Latest / Ridiculous History / Why British Soccer Players Saluted the Nazis

Transcript

Why British Soccer Players Saluted the Nazis · Ridiculous History

0:23
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show, ladies and gentlemen. We're going to
0:26
Speaker 1: start today's episode with a look at something that happened
0:30
Speaker 1: very recently in American history, and that is the controversy
0:35
Speaker 1: taking place in American football, not what the rest of
0:38
Speaker 1: the world calls football, as the controversy taking place in
0:41
Speaker 1: American football regarding players taking a knee in protest during
0:46
Speaker 1: the national anthem. I refuse, wait, are you supposed to
0:49
Speaker 1: take any You're you know, you're not supposed to take
0:51
Speaker 1: a knee. It's disrespectful to take in me. In fact,
0:54
Speaker 1: the NFL, I believe, just came out with new rules
0:58
Speaker 1: that UM require players contractually to stand for the national anthem.
1:04
Speaker 1: But as you say, Ben, yes, it was an act
1:06
Speaker 1: of defiance UM, a way of standing up or taking
1:10
Speaker 1: a knee rather for their particular cause. Is that okay?
1:14
Speaker 1: Casey was great. Oh, and that's our super producer, Casey Pegram,
1:18
Speaker 1: who was in fact on the case. And I'm Ben
1:22
Speaker 1: and you are oh, and that makes this ridiculous history. Yeah,
1:27
Speaker 1: we are not the It's no secret that you and
1:29
Speaker 1: I are not die hard NFL fans, But like many
1:34
Speaker 1: people in this country and in other countries, we were
1:38
Speaker 1: fascinated by this story, by this process of protest and
1:43
Speaker 1: counter protest and nol As you pointed out just a
1:47
Speaker 1: second ago, the NFL did in May of eighteen ban
1:52
Speaker 1: the practice of taking a knee. Although this is a
1:56
Speaker 1: tremendously controversial ban. Yeah, I think it's being appealed or
2:00
Speaker 1: picketed or you know, protested in some way by the union,
2:04
Speaker 1: the players union, I believe, because come on, man, like,
2:07
Speaker 1: if you can't we can't protest as a multi millionaire
2:11
Speaker 1: overpaid sports figure, you know, what does that say for
2:14
Speaker 1: the rest of us? And what does it say about
2:16
Speaker 1: free speech as well? Exactly? Um, but we're talking about, uh,
2:21
Speaker 1: not this exactly. Kind of it's weird that it's part
2:25
Speaker 1: of the story, but we're talking about kind of the
2:27
Speaker 1: opposite of this, which is using sports as propaganda. Right.
2:32
Speaker 1: I would say that we're talking about a a larger
2:35
Speaker 1: context because this specific event in modern history provides an
2:41
Speaker 1: excellent point of comparison to the earlier events that I
2:46
Speaker 1: think surprised both of us when we began digging into this,
2:50
Speaker 1: and sporting events on an international scale have long functioned
2:55
Speaker 1: as acts of propaganda, you know, iconic moments in history
2:59
Speaker 1: occurred at Thelympics, for instance, right, absolutely, And what is
3:02
Speaker 1: the Olympics if not a chance for various countries to
3:06
Speaker 1: achieve perhaps not global dominance and hegemony, but at least
3:11
Speaker 1: dominance on the field of sports foe battle. Yeah. Yeah,
3:15
Speaker 1: we see it in the World Cup, we see it
3:17
Speaker 1: in the World Series, we see it in the Super Bowl.
3:20
Speaker 1: And today's episode involves a tremendously important political event that
3:28
Speaker 1: took place on a soccer field. We have to go
3:32
Speaker 1: into some political context, I think first, right, I think
3:36
Speaker 1: we do, Ben, It's true. Um, so we're talking about Germany,
3:40
Speaker 1: right And and the second half of the nineteen thirties, Um,
3:45
Speaker 1: the Nazi Party that had taken over Germany was really, really,
3:50
Speaker 1: really becoming quite aggressive, weren't they been. In nineteen thirty five,
3:55
Speaker 1: they publicly announced that they were going to rearm their military,
3:59
Speaker 1: which flew in the face of a little something called
4:01
Speaker 1: the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War One. Isn't
4:05
Speaker 1: that right? Then? That is correct? Null. And We've talked
4:09
Speaker 1: a little bit in the past about the enormous cost
4:12
Speaker 1: Germany bore as a result of World War One and
4:15
Speaker 1: has had dangerous effects on their economy. And it's one
4:20
Speaker 1: of the factors that allowed the very aggressive, expansionist Nazi
4:28
Speaker 1: regime to come into power. And at the time, other people,
4:34
Speaker 1: other countries and heads of state couldn't agree on what
4:38
Speaker 1: the proper unified response to this aggressive German government should be.
4:44
Speaker 1: The question was, should we contain the Nazi Party and Germany,
4:50
Speaker 1: should we openly combat them, or should we attempt to,
4:54
Speaker 1: you know, appease the make it make nice. Let's let's
4:57
Speaker 1: let's run with that word band. Let's let's make a
4:59
Speaker 1: whole set them out of this policy. We'll call it appeasement.
