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Hitler’s Olympics, Part 3: Mustache to Mustache · Revisionist History

0:04
Speaker 1: Pushkin October thirty first, nineteen thirty five, Park Avenue, mid Taiminhattan.
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Speaker 2: A great two friends from the Advertising Club of New
0:25
Speaker 2: York City and present another interesting luncheon meeting of this organization.
0:30
Speaker 1: The meal is served grilled Boston squad with Chris bacon
0:34
Speaker 1: or breaded vealsteak Vienna style, followed by old fashioned strawberry shortcack.
0:41
Speaker 1: The plates are cleared away. The president of the club
0:44
Speaker 1: introduces the head table, a long row of distinguished gentleman,
0:48
Speaker 1: and then the agenda of the day.
0:52
Speaker 2: The Olympics to be held in Germany in nineteen thirty six.
0:57
Speaker 2: Forgetting the thought of every nation the world over, it
1:05
Speaker 2: seemed fitting then that we should go to our guest
1:09
Speaker 2: of the day.
1:12
Speaker 1: He gestures to a man sitting next to him with
1:14
Speaker 1: a fabulous, thriving mustache, Charles Hitchcock Cheryl.
1:20
Speaker 2: Why do we call on General Cheryl? First of all,
1:26
Speaker 2: he's an athlete himself. He's probably the only man who
1:32
Speaker 2: won seven intercillegiate championships while attending jail.
1:38
Speaker 1: He lists Cheryl's many accomplishments, his time as a diplomat,
1:42
Speaker 1: his training as a lawyer, his service in the New
1:46
Speaker 1: York National guard.
1:47
Speaker 2: Probably, though I should emphasize above everything else, the fact
1:51
Speaker 2: that for fifteen years he's been a member of the
1:56
Speaker 2: American Olympic Committee, in a nice little Olympic committee, and
2:03
Speaker 2: we've asked him to come here to clear up the
2:06
Speaker 2: fall which some feel exists about this nineteen thirty six
2:13
Speaker 2: Olympic situation.
2:15
Speaker 1: And there is no better man to clear up this
2:18
Speaker 1: Olympic situation than Charles Hitchcock. Cheryl, of course, he opens
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Speaker 1: his Advertising Club talk with a joke.
2:34
Speaker 2: Your president has spoken as though I was dead and
2:39
Speaker 2: in a coffin, and he was speaking at the funeral.
2:45
Speaker 2: He left out what I think is the most important
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Speaker 2: thing that he put and that is that I have
2:51
Speaker 2: led the happiest life of anybody you ever met in
2:54
Speaker 2: your life.
2:55
Speaker 1: He beams, He looks around happily, his eyes twinkle. This
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Speaker 1: is his kind of room. He launches into a brief
3:03
Speaker 1: and modest account of his sprinting accomplishments at Yale. He
3:07
Speaker 1: speaks of his key role in the invention of the
3:10
Speaker 1: crouching start on how the press love to talk about it.
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Speaker 2: I have a wife at pome So, sir, you've getched
3:16
Speaker 2: the myathletic path. She says, why is it that whenever
3:20
Speaker 2: you achieve anything, they must sprint half naked pictures of you?
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Speaker 1: And then Charles Cheryl tells the assembled group the story
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Speaker 1: of how he has rescued the Olympic Games from the
3:35
Speaker 1: doubters and the naysayers, not once, but twice. Welcome to
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Speaker 1: episode three of Hitler's Olympics, our story about the nineteen
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Speaker 1: thirty six Games, the most important games in the history
3:51
Speaker 1: of the Olympics. In the previous installment, we met our
3:54
Speaker 1: would be hero, Charles Cheryl, who single handedly broken the
3:58
Speaker 1: deal in Vienna, promise that he believed would save the
4:02
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six Olympics, a promise from the Nazis not
4:06
Speaker 1: to exclude Jewish athletes from the Games. But now the
4:11
Speaker 1: deal is imperiled, there are renewed calls for an Olympic boycott,
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Speaker 1: and our hero has been compelled once again to come
4:19
Speaker 1: to the rescue. All human societies organize themselves into a pyramid,
4:30
Speaker 1: with ordinary people at the bottom and elites at the top.
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Speaker 1: And the crucial thing about the world Charles Cheryl grew
4:38
Speaker 1: up in America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century,
4:41
Speaker 1: is at the top of the pyramid is really really small.
4:45
Speaker 1: It's a pinprick. It's basically rich white men. And if
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Speaker 1: you were all so handsome and a fraternity brother from Yale,
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Speaker 1: so much the better. Charles Cheryl was all those things.
