Part Two: How Avery Brundage Gave Hitler an Olympics

Robert and Matt discuss how Avery Brundage and the Olympic Committee killed the attempt at an Olympics boycott and handed Hitler a major win.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Yes, So I don't know. I mean, I guess it
depends on what you consider to be murder. Like, I
don't really think it was murder, because you know, I was.
I was pretty wasted, so like, I feel like that
is a mitigating factor. But oh my god, we're recording. Hey, sorry,
this was a podcast. Well, this was not a podcast.

(00:25):
I didn't realize we were recording. I was just talking
to Matt Leeb about our weekend on Sesame Street.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
Yeah. Mine was also good on Sesame Street. And yes
on Sesame Street. Yes. Anyway, legal analysts are split on
whether or not the Sesame Street weekend we had was
legal or not.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's I think what's most important
to note is that big Bird is up in a farm,
uh in the country now, and he's doing great.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
He's fine, he's fine, he's good.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Look into like the will that that is totally legitimate,
that will be found in this house. Anyway, Matt, we're
still in our Burton Ernie bed reading her bedtime story,
a two hour bedtime story.

Speaker 4 (01:06):
Yet what wait, I have an important questions and I
feel like Matt would give a fantastic answer this question,
which fictional TV character would you let defend you in court?

Speaker 3 (01:19):
Oh god? I mean the obvious one is fog Horn
Leghorn because he already sounds like a rooster lawyer. But
if I had to go, uh, does it have to
be a cartoon? No?

Speaker 4 (01:32):
No, no, no, no, I think I think it. I think
it's just fictional, so just so it could be. And
you know from from either shows that you I mean,
you could pod yourself the gun or pod yourself the wire?

Speaker 3 (01:45):
Where are you? I think I already chose Foghorn Leghorn.
But if I had to choose someone from you know,
a live action television show, I don't know. I feel
like a fucking I think the Good Doctor would be
pretty good at it.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Okay, okay, see me. I'm picking my cousin Vinnie, sure,
largely because I would like to meet Marisitome.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
Oh yeah, but.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
He will get me off out of this murder rap
that I shouldn't catch for whatever happened to Big Bird, which.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
Doesn't matter what happened. The point is is, you know,
we're going to be fine. We're going to be fine.
Big Bird is still alive.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
I do kind of want to see I mean, this
is adjacent to Sesame Street. But I do feel like
right after my cousin Vinnie, they could have done a sequel,
but where the rest of the cast are muppets, and uh,
that would have been a great movie.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
They could have done a lot of things.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
I feel like the original could have had muppets in
it and it will worked out pretty.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
Were not really many movies out there that couldn't also
work being a combination live action muppet movie. You know,
I just Godfather.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
The Pianist, sure, Oh yeah, definitely the Pianist Captain Corelli's
mandolin for sure.

Speaker 3 (03:05):
Man, it just works.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
So that's the cold open, everybody. We're going to talk
more about Avery Brundage when we get back. And we're back. So,
if Pierre de Kubertine was the Jesus Christ of the Olympics,
and he kind of was, Enri de Ballets, Latour was

(03:29):
the Apostle Paul we mentioned him in the last episode.
This is kind of the guy Kubertine when he gets
too old. Henri is the dude who kind of follows
him as the King of the Olympics. You might say
that's not what they call it, but that's what I'm
going to call it because Enri de Ballet Latour was
a Belgian aristocrat. His father was a count and former

(03:50):
governor of Antwerp, which, of all the parts of Belgium,
is certainly one of them. He had been elected to
Kubertine's successor as President of the Olympics in nineteen twenty five,
and as the nineteen thirty dawned, his primary claim to
fame was that in nineteen twenty eight he had tried
to ban women from the Olympics.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
Hell. Yeah, so that's that's Ballet la tour.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Things are too easy for broads in nineteen twenty eight.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
Yeah, no, there's gonna be men only nineteen twenty eight onward,
all dudes.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
I just want to see men in tight span dex dancing, dancing.

Speaker 4 (04:23):
I would like to see a man do what Simone
Biles does.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
Sure, literally can't because she is one of one. Thank
you so much.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
Okay, but if I try hard and I could probably
do those flips.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
This is what I saw the first time I met you,
is you have a real Simone Biles energy, absolutely a microphone.

Speaker 3 (04:44):
I'm limber and I'm fun, that's right, That's right, and
much too tall.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
You know who's not limber? Or fun was Enri Ballet
la tour?

Speaker 4 (04:56):
Cool?

Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah, now I learned he was a piece of shit
from the book burlin in Games by Guy Walters. But
whenever I learned some very prominent and respected guy was
actually a scumbag, I like to take a glance at
their wiki just to see if they're like any funny
examples of editors. They are trying to diplomatically describe how
much a dude sucks, presumably while battling the horde of
bots that today's International Committee commands to whitewash their history.

(05:20):
And sure enough, when I went to Allanrie's wiki, I
found this. As IOC president, he focused on preserving the
traditional ideals and integrity of the Olympics and supporting amateur
sport globally during a time of increasing political and commercial pressures,
despite his antipathy towards Jews and his desire to exclude
women from participating in the yellowcups. Oh boy, it feels

(05:44):
like a buried lead there?

Speaker 3 (05:47):
Is that not the name of the sub section typathy? Yeah? Yeah,
well this does give me an opportunity to use my
net and Yahoo soundboard that I just invented. All right,
there we go and here's another one. Crazy Jews, Crazy Jews.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
It's going to be popular. So since Ballet la Tour
was a raging anti semi that's what I mean. I
think we could all do that in our heads. You
hear someone described as having antipathy towards Jews, that's the
most racist man you've ever heard of, although not in
this case, because Hitler is also a part of our story.

Speaker 3 (06:22):
Yes, he's around at the same time, you know, And.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
Because Ballet la Tour he is going to push back
on some of Hitler's discrimination against Jewish athletes. He gets
more credit that he deserves because he is At no
point is he doing it because it's really wrong. He's
doing it because, like, well, I know I should do
this because the Olympics is supposed to be for everyone,
and I kind of hate these people, but all, like
I have to demand they at least pretend not to

(06:48):
be racist than not against these people that I also hate.