5:03
Speaker 1: We go about that. But you can understand why. I mean,
5:08
Speaker 1: people were shell shocked from the havoc that was wreaked
5:12
Speaker 1: by World War One all across Europe. I mean, that
5:15
Speaker 1: was no fun. It was utter devastation many parts of
5:19
Speaker 1: the country, and the Treaty of Versailles, even the Allies
5:23
Speaker 1: kind of realized people on the ground, at least from
5:25
Speaker 1: what I've read that the Treaty of Versailles wasn't particularly
5:29
Speaker 1: fair to a lot of the countries that involved, specially Germany,
5:33
Speaker 1: because under the treaty they were limited to having a
5:36
Speaker 1: hundred thousand strong military. But again in thirty five, after
5:42
Speaker 1: they've been kind of amassing weaponry all these years, they
5:45
Speaker 1: got the confidence under Hitler to come out and say, Yo,
5:49
Speaker 1: we are building up our military again. Boo on your treaty.
5:54
Speaker 1: We could care less, and they escalated that thirty six
5:58
Speaker 1: they occupied the Rhineland, which is an area a region
6:02
Speaker 1: of small region in the middle of the country, also
6:05
Speaker 1: totally against the Treaty of Versailles. Yes, and this appeasement
6:10
Speaker 1: policy sound may sound strange to us today because we
6:14
Speaker 1: have the benefit of knowing what happened after this policy
6:19
Speaker 1: was in place. But the appeasement policy is often pointed
6:22
Speaker 1: out as the worst decision that Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain
6:26
Speaker 1: ever made. But there were other British prime ministers who
6:29
Speaker 1: followed the same policy, including Ramsay McDonald and Stanley Baldwin.
6:34
Speaker 1: This wasn't just um made for Germany. It also was
6:38
Speaker 1: applied to uh Italy, which was under the control of
6:41
Speaker 1: a fascist regime at that and it lasted from nineteen
6:44
Speaker 1: thirty five to nineteen thirty nine. Our story today takes
6:51
Speaker 1: place during that time. It takes place in nineteen thirty
6:55
Speaker 1: eight at a soccer game. It's true and just to backtrack,
6:58
Speaker 1: ever so slightly, to go back into appeasement. Every time
7:02
Speaker 1: the Nazis did these kind of brash moves like occupying
7:04
Speaker 1: the Rhineland. In the year of our story, they annexed
7:08
Speaker 1: Austria UM, and they actually like did a coup data
7:12
Speaker 1: within their not already pretty strong Nazi party within Austria,
7:15
Speaker 1: and Austria being Hitler's boyhood home. Right, We're going to
7:19
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time in this episode going from
7:23
Speaker 1: the specific events to the larger context. So before we
7:28
Speaker 1: get to the famous event that occurred in May May four,
7:35
Speaker 1: let's go back earlier in the year to April, where
7:39
Speaker 1: we saw another precedent set an example of protests through sport. Yeah,
7:45
Speaker 1: the one we kind of alluded to at the top
7:47
Speaker 1: of the show, because, like I said a minute ago,
7:49
Speaker 1: it was in nineteen thirty eight that Germany really UH
7:53
Speaker 1: went hard in the paint and totally annexed Austria, as
7:57
Speaker 1: I said, over to the government in UM an effort
8:00
Speaker 1: to combine the two countries UH in an event they
8:04
Speaker 1: referred to as the a Schloss, and UM Austria had
8:09
Speaker 1: a pretty balling pun totally intended UH soccer team football
8:15
Speaker 1: team headed up by a guy by the name of
8:19
Speaker 1: Matteias Sindler or Schindler I've heard, I'm gonna I think
8:23
Speaker 1: it's similar. There's no sc h s I M d
8:25
Speaker 1: e l a r um. And then he had a
8:27
Speaker 1: really cool nickname, didn't name, Yeah, it was the Paperman
8:31
Speaker 1: or paper in uh sindelar s I n d e
8:35
Speaker 1: l a r was known as the Mozart of football
8:39
Speaker 1: as well. Saw that one. He played as the center
8:42
Speaker 1: forward for the Austria national team that was known as
8:46
Speaker 1: the Wonder team, and he captained the nineteen thirty four
8:49
Speaker 1: World Cup. This guy is a football superstar. And this
8:54
Speaker 1: game that occurs on April third and nineteen thirty eight
8:58
Speaker 1: was meant to celebrate what Germany was calling. Get this,
9:02
Speaker 1: Austria's coming home to the Reich. Come on home to
9:05
Speaker 1: the Reich, Come on home to the Reich. Yeah yeah,
9:08
Speaker 1: but here's a problem. Simdler hated the Nazis predictably. Yeah,
9:15
Speaker 1: I mean they totally came into his his country, took
9:18
Speaker 1: it over, tried to change everything about his way of life,
9:22
Speaker 1: including trying to smush his football club in with the
9:28
Speaker 1: German football club. That sucked by the way Germany was
9:31
Speaker 1: not good at at a Can I call it soccer?
9:34
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna call it soccer. Yeah, just call it
9:35
Speaker 1: soccer all. As a matter of fact, we have a
9:38
Speaker 1: fun firebomb to throw for you ridiculous historians. If you
9:42
Speaker 1: were football or soccer fan, actual Molotov cocktail, it might
9:47
Speaker 1: be a bit ince injury for some people. I found
9:50
Speaker 1: this article in The Atlantic called why Americans called soccer
9:53
Speaker 1: soccer by Uri Friedman. It's a British term, us term,
9:58
Speaker 1: and we hear in the States picked it up from England.