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Speaker 1: He was at the very apex of the pinbrick. And
5:01
Speaker 1: right from the beginning what distinguished Charles Cheryl was his
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Speaker 1: intuitive understanding of the rules that governed the top of
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Speaker 1: the pyramid, like, for example, never say a discouraging word
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Speaker 1: about another person in that tiny group at the very
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Speaker 1: very top. I'm reading to you now from Cheryl's unpublished memoirs,
5:21
Speaker 1: where he recounts the story of the time he was
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Speaker 1: part of a group visiting the White House and presented
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Speaker 1: the first Lady, Grace Coolidge, with a bouquet of roses
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Speaker 1: that had been named in her honor. I did this,
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Speaker 1: Cheryl writes, with the comment that the presentation of coolidge
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Speaker 1: roses to missus Coolidge was but holding the mirror up
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Speaker 1: to nature. She replied, not exactly, because the roses are blondes,
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Speaker 1: and I am a brunette. Ernest cafalis all round. Rule
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Speaker 1: number two. If you are outside this type, little sir,
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Speaker 1: at the top of the pyramid, Charles Cheryl doesn't see you.
6:04
Speaker 1: This is a crucial point. There is a certain kind
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Speaker 1: of racist who is racist because he or she harbors
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Speaker 1: an obsession with the other. In the Jim Crow South,
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Speaker 1: for example, swimming pools were segregated because white people didn't
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Speaker 1: want to share the same water as black people. The
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Speaker 1: idea that something might wash off black skin and linger
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Speaker 1: in the water gross them out. It kept them up
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Speaker 1: at night. It was visceral. That's not Charles Cheryl. He
6:32
Speaker 1: has plenty of black people in his life. They work
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Speaker 1: in the kitchen, they take his coat, but the thought
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Speaker 1: that he is sharing his Manhattan townhouse with them does
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Speaker 1: not keep him up at night. He has arranged his
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Speaker 1: life so that he doesn't have to think about them
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Speaker 1: at all. So when it comes to the nineteen thirty
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Speaker 1: six Olympics and Jews in Germany, you might be wondering,
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Speaker 1: is Cheryl a n anti Semite? Well not like Hitler
6:57
Speaker 1: was an anti Semite. Hitler got all worked up about Jews.
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Speaker 1: People like Cheryl, on the other hand, kept their voices down.
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Speaker 1: What is the attitude of these this kind of person
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Speaker 1: in this era towards Jews.
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Speaker 3: Let's see where to begin.
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Speaker 1: Nick Lemon historian.
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Speaker 3: So you're really talking about these sort of upper patrician classes, right.
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Speaker 3: So typically these people lived inside a series of institutions
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Speaker 3: that were quote unquote restricted, which meant, you know, in
7:36
Speaker 3: the broadest sense, only gentlemen could be in them, and
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Speaker 3: in this specific sense usually meant no Jews. So this
7:44
Speaker 3: would apply to you know, private clubs, neighborhoods that often
7:51
Speaker 3: had deed restrictions that you know, no Jews could live there.
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Speaker 3: You know, very very often workplaces had rules against Jews
8:00
Speaker 3: who's being hired. It was understood that Jews weren't allowed
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Speaker 3: in this world of sort of upper class gentlemen and ladies.
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Speaker 1: People in Cheryl's class arranged their lives so that they
8:13
Speaker 1: didn't have to deal with Jews.
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Speaker 3: And I think they would have thought, you know, Jews,
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Speaker 3: or course, they're vulgar, they're not gentlemanly, they think about
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Speaker 3: money all the time, things like that.
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Speaker 1: But they didn't think of Jews. To use one of
8:29
Speaker 1: Hitler's favorite words, as Vermin. Cheryl's great friend on the
8:36
Speaker 1: International Olympic Committee was the group's president, the Belgian count
8:40
Speaker 1: unreaded by La Tour. Remember Latour's wife was the one
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Speaker 1: who wrote Hitler a thank you note when he invaded Belgium.
8:48
Speaker 1: Now she wouldn't call herself a Nazi. She would say
8:52
Speaker 1: that sending a thank you note to your invaders upon
8:55
Speaker 1: the occasion of your country's invasion was just good manners,
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Speaker 1: like sending a bud cake to the family that moves
9:01
Speaker 1: into the mansion across the street. The Count, meanwhile, once
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Speaker 1: said of Jews in a letter to a friend that
9:08
Speaker 1: he wasn't fond of them. He wrote, the Jews usually
9:12
Speaker 1: quote shout before there is reason to do so. The Jews,
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Speaker 1: in the view of the cultured men of the European aristocracy,
9:20
Speaker 1: were annoying and vulgar and a little bit exasperating. But
9:27
Speaker 1: the Count was quite clear that you couldn't ban Jews
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Speaker 1: from the Olympics. Just because a particular race was annoying
9:33
Speaker 1: and vulgar didn't mean that they couldn't participate in say
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Speaker 1: the long Job. People like bay Latour and Charles Cheryl
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Speaker 1: liked Jews in theory, but just not in practice, in
9:45
Speaker 1: contrast to the Nazis, who didn't like Jews in practice
9:49
Speaker 1: or in theory. In nineteen thirty five, that distinction seemed important.