Speaker 3 (06:52):
Yeah, we have to put on a good face, you know.
It's like you need to wear a mask if you're
going to hate Jews. Come on Hitler, right right.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
And the problem for Ballet la Tour, who's again he's
president of the IOC, which is the International Committee Avery
Brundage is for most of his period he's president and
then like a leading official in the AOC, which is
the American Olympic Committee. Right, So Brundage is like a
local Olympic leader and balleyla Tour is running the whole shebang, right,

(07:19):
And so Ballet la Tour Brundage desperately wants to be
on the IOC, and he is eventually going to get
on it and later will be president of the IOC,
and he's looking he has to kind of he has
to make balleyla Tour happy in order to be able
to make that jump, right. So this is like from
a career point of view, what's going on here? And
the problem for both balayla Tour and Brundage is that

(07:40):
as soon as the Nazis get into power, they start
banning Jewish athletes from joining sporting organizations, from using the
same sporting facilities as Aryan athletes. And this they don't
like directly say Jews can't be in the Olympics, but
because they have, they have made it impossible for Jewish
people to be a part of any of the things
that funnel people into the Olympics, right, So it's a

(08:01):
facto band, right, Yeah, I think there is an eventually,
like a straight up band, but it starts as just
sort of like, well, we have now made it impossible
for this to happen, right Yeah. Avery Brundage again also
sees this as a problem, but he's also very racist,
So they're both in this position of like, well, we
have this kind of messianic belief in the Olympics and
everyone should be capable of being in the Olympics. So

(08:22):
we don't like that you've made this impossible, but we
also basically agree with why you hate the Juice, right,
Like we do think they run an international conspiracy.

Speaker 3 (08:32):
We're very racist. You listen, I get where you're coming
from with the whole Jews thing. What I'm just saying,
you know, that's trying to ban them. Yeah, I'm trying
to square that with letting everyone compete in sport. And uh,
it's a tricky one.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
It's such a it's such an interesting because there's a
lot of these kinds you even when you read through
like wartime memoirs of like Americans, there's a lot of
like like patent pretty racist against Jewish people, and then
like the Holocaust becomes clear and there are a number
of folks who are like, oh, I guess I'm not
that kind of racist. I learned something about me through

(09:09):
this whole experience, And isn't that what war is all about?

Speaker 3 (09:12):
Right? Yeah, learning that you're not as bad as.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
Yeah, So the Nazis being Nazis, spark anger across the
rest of the world with a chaotic series of aggressive
Olympic related spasms pretty much as soon as they're in charge. Now,
this goes in a number of different directions. First off,
they're just kind of like, we don't even want to
host the games if you guys are going to be
dicks about this hole us oppressing Jewish people think.

Speaker 3 (09:36):
And then they're like, yeah, you guys are going to
be rude about our belief system about how Jews are vermin.
Then I don't even think we want to do this shit. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:47):
The other thing they do, so the guy who's the
president of the German Olympic Committee, so he's like the
German Avery Brundage, is a guy named Theodore Leveled and
he's like half Jewish, right, and so they try to
fire him, and the IOC is like, well, you can't, right,
Like then we definitely will. And so like he's going
to be leveled. Is like in such an awkward position
where he is part Jewish, he has actively been discriminating,

(10:10):
discriminated on in this in this entire pre and during
the Olympics period. He is also the head of the
German Olympic Committee still and it's one of those like
I definitely know there are definitely people at the time,
like Jewish refugees and stuff, who attacked him for being
a trader. I also like, well, I don't know, man,
what happens to your family if you are that publicly

(10:32):
like that. I'm not gonna. I don't have it in
me to judge people in that situation.

Speaker 3 (10:38):
Yeah, yeah, it's a bit tricky if yeah, you know,
yeah German jew at this time. Yeah, like maybe we
can like reason with him.

Speaker 2 (10:48):
Yeah yeah, it's it's yeah, I just don't have it
in me to come down on the guy. But it's
important to understand that context and understand that there are
a lot of people who consider him a trader.

Speaker 3 (10:57):
Right.

Speaker 2 (10:58):
The Nazis banned Jewish athletes from from using public training
facilities and from holding membership in any of the sporting
organizations that funnel competitors up to the Olympics. This sparks
outrage in the United States and the US we're really
interested that it's interesting in this period because we are
as racist as we have ever been in the nineteen thirties.
But anytime somebody comes straight out and makes their politics

(11:21):
at a national level, you can get away with at
a local level in the South, especially, but if you
come out at a national level and you might make
your politics be about racial exclusion, Americans don't generally like that, right,
But I think in large part not because we're any
less racist than anyone else, but because it conflicts with
the idea Americans have of themselves.

Speaker 3 (11:40):
Yeah, and that offends them right of one day not
being racist or the idea that like, no, we're not
actually racist. Yes, on a national level, we're really really
polite about segregation.

Speaker 2 (11:51):
As we're going to get into, one of the awkward
things about this is that a lot of some of
the people who reject the boycott campaign in the US
are black American athletes, and they have a really good point, right,
because they're like, well, but we have like a lot
of the same laws, Like I can't play in most
of the same facilities that like the people running the
Olympics play in. So why am I pissed about Germany

(12:12):
in particular?

