Latest / Revisionist History / Hitler’s Olympics, Part 2: Pangloss, Polonius, Prufrock

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Hitler’s Olympics, Part 2: Pangloss, Polonius, Prufrock · Revisionist History

0:08
Speaker 1: Bushkin. We can't. I have never had a single conversation
0:18
Speaker 1: where both you and I were not kind of grinning
0:22
Speaker 1: as we told charge all stories.
0:27
Speaker 2: Well, I think there's something kind of lovely about his
0:29
Speaker 2: un self consciousness. I mean, he's a rare breed in
0:32
Speaker 2: this day and age, the like, completely unself conscious man
0:35
Speaker 2: who never for a second doubts his abilities, even though
0:39
Speaker 2: there's so much evidence for why he should be doubting
0:42
Speaker 2: his abilities.
0:45
Speaker 1: I'm talking to Ben Adaph Haffring, my partner in our
0:48
Speaker 1: series on the nineteen thirty six Olympics, the most consequential
0:53
Speaker 1: Olympic Games in history.
0:55
Speaker 2: And he's also just a really excellent partner in the
0:59
Speaker 2: goal of mocking him, because he really preserves all of
1:03
Speaker 2: the evidence of his follies and he reads like a
1:07
Speaker 2: great character out of literature.
1:10
Speaker 1: This episode is about Charles Hitchcock Cheryl, the man who
1:14
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen thirties was at the center of
1:17
Speaker 1: the debate over whether the United States should go to
1:20
Speaker 1: the Berlin Games. In fact, if you ask why the
1:23
Speaker 1: Olympic Games are the Olympic Games, how it flourished. It
1:26
Speaker 1: endured over the course of the most tumultuous century in history.
1:30
Speaker 1: There are really only two people who matter. One is
1:33
Speaker 1: Avery Brundage, and we'll get to Brundage later in the series.
1:36
Speaker 1: The other is Charles Hitchcock. Cheryl. Cheryl is a forgotten figure. Today,
1:42
Speaker 1: traces of him persist only in little scraps here and there.
1:46
Speaker 1: But in his day, when Cheryl gave an after dinner
1:49
Speaker 1: speech somewhere, it made the Times. When Cheryl complained about
1:53
Speaker 1: his neighbour's dog, it made the Times when he died.
1:56
Speaker 1: The New York Times wrote no fewer than five stories five.
2:00
Speaker 1: He was everywhere. He knew everyone. He was friends with
2:05
Speaker 1: every American president, from Teddy to Franklin Roosevelt. He attended
2:09
Speaker 1: every reception of importance, every luncheon that mattered. In his
2:14
Speaker 1: sixty nine years, he crossed the Atlantic ninety times. He
2:18
Speaker 1: was in constant motion. He was Zelig.
2:22
Speaker 2: He's Forrest Gump.
2:23
Speaker 1: He's Forrest Gump. You know I'm about to you know
2:25
Speaker 1: who he is? Hold on, hold on, hold on, Oh no,
2:29
Speaker 1: wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait, he's polonious.
2:33
Speaker 1: I have to get this right here. We are okay.
2:37
Speaker 1: So this is from love song with j alf Proof
2:39
Speaker 1: Rock maybe T. S. Eliot's most famous poem, and proof
2:43
Speaker 1: Rock is a kind of self aware version of Charles Cheryl, Oh,
2:49
Speaker 1: yes here we are okay. No, I am not Prince Hamlet,
2:53
Speaker 1: nor was meant to be. I am an attendant.
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Speaker 3: Lord, the one that will do to swell a progress,
3:00
Speaker 3: start a scene, or to advise the Prince, no doubt,
3:04
Speaker 3: an easy tool, deferential, glad to be of use, politic,
3:09
Speaker 3: cautious and particulous, full of high sentence, but a bit
3:14
Speaker 3: of cuse at times, indeed almost ridiculous, almost at times.
3:21
Speaker 1: The fool that's him?
3:24
Speaker 2: That is him? And also can I do another literary pe?
3:29
Speaker 2: This is he's also Pangloss, you know, Condide's sort of
3:32
Speaker 2: utopian philosopher who's completely fatuous. The Pangloss quote is it
3:39
Speaker 2: is demonstrable that things cannot be otherwise than as they are.