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Speaker 1: Oh Ru three from the top of the pyramid. Remember
10:02
Speaker 1: when we said in the last episode that another of
10:05
Speaker 1: the people Cheryl reminds us of is Candide's pangloss, the
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Speaker 1: man who believes that all is necessarily for the best end. Essentially,
10:15
Speaker 1: everything happens for a reason, and a good reason at that.
10:19
Speaker 1: I mean, how could it not when you're living a
10:22
Speaker 1: life like Charles Hitchcock Cheryl.
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Speaker 2: I have led the happiest life of anybody you ever
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Speaker 2: met in your life.
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Speaker 1: That's not just a statement of character and disposition, It's
10:33
Speaker 1: an ideological belief. He looks around at those who would
10:37
Speaker 1: question the status quo, radicals, communists, suffragette's Jews, and he says,
10:42
Speaker 1: what are you complaining about? From where I sit at
10:46
Speaker 1: the top of the pyramid, the view is pretty great, Okay,
10:52
Speaker 1: final rule of pyramids and maybe the most important. From
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Speaker 1: his happy perch high up on the pyramid, Charles Cheryl
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Speaker 1: con trucks the following syllogism. If we are really happy
11:04
Speaker 1: with things just as they are, then what do we
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Speaker 1: make of those at the very top responsible for keeping
11:10
Speaker 1: things just as they are? We like them a lot.
11:16
Speaker 1: Charles Cheryl's great literary accomplishment, Apart from the books he
11:20
Speaker 1: wrote about Stained Glass was an ambitious work of history.
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Speaker 1: He told the story of Otto von Bismarck, the nineteenth
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Speaker 1: century strong man who unified Germany. Bismarck was a master strategist,
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Speaker 1: steely character, enormous, bushy eyebrows, a furious mustache, a jaw
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Speaker 1: chiseled from the finest Bavarian granite, a row of medals
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Speaker 1: on his crisply starched tunic. They called him the Iron Chancellor,
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Speaker 1: and in his treatise Cheryl compared Bismarck with his other
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Speaker 1: great man crush, the Italian strong man Benito Mussolini Ilduchack
12:00
Speaker 1: vor of modern fascism. Cheryl admired Bismarck, but Mussolini, for
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Speaker 1: Il Ducce he had true passion. In the course of
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Speaker 1: his research, he would visit Mussolini in his massive office.
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Speaker 1: As he would write, it is a fashion for writers
12:16
Speaker 1: upon Mussolini to describe this lofty room, devoid of all decoration,
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Speaker 1: as an entirely appropriate background for this forthright statesman. Possibly
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Speaker 1: they are right, but I see a wider, bolder background
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Speaker 1: for him. Il Ducjay would come striding over, and Cheryl's
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Speaker 1: heart would go all a flutter looking back on the memory,
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Speaker 1: He wrote, if he has known you several years, the
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Speaker 1: greeting is pleasingly cordial, his caesar like features lighting up,
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Speaker 1: and those piercing eyes softening into friendliness, and then a
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Speaker 1: good manly handscheck. Was Cheryl's Bismarck and Mussolini a good book?
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Speaker 1: Probably not. It got a three sentence review in the
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Speaker 1: American Journal of Sociology, ending with the line Cheryl's special
13:10
Speaker 1: field of competence would appear to be handling and assessing
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Speaker 1: columns of marching men. A lesser man would be crippled
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Speaker 1: by a sentence like that, but not Charles Cheryl. Because
13:23
Speaker 1: when Cheryl sent Mussolini his book, Il Ducce liked it
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Speaker 1: so much he gave Cheryl the highest of all Italian
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Speaker 1: military and civilian honors. He made him a Knight Grand
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Speaker 1: Cross of the Order of the Crown of Italy, a
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Speaker 1: gold star, plus a striking right shoulder sash. Mussolini sent
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Speaker 1: it in a box to New York, where it arrived
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Speaker 1: in time for Cheryl's twenty fifth wedding anniversary, a dinner
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Speaker 1: at the Pier Hotel with one hundred and forty two guests,
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Speaker 1: where the honor was pinned on Cheryl's chest by the
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Speaker 1: Italian Consul General in the presence of the French, Argentine,
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Speaker 1: Spanish and Cuban ambassadors and Dutch, Swedish, Greek and Czechoslovak ministers.