Speaker 3 (12:13):
Right? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (12:14):
And it's like, well, yeah, I mean from the position
of like, yeah, you're a black boxer, like nineteen thirty
five or whatever, I understand that argument. I certainly can't.
It's kind of like you get with them black strike
breakers during like the Cold Wars, where it's like, well,
they wouldn't let you be part of the union. What
are you supposed to do? Right, Like you had a
family to feed? Yeah, yeah, yeah, Oh, I guess in

(12:35):
this case, you're legally not allowed to feed your family
by being good at sports. So there is that difference.
So there's a boycott campaign that starts to consolidate around
the nineteen thirty six games. As Carolyn Marvin lays out
in an article for the Journal of American Studies, telegrams,
phone calls, and letters demanding an official American reaction besieged
Brundage as the president of the AOC, and he released

(12:56):
a statement giving his personal but unofficial opinion that the
IOC would not permit the games to be held wherever
there might be interference with the fundamental Olympic theory of
a quality of all races. To Brundage's irritation, this was
reported as an official challenge to German Olympic Committee policy.
He had only meant to reassure the American public, upon
whose goodwill Olympic activities depended, he explained in a letter

(13:18):
to the nervous doctor Leveled. Facing problems of his own
and fearing the defection of the large and prestigious American team,
so he talks when he really shouldn't have, and it
causes problems for Leveled over in Germany and Levels again
in a very tough position. Now, back in nineteen thirty,
before the Nazis were in charge, the American Olympic Committee

(13:38):
had sent a guy named Gustavus Kirby to observe construction
efforts for the stadium to make sure that the plans
for the thirty six Olympics were going according to like plan,
and he was the first guy that Ballet Latour had
Brundage trot out to fight back against fears that the
Nazis might have plans to do some like racial violence
and thus weren't fitting Olympic hosts. They were also worried

(14:00):
like are they going to start another war?

Speaker 3 (14:02):
Right?

Speaker 2 (14:02):
Is there going to be a big European war? And
so his job, by way of defending the Olympics, Kirby
has to like argue that Germany is never going to
do another war. Oh, and here's what Kirby writes, The
German psychology is not that of deception. The World War
was not only in their hearts but also on their
lips before it was precipitated, and that if the rest

(14:24):
of the world were blind, it certainly was not because
Germany had for years been boasting. And therefore if the
present activity were being directed toward a warlike end, we
would certainly hear of it, know of it.

Speaker 3 (14:34):
Yeah, I think we know if Germany had some sort
of ambitions towards a war.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
Yeah. God, beautiful stuff. So somehow this failed to reassure anybody.
Balley la Tour, president of the Olympics, got involved and
he wrote Avery Brundage a letter saying I am not
personally fond of Jews and of the Jewish influence, but
I will not have them molested in no way whatsoever.

Speaker 3 (15:03):
Godol, I love the middle ground of this. So they're
just like, listen, I'm no fan of the international Jew right.
I think we can all agree with that.

Speaker 2 (15:14):
Of course, the Nazis are right about everything except their laws.

Speaker 3 (15:18):
Yeah, except the whole power they're molesting them, all right,
let's not molest It's so funny.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
I mean, it's not like this is one of the
worst things that ever happened in history, and it keeps
being repeated in various forms down through the ages. But
it's very funny whenever you read how people like talked
about this, like the attempts to like we would know
if the Germans wanted war. It's like that Simpson's line,
no one who's German could be a bad man. Oh yeah,

(15:50):
So Ballet Latour urges Brundage to find a way to
apply pressure to the Germans, while also acknowledging that the
Jews quote shout before there is reason to do so
they always just the good part.

Speaker 3 (16:05):
And there's just like and I acknowledge again, you cries
out in pain before he strikes you. I acknowledge this.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
Yeah, yeah, we've got to put pressure on the Nazis.
But also I'm really bad, like maybe clear about this.
I suck so hard, No, I'm just as evil as
you gonna.

Speaker 3 (16:23):
Don't get me wrong. You know, White don't want to
do anything about it.

Speaker 2 (16:26):
I just want to get angry on Reddit about it.

Speaker 3 (16:28):
You know that's me. I got like fourteen eighty eight
mine fucking Twitter handle and everything.

Speaker 2 (16:35):
So, both Brundage and Balela Tour did strongly disagree with
the fact that the Nazis had Banjews from qualifying to
compete in the Olympics. And again, this isn't because of
any particular respect for human rights, but more because of
their religious faith in the Olympics as a concept. Right,
the only people you can exclude are professional athletes because
they're fundamentally bad people.

Speaker 3 (16:55):
For making them exactly yeah, yeah, they're destroying sport by
feeding their families with it.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
It is a fascinating set of moral lines these people truy.
So the American Olympic Committee voted to boycott the games
of Germany didn't reverse course, and Brundage supported the resolution initially,
and it passes easily because again, Americans don't like being
seen as racist.

Speaker 3 (17:18):
Right.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
Had the story ended there, Brundage probably wouldn't ever have
made behind the bastards. You would have been yet another
guy in the twenties had some shitty opinions but ultimately
did the right thing right supporting the boycott, I would argue,
was the right thing to do. Sure, but the IOC
was very unhappy with this situation because every person in
the IOC is a wealthy aristocrat or at least rich
in the case of the Americans, and they all thought

(17:41):
the Nazis were actually pretty cool.

Speaker 3 (17:44):
I think they're on something.

Speaker 2 (17:47):
There's one guy who doesn't suck in the fancy boys
Olympic club, and it's a commodore, ernest Yankee like JH.
Ncke who is the former Assistant Secretary of the Navy.
So there's another guy. I have General General Cheryl who's
on the Olympic Committee who does suck and is basically
a Nazi. But Comrado or Janki is like, and I'm
not saying he's like woke by whatever standards people use today,

(18:11):
but he's like, the Nazis are bad and we shouldn't.

Speaker 3 (18:14):
We shouldn't humor.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
Hitler with an Olympics, right like he wants this, and
we shouldn't give Hitler the things that he wants, right
love it. So yeah, his colleagues want him out as
a result of this. Now they will eventually force him out.
They can't do it right away. There's like you gotta
have you gotta basically have a whole vote. He's got
to do like some Emperor Palpatine, Star Wars, prequels, politics
shit to make this happen right right right, Balleyla Tour

(18:37):
is going to be a big part of that. So
while they're waiting to be able to force him out,
Balleila Tour promises Brundage, Hey, this guy, he's either going
to resign or one of these days, one way or another,
he will be out in the near future. And if
you fix this boycott situation, his seat will go to you, right.
And that's the thing, Avery, Brundage is always.