3:42
Speaker 2: We're all being created for an end, all is necessarily
3:45
Speaker 2: for the best end. And that's also Ryl's kind of
3:48
Speaker 2: that's his philosophy of inconsequence, why really bother because everything's
3:53
Speaker 2: so great and it's just how it ought to be?
3:56
Speaker 1: Zelig force Gump, polonious Pangloss. Oh, and one more.
4:01
Speaker 2: That reminds me of the Dorothy Thompson who goes Nazi
4:05
Speaker 2: quote that he has been treated to forms of education
4:09
Speaker 2: which have released him from inhibitions. His body is vigorous,
4:12
Speaker 2: his mind is childish. His soul has been almost completely neglected.
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Speaker 1: A yes. Remember Dorothy Thompson's parlor game where she describes
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Speaker 1: going to parties, looking around the room and picking out
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Speaker 1: which person was most likely to go Nazi. Thompson had
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Speaker 1: two particularly interesting archetypes, misters B and C. Charles Cheryl
4:35
Speaker 1: was the embodiment of mister B. Mister B has risen
4:41
Speaker 1: beyond his real abilities by virtue of health, good looks,
4:45
Speaker 1: and being a good mixer. He married for money, and
4:48
Speaker 1: he's done lots of other things for money. His code
4:51
Speaker 1: is not his own. It is that of his class,
4:53
Speaker 1: no worse, no better. He fits easily into whatever pattern
4:57
Speaker 1: is successful. That is his measure of value. Success. Nazism
5:04
Speaker 1: as a minority movement would not attract him. As a
5:07
Speaker 1: movement likely to attain power, it would. My name is
5:15
Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about
5:18
Speaker 1: things overlooked and misunderstood. This is episode two in our
5:23
Speaker 1: series Hitler's Olympics, How and Why America went to the
5:27
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six Games. Charles Cheryl grew up in Washington,
5:36
Speaker 1: d c. His father made a lot of money lobbying
5:39
Speaker 1: for the big railroad interests. He went to college at Yale,
5:43
Speaker 1: then worked for a time as a lawyer on Wall Street.
5:46
Speaker 1: He was tall, slender, with a long imperial nose, bright
5:50
Speaker 1: twinkling eyes, a full head of blonde hair, and a
5:54
Speaker 1: thriving mustache. He wrote twenty books, mostly about stained glass.
6:00
Speaker 1: It's his memoirs, though, that are ar tour de Force,
6:03
Speaker 1: an unpublished three hundred and sixty page compendium of every anecdote, accolade, witticism,
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Speaker 1: and celebrity encounter in his entire life. Here is my favorite.
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Speaker 1: In October nineteen thirty one, I had the honor of
6:22
Speaker 1: lunching alone at the White House with President Hoover because
6:25
Speaker 1: he wanted me to undertake a certain matter, which I
6:29
Speaker 1: guessed he thought me reluctant to do. That opening is
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Speaker 1: very Charles Cheryl. He was not the sort who volunteered.
6:37
Speaker 1: That would be ghusch. He waited for opportunity to ask
6:41
Speaker 1: him to lunch. It was an excellent luncheon, he continues,
6:47
Speaker 1: and I was pleased to see upon each of the
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Speaker 1: four corners of the table small silver dishes containing cherries.
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Speaker 1: I am very fond of cherries, and so looked forward
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Speaker 1: to indulging in them when the arrived. Therefore, while I
7:03
Speaker 1: was partaking out of a cup of soup, the President
7:05
Speaker 1: ate the cherries out of his dish and remarked to me,
7:09
Speaker 1: I see you do not like cherries, and then proceeded
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Speaker 1: to eat all the cherries out of all four dishes.
7:16
Speaker 1: This stunned me, but of course I made a comment
7:20
Speaker 1: upon his disposal of all the cherries in sight. The
7:25
Speaker 1: President then makes a pitch for the post. He wants
7:28
Speaker 1: Cheryl to take some minor ambassadorship or blue ribbon panel.
7:33
Speaker 1: Cheryl demurs. The President is crestfallen, but as they leave
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Speaker 1: the luncheon, Cheryl turns to Hoover and gently says, I think, sir,
7:44
Speaker 1: that you do not realize that a man does not
7:47
Speaker 1: always know just what the other man likes or does
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Speaker 1: not like. For example, at luncheon, you said I did
7:53
Speaker 1: not appear to like cherries, But you are mistake, because
7:57
Speaker 1: I am very fond of cherries. But there might be
8:00
Speaker 1: something else which I would like to do to serve you,
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Speaker 1: which I like as much as I like cherries, and
8:06
Speaker 1: possibly it is something that you have not thought of
8:10
Speaker 1: in connection with me. And then the kicker, perhaps this
8:15
Speaker 1: remark of mine has something to do with his subsequently
8:19
Speaker 1: asking me to undertake the embassy to Turkey. I mean,
8:25
Speaker 1: can you see why we are so fascinated with Cheryl?