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Speaker 1: A guess list that all of us have dreamt about
14:11
Speaker 1: for our twenty fifth wedding anniversary. Let the assistant professors
14:16
Speaker 1: of sociology write what they choose about the book. Our
14:19
Speaker 1: hero was now a Knight of the Grand Cross of
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Speaker 1: the Order of the Crown of Italy. Now think back
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Speaker 1: to Dorothy Thompson, America's most celebrated foreign correspondent, who famously
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Speaker 1: interviews Hitler in nineteen thirty one when he is on
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Speaker 1: the cusp of power. Thompson's day job is not a
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Speaker 1: lot different from Cheryl's. As part of his diplomatic duties
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Speaker 1: or his role at the IOC, Cheryl goes around Europe
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Speaker 1: meeting with heads of state and aristocrats. As a foreign correspondent,
14:56
Speaker 1: Thompson does the same thing. I'm sure they meet some
14:59
Speaker 1: of the same people, but she's not at the top
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Speaker 1: of the pyramid. She was raised by a struggling preacher.
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Speaker 1: Her mother died when Thompson was a child. Her life
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Speaker 1: experiences haven't made her comfortable with power or left her
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Speaker 1: thinking that the world is just fine the way it is.
15:15
Speaker 1: Quite the opposite. When Thompson got out of college, she
15:19
Speaker 1: immediately threw herself into the suffrage movement. She spent three
15:23
Speaker 1: years on that fight, and when it finally looked like
15:26
Speaker 1: women might get the vote, she decides, I want to
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Speaker 1: find the next fight, and she buys a ticket on
15:32
Speaker 1: an ocean liner, and.
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Speaker 4: Then she landed in Europe just as fascism was starting
15:37
Speaker 4: to build.
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Speaker 1: The historian Sarah Church, well.
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Speaker 4: It's actually important that we all remember that that fascism
15:43
Speaker 4: was by no means a German phenomenon, especially in the
15:46
Speaker 4: nineteen twenties, or uniquely certainly not a uniquely German phenomenon.
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Speaker 4: And in the twenties it's Mussolini. Well, of course gives
15:53
Speaker 4: it its name. So Thompson traveled to Italy. She encountered
15:57
Speaker 4: Italian fascists. She was educating herself about Italian and European fascism.
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Speaker 1: She marries a Jew, a Hungarian writer, a radical. She
16:06
Speaker 1: meets his crowd, artists, writers, outsiders.
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Speaker 4: This was an experience, a relationship that opened her eyes
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Speaker 4: and her understanding to political conversations in Eastern Europe around
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Speaker 4: the rising tensions and all of the volatility of the
16:24
Speaker 4: European political situation at that time. So by the time
16:27
Speaker 4: Hitler came into power in nineteen thirty three, she'd spent
16:30
Speaker 4: a decade becoming an, you know, pretty expert. Certainly for
16:32
Speaker 4: an American, she probably had a more nuanced understanding than
16:36
Speaker 4: virtually any other American of her generation, because she'd spent
16:39
Speaker 4: the best part of that decade living among Europeans who
16:43
Speaker 4: were breathing and debating and arguing and figuring out what
16:47
Speaker 4: these new fascist movements were going to mean.
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Speaker 1: But I was care, I want to go back to
16:52
Speaker 1: the thing about she starts with the suffrage movement, and
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Speaker 1: I wondered whether that experience kind of permanently sensitizes you
17:03
Speaker 1: to the kind of the plight of the powerless in
17:09
Speaker 1: a certain way, Like, I might be really hard to
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Speaker 1: be pro fascist if you spent your early twenties fighting
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Speaker 1: for women suffrage, don't you think?
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Speaker 4: Yeah? Absolutely so. She certainly she had a strong sense
17:21
Speaker 4: of sympathy and identification with people who saw themselves as
17:26
Speaker 4: being an oppressed class and oppressed minority.
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Speaker 1: The point is that when Dorothy Thompson thinks of Mussolini,
17:34
Speaker 1: it is not to remark on his manly handshake and
17:37
Speaker 1: piercing eyes. And when she goes to see Hitler, she
17:40
Speaker 1: doesn't defer to him just because he's on the cusp
17:43
Speaker 1: of running Germany. She sees him for what he is,
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Speaker 1: an angry, vicious demagogue. But if you are Charles Cheryl
17:52
Speaker 1: looking at that same man, what do you see? You
17:56
Speaker 1: see someone very different. In the summer of nineteen thirty five,
18:11
Speaker 1: the deal to save the Games that Cheryl had hammered
18:14
Speaker 1: out in Vienna two years before is imperiled. The Germans
18:18
Speaker 1: had promised to keep their Olympic team open to Jewish athletes,
18:22
Speaker 1: but Nazi anti Semitism is accelerating and people around the
18:27
Speaker 1: world are threatening again to boycott the games. Cheryl is
18:31
Speaker 1: worried that his diplomatic master stroke will come to nothing.