Speaker 3 (18:56):
All he wants advancement, that.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
Brave yes, and we all crave advancement. And really the
only way to advance is to buy the products sponsored
on their show. A lot of people don't know this, actually,
but one of the products sold on this show is
a seat on the IOC.

Speaker 3 (19:15):
You know it.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
And if we get enough listeners on the IOC, we
can make my old hometown of Idabell, Oklahoma be the
site of the new Olympics, and I just think that
would be kind of funny.

Speaker 3 (19:25):
That would be sick of.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
North Korea marching through the streets of Idaba.

Speaker 3 (19:31):
Let's do it, guys.

Speaker 4 (19:32):
I do kind of feel like they're going to run
actual Olympic ads on our shows during the Games. I
do kind of feel like NBC probably whoever the fuck
owns the streaming rights.

Speaker 3 (19:41):
Hell yeah, I'll.

Speaker 2 (19:42):
Take their money. I'll take their money, and I will
make them do the discus on the cow farm where
I grew up. Anyway, here's here's some ads. All right,
So we're back. So I want to read a quote
from Guy Walters kind of the conundrum that Avery Brundage

(20:03):
is faced with. Well, Brundage knew that if he wanted
to succeed him Jonki, he would have to do exactly
as the President and the Vice President wished. With the
two men looking benevolently on Germany, Brundage decided that he
would change his opinion to coincide with theirs. It was
nothing more than toadying. From this moment on, Brundage would
do everything in his power to ensure that his masters

(20:24):
were satisfied and The best way he could do that
was to ensure American participation at Berlin. Had Brundage not
been so personally ambitious, then a boycott would have been,
if not inevitable, certainly more likely. Nevertheless, the road to
Berlin was long, and it was to be heavy going.
Brundage's first task was to go to Germany at the
behest of the American Olympic Association, a decision that had

(20:46):
been taken in February.

Speaker 3 (20:49):
So he's going to go to Germany and he's going
to be assured. He's going to take a little tour. Yeah,
everything in Germany is all good. Everyone is check ill,
and don't worry about any future wars. That's just Jewish propaganda,
right right.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
Our streets are filled with marching soldiers. Don't worry about it.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
No, they're just they just we just like doing fucking
heel to toe walking.

Speaker 2 (21:15):
Okay, we like uniforms. Who does racewalking? Racewalking just like you,
different kind of racewalking.

Speaker 3 (21:22):
Yeah, it's a master race walking, but it's still we're
into it. We're just like you, bro.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
We're just like you guys. It was obvious from the
jump that Brundage would approve entirely of the German efforts.
Before he left, he wrote this in an article for
Olympic News. The German committee is making every effort to
provide the finest facilities and plans to reproduce the Los
Angeles Olympic village. We should see in the youth of
Berlin the forebears of a race of free, independent thinkers,

(21:49):
accustomed to the democracy of sport, a race disdainful of
sharp practice, tolerant of the rights of others, and practicing
the Golden Rule because it believes in it. Yes, that's
how would described nineteen thirty six Germans. Tolerance of the
rights of others.

Speaker 3 (22:06):
That sounds like the Germany I know, and I've read
about in history books.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
People can't stop talking about how much they love an
independent Poland it's the only thing on the books.

Speaker 3 (22:17):
You can't walk down the street without something me like.
You know, Polish independence is great, great.

Speaker 2 (22:22):
I'm such a brand of their being because there was
one last flag in Europe before Polish independence.

Speaker 3 (22:27):
And I like it, and I like it. It's good
to happen. If there's one thing we can all agree
on here in Germany is that we have enough space
for everyone.

Speaker 2 (22:38):
So I'm going to give as much detail as I
have on the trip Avery took, but I want to
actually first read you a summary of the whole trip
by Oliver Hilmes in his book Berlin in nineteen thirty six,
which I like less than Guy's book, but I appreciated
this passage. Brendage stayed in the capitol of the Third
Reich for six days, inspecting construction on the Olympic Stadium
and other facilities, visiting a number of museums, and generally

(23:01):
enjoying life. He had little time left over for meeting
representatives of Jewish athletics. When they told him that Jews
were no longer allowed to join German sports clubs, he replied,
in my club in Chicago, Jews are not permitted either.

Speaker 3 (23:14):
That great, great cool.

Speaker 2 (23:18):
I mean that's not a bad point vis a vis
the United States not going well on this, but it's
a bad point for you to make.

Speaker 3 (23:25):
Yeah, it's like, hey, you know, listen, we also don't
allow Jews here, So yeah, do what you need to do.

Speaker 2 (23:33):
Who am I as hell? So who's to say the
Nazis are bad?

Speaker 3 (23:37):
Who am I to try to change any of this shit?
So now I'm going to.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
Give you the full story of his visit to Germany.
I just really found that paragraph funny. On his way
to Germany, before he actually gets there for the trip,
Brundage stops at Stockholm for a meeting of some international
athletic federation or another. They held a party at a
villa and he meets a guy named Carl diam there,
who's a He's tight with a lot of major German
sporting officials. He's a big wig in German sporting. DM

(24:05):
invites him to lunch the next day while with Leveled,
that half Jewish German sporting official and Justice W. Meyerhoff,
a Jewish member of Berlin's sports club. Meyerhoff had obviously
faced repression at home being a German Jewish athlete. He
had been forced out of athletics like every other Jewish
person in Germany. But when the boycott threats cropped up,
the Nazis had said, hey, go put on a show

(24:27):
for this American or else. So he goes to lunch
with Leveled, and he tells Brundage, oh man, the Nazis,
those guys are great. You know, I tried to resign
from my sports club. Who wouldn't even let me, wouldn't
take my resignation. I was so proud of him. Great dudes.