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Speaker 1: It's all there in the showdown over the cherry bowl,
8:31
Speaker 1: his willingness to speak truth to power, his will to succeed,
8:35
Speaker 1: his daring conversational gambits. Cheryl's most enduring fame, however, was
8:40
Speaker 1: as a sportsman. He was a champion sprinter at Yale.
8:44
Speaker 1: He never went to the Olympics, but he did briefly
8:47
Speaker 1: share the world record for the hundred yard dash. But
8:50
Speaker 1: that was just part of it. You know how sprinter's
8:52
Speaker 1: crouch at the start of every race instead of standing.
8:56
Speaker 1: Charles Cheryl invented the crouching start, or at least he
9:02
Speaker 1: says he did.
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Speaker 4: Any One that looked at my hand will be that
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Speaker 4: I have a luck line which surprises all of those
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Speaker 4: who are wise in such.
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Speaker 1: Such Cheryl was much sought after as an after dinner speaker,
9:13
Speaker 1: and he would often begin with a story or two
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Speaker 1: of his halcyon days at Yale as a champion athletic innovator.
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Speaker 4: Which brings me to the athletic thought that although I
9:26
Speaker 4: should play credit for the invention of the catching start,
9:34
Speaker 4: the real fact is that it's due more to luck
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Speaker 4: than brain. I happened upon it and it turned out
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Speaker 4: to be worth at least the yard, and I got
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Speaker 4: credit or something with my luck really deserved.
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Speaker 1: You know how you have an uncle who stole home
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Speaker 1: in the little league to win the county championship and
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Speaker 1: he's still telling that story fifty years later. Cheryl was
9:57
Speaker 1: like that with the crouching start.
10:01
Speaker 2: He has this glorious life that everyone in the world
10:04
Speaker 2: is basically supporting, because even he get has all these
10:07
Speaker 2: letters from presidents just being not saying anything important, but
10:12
Speaker 2: being like, Chaz loved your book on stayin Glass. Yeah,
10:17
Speaker 2: like three paragraphs from Teddy Roosevelt telling him how great
10:21
Speaker 2: his book on stained Glass is. And I believe that
10:23
Speaker 2: he actually read Charles Cheryl's book on Stained Glass. But
10:26
Speaker 2: for what reason other than to make Cheryl feel good
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Speaker 2: about himself, which is just the mission of even the
10:31
Speaker 2: most powerful man in the world.
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Speaker 1: Do you know about the Teddy Roosevelt. There's a great
10:37
Speaker 1: Teddy Roosevelt moment in uh oh, yeah, he goes to
10:42
Speaker 1: see Roosevelt. This is from his tires and he's he
10:46
Speaker 1: waits for half an hour before going into the president
10:48
Speaker 1: study because Booker Washington had been called called in to
10:51
Speaker 1: advise up upon a speech touching on the colored race.
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Speaker 1: So just so we know, like he's.
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Speaker 2: Like, something meaningful is really going on.
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Speaker 1: Booker T. Washington was one of the most important African
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Speaker 1: American leaders of his generation, and they're talking about the
11:05
Speaker 1: central problem facing the American public. And Cheryl is like
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Speaker 1: waiting impatiently because he said, I followed him and after
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Speaker 1: the purpose of my visit was concluded a rose to leave.
11:15
Speaker 1: The President asked my opinion of two bronzes. One was
11:18
Speaker 1: the Bronco Buster, which had been presented to him by
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Speaker 1: the old Regiment, the rough Riders. The other was the
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Speaker 1: Crouching Start by Tate McKenzie.
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Speaker 2: Ah, that's that's what I found in the museum.
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Speaker 1: We are deep into digression mode here, But at some
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Speaker 1: point in our mutual obsession with Charles Cheryl Ben found
11:36
Speaker 1: himself in a community museum in some waspy corner of Connecticut,
11:40
Speaker 1: and stumbled upon a statue of a tall, handsome man
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Speaker 1: in a crouching start. Chills went down his spine exactly exactly,
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Speaker 1: I laughingly declared my inability to give any unprejudiced answer
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Speaker 1: because I was the first runner to use the crouching start.