18:36
Speaker 1: He knows he has to act, and now he sees
18:38
Speaker 1: the mistake he made back in Vienna he dealt with underlings.
18:43
Speaker 1: He realizes it's time to confront Herr Hitler himself. Does
18:51
Speaker 1: he go through Putsy Hitler's wagner playing Harvard trained pr men.
18:55
Speaker 1: Probably Putsy was always the point of entry for Americans
18:59
Speaker 1: want again audience with her Hitler. If Charles Cheryl had
19:04
Speaker 1: lived to see how things turned out with the Nazis,
19:06
Speaker 1: he would have edited his papers, particularly the Chief Offender
19:10
Speaker 1: scrap Book thirty five, that he would have buried in
19:14
Speaker 1: the back yard of his estate in the Hamptons, along
19:17
Speaker 1: with his Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the
19:19
Speaker 1: Crown of Italy. That's what people like Charles Cheryl did
19:22
Speaker 1: after the war, cleaned house. But Charles Cheryl died too soon,
19:27
Speaker 1: and so there remains in the archives of the New
19:31
Speaker 1: York Historical Society a love letter in seven doubles based
19:36
Speaker 1: type pages. His Excellency, reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler received me
19:43
Speaker 1: at noon August twenty fourth, nineteen thirty five in his
19:47
Speaker 1: own private Munich residence. Let me, first of all, frankly
19:51
Speaker 1: confess that this will not prove a journalistic interview with
19:55
Speaker 1: Germany's chief of state. It merely narrates a foreigner's visit
20:00
Speaker 1: to an undeniably great leader. As a gift, Cheryl brings
20:05
Speaker 1: Hitler two of his books, his treatise on German Stained
20:09
Speaker 1: Glass Windows, and of course his master work comparing Mussolini
20:13
Speaker 1: and Bismarck. Then they talked man to man for an
20:18
Speaker 1: hour and ten minutes. He wrote, I was immediately struck
20:26
Speaker 1: by the fact that Hitler deliberately chose the seat facing
20:30
Speaker 1: the window and its bright sunlight. When in nineteen twenty
20:33
Speaker 1: one I talked with fifteen European prime ministers plus four
20:37
Speaker 1: presidents and two years later nine kings, none of them
20:40
Speaker 1: did this, nor have any leading statesman I have since
20:44
Speaker 1: then met Charles Cheryl had nothing but respect for a
20:48
Speaker 1: man unafraid to sit facing the window he goes on.
20:56
Speaker 1: His photographers do him grave injustice in two Guards. They
21:01
Speaker 1: do not show enough the strength of his upper head
21:03
Speaker 1: above the expressive eyes, and give no hint of the
21:07
Speaker 1: engaging human being he can be when he wants to be.
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Speaker 1: Dorothy Thompson, remember, looked into those same eyes and found
21:15
Speaker 1: the peculiar shine which often distinguishes Genius's alcoholics and hysterics.
21:21
Speaker 1: It's like they're meeting a different man. Thompson found Hitler formless, cartilaginous,
21:28
Speaker 1: ill poised, and insecure, but Cheryl finds himself drawn to
21:32
Speaker 1: Hitler's famously short mustache. It's not like Cheryl's mustache, which
21:37
Speaker 1: of course is full and luxuriant and suggestive of all
21:40
Speaker 1: manner of daring and panash. But something this concise yet
21:45
Speaker 1: emphatic for the fur totally works. It suits Hitler's face
21:52
Speaker 1: while speaking, because revealing all of the expression around the mouth.
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Speaker 1: Welcome to the top of the pyramid, my little mustachioed friend.
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Speaker 1: So what do the two men talk about? Here's Cheryl again.