Speaker 3 (24:41):
Yeah, all those guys. Oh the people in the brown
shirts and they're cool. Hell yeah, Oh we're all friends.
We all hang out. Oh this black guy, I got
it from now. We hugged to all. No.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
You know, I'm a runner, so like I felt like
fingernails were slowing me down. I just took them all
off myself, you know, to try and get more aerodynamic.
That's why I lost all this weight. Yeah, I'm just
trying to make a way for DM later wrote of

(25:19):
the meeting, Brundage was visibly impressed. Avery is wined and
dined in Stockholm by German officials who praise him as
an athlete, a businessman, and a potential friend to the
German people. When he arrived in East Prussia on September twelfth,
one day short of a nine to eleven, he was
ready to believe whatever the Nazis told him. Or one
day long of a nine to eleven. I messed up

(25:40):
my nine to eleven joke, but I was gotta make
one anyway. I'm going to quote from Walters again. He
met Jewish sports leaders, who under the watchful eyes of
Nazi handlers, assured Brundage that conditions were not as the
foreign newspapers were suggesting. Brundage was further handicapped by his
inability to speak German, so any inferences that the Jewish
sportsman may have may have made would have been blocked
out by the Nazis. In turn, Brundage also met his

(26:01):
old friend von Halt, who assured him that there were
no obstacles to Jews making the Olympic team, a pledge
echoed by von Schamer und Austen, with whom the American
got on well. By the end of the week, Brundage
not only felt content that the Jews were getting a
fair deal, but he was also dazzled by the seeming
prosperity in order of the new Germany. America could learn
much from Germany, he was to say in a speech

(26:22):
eighteen months later. She is efficient and hard working and
has spirit.

Speaker 3 (26:26):
God. That so easy for this fool to be like,
just well, I'm convinced.

Speaker 2 (26:32):
Well, yeah, that's all I needed to say.

Speaker 3 (26:35):
They said the words that I came here desperately wanting
to hear, so that we could continue with the Olympics.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
They told me what I wanted to hear, and I
didn't ask another question.

Speaker 3 (26:44):
God.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
So, like most prominent people after Avery died, people had
papers back then, right, and his papers get donated to
a museum, And as a result, we have the notes
that he took while writing out because when he gets
back to the US, he gives a speech about his
trip to Remony right to the American Olympic Committee, and
the notes that he had while writing that speech include

(27:05):
three bullet points that he took during his meeting with Hitler.
So while Brundage is like sitting down meeting Hitler, these
are his notes. One a God, two giving back self respect,
three a man of the people.

Speaker 3 (27:22):
His first bullet point is a god. Yes, oh my God.
Bulletvoind four dreamy eyes.

Speaker 2 (27:34):
That is, we're gonna like that some of because other
Olympic officials go and meet with Hitler, some of them
are literally like man. But you know what the photographers
never get across is how good this guy looks? Uh?

Speaker 3 (27:46):
Why did you uh draw a picture of Hitler naked?
In the margins of the few notes here.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
Avery, this speech is just a drawing that you label
as what I assume Hitler's penis looks like, are you
doing okay?

Speaker 3 (28:00):
Yeah? So did it go well?

Speaker 2 (28:02):
Yeah, I mean it is. We do get like, it's
funny that the pubic hair is shaved like the mustache.
We get it, we get the bit, but it lost
out a speech. Really, it's a lot of detail on
the vein here. Yeah. So it becomes clear at this
point that Avery Brundage was not just an Olympics obsessive
who got tricked by the Nazis or even cave to

(28:22):
them because he wanted a job. He was himself a
howling fascist, right, and so once he returned he gives
this big speech to the American Olympic Committee, and in
it he complains that before Hitler, Germany had suffered from debt,
undernourished youth, feverish gayety, and night life until the hardest
young men, by which he did not mean to imply gaiety,

(28:45):
but rather the brown Shirts rose up to fight back
of Hitler's things are just too gay here, it was too.

Speaker 3 (28:53):
Gay in Berlin.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
Yes, stop it with violence, that is what he's literally saying.
I mean that that was a very popular conservative talking
point of the day and today of the Hitler's thugs
who were then murdering gay people, communist activists Jews in
the street. Avery wrote that they were quote apparently doing
useful work.

Speaker 3 (29:12):
I love that.

Speaker 2 (29:12):
He's like, look, maybe I'm wrong, but like it seems good,
it seems fine.

Speaker 3 (29:16):
Yeah, a dirty job, but someone literally has to do it.

Speaker 2 (29:19):
Yeah, And he's like, you know, obviously the Jews should
be able to compete, but you know, they're leaders in communism,
so it's it's understandable that the Germans would need to
get a handle.

Speaker 3 (29:27):
On him, right, that's right.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
Avery also noted that the Germans had promised that no
Jews would be prohibited from competing in any way, so
there really was no need for a boycott.

Speaker 3 (29:37):
Quote.

Speaker 2 (29:38):
I was given positive assurance in writing that there will
be no discrimination against Jews. You can't ask for more
than that, and I think the guarantee will be fulfilled.

Speaker 3 (29:48):
Wait, he wrote down, you can't ask, you can't ask
more than that.

Speaker 2 (29:52):
That's Fuddy Hitler said they weren't going to do anything bad.

Speaker 3 (29:56):
Yeah, are you telling me you can't be trusted? Yeah,
he wrote it down on a piece of paper. I mean,
who the fuck would go against something they wrote on paper,
bro It.

Speaker 2 (30:05):
Is like, well, not in Avery's defense, but it's wild.
But basically every man who is of his socioeconomic level
anywhere in power in the West during this period is
doing the same thing. It's been like, well, Hitler said
he's not a bad guy. Who are we to argue? Oh?

Speaker 3 (30:21):
Man, it is. It really does go to show that,
like people really are willing to believe whatever someone in
a nice suit tells them and is written down on
some nice glossy paper like you know.