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Speaker 2: Not true.
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Speaker 1: By the way, come back here and sit down, snapped
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Speaker 1: out the President, and then followed a rapid fire useilade
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Speaker 1: as to why that start had been invented, its advantages, limitations, etc.
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Speaker 1: Until I felt as if a stomach pump had been
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Speaker 1: applied to my brain.
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Speaker 5: Like just so we understand, Roosevelt has just met what
12:20
Speaker 5: Booker t WASHINGTD to discuss the central issue facing the Republic,
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Speaker 5: which is the continued like crime be committed against the
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Speaker 5: black people.
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Speaker 1: Cheryl shows up, Now what does the president do? Finally
12:33
Speaker 1: comes alive with the question of the origin of the
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Speaker 1: crouching start. Presidents were impressed by Charles Cheryl, and so
12:41
Speaker 1: was an organization that lies at the very heart of
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Speaker 1: this story, the International Olympic Committee the IOC. The IOC
12:51
Speaker 1: is the governing body of the Olympic Games then is now.
12:54
Speaker 1: It is based in Lauzon, Switzerland, neutral territory. It has
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Speaker 1: ultimate control over all aspects of the games, the rules,
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Speaker 1: the events, the schedule, where the games are held, Who
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Speaker 1: gets invited. The organization's founder was Pierre de Coupertan Baron
13:10
Speaker 1: de Cupertin, a French aristocrat. He got the modern game
13:14
Speaker 1: started in Greece in eighteen ninety six, planted the seed,
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Speaker 1: and from the beginning he surrounded himself with his friends,
13:22
Speaker 1: basically other aristocrats. He referred to them as the trusted Men.
13:28
Speaker 1: The Baron's successor to run the IOC was Count Henri
13:32
Speaker 1: dubayers LeTour of Belgium. Someone once wrote of the Count's wife,
13:37
Speaker 1: the Comtesse Elizabeth von Clarie Unaldringen. She traveled widely as
13:42
Speaker 1: her husband was a passionate tourist. The comtest was also
13:47
Speaker 1: a Nazi, who wrote a personal note of thanks to
13:49
Speaker 1: Adolf Hitler after he invaded her country. But we're getting
13:52
Speaker 1: ahead of ourselves. Another Olympic committee member, his Excellency the
13:57
Speaker 1: most excellent, the Marquise of sam the Spanish aristocrat who
14:02
Speaker 1: ran the IOC for twenty one years. One biographical note
14:05
Speaker 1: on Samarank reads that quote. During his studies he practiced
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Speaker 1: roller hockey, for which he created world Championships, which the
14:14
Speaker 1: Spanish team won roller hockey. He picks a sport no
14:18
Speaker 1: one plays, and then invents a world championships where he
14:21
Speaker 1: has to be the favorite. I mean, that is just
14:23
Speaker 1: about the most perfect description of enterprising white guy privilege ever.
14:30
Speaker 1: And let's not forget about Lord David George brownlow Cecil Berlin,
14:34
Speaker 1: heir to the Marquess of Exeter, who once ran around
14:37
Speaker 1: the upper promenade deck of the Queen Mary Ocean Liner
14:40
Speaker 1: in fifty seven seconds dressed in street clothes, a record
14:45
Speaker 1: that I'm pretty sure still stands. Burgley was the one
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Speaker 1: who bestowed the golden bronze medals on the American runners
14:52
Speaker 1: John Carlos and Tommy Smith at the Mexico Games in
14:54
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, where on the victory stand the two
14:58
Speaker 1: famously raised glove fists in a black power salute. When
15:02
Speaker 1: asked why Carlos and Smith wore gloves that day, Burley said,
15:06
Speaker 1: I thought they'd hurt their hands. These were the men
15:13
Speaker 1: of the Io Sea. They would meet every year or
15:16
Speaker 1: so in a grand hotel in one of the many
15:18
Speaker 1: storied capitals of Europe, put on long black coats and