10:02
Speaker 1: The word soccer originated in England, fell into disused there
10:05
Speaker 1: and became dominant in the States. And there are some
10:09
Speaker 1: people who have studied this who found. What they did
10:13
Speaker 1: is they looked at the frequency with which the words
10:16
Speaker 1: football and soccer appeared in American and British news outlets
10:20
Speaker 1: dating back to nineteen hundred. Soccer was a recognized term
10:26
Speaker 1: for the game we're describing for the first half of
10:29
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, but it wasn't widely used until after
10:32
Speaker 1: World War Two, when it became interchangeable with the phrase
10:37
Speaker 1: football and sometimes used together soccer football. Okay, but I'm
10:41
Speaker 1: an American. I'm an American I'm proud of it, So
10:44
Speaker 1: I call hitting that that ball? What what would you
10:46
Speaker 1: hit your foot with the ball game? I'm gonna call
10:48
Speaker 1: it soccer, so just just as not to confuse, you know,
10:52
Speaker 1: because I don't want to American football. That sounds ridiculous,
10:55
Speaker 1: so I had to say it in a British acts
10:57
Speaker 1: exactly say American football, although the fact the Brits have
11:01
Speaker 1: been dominant in the sport since the very beginning. I
11:04
Speaker 1: want to sew this up real quick because I'm sure
11:07
Speaker 1: this is going to interest several of you ridiculous historians,
11:11
Speaker 1: especially if you've had an argument with one of your
11:13
Speaker 1: friends across the pond about this. It traces back to
11:17
Speaker 1: World War Two. Most likely American troops stationed in the
11:21
Speaker 1: UK during the war came back and started using that phrase,
11:25
Speaker 1: and that led to a backlash against the word in Britain.
11:30
Speaker 1: And now this word has completely immigrated to the US.
11:35
Speaker 1: Isn't that funny? If you still haven't given me the automology,
11:37
Speaker 1: it's just like it said about the socks, the knee socks,
11:39
Speaker 1: the fact that you're socking the ball around with your
11:41
Speaker 1: foots it's a shortening of association footballer that's stupid. So soccer,
11:50
Speaker 1: that's that's the worst possible. But you can't. You can't
11:54
Speaker 1: go in and expect a language to conform to what
11:57
Speaker 1: you as an individual. I'm not mad at you, then,
11:59
Speaker 1: I didn't mean that to come off like I was
12:00
Speaker 1: your fault that the the the origin of soccer is
12:03
Speaker 1: so dull. But I'm disappointed. I think it's fascinating. It
12:06
Speaker 1: is fascinating, Ben, you know what else is fascinating. Back
12:08
Speaker 1: to Sindler, let's do it um so again, super salty
12:13
Speaker 1: about the Nazis coming in and invading his home turf
12:16
Speaker 1: and trying to you know, jam up his his soccer club.
12:21
Speaker 1: Um and so they this this game in question in
12:25
Speaker 1: what do we say, April of nineteen April third, nineteen
12:29
Speaker 1: thirty eight. That's right, it's meant to be, on paper,
12:33
Speaker 1: at least, a celebration of the historical legacy of the
12:37
Speaker 1: Austrian Soccer club and the last match that the team
12:42
Speaker 1: would have as an independent Austrian team before it gets
12:45
Speaker 1: smushed in with the uh far inferior German club. So
12:51
Speaker 1: so they began protesting the moment they hit the field
12:54
Speaker 1: kind of well, the what I what I had seen
12:57
Speaker 1: in an amazing documentary from the BBC called Fascism and Football,
13:02
Speaker 1: was that it was very clear that the Austrians had
13:07
Speaker 1: been told to lose. Yeah, to throw the game, throw
13:11
Speaker 1: the match to show the symbolic or propagandistic importance of
13:18
Speaker 1: aligning with Germany. That's right. And and and just to one
13:21
Speaker 1: quick aside, one quote that I think is so amazing
13:23
Speaker 1: from this documentary Fascism in Football Orther. You can find
13:26
Speaker 1: the whole thing on YouTube and it's just great. Is
13:29
Speaker 1: the idea that um sports were such a powerful tool
13:33
Speaker 1: for propaganda because when you win, you win, and you
13:37
Speaker 1: can't like, no one can accuse you of lying. Because
13:39
Speaker 1: if you win an are dominant in a sport, then
13:42
Speaker 1: that's just before everyone's very eyes. You are the clear,
13:45
Speaker 1: you're the winner. You you won and you played by
13:48
Speaker 1: the rules. It's what we today would refer to as optics.
13:51
Speaker 1: Optics are And so the star player of Austria's team Sindelar,
13:57
Speaker 1: that's right. It refuses to go along with this plan.
14:01
Speaker 1: He says, I am not going to pay obeesience to
14:06
Speaker 1: this invading power. And furthermore, I'm not going to cheapen
14:11
Speaker 1: the most important thing in my life when the funny
14:13
Speaker 1: thing is too like, yes, you're absolutely right, he definitely
14:15
Speaker 1: did not go along with it, and that he did
14:16
Speaker 1: not look like he was trying very hard. He made
14:19
Speaker 1: it very clear that he was just kind of farting along,
14:22
Speaker 1: very lackluster lee right. Um. I think he was like
14:25
Speaker 1: shaking his head and disdain kind of and refused to
14:28
Speaker 1: wear the uniforms. They were supposed to wear their traditional
14:31
Speaker 1: white and black. They replaced it with uncendolars orders. More
14:36
Speaker 1: or less, the Austrians played in red white red outfits
14:41
Speaker 1: the national flags colors and uh and yeah, like you're saying,
14:47
Speaker 1: the audience knew something was up because it seemed like
14:50
Speaker 1: they just weren't trying. They were just farting around until
14:53
Speaker 1: what the last twenty minutes Yeah, and then uh and
14:56
Speaker 1: then Simdler the paperman um scored one of two goals
15:02
Speaker 1: and Karl Sesta got the second one, who I think
15:04
Speaker 1: was his bestie. I think I think they were they
15:06
Speaker 1: were like really really close, and yeah, they totally totally humiliated.
