Roguer, and Jake Gorsky.
35:39
Speaker 3: Engineering by Nina Bird Lawrence. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith.
35:45
Speaker 3: Special thanks on this episode to Karen schakerji to the
35:48
Speaker 3: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum into Alexander Wells for his
35:52
Speaker 3: translation of the Kaiserhoff meeting. I'm ben Nataphaffree
36:06
Speaker 2: S