15:21
Speaker 1: striped pants and bowler hats, drink a lot of Chateau
15:24
Speaker 1: Lafitte Rothschild, and regale each other with stories of past
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Speaker 1: athletic triumphs. It was the greatest men's club in the world,
15:35
Speaker 1: and in retrospect, it was surely only a matter of
15:38
Speaker 1: time before the IOC set their sights on a certain
15:42
Speaker 1: dashing mustachiote sprinting champion from New York City who held
15:48
Speaker 1: the ear of Presidents. Let me read to you from
15:53
Speaker 1: the June eighth, nineteen twenty two edition of the New
15:56
Speaker 1: York Times. Olympic Committee Aleks Mister Cheryl will bring a
16:02
Speaker 1: vast store of athletic knowledge to the Committee. While at
16:05
Speaker 1: Yale he won the intercollegiate one hundred yard dash championship
16:09
Speaker 1: four years in succession. He was wait for it, the
16:14
Speaker 1: originator of the crouching start, which is now used in
16:17
Speaker 1: all sprints in every section of the world. Zelig Forrest Gum,
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Speaker 1: Polonius Pangloss, Mister b and the Thomas Edison of the
16:28
Speaker 1: crouching start. Our man of parts has now been given
16:31
Speaker 1: his greatest role ever a member of the International Olympic Committee,
16:36
Speaker 1: and over the next decade his medal will be put
16:39
Speaker 1: to the test do I dare to introduce yet another
16:42
Speaker 1: literary analog, Hercules, of course, whom the Oracle of Delphi
16:47
Speaker 1: directed to perform twelve trials in exchange for immortality, the
16:52
Speaker 1: slaying of the Hydra, the cleansing of the augien Stables,
16:55
Speaker 1: on and on. You read the Greek myths and immediately
16:58
Speaker 1: your thinking of Charles Hitchcock Cheryl. And by the way,
17:02
Speaker 1: where is the most famous depiction of the labors of
17:04
Speaker 1: Hercules in a sculpture found in the Temple of Zeus
17:09
Speaker 1: at Olympia. It all fits. Adolf Hitler's rise to the
17:20
Speaker 1: leadership of Germany was swift. In nineteen twenty three, in
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Speaker 1: his mid thirties, he makes an incredibly clumsy coup attempt
17:28
Speaker 1: in Munich and gets arrested. Spends nine months in prison,
17:32
Speaker 1: where he writes Mankomfe his vision for a new ary
17:35
Speaker 1: in Germany, cleansed of Jews and outsiders, and as soon
17:38
Speaker 1: as he gets out, his star ascends. By the time
17:42
Speaker 1: our famous American journalist Dorothy Thompson interviews Hitler at the
17:46
Speaker 1: Kaiserhoff Hotel in nineteen thirty one, the Nazis are the
17:50
Speaker 1: second biggest party in the German parliament, and gaining ground,
17:54
Speaker 1: and Thompson is trying to figure out whether Hitler can
17:57
Speaker 1: actually get elected Chancellor, especially since he makes it clear
18:01
Speaker 1: that he doesn't actually believe in democracy. Thompson wrote, people
18:06
Speaker 1: were to awaken, and Hitler's movement was going to vote
18:10
Speaker 1: dictatorship in in itself a fascinating idea. Imagine a would
18:15
Speaker 1: be dictator setting out to persuade a sovereign people to
18:18
Speaker 1: vote away their rights. In nineteen thirty three, Hitler pulls
18:24
Speaker 1: it off. It comes to power almost immediately. There's a
18:28
Speaker 1: boycott of Jewish businesses. People start beating up Jews in
18:32
Speaker 1: the streets. Jews get banned from professional organizations and sports clubs.
18:38
Speaker 1: The Nazis, it turns out, care a great deal about sports,
18:42
Speaker 1: about physical fitness, about vigorous competition, and their vision of
18:46
Speaker 1: sports does not include Jews. Germany's best tennis player at
18:51
Speaker 1: the time is Jewish doctor Daniel Prenn, and he gets
18:54
Speaker 1: kicked off the country's Davis Cup team. In the spring
18:57
Speaker 1: of nineteen thirty three, the head of the German an
19:00
Speaker 1: organizing committee for the Berlin Games, Teodolibald, is stripped of
19:04
Speaker 1: his post because there were some Jewish people in his
19:06
Speaker 1: family tree. In May of nineteen thirty three, the German
19:10
Speaker 1: Sports Commissioner gives an interview where he says that German
19:14
Speaker 1: sports are for arians. The American Jewish Congress sends a
19:19
Speaker 1: telegram to the American delegates to the IOC. It says,
19:23
Speaker 1: no jew in America or in other countries could, in
19:27
Speaker 1: self respect undertake to appear in Germany under present conditions.