15:14
Speaker 1: The Nazis apparently kind of did one of those like
15:16
Speaker 1: end zone kind of cocky yeh, cock of the walk
15:19
Speaker 1: kind of dances right in front of like, can you
15:21
Speaker 1: imagine the scene ben the stands full of Nazi officials,
15:26
Speaker 1: high senior Nazi dignitaries, and they celebrated extravagantly. They owned
15:33
Speaker 1: the moment because they really had publicly humiliated these officials.
15:39
Speaker 1: And it's we don't have solid historical proof of this,
15:43
Speaker 1: so this is entirely speculation on my part. But I
15:46
Speaker 1: would not be surprised if some of those pro Nazi forces,
15:50
Speaker 1: knowing in theory the outcome of the game, had decided
15:53
Speaker 1: to gamble on it a bit. So they were out money,
15:56
Speaker 1: but more importantly, they were out public credibility, oh app solutely.
16:00
Speaker 1: And here's the thing, as you might imagine, similar was
16:05
Speaker 1: made persona non grata at that point. He was declared
16:09
Speaker 1: in their internal Gestapo memos on him that declared him
16:13
Speaker 1: pro Jewish among other uh death sentence were they distinctions
16:19
Speaker 1: like a social democrat that's it's uh. He about it.
16:24
Speaker 1: Within the year or within a year after these events,
16:28
Speaker 1: he was dead at the age of thirty five under
16:32
Speaker 1: the most suspicious circumstances. I think he had been out
16:35
Speaker 1: partying that night and gambling in a coffee shop that
16:38
Speaker 1: he was a part owner of, or the guy that
16:41
Speaker 1: talks about his buddy in the documentary, referred to it
16:43
Speaker 1: as his coffee shop. I'm not sure if that was
16:45
Speaker 1: just a translation thing or if it was just like
16:47
Speaker 1: the place where they would all hang out. But they
16:49
Speaker 1: were gambling, playing cards. A lot of money was on
16:51
Speaker 1: the table and a lot of drinking. And then he
16:54
Speaker 1: went back with his girlfriend to her apartment, and you know, YadA, YadA, YadA.
17:00
Speaker 1: One thing led to another. They go to sleep and
17:02
Speaker 1: they never wake up because they died of carbon Actually,
17:05
Speaker 1: she ended up in a coma that she never recovered from,
17:09
Speaker 1: and he died in his sleep of carbon monoxide poisoning,
17:12
Speaker 1: which was recorded as an accident. Because super cool. Yeah,
17:17
Speaker 1: because according to Egon Old Brick, lifelong friend of Sindelar,
17:22
Speaker 1: he's the guy I was talking about that. I was
17:24
Speaker 1: talking about the gambling night. Yeah yeah, he uh, he
17:27
Speaker 1: says in the documentary, And then also in an article
17:30
Speaker 1: called Football Fascism in England's Nazi Salute on the BBC
17:33
Speaker 1: by Jonathan Duffy, he says that the truth of the
17:37
Speaker 1: story was that a local official was bribed to record
17:41
Speaker 1: Sindelar's death as an accident, ensuring that he would receive
17:46
Speaker 1: a state funeral, because when we have a great quote
17:50
Speaker 1: from Old Brick about this, because Nazis had particular rules
17:54
Speaker 1: about this, that's right, this is the quote. According to
17:56
Speaker 1: Nazi rules, a person who had been murdered or who
17:59
Speaker 1: has committed Sue's side cannot be given a grave of honor.
18:02
Speaker 1: So we had to do something to ensure that the
18:04
Speaker 1: criminal element involved in his death was removed. Um, that's
18:09
Speaker 1: wild man, and it continued escalating. Yeah, the Germans were
18:13
Speaker 1: very very serious about the value of propaganda, and from
18:18
Speaker 1: their perspective, this sort of insolence could not stand. So
18:24
Speaker 1: it's pretty obvious that he was murdered, no doubt. And
18:27
Speaker 1: did we mention the fact that for a while, as
18:29
Speaker 1: the Nazis rose to power, maybe this is obvious to
18:32
Speaker 1: everybody but me, they kind of masked their awful racist ways.
18:38
Speaker 1: But they didn't reveal the full nature of their final
18:41
Speaker 1: solution or their idea of you know, pulling up the
18:44
Speaker 1: Jews in the roma Um people, or any of the
18:48
Speaker 1: just horrible, horrible racist leanings until a good bit later.
18:52
Speaker 1: And this was still during that time where obviously they
18:54
Speaker 1: meant business, but the true nature of their evil was
18:58
Speaker 1: not on full display. Yet well, it was also in
19:01
Speaker 1: that time. This is unfortunate and ugly truth. In that time,
19:06
Speaker 1: anti Semitism was widespread, we know that, Yeah, just like
19:12
Speaker 1: throughout Europe, definitely also clearly in the US. And the
19:16
Speaker 1: same prejudices applied to Roma as well and other quote
19:21
Speaker 1: unquote you know, subversive elements or what they would call deviance.