Speaker 2 (30:35):
I think the key corollary to that is if that
makes their lives easier, right Right. Avery's life is made
hard by challenging Hitler, so he won't challenge Hitler, so
he needs to believe that Hitler's dope, right yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:47):
But so is everyone else. So does everyone else who's
believing him. You know, there's like enough people out there
who are just there. They want to believe that everything's
going to be okay for whatever reason, whether it's because
they to compete.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
In the electoral human desire, right.

Speaker 3 (31:03):
But it's like just this general idea of like, you know,
the problem is that, uh, these oppressed people complain too much.
Is kind of the through line with all these these people.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
Look, yeah, these people are getting invaded or whatever. But
like if we stand up to fucking Russia, to the
United States, to whoever's doing the invasion in this situation,
that makes my life hard. So I'm just not got it.

Speaker 3 (31:24):
Right, Yeah, there's just no incentive for me to not
believe this blatant line.

Speaker 2 (31:30):
Yeah, like George W. Bush seems problematic, but like at
the end of the day, like I got I got,
I got a mortgage, you know, yeah, Like, uh yeah,
it's it's great anyway. That's how humans, apparently are. The
crux of his argument in favor of Germany actually rested
on a quite cunning stance, which is that he had

(31:50):
succeeded in getting the Nazis to promise to let Jews
participate in the games. This, he told the American Olympic Committee,
was all the Olympics could do since they were funded
in a political organization. Every person deserved the chance to compete,
and the Olympics had a responsibility to ensure that, but
it would not be reasonable for the event to take
any stance on Germany's internal political system. This argument works,

(32:13):
and you can see again how that's a comforting argument
to make.

Speaker 3 (32:17):
Right. We simply can't care about much beyond this. Right now.
We're a political we have to be a political.

Speaker 2 (32:23):
Yeah, the AOC has another vote and they reversed their position.
Balleyla Tour gives Brundage a pat on the back and
assured him that the job was his. But their problems
persisted because after the AOC's vote came a steady drumbeat
of stories of Jews being murdered or beaten and forced
from public life. Many people wondered if Avery might be
full of shit. One of them was his successor at

(32:44):
the Amateur Athletic Association, which Brundage had controlled as president
into leaving that year to run the AOC. This guy
was a judge, Jeremiah Mahoney, and he publicly accused Brundage
of having been wined and dined by Hitler and claimed
that behind the scenes, he'd sought to intimidate anyone who
didn't trust the Nazis. And Mahoney is a pretty cool

(33:05):
guy in this, although he is also going to wind
up in a really awkward situation. But for the next year,
Mahoney's going to be one of the leading figures in
the effort to force a US boycott of the Olympics.
A vote is set for December nineteen thirty five, and
that August, twenty thousand people show up for an anti
fascist rally at Madison Square Garden. That same month, August
of thirty five, the IOC tried to deflect criticism by

(33:27):
sending another delegation to Berlin. So they're like, well, sending
Brundage didn't work because they're just like, well, he seems
to really like Hitler, So what sending.

Speaker 3 (33:34):
You like swast on all of the official notepaper here.

Speaker 2 (33:38):
He's growing a mustache and I don't like where it's going.

Speaker 3 (33:41):
Yeah, people aren't starting to believe you may not be,
you know, an impartial third party observer here.

Speaker 2 (33:47):
So in order to deal with the fact that people
didn't trust Brundage, they decide to send a guy who's
even more of a Nazi general Charles Cheryl now Cheryl Chucky.
Chucky s is one of the three Americans on the
iOS Bored and he has the distinction of maybe being
the shittiest person in an organization that hired entirely based
on how much you sucked. In Berlin nineteen thirty six,

(34:09):
all of her Hilms writes of him quote, his main
qualification for this task was something completely different, a conspicuous
personal fascination with Adolf Hitler. As long ago as June
nineteen thirty three, in a letter to The New York Times,
Cheryl had praised the newly elected German Chancellor as the
strongest man in Europe. On twenty fourth of August nineteen
thirty five, when Cheryl was received by Hitler for an

(34:31):
hour long conversation, it was a dream come true. The
retired army general seemed to feel as if he'd been
called to something higher. Perhaps he saw himself as the
new US ambassador in Berlin. In any case, he wrote
up a report on his meeting with Hitler and sent
it to none other than Franklin D. Roosevelt. Cheryl raved
about Hitler's personal modesty, his impressive physical condition, that his

(34:51):
upstanding character.

Speaker 3 (34:54):
The bullet points on that one. Yeah, God, I was
just like some guy, just send me Hitler smile. So
I don't know he drew as pregnant for some reason.
Not really sure what to do with this. I think
this is just fan fiction at this point.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
Yeah, and thus was created deviant art. I'm gonna continue
that quote from Helms please, and his conversation with Cheryl,
Hitler made no concessions. Jews were not being discriminated against,
he lied, They were merely being treated as separate from
the German people and thus could not be members of
the German Olympic team. Cheryl pressed the Furwer on the issue.
He was Germany's friend, he said, and wanted only the

(35:30):
best for the country. But if the fewer insisted on
this position, the IOC would take the games away from Berlin.
Hitler snarled that in that case, the Third Reich would
stage a purely German Olympic Games.

Speaker 3 (35:41):
Now, yeah, we'll start our own Germany with Hooker's blackjack.

Speaker 2 (35:44):
Yeah, he was lying about this. In the early days
of the Third Reich, his hold on power was not
yet total, the army still represented potential resistance, and Germany
was still pretty weak militarily and economically compared to its neighbors.
Hitler could not afford to put on a German Games.
Would have had a fraction of the grandeur of the
Olympic Games, and the gesture would have made Germany look

(36:04):
like even more of a pariah state than it actually was.
The nineteen thirty six Olympics were more than anything, Germany's
attempt to show themselves as turning back towards the rest
of the world. For all of his talk of awetarchy
of independence for Germany, this mattered to Hitler. He wanted
Germany to take I mean the phrase he would use
a lot was Germanys to take its place in the sun. Right,

(36:25):
you can't do that if you're like holding your own
sad loaner Olympics for people nobody likes. We're calling it
the no Jews Olympics.