19:32
Speaker 1: The Olympic ideal and the Nazi agenda are on a
19:36
Speaker 1: collision course. Now it's June nineteen thirty three. The IOC
19:44
Speaker 1: has its big meetings set for Vienna. It was almost
19:47
Speaker 1: certainly at the Hotel Imperial, a magnificent building in the
19:50
Speaker 1: Italian Neo Renaissance style, marble lobby, coffered ceilings, crystal chandeliers.
19:56
Speaker 1: No other place would be up to the IOC's standards.
20:00
Speaker 1: Little known fact about the Imperial, by the way, Hitler
20:03
Speaker 1: worked there briefly as a janitor when he was bombing
20:06
Speaker 1: around Vienna in his twenties. Sixty six delegates are coming
20:09
Speaker 1: for the IOC meeting from every country of significance in
20:13
Speaker 1: the world. The Men's Club has gathered in their long
20:17
Speaker 1: black coats, their striped pants and bowler hats. A special
20:21
Speaker 1: program is printed up for all in attendance, which begins
20:25
Speaker 1: on its opening page with a questionnaire. Are you a sportsman? One?
20:31
Speaker 1: Do you play the game for the game's sake? Two?
20:34
Speaker 1: Do you play for your team and not yourself? Three?
20:38
Speaker 1: Do you carry out your captain's orders without question or criticism? Four?
20:44
Speaker 1: Do you accept the umpire's decision absolutely? Five? Do you
20:49
Speaker 1: win without swank and lose without grousing? And then the
20:55
Speaker 1: crucial one six would you rather lose than do anything
21:00
Speaker 1: which you are not sure is fair? The Vienna meeting
21:05
Speaker 1: focuses squarely on that sixth question. A true sportsman would
21:10
Speaker 1: rather lose than do anything that wasn't fair, And the
21:13
Speaker 1: delegates are perfectly aware of what's going on in Germany.
21:17
Speaker 1: Not letting Jews compete simply because they are Jews is
21:21
Speaker 1: for the sportsman surely the definition of unfairness.
21:25
Speaker 4: But our International Committee does not concern itself with internal
21:34
Speaker 4: athletic conditions in any country, but only with the choice
21:39
Speaker 4: of that country's members for its Olympic team.
21:44
Speaker 1: This is Cheryl in a speech outlining the Commission's dilemma
21:47
Speaker 1: that week in Vienna.
21:48
Speaker 4: Now that's very important to remember with that choice, we
21:52
Speaker 4: insist that race, religion, color, and sofar shall.
21:56
Speaker 1: Not interfere cognitive dissonance upon us. And the Olympic committee
22:02
Speaker 1: members have four ways they can resolve it. They can
22:05
Speaker 1: move the game somewhere else. They can cancel the games
22:09
Speaker 1: the way they did in nineteen sixteen in the middle
22:11
Speaker 1: of the First World War. They can keep the games
22:14
Speaker 1: in Berlin and simply let everyone boycott. Or they can
22:18
Speaker 1: convince the Nazis to have a change of heart when
22:21
Speaker 1: it comes to their Jewish athletes. What should they do?
22:26
Speaker 1: Let us put ourselves in the mind of our hero,
22:29
Speaker 1: Charles Hitchcock Cheryl. He has sailed the Atlantic ninety times.
22:34
Speaker 1: He has written a book on German stained glass windows.
22:37
Speaker 1: He knows the Teutonic soul and did not Charles Hitchcock
22:41
Speaker 1: Cheryl stare down the President of the United States over
22:44
Speaker 1: the thorny issue of the disputed cherrybyl Why bow to tyranny?
22:50
Speaker 1: Why not compel tyranny to bow to you? The last
22:55
Speaker 1: option to convince the Nazis to be less Nazi was
22:59
Speaker 1: the only choice. Cheryl sends a telegram home to the
23:03
Speaker 1: American Jewish Congress, rest assured that I shall stoutly maintain
23:08
Speaker 1: the American principle that all citizens are equal under the law.
23:15
Speaker 1: The key business of the Vienna meeting was conducted by
23:17
Speaker 1: a six man executive committee headed by the Belgian count
23:21
Speaker 1: Henri du Baye LeTour, and Cheryl, by virtue of his
23:25
Speaker 1: stature as a diplomat and storied athlete, is the key
23:29
Speaker 1: player in that inner circle. They meet behind closed doors.