19:25
Speaker 1: So these people, this group had existed throughout various countries
19:31
Speaker 1: in Europe for centuries, right, And the shocking racism, the
19:37
Speaker 1: anti semitism, uh, the iron clad and puritanical attitudes about
19:45
Speaker 1: sex were normal. If you read a German textbook about
19:49
Speaker 1: the concept of living space for the German people, it's
19:53
Speaker 1: not that different from many other textbooks of the time
19:58
Speaker 1: that also argued the innate superiority of certain ethnic groups,
20:02
Speaker 1: and it might change during the country. So people didn't know.
20:06
Speaker 1: I think the point you're making this really important is
20:08
Speaker 1: people did not know that there was genocide on the horizon. Privately,
20:14
Speaker 1: members of the Nazi regime were already thinking of ways
20:20
Speaker 1: to forcibly deport elements of the population they didn't improve up,
20:26
Speaker 1: and they were trying to figure out where to put them,
20:27
Speaker 1: like would it be Madagascar, would it be some other
20:30
Speaker 1: country and then eventually, as we know, this led to
20:34
Speaker 1: one of the most horrific occurrences in human history. God,
20:38
Speaker 1: and I hate to get political about it, but it
20:40
Speaker 1: feels like when you start reading about the early stages
20:43
Speaker 1: of the Nazi takeover and the kind of rhetoric that
20:46
Speaker 1: kind of this nationalistic rhetoric, while not overtly racist, very
20:51
Speaker 1: dog whistle racist in a very similar way that we're
20:55
Speaker 1: experiencing in our country right now, And it scares the
20:58
Speaker 1: crap out of me reading this, thinking about history repeating
21:02
Speaker 1: multiple countries, right, absolutely, So we've got this, We've got
21:05
Speaker 1: this context with this Sindelar who now we know was murdered,
21:09
Speaker 1: but originally we don't really know. I mean, yeah, you can't,
21:13
Speaker 1: it couldn't. Come on, You're right, we don't know for sure,
21:18
Speaker 1: those those classifications. I mean, he was everyone says that
21:21
Speaker 1: was a death sentence. Somebody had their eye on him,
21:24
Speaker 1: and not in a good way. So in this, in
21:31
Speaker 1: this context, we have the precedent for protests, and then
21:35
Speaker 1: we have the precedent for sport events overall, especially football, soccer, football, soccer,
21:42
Speaker 1: whatever you wanna call it. We see this as a
21:44
Speaker 1: medium for propagandistic communication. Let's get back to this concept
21:52
Speaker 1: of appeasement. Let's talk a little bit about Neville Chamberlain yea,
21:57
Speaker 1: and how far this idea of appeasement went in in
22:02
Speaker 1: the way it played out on what the Brits referred
22:05
Speaker 1: to as the soccer pitch. Yeah yeah, we talk a
22:10
Speaker 1: lot about media manipulation in the modern day, but it
22:15
Speaker 1: was a known, tried and true technique here in the
22:20
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties as well, so much so that going back
22:26
Speaker 1: to May ninety four, of May English soccer players traveled
22:31
Speaker 1: to Germany to play the German team in a soccer match.
22:38
Speaker 1: That's right, but minus uh yeah, minus there there as
22:42
Speaker 1: in the whole uh Siindler who was still living at
22:45
Speaker 1: this time, but he refused, probably another reason he was
22:50
Speaker 1: blacklist than the way he was to add insult to injury,
22:53
Speaker 1: he refused to play for the new combined Austrian Germany team,
22:57
Speaker 1: which obviously was just called the German team. Um, he said,
23:00
Speaker 1: We cited old age, but he was like thirty five
23:04
Speaker 1: I think, and also simultaneously injuries, so it was just
23:07
Speaker 1: a bit of a f you two old. So let's
23:11
Speaker 1: set the scene, casey, could we have maybe the sound
23:14
Speaker 1: of a of a crowd at a at a soccer match,
23:19
Speaker 1: more than one hundred thousand soccer fans file into Berlin's
23:23
Speaker 1: Olympic Stadium and the countries. At this point everybody knows
23:29
Speaker 1: war is escalating. Things are ratcheting up right, and these countries,
23:33
Speaker 1: Britain and Germany are still playing nice. They don't trust
23:38
Speaker 1: each other, but they're still going through the motions and
23:41
Speaker 1: the gestures of diplomacy, and swastikas and British flags are
23:46
Speaker 1: flying side by side. The German national anthem is being
23:49
Speaker 1: played over the speakers, but on the field below. If
23:53
Speaker 1: you can imagine this in your mind, fellow historians, something
23:56
Speaker 1: very strange occurs. The German and the British players raised
24:02
Speaker 1: their arms in the infamous Nazi salute. The hile let's
24:06
Speaker 1: hear the Cliff Cup final enthusiasm prevails in Berlin when
24:11
Speaker 1: England meat Germany on the soccer field. All the cutticis
24:13
Speaker 1: are observed before the stop God to save that the
24:15
Speaker 1: king just played and the English team in White churchs
24:24
Speaker 1: get the Nazis salute during the German national anthem. So
24:29
Speaker 1: that was newsreel footage from the Associated Press on the
24:32
Speaker 1: day of this infamous event. Um. And and it's reported
24:37
Speaker 1: eerily in a matter of fact kind of way. Um,
24:41
Speaker 1: But there was a lot of controversies around in this
24:43
Speaker 1: game because by this point, if not their full final solution, level,
24:49
Speaker 1: complete and utter evilness was on display. People knew that
24:52
Speaker 1: the Nazis were fascists oh yeah and big time yeah.