Speaker 3 (36:33):
It's going to be here in Germany and we're just
mostly going to run next to each other and talk
about how much he fucking hates the Jews.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
Yeah, that was basically the ideal. But it matters a
lot to Hitler that Americans in particular will be at
his games, so he does actually listen when Cheryl makes
an offer, And Cheryl's offer is, look, man, I'm not
asking you to actually treat Jewish people better. If you
just have the Jewish sports federations nominate a couple of
athletes take them on, ask that the phrase Cheryl uses

(37:02):
his token Jews for the German.

Speaker 3 (37:04):
Yeah, that's good. Breaking racism here. Yeah. Yeah, they're just
they're just saying it out loud, which is nice. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:14):
Not only does Hitler agree to the idea, but he
invites Cheryl to attend a special event that year, a
rally in Nuremberg, you know.

Speaker 3 (37:21):
The one that heard of it.

Speaker 2 (37:25):
Immediately after that rally, the Nuremberg Laws, which officially codified
the elimination of Jewish rights in Germany, were announced. Cheryl
returned home pretending this had not happened, and, like Brundage,
raved about the wondrous things the Nazis were doing in
Germany and promised that they would totally let a Jew
play on their team. So everything's good, everything's cool. There's
going to be a couple of token Jews.

Speaker 3 (37:46):
We got this, don't worry. Please let it go forward.

Speaker 2 (37:50):
And the Nazis do pick a couple of Jewish people.
One of them is Helena Meyer. Meyer is a prodigy fencer.
She's very good at fencing, and she is currently because
you know, she's living through this whole period. She sees
what's happening in Germany, and so she goes to college
in California. She goes to a small college in California.
Good call given the time.

Speaker 3 (38:10):
Yep, And it's one of those things.

Speaker 2 (38:11):
She actually didn't consider herself Jewish. She's raised Catholic, but
her dad, I think, is Jewish. Right, So the Nazis
do consider her that. But Helena also has this kind
of it's going to prove to be a delusional belief
that like, well, if I can just convince them I
consider myself a Christian, they'll be fine with me.

Speaker 3 (38:28):
Yeah right, yeah, yeah, no, for sure, that's not how
it works. Yeah no, it definitely works that way. It's
just like no, no, no, no, no, I'm not like a
jujuw right. Right.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
She gets publicly invited to the Olympics, and there's some
back and forth. She publicly declines at a point, but
basically her line is I want my citizenship restored, and
they restore her in her family citizenship right. And Helena's
line again is basically that like, well, I'm half Jewish
and not observant, so I shouldn't be persecuted. The Nazis
again don't really agree to this, but they pretend to
Another German Jewish athlete they're going to pick out is

(39:03):
Gretel Bergmann. Bergmann had immigrated to the United Kingdom for college.
She was an exceptionally talented runner and long jump competitor.
She was so good at this that her college in
the UK gives her a handicap when she is competing
at local events, and she still wins all of them.

Speaker 3 (39:19):
Damn.

Speaker 2 (39:20):
She's just very good at this. Since Jewish athletes had
been banned from public competition at home, she decides to
try out for the British team, and she's like, look,
I'll play for Britain and I'll beat my own former country,
and that'll be kind of nice as a Jewish exile, right,
Like sounds satisfying, right, And she's particularly excited because when

(39:40):
she has her big qualifying competition and does in fact
qualify for the UK Olympic team, her father is there.

Speaker 3 (39:47):
He manages to.

Speaker 2 (39:48):
Secure approval to visit England on business, but after the
competition he's like, hey, I'm only actually able to be
here because the Nazis want to get you to compete
for Germany, and his presence thus is kind of a
threat for the Germans. They're like, well, we can either
send your father to you or we can take them away.
Whose team do you want to be on, you know,

(40:08):
and you know again, that's why I'm not gonna got
no judgment for Gretel here in deciding to, you know,
try out for the German Olympic team, because Brundage and
Ballet Latour didn't actually care about the welfare of German Jews,
just that they could show Jewish participation in German Olympic
teams to satisfy the boycotters. No real effort was made
to ensure that stuff like this was like real offers,

(40:30):
and as a result, the primary thing that the American
Olympic Committee succeeds in doing is in bringing more violence
and danger into the lives of German Jewish athletes, because
all they care about is the look right. They don't
actually care that conditions have changed, just that they can
argue they have. If Brundage had been at all aware
or concerned by this, he showed no sign of it.
In late nineteen thirty five, his only real worry was

(40:53):
that Jewish American sporting associations were continuing to advocate for
a boycott of the Berlin Olympics. Brundage declared this a
Jewish communist conspiracy, using language he may well have taken
back from his nineteen thirty four trip to see the Reich.
Judge Jeremiah Mahoney, president of the Amateur Athletic Association, which
organized the US Olympic trials, continued to attack him as

(41:13):
a Nazi stooge, alongside US socialist groups and even a
number of conservative politicians. And I'll give some some credit
to New York Mayor Fiarella LaGuardia there, who was like, nah, man,
we shouldn't do this, we shouldn't go do an Olympics
over there. That congratulations LaGuardia, you earned your airport.

Speaker 3 (41:30):
Yeah. I was gonna say, only good guy that's ever
been had an airport named after them, So I don't
know the rest of them. Dullest definitely, definitely not a
good guy. Oh boy, bad airport guy.

Speaker 2 (41:43):
Yeah, Dulles and Reagan airports are like the warring war
crimes airports up there, and then a little north you
got LaGuardia, So there you go.

Speaker 3 (41:51):
Hey. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
The anti boycott side of things, though, is also this
is part of the complex history here, a lot more
diverse than you might initially get, yes, because a big
part of it is a number of black athletes who
have a really good point. In October of nineteen thirty five,
Mahoney tells a crowd at Columbia University that he wished
to God quote the Nazis could witness an athletic competition
in this country. The next guy up after him is

(42:15):
Ben Johnson, a black American Olympics sprinter, And when Mahoney
says this, Johnson gets kind of pissed, and he comes
up and he says, I think Justice Mahoney should clean
up the South where negroes are barred from his amateur
athletic union and discriminated against an Olympic selections.