23:34
Speaker 1: Imagine a room full of mustachio gentlemen in an ornate
23:39
Speaker 1: conference room festooned with portraits of other mustachio gentlemen. Cheryl
23:44
Speaker 1: by LeTour and the English delegate on one side of
23:48
Speaker 1: the long oak conference table, the Germans on the other.
23:53
Speaker 1: It was a trying fight, Cheryl explains later in a
23:56
Speaker 1: letter to a friend. The British said, let the Germans be,
24:00
Speaker 1: but Cheryl would have none of it. The Germans yielded slowly,
24:04
Speaker 1: very slowly. First they conceded that the other nations could
24:08
Speaker 1: bring Jews. Then I went at them hard, insisting that
24:13
Speaker 1: as they had expressly excluded Jews, now they must expressly
24:17
Speaker 1: declare that Jews would not even be excluded from German teams.
24:24
Speaker 1: He would tell this story often in the intervening years.
24:27
Speaker 4: I personally fearing unfair treatment of Jewish athlete in the
24:32
Speaker 4: selection for the German nineteen thirty sixth Olympic team. Made
24:38
Speaker 4: it my business who pushed the points so far that
24:42
Speaker 4: our committee received from the German Ministry of Interior Ministerium
24:47
Speaker 4: dos Center a letter of three short paragraphs, third of
24:52
Speaker 4: which reads, as a principal German Jews shall not be
24:58
Speaker 4: excluded from German team at the game of the eleventh Olympia.
25:03
Speaker 4: At his next year, I had the honor of drafting
25:07
Speaker 4: that third paragraph. Perhaps you will agree that I felt
25:13
Speaker 4: everyone at home and abroad thought that I was thus
25:18
Speaker 4: doing my best for the Jews.
25:24
Speaker 1: In Vienna, there are reporters gathered at the hotel waiting
25:28
Speaker 1: for news to break. Cheryl emerges, triumphant that games will
25:33
Speaker 1: go on. A cheer goes up around the world. The
25:36
Speaker 1: New York Times, Charles Cheryl's newspaper of record, calls him
25:40
Speaker 1: a hero. The straightforward character of the promise obtained from
25:45
Speaker 1: the German government came as all the greater surprise, and
25:48
Speaker 1: the opinion was expressed that a real blow had been
25:51
Speaker 1: struck in the cause of racial freedom, at least in
25:55
Speaker 1: the realm of sports. Charles Cheryl confronts the contradt of
26:00
Speaker 1: the Berlin Games, the cognitive dissonance of a pure competition
26:04
Speaker 1: in an impure place, and he resolves it how not
26:09
Speaker 1: like Dorothy Thompson. She said, you resolve it by not going.
26:13
Speaker 1: He says, no, you resolve it by making the impure
26:17
Speaker 1: place pure, by staring down his German counterparts across the
26:21
Speaker 1: negotiating table, and through sheer force of personality and intelligence
26:26
Speaker 1: and courage and good old fashioned New York City moxie,
26:31
Speaker 1: bending them to our will. The Vienna Declaration was Charles
26:36
Speaker 1: Hitchcock Cheryl's finest hour. The controversy over the Games faded,
26:42
Speaker 1: The Olympics were saved. Problem solved, right, Oh, no, problem
26:49
Speaker 1: is just beginning.
27:00
Speaker 2: I want to keep talking about what's funny about Charles Cheryl,
27:03
Speaker 2: because I do think he's hilarious and he brings me
27:05
Speaker 2: so much joy. I think he also raises a number
27:08
Speaker 2: of very complicated moral questions. Yeah, and I found myself
27:13
Speaker 2: at the end of the second day that I went
27:16
Speaker 2: into the archives. His scrapbooks are at the New York
27:19
Speaker 2: Historical Society.
27:21
Speaker 1: The New York Historical Society is a massive bozar building
27:24
Speaker 1: on Manhattan's Upper West Side, right by the Natural History Museum.
27:29
Speaker 1: If you were a man of Charles Cheryl's stature, there
27:32
Speaker 1: is no other place worthy of your collected papers.