24:56
Speaker 1: And the British press, despite efforts a media manipulation to
25:01
Speaker 1: make the population pro appeasement, the British press had had enough,
25:04
Speaker 1: absolutely outrage and it was even there was even more
25:08
Speaker 1: insult to injury because it turned out, despite this gesture
25:12
Speaker 1: on the part of the English team, Adolf Hitler wasn't
25:14
Speaker 1: even at the game. It wasn't present. They were just
25:17
Speaker 1: saluting the idea of Nazis. No, it's true. In fact,
25:20
Speaker 1: like I think the very first game he ever attended
25:23
Speaker 1: earlier in this story, the Germans lost two. I think
25:30
Speaker 1: it was the Netherlands or a smaller team that was
25:33
Speaker 1: seen as being less uh skilled than the German team,
25:36
Speaker 1: and he was really irritated about that, so he he
25:39
Speaker 1: didn't always make appearances. Um. But no, he was not
25:42
Speaker 1: at this game. And the thing is, the Germans did
25:44
Speaker 1: lose this game. Um, they got there. Uh, they're brought
25:49
Speaker 1: worse handed to them by um the Brits, who again,
25:52
Speaker 1: as we said, we're pretty damn dominant in the sport. Um.
25:56
Speaker 1: There's an interview in this documentary with the guys like, Yeah,
25:59
Speaker 1: it wasn't really that big of a surprise because pretty
26:01
Speaker 1: much everyone lost to the UK. Yeah. Can we play
26:04
Speaker 1: that guy's clip? I just love his voice. To lose
26:08
Speaker 1: to England at that time was nothing unusual because basically
26:13
Speaker 1: everybody lost to the British team at the time. Uh
26:16
Speaker 1: So I think for Hitler, the propaganda effect of that
26:22
Speaker 1: game was a lot more important than everything else. Right,
26:26
Speaker 1: they were known to be one of the best teams
26:30
Speaker 1: on the planet. They won the game six to three,
26:33
Speaker 1: six England three Germany, and the weird thing about the
26:37
Speaker 1: scores it was somewhat of a footnote because the thing
26:40
Speaker 1: everybody was focusing on was this bizarre attempt at diplomacy.
26:46
Speaker 1: It wasn't spontaneous on the part of the English team.
26:49
Speaker 1: Neville Chamberlain had in advance told them to do it,
26:53
Speaker 1: and the from what we understand, the intent of this
26:58
Speaker 1: was to make ice and show that Germany was not
27:02
Speaker 1: considered to be a quote pariah state, despite the fact
27:06
Speaker 1: that they pac manned up Austria, and that was also
27:10
Speaker 1: kind of part of Germany's propagandistic way of looking at
27:15
Speaker 1: this was to show that, hey, we're just like you.
27:17
Speaker 1: We we we like to play sport and we like
27:20
Speaker 1: to goose step around in our strange Nazi uniforms and I, oh, wait,
27:27
Speaker 1: something's wrong here. Showcase our superior because I want to
27:33
Speaker 1: go back a little way, just because I think this
27:34
Speaker 1: is a really important point. Um. The real stage center
27:38
Speaker 1: for Hitler's use of sport in this way was the
27:42
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six Olympics, Berlin Olympics UM, which is super
27:48
Speaker 1: interesting because that was like a world stage. Everyone's watching
27:53
Speaker 1: it's in Berlin. Hitler's there. He used it as an
27:56
Speaker 1: opportunity to showcase, like he said, the efficiency, um, the
28:00
Speaker 1: militaristic might of the Nazi state. UM. But there was
28:04
Speaker 1: a little kink in Hitler's idea here of showcasing the
28:08
Speaker 1: you know, might and prowess of the Aryan supremacy or
28:12
Speaker 1: what have you. Um this mythos he was trying to create.
28:16
Speaker 1: When Jesse Owens, an African American competitor, won four gold medals,
28:21
Speaker 1: that's right. Then four gold medals. Uh, it was in
28:24
Speaker 1: the hundred meter two D long jump and four by
28:27
Speaker 1: one hundred meter relay race, just completely in front of
28:32
Speaker 1: God and everyone crushing that idea. Hitler was none too pleased, right,
28:38
Speaker 1: which is which is weird because this is such an
28:40
Speaker 1: iconic moment, and you know we're going to brag a
28:43
Speaker 1: little bit. Jesse Owens is American, so take that Nazis. Indeed,
28:49
Speaker 1: do you like our bragge as if we had anything
28:51
Speaker 1: to do with her? Yeah? But there's an interesting tidbit
28:54
Speaker 1: here because so this occurs in August of August first,
29:00
Speaker 1: I think is the first day of competition. There was
29:03
Speaker 1: a newspaper editor named Robert L. Van, himself African American,
29:09
Speaker 1: who was at the scene, and in an article dated
29:12
Speaker 1: to August four, he says, wonder of wonders, I saw
29:19
Speaker 1: Harry Adolf Hitler salute the lad I looked on with
29:22
Speaker 1: a heart which beat proudly. Is the lad who was
29:24
Speaker 1: crowned king of the one event got an ovation the
29:28
Speaker 1: like of which I had never heard before. I saw
29:30
Speaker 1: Jesse Owens greeted by the Grand Chancellor of this country
29:32
Speaker 1: as a brilliant son peeped out through the clouds. I
29:35
Speaker 1: saw a vast crowd of some eighty five thousand or
29:37
Speaker 1: ninety thousand people stand up and cheer him to the echo.
29:41
Speaker 1: And that is winning hearts and minds, isn't it. I
29:45
Speaker 1: think it's so easy to underestimate the importance that these
29:49
Speaker 1: sorts of events can play in human history. Yeah. Now,
29:52
Speaker 1: because people, I mean I've seen um pieces whole you know,
29:57
Speaker 1: paper has written about the idea of sport as a religion.