22:09
Speaker 1: Because I am a member of the International Olympic Committee,
22:12
Speaker 1: we naturally spoke of our nineteen thirty six games schedule
22:16
Speaker 1: for Berlin. In these he expressed keen interest. Then Cheryl
22:22
Speaker 1: brings up what he calls the unfortunate Jewish question. Not
22:26
Speaker 1: the Nazis' anti Semitic policies writ large, of course, but
22:29
Speaker 1: the annoying controversy over Jews of the German Olympic team
22:33
Speaker 1: and how it's threatening to derail the games. Cheryl has
22:38
Speaker 1: a proposal for Hitler, a simple way to calm the
22:42
Speaker 1: waters back in the United States. Just put a Jew
22:46
Speaker 1: on the Olympic team. One will do. Cheryl even has
22:49
Speaker 1: someone in mind, a fencer named Helene Mayer. Mayor is
22:53
Speaker 1: German and living in Los Angeles. She's one of the
22:55
Speaker 1: greatest fencers of all time. Technically she's only half Jewish
23:00
Speaker 1: since her mom is a proper Arian. Cheryl thinks that
23:02
Speaker 1: fact will help persuade Hitler. Plus mayor is blonde and
23:07
Speaker 1: blue eyed and really looks the part. Hitler pushes back,
23:11
Speaker 1: so Cheryl brings up the Vienna Declaration that it hammered
23:14
Speaker 1: out two years previously at the Hotel Imperial Germany's agreement
23:19
Speaker 1: in principle not to exclude Jews. Hitler says he's never
23:23
Speaker 1: heard of the Vienna deal. Cheryl is shocked, what how
23:28
Speaker 1: is that even possible? He doubles down. Hitler responds, German
23:32
Speaker 1: sports are for arians only. Cheryl comes at him again.
23:37
Speaker 1: It's back and forth, back and forth. Later, in a
23:40
Speaker 1: note to Frank and Roosevelt's private secretary, Cheryl describes the
23:44
Speaker 1: scene my book. Bismarck and Mussolini lay before him, and
23:49
Speaker 1: he faced a fine limback portrait of Bismarck. It was
23:53
Speaker 1: a last chance, so I went right at him with
23:55
Speaker 1: a question, what would Bismarck, master of foreigner's psychology do today?
24:02
Speaker 1: He was polite but showed nothing. Had My appeal won
24:08
Speaker 1: no sign. Two titans duking it out at the top
24:12
Speaker 1: of the pyramid. Mustache to mustache. It was dreadful nerve
24:17
Speaker 1: for me to tackle him in his own Munich home.
24:21
Speaker 1: But I am only a private citizen and he can't
24:23
Speaker 1: eat me. Cheryl leaves the meeting, has his bold gambit worked,
24:28
Speaker 1: daring her Hitler to put himself in autovon Bismarck's shoes
24:33
Speaker 1: WWBD What would Bismarck do? Cheryl dashes off a letter
24:37
Speaker 1: to his friend by latour. Prepare yourself, he says, for
24:42
Speaker 1: the very real possibility that all of my brilliant diplomatic
24:46
Speaker 1: stratagems in Vienna two years ago have come to Nod,
24:51
Speaker 1: please speak to him. Cheryl pleads, we need Hitler to
24:55
Speaker 1: compromise for the sake of the games. He writes, It
25:00
Speaker 1: will be a trying test for even your remarkable tact
25:03
Speaker 1: in Savo Affaire, and the sooner you meet the situation,
25:07
Speaker 1: the better the hope for your success instead of a
25:10
Speaker 1: destructive explosion. Did our hero endure a sleepless night in
25:20
Speaker 1: his agonies? Did he turn the essential question on himself?
25:25
Speaker 1: W w b D. What would Bismarck do if, say,
25:28
Speaker 1: Mussolini renegged on an agreement, but then he gets a
25:32
Speaker 1: note in the mail. It's there in the famous scrap
25:36
Speaker 1: book thirty five, a little embossed card inviting him to
25:40
Speaker 1: the Nuremberg Rally in mid September, the annual propaganda festival
25:45
Speaker 1: put on by the Nazi Party. I'm sure you've seen
25:47
Speaker 1: film clips, thousands of soldiers marching in lockstep, chanting Hyle Hitler.
25:53
Speaker 1: Cheryl lives for moments such as these. Remember, even the
25:58
Speaker 1: American Journal of Sociology has noted his taste when it
26:01
Speaker 1: comes to columns of marching men. So he accepts the
26:05
Speaker 1: invitation from the Nazi Party. He packs an overnight bag.
26:09
Speaker 1: They offer him a ride on Hitler's train.
26:11
Speaker 5: He says yes, And then in his scrap book there
26:17
Speaker 5: then follows many pages of press coverage Schwastika's Nazi propaganda
26:24
Speaker 5: that he collected.
26:25
Speaker 1: Mccullague bend Adaf Haffrey reporting on what he found in
26:28
Speaker 1: Cheryl's papers at the New York Historical Society.
26:31
Speaker 5: There's an amazing photo of him at the Nuremberg Rally
26:35
Speaker 5: at some official events surrounding it, with all these medals
26:39
Speaker 5: on his tuxedo jacket, sort of gazing up at the
26:43
Speaker 5: ceiling in awe, because you imagine he's in some vast
26:46
Speaker 5: hall surrounded by just they look, there's such prototypical Nazis.