27:36
Speaker 2: So we found out that Charles Pitchcock Cheryl had lovingly
27:42
Speaker 2: documented his entire life. You know, most archives you go to,
27:45
Speaker 2: they're just boxes of stuff that was left to a library,
27:49
Speaker 2: and then they had to figure out some kind of
27:50
Speaker 2: archival organization's scheme for it. Not Charles Cheryl's papers. Everything
27:55
Speaker 2: that he kept was preserved in a scrap book, in
27:59
Speaker 2: actually four four scrap books that then when he died
28:02
Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty six, his wife be queathed to the
28:05
Speaker 2: New York Historical Society.
28:08
Speaker 1: Ben spent days at Historical Society archives digging to the
28:13
Speaker 1: Cheryl mother lord.
28:15
Speaker 2: I mean they're all like six inches wide. And the
28:18
Speaker 2: thing is, the legacy of Cheryl continues in the pristineness
28:23
Speaker 2: of these scrap books. I mean, his ink doesn't fade,
28:27
Speaker 2: the glue he uses to bind this stuff doesn't give,
28:30
Speaker 2: and all of the paper was still so crisp and weighty.
28:34
Speaker 2: Everything is written on these like robins egg blue and
28:36
Speaker 2: pearl thick stock pages, or like silky diary pages. He
28:41
Speaker 2: just had the best of everything, and it's all withstood
28:46
Speaker 2: the test of time.
28:48
Speaker 1: Was the wife in donating these materials? Let's accept for
28:53
Speaker 1: a moment the premise that the wife may not have been,
28:56
Speaker 1: the relationship may not have been. Should we say conventional?
29:00
Speaker 1: Do you think she's Do you think she knows what
29:02
Speaker 1: she's doing? Oh? The wife? We haven't talked about her yet.
29:07
Speaker 1: She was the heir to the Berkshire Cotton manufacturing Company,
29:11
Speaker 1: which would later merge with Hathaway to create you guessed it,
29:16
Speaker 1: Berkshire Hathaway, which her family would turn around and sell
29:21
Speaker 1: to a young Warren Buffett. Yet another way in which
29:24
Speaker 1: the world turns around. Charles Hitchcock Cheryl. Anyhow, missus Charles
29:29
Speaker 1: Hitchcock Cheryl takes the complete set of her husband's papers,
29:34
Speaker 1: has them preserved in perpetuity, and apparently never checks to
29:38
Speaker 1: see what's in them. Or maybe she does and she's
29:42
Speaker 1: fine with it. Now. It's crucially important that he dies
29:47
Speaker 1: in thirty six right.
29:49
Speaker 2: The former head of manuscripts that the New York Historical
29:52
Speaker 2: Society points out that this is the rare occasion on
29:56
Speaker 2: which a American who really fell in love and hard
30:00
Speaker 2: with the Nazi Party was unable to then sanitize his
30:03
Speaker 2: records after seeing what happened in World War Two. So
30:06
Speaker 2: what we have here is a perfectly preserved in amber.
30:10
Speaker 2: It's like the Jurassic Park Mosquito of nineteen thirties American fascism,
30:15
Speaker 2: because nothing there was, you know, already a very high
30:19
Speaker 2: bar for self consciousness in Charles Cheryl's life, and so
30:23
Speaker 2: the full force of his love for the Nazis is
30:25
Speaker 2: on display in volume thirty five of his forty four
30:28
Speaker 2: scrap book collection.
30:32
Speaker 1: In our next episode, we delve into the buried treasure
30:35
Speaker 1: of scrap Book thirty five, the uncensored journal of a
30:39
Speaker 1: man in the process of going Nazi.
30:43
Speaker 3: I'm an attendant lord, one that will do to swell
30:46
Speaker 3: a progress, start a scene, or do advise the Prince,
30:52
Speaker 3: no doubt, an easy tool, deferential, glad to be of use, politic,
30:57
Speaker 3: cautious and particulous, full of high sentence, but a bit
31:02
Speaker 3: of cute at times, indeed almost ridiculous, almost at times.
31:10
Speaker 1: The fool Well Yes Religious History is produced by ben
31:28
Speaker 1: Na daph Haffrey, Tolly Emlin and Nina Bird Lawrence. Our
31:32
Speaker 1: editor is Sarah Nix. Fact checking by Arthur Gomberts and
31:37
Speaker 1: Jail Goldfein. Original scoring by Luis Gara, mastering by Flan Williams,
31:43
Speaker 1: Sarah Buger and Jake Gorsky. Engineering by Nina Bird Lawrence.
31:48
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Special thanks to Karen Chakerji.
31:54
Speaker 1: I'm Malcolm gladwa