30:01
Speaker 1: People put as much credence in you know, baseball players
30:04
Speaker 1: and basketball players they do, and you know God right
30:08
Speaker 1: like King James the name for Lebron because it's a
30:10
Speaker 1: stand in for our hopes and dreams. You know, even
30:14
Speaker 1: if it's sort of a false dichotomy. It's because you
30:16
Speaker 1: win a soccer game as a country doesn't doesn't really
30:20
Speaker 1: translate in reality to your might or prow ass. It's
30:24
Speaker 1: sort of a micro cosmic view of that, which is
30:27
Speaker 1: why so many countries spend so much money and time
30:32
Speaker 1: and occasionally so much uh effort at skullduggery when it
30:37
Speaker 1: comes to winning international sports competitions. I have a thing
30:43
Speaker 1: I'd like your take on, and you as well folks,
30:46
Speaker 1: do you think sport the concept just sports games? Do
30:50
Speaker 1: you feel like it has taken in the most powerful
30:55
Speaker 1: parts of religion, the most powerful parts of war, and
30:57
Speaker 1: the most powerful parts of economy. I feel like it has.
31:01
Speaker 1: Thank you just answered your own question. What do you think?
31:05
Speaker 1: I think it's a very no. I think that is
31:06
Speaker 1: an astute point. And Um, I think that's absolutely true.
31:09
Speaker 1: And I think we see that too with what we
31:10
Speaker 1: opened the show with. Um, the idea of the power
31:13
Speaker 1: that these players have, and when it when it doesn't
31:16
Speaker 1: jive with the money behind the power, or like the
31:21
Speaker 1: organizational power behind the scenes, there can be issues. Sometimes
31:26
Speaker 1: it involves people getting carbon monoxide poisoned to death in
31:29
Speaker 1: their sleep. Sometimes it involves getting you know, players being
31:33
Speaker 1: suspended for not for taking a knee during a national anthem. Um.
31:37
Speaker 1: It's just interesting the way politics and sports can be
31:41
Speaker 1: so intertwined. And I think it all goes back to
31:45
Speaker 1: even earlier than this. This is just probably the biggest,
31:47
Speaker 1: most obvious political example that we have. But to your point, Ben,
31:51
Speaker 1: as far back as the Romans and Gladiators and bread
31:55
Speaker 1: and circuses and all that, sport has always been a
31:58
Speaker 1: powerful tool to manipulate the minds of the people. And
32:04
Speaker 1: manipulate maybe is the wrong word. I don't know, what
32:05
Speaker 1: do you think. I feel like manipulate is a perfect
32:08
Speaker 1: word for this. Also, we have to we have to
32:11
Speaker 1: point out spoiler alert for World War two everyone, so
32:15
Speaker 1: tune out if you don't, if you don't want to
32:17
Speaker 1: get spoiled for this. Uh. We have to point out
32:20
Speaker 1: that Chamberlain's in Britain's appeasement policy did not work. It
32:26
Speaker 1: was just a little more than a year before tensions
32:32
Speaker 1: broke the war began, correct, Yeah, it was September of
32:36
Speaker 1: nine the Nazis invaded Poland. Uh, and that was just
32:40
Speaker 1: a bridge too far for the Allies. They'd finally had enough. Um.
32:43
Speaker 1: The Germans leagued up with the Soviets to partition Poland
32:47
Speaker 1: into their own, uh, separate spheres of influence. And that,
32:52
Speaker 1: my friend, is um the story of how World War
32:55
Speaker 1: two really began in earnest Uh. And that's the story
32:59
Speaker 1: for another time. No. I really enjoyed this episode, Nolan.
33:08
Speaker 1: I hate to close so soon. Hey, what do you
33:11
Speaker 1: say we do a little bit of listener mail? Huge fan?
33:18
Speaker 1: So the first one I want to pull from a
33:20
Speaker 1: Facebook post that is is a really good summary of UM.
33:23
Speaker 1: A myriad of emails we got Facebook posts of some
33:27
Speaker 1: few few people slid into our d M s on
33:29
Speaker 1: Instagram and Facebook. I loved all of them, by the way,
33:31
Speaker 1: thanks for writing to us folks, no doubt, but they
33:34
Speaker 1: very gingerly shreded us on our pronunciation of a few
33:40
Speaker 1: Philadelphia Philadelphia ms. Let's say it together three to one
33:46
Speaker 1: school kill only as some people that even quibble with
33:51
Speaker 1: that one, which is why it makes me feel good
33:52
Speaker 1: about it. This guy says, laughing at Ben Bowling and
33:55
Speaker 1: Noel Brown butchering school kill River, I believe we said
33:59
Speaker 1: shore colation of shoy kill, sholl kill whatever it was wrong, UM.