26:51
Speaker 5: So it's just this man kind of daphly wandering around
26:55
Speaker 5: this grand hall, surrounded by these deeply evil people, and
26:59
Speaker 5: completely unaware of the historical significance of what he's witnessing,
27:02
Speaker 5: other than that it's a very important event and therefore
27:05
Speaker 5: must be prepared for his scrapbook.
27:12
Speaker 1: The nineteen thirty five Nuremberg rally is where Hitler announced
27:16
Speaker 1: the so called Blood Laws, outlawing marriage between Arians and
27:19
Speaker 1: Jews and stripping German Jews of their citizenship. It was
27:23
Speaker 1: the clearest articulation yet of the Nazis' murderous anti Semitism,
27:28
Speaker 1: and for many Americans, Nuremberg put the conundrum of the
27:31
Speaker 1: games into sharp focus. If that's who these people are,
27:35
Speaker 1: can we really go there? But that's not how Cheryl
27:38
Speaker 1: sees it.
27:40
Speaker 5: So what does he do at the Nuremberg rally? He
27:45
Speaker 5: collects signatures he and his scrap book has autographs from
27:50
Speaker 5: people he met at the Nuremberg rallies that are scrawled
27:54
Speaker 5: on this one of the brochures from it, describing what's
27:58
Speaker 5: going to happen on September in nineteen thirty five and
28:01
Speaker 5: then there's all these pencil signatures from what I can
28:04
Speaker 5: only assume it's prominent members of the party.
28:07
Speaker 1: He's fan blowing the Nazi Party.
28:09
Speaker 5: It's but it's like that, yeah, he's he was not
28:11
Speaker 5: even Yeah. I don't think that Charles Cheryl would approve
28:15
Speaker 5: of a campaign to exterminate the Jews. I think he
28:18
Speaker 5: all he can recognize is force, wilfulness and power, and
28:23
Speaker 5: so he understands that this will be a good one
28:25
Speaker 5: for the scrap book or the after dinner toast. But
28:28
Speaker 5: there's something about that the autographs thing I found very
28:33
Speaker 5: It's it's really chilling, and there's like, is there has
28:37
Speaker 5: to be a it's it feels like a different category
28:40
Speaker 5: than the banality of evil. It's like the there there,
28:43
Speaker 5: we have to invent a new term for the relationship.
28:46
Speaker 5: Charles Cheryl bears to this evil.
28:50
Speaker 1: I'm with you. He's so, he's he's got he's just
28:53
Speaker 1: he's just, he's he's just unbelievable. At the end, a
28:58
Speaker 1: top Nazi official pulls him and tells him her, Cheryl,
29:02
Speaker 1: we have good news for you. We are inviting the
29:05
Speaker 1: half Jew Helene Mayer to join the German Olympic team.
29:09
Speaker 1: Mission accomplished, he sails for home on the S S. Normandy,
29:16
Speaker 1: the largest and fastest passenger ship of its day. He
29:20
Speaker 1: steps off the boat and is mobbed by reporters. I
29:24
Speaker 1: am more convinced than ever that America should take part
29:27
Speaker 1: in the Olympics, he says, and I'm probably the best
29:30
Speaker 1: friend the Jews have in America. Then he makes a threat.
29:37
Speaker 1: I'm not here to stop any antisemitic waves, but I
29:41
Speaker 1: warn of the danger of such a development. If five
29:46
Speaker 1: million Jews in the United States can make one hundred
29:49
Speaker 1: and twenty five million Americans pull the chestnuts out of
29:54
Speaker 1: the fire for the Jews in Germany, Jews Cheryl is
29:58
Speaker 1: saying shouldn't complain about anti Semitism because that will cause
30:03
Speaker 1: anti Semitism. Besides, having not given you exactly what she wanted.
30:08
Speaker 1: Helene Mayer a brilliant fencer and a Jewish, or at
30:12
Speaker 1: least the daughter of a Jew, which ought to count
30:14
Speaker 1: for something. Right, aren't you happy now? Charles Cheryl chose
30:19
Speaker 1: to resolve the dilemma of the pure competition in an
30:22
Speaker 1: impure place by layering a flimsy piece of wallpaper over
30:27
Speaker 1: the menace that was the Nazi regime and hoping no
30:30
Speaker 1: one will look underneath. Remember Dorothy Thompson's taxonomy of who
30:35
Speaker 1: goes Nazi? Mister b It's like she was writing with
30:40
Speaker 1: Charles Cheryl in mind. His code is not his own,
30:43
Speaker 1: it is that of his class. No worse, no better.
30:46
Speaker 1: He fits easily into whatever pattern is successful. That is
30:50
Speaker 1: his sole measure of value. Success. Nazism as a minority
30:56
Speaker 1: movement would not attract him. As a movement likely to
31:00
Speaker 1: attain power, it would. He goes home to his Manhattan townhouse,
31:06
Speaker 1: rests his weary head in triumph, and a week later
31:09
Speaker 1: takes the stage at the Advertising Club of New York City,
31:13
Speaker 1: where he will say.
31:15
Speaker 2: I have led the happiest life of anybody you ever
31:18
Speaker 2: met in your life.
31:38
Speaker 1: Charles Cheryl will not live to see the Berlin Olympics.
31:40
Speaker 1: He will die of a heart attack at his Paris
31:43
Speaker 1: townhouse the following June, a few weeks before the spectacle
31:46
Speaker 1: of the opening ceremonies in Berlin. That is a shame.
31:50
Speaker 1: Few would have enjoyed that bit of fascist pageantry more
31:54
Speaker 1: than Charles Hitchcock Cheryl. So the Advertising Club speech is
31:59
Speaker 1: really the last time we will see him in his element,
32:03
Speaker 1: and he has a message for the world that day.
32:06
Speaker 1: It's about the Jews. They are violating the rules of
32:10
Speaker 1: the pyramid. People are supposed to be nice to each other.
32:14
Speaker 1: People are supposed to accept the world as it is,
32:17
Speaker 1: be glad for it. People at the bottom are supposed
32:20
Speaker 1: to stay out of sight, and everyone should revere the
32:24
Speaker 1: people at the top. But ever since he stepped off
32:27
Speaker 1: the normandy and said that bit about how Jews shouldn't
32:30
Speaker 1: really complain about antisemitism because that will cause antisemitism, people
32:35
Speaker 1: had been mean to him. This is what he wanted
32:39
Speaker 1: to tell the August members of the Advertising Club of
32:42
Speaker 1: New York. He has been wronged.
32:47
Speaker 2: After all my years of arding a square deal for Jews.
32:52
Speaker 2: They called me andy Jewish. Many questions have been asked
32:58
Speaker 2: me by telephone a letter about the type of communication
33:04
Speaker 2: that have been coming in since my arrival from abroad
33:09
Speaker 2: ten days ago. In the first place, almost all the
33:14
Speaker 2: Jewish letters, I'm sorry to say, have been either abusive
33:20
Speaker 2: or threatening.
33:21
Speaker 1: He goes on and on. He is aggrieved, heavy hangs
33:26
Speaker 1: the head, the worse the crown.
33:28
Speaker 2: This force is me, and I say it with deef emotion.
33:33
Speaker 2: So there's this from those friendly efforts in the future.
33:37
Speaker 2: But neither that incident nor the torrent of Jewish abuse
33:41
Speaker 2: recently poured upon me can succeed in making me Auntie Jules.
33:47
Speaker 1: He doesn't hate the Jews, he's trying to say, but
33:50
Speaker 1: he will not stand with them again because his feelings
33:53
Speaker 1: have been hurt. And then our wounded lion raises his
33:57
Speaker 1: heavy head and says.
34:00
Speaker 2: Enough, everybody has a perfect right to have an opinion
34:05
Speaker 2: on this much discussed question. But now that decision to
34:09
Speaker 2: go to Berlin has been definitely made by the only
34:14
Speaker 2: American group having the right of decision.
34:17
Speaker 1: That would be people like Charles Hitchcock Cheryl, the people
34:21
Speaker 1: at the top of the pyramid.
34:23
Speaker 2: It would be well to remember General Grant saying the
34:26
Speaker 2: close of our civil war, let us have tea.
34:31
Speaker 1: And with that the room rises in loud agreement on
34:36
Speaker 1: to Berlin.
34:37
Speaker 6: General cherfls, you have quickened our democratic faith by telling
34:42
Speaker 6: us of that global international democracy, the Olympic Gay and
34:46
Speaker 6: let us run with patients. The race that is set.
34:49
Speaker 1: Before religion's history is produced by ben Na daph Haffrey,
35:07
Speaker 1: Tolly Emlin and Nina Bird Lawrence. Our editor is Sarah Nix.
35:12
Speaker 1: Fact checking by Arthur Gomperts and JAYL Goldfein. Original scoring
35:18
Speaker 1: by Luis Garra, mastering by Flawan Williams, Sarah Buger and
35:22
Speaker 1: Jake Gorsky. Engineering by Nina Bird Lawrence. Our executive producer
35:27
Speaker 1: is Jacob Smith. Special thanks to Karen Chakerji. I'm Malcolm
35:33
Speaker 1: Gladwell