34:05
Speaker 1: This guy John C. Says it's pronounced school all caps
34:11
Speaker 1: dash kill and then added you added John a smiling,
34:15
Speaker 1: laughing emoji, so we knew that we hadn't fatally offended,
34:19
Speaker 1: you know. He shredded us with love and then Ben
34:22
Speaker 1: um as as we're want to do on Ridiculous Historians,
34:26
Speaker 1: UM posted a delightful response saying we murdered that pronunciation
34:29
Speaker 1: so hard that this episode counts as true crime. Hey,
34:34
Speaker 1: thanks for us, and he says thanks for listening. As
34:36
Speaker 1: well for the valuable correction. I did say thanks for
34:39
Speaker 1: you just quoted me to yourself. You that's weird, but yeah,
34:46
Speaker 1: but check out this thread. This is part of the
34:49
Speaker 1: reason why we love the Ridiculous Historians page because some
34:54
Speaker 1: of your fellow listeners didn't just point out the correct
34:58
Speaker 1: or accepted pronunciation of this river. Uh. Some of them
35:02
Speaker 1: also began bantering back and forth, disagreeing on their own
35:06
Speaker 1: ideas about pronunciation right big time. And then we had
35:09
Speaker 1: one Oliver Ce pop in with a little Georgia centric
35:13
Speaker 1: thing saying, here in Georgia they call the old Muddy
35:16
Speaker 1: River okmulgi ok muggi okamogie, and that's spelled o c
35:22
Speaker 1: m u l g e e. But the funny thing is,
35:24
Speaker 1: I am from Georgia and I've always said okmulgi and
35:27
Speaker 1: I've heard it pronounced that way. But whatever you say, um,
35:30
Speaker 1: and then ge like clarified, buttermogi. Okay, no, no no, that's right, okamogi.
35:37
Speaker 1: That's right, I've heard it that way. Um. And what
35:40
Speaker 1: you would think would be Houston County is actually Houston County,
35:44
Speaker 1: which I've noticed. Yeah, that happened to me one time. Yeah.
35:47
Speaker 1: And then we've got a guy Rob s saying Jersey
35:50
Speaker 1: born and raised here, I always heard it as school kill. Yeah,
35:54
Speaker 1: dropped the L and John C comes back in in
35:58
Speaker 1: the thread and says, I don't know with Philadelphians have
36:01
Speaker 1: much room to talk about pronunciation, and he shared this
36:04
Speaker 1: fascinating Washington Post article about the unique Philadelphia accent, which
36:09
Speaker 1: I highly recommend you check out, like wooter ice yeah,
36:13
Speaker 1: which is basically like what like a like a freeze
36:15
Speaker 1: pop or like kind of Italian ice beach towels beach
36:18
Speaker 1: towels yet uh. And we've got a question that I
36:22
Speaker 1: think will interest a lot of us in the audience,
36:26
Speaker 1: and it is this, what are the strangely pronounced places,
36:32
Speaker 1: landmarks or things in your neck of the woods. Because
36:37
Speaker 1: for instance, you know, there's Worcester in Massachusetts, which is
36:41
Speaker 1: completely not pronounced how it sund There's there's Peabody in Boston,
36:47
Speaker 1: I believe, or in massachuse as well, where it's apparently
36:50
Speaker 1: pebody Pbody, which is another um county or town in
36:56
Speaker 1: in in Massachusetts. Yeah, so it takes all kinds. Let
37:00
Speaker 1: us know, we want to hear We're not exaggerame, we
37:02
Speaker 1: want to hear the weirdest ones who knows you. You
37:07
Speaker 1: may save us from you may you may save us
37:11
Speaker 1: from a future internet post. You bring it on, babies,
37:15
Speaker 1: I love it. So we want to thank you, of
37:18
Speaker 1: course for journeying with us through this story of sports
37:22
Speaker 1: and protest and appeasement. We want to thank Casey Pegram
37:26
Speaker 1: and we want to thank Christopher haciotis our research associate
37:31
Speaker 1: who hipped us to this story. Have a sound effect, Jim,
37:37
Speaker 1: Let's see who else do we think? Oh, Alex Williams,
37:40
Speaker 1: who can post our track? And you Noel brown Man. Yeah,
37:44
Speaker 1: that's why I'd like to thank you too. Man. Oh boy.
37:48
Speaker 1: So stay tuned for our next episode, where he delved
37:51
Speaker 1: into a strange story about Heineken which was actually really
37:56
Speaker 1: inspiring to me. Heineken dead perhaps Blue Redding? All right, yeah, well,
38:03
Speaker 1: I mean it takes all beers. Uh, you know, I'm
38:05
Speaker 1: a PBR man. Yeah, you're you are a PBR man.
38:08
Speaker 1: But you know what, You can't build a hut at
38:10
Speaker 1: a PBR cans. Oh well you could, it just wouldn't
38:14
Speaker 1: be as cool. Now, what the heck are we talking about?
38:17
Speaker 1: You maybe asking yourself tune in to find out. In
38:20
Speaker 1: the meantime, you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter,
38:22
Speaker 1: and yeah, we we were about to roll out that
38:25
Speaker 1: in interest page. I think that I'm doing a vision board.
38:29
Speaker 1: I'm keeping an analog bro. I like, really, yeah, you're done,
38:33
Speaker 1: You're off the net. No, the vision board at least
38:35
Speaker 1: is it's just it's a wall in my house and
38:40
Speaker 1: I just paste up different pictures. I've been going through
38:44
Speaker 1: a laser tag phase that oh cool, like like like
38:46
Speaker 1: you you're gonna go laser tag fashion from here on out.
38:50
Speaker 1: You're gonna come to work looking like Tron and stuff.
38:52
Speaker 1: That would be cool. Are you in? You're interested in this,
38:54
Speaker 1: shut man? I'll try anything, you know, a bunch of
38:56
Speaker 1: times awesome. In meantime, if you don't want to do
39:00
Speaker 1: any that stuff, which you should, um, you can also
39:02
Speaker 1: join the Facebook rep Ridiculous Historians, or you can send
39:05
Speaker 1: us a good old fashioned email at Ridiculous at how
39:07
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com