Speaker 3 (42:31):
And it's like, it's.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
A fair point. He probably shouldn't have said. The Nazis
should see how we do sports here.

Speaker 3 (42:36):
Yeah, here's how we do sports here, Mahoney. Maybe you
should see how we do sports here.

Speaker 2 (42:41):
Yeah. H Now, Jesse Owens, who I think people still
broadly know know of, was going out here. I mean,
he's in the thirty six Olympics. He's gonna win like
fucking everything, the fastest man alive, right, But he goes
back and forth on whether or not to boycott the
Olympics beforehand. In thirty five, during a November of nineteen
thirty five radio interview, he stated his opinion that the

(43:03):
US should withdraw if Germany continued to discriminate against minorities,
as he put it, but his coach talked to him
out of it by using the same logic Ben Johnson
had used, why would you oppose Germany for doing the
same shit your fellow citizens due to you?

Speaker 3 (43:17):
Right?

Speaker 2 (43:19):
And the NAACP head Walter White no relation writes a
letter he's he considers making like a big open statement
of basically the NAACP supports a boycott. He never actually
does that, but he does write a letter to Owens
where he's like, you should you consider boycotting basically even

(43:39):
so you know, they never kind of tip into doing it,
and Owens obviously does not ultimately boycott the Olympics, but
the amount of popular support for a boycott in late
nineteen thirty five terrifies Brondage, who feels his chances of
being appointed to the IOC committee slipping away. In late
nineteen thirty five, he was a constant voice for US participation,
telling anyone who had and revolutionaries are not bred on

(44:02):
the playing field.

Speaker 3 (44:03):
See this is this is how you He just becomes
more anti Semitic. As this goes along, I'm sure because
he's just like these fucking Jews. They don't believe it.
When I brought the piece of paper, I brought the paper.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
Why don't they understand that Hitler says he's not gonna
hurt them.

Speaker 3 (44:22):
Yeah, Hitler is cool, he dressed his good he's godlike,
and he is a strong dick vein. I've drawn it
right here in the margins of my notes. Jews don't
believe a word of it.

Speaker 2 (44:36):
Speaking of dick veins, do you know what it'll make
your dick vein pop.

Speaker 3 (44:39):
Ooh, a lot of things, But what do you have
in particular times? Possibly the sponsors of this podcast. I
love it. Pop my dick vein with your hymns. I
don't know if it's hymns. I think it's we've had hymns.

Speaker 2 (44:54):
I think anyway, we're back. So Brundage was willing to
acknowledge in private his belief that quote the Hitler rites
did not intend to live up to the pledges given
to the IOC, but his overwhelming public sentiment was that
those mean old Jews were trying to ruin everyone else's

(45:15):
good time. Surprise Price surprise, as he told the secretary
of the British Olympic Association, my own view is that
we are pandering too much to the Jews. In an
article for the Journal of American Studies, Carolyn Marvin summarizes
his growing anti Semitic paranoia. The Jews were complaining too much,
first according to a peculiarly circular IOC standard of evidence

(45:37):
as to whether their complaints had substance, and second because
they were like that. Brundage regularly observed in his correspondence
with other sports officials that the Jews have been clever
enough to realize the publicity value of sports. He was
informed by j. Siegfried Enstrom, president of the International Amateur
Athletic Federation, that the main reason of the Aryan movement
in Germany was that the Jews have taken too prominent

(45:59):
a posis in certain branches of life, and happen, as
the Jews very often do when they get in the majority,
misuse their positions.

Speaker 3 (46:07):
Oh god, it's the second point of you know, the
Jews are like that, you know how they be, you
know how they are are?

Speaker 2 (46:15):
Right, She's interesting that that not language has still been
going around.

Speaker 3 (46:19):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and also just like a side note
to this whole thing is that it just this whole
thing kind of reminds me, and maybe not even that
much of a circuitous way, but like of the way
that the trans athlete debate kind of like god, yes,
it through everything, just this like this way of using

(46:40):
sport and sportsmanship and kind of like the you know,
oh there they're always they're overrepresented, and they're everywhere, and
they complain all the time. It's like the exact same
type of shit, and and it's used to uh, you know,
it's I don't know, it's the beginning of what is
an event, will you know, movement to try to hurt

(47:05):
this sh.

Speaker 2 (47:05):
Trying to force them out of public life, yes, which
is a prelude to worse things exactly. It's interesting too
that you bring that up. I think we're gonna have
to do another episode because there's so much. There's still
more on Brundage than I've wrote, but there's also there's
so much about the thirty six Olympics, and one of
them is they have a trans panic, like that they
have a panic over what they think are They don't

(47:28):
use the term transgender. This of course, I don't really
think anyone did, but they have, they have what is
a panic over that, and like every time that happens,
what actually happens is a bunch of a bunch of
people who are a site we're assigned female at birth
and who identified as female were just baselessly attacked because
they didn't look feminine enough to some rando in the audience. Yeah,

(47:50):
like it's it's all the same shit, Like it's the
same like going over that like panic that those athletes
went through, and like one of them at least is
a Nazi, so it is harder to be simplified.

Speaker 3 (48:03):
But like that doesn't make that right, you know.

Speaker 2 (48:06):
Yeah, but it is like it's always the same thing.
There's only one playbook. It just always works pretty well.

Speaker 3 (48:13):
Yeah, And I think it's because of the way in
which people kind of idealize and almost idealized sports and
make them uh you know, fake themselves out into thinking
they're in a political expression of like fair competition or whatever,
and so they you know, this is the exact same
thing where you just kind of go like you're messing
with the uh my idealized version of of of what

(48:36):
sports is and what it's supposed to be and and
they you know, but really it's to mask this, like,
I mean, they would say the same things. Listen, I'm
no fan of trans people. I think we can all
agree that. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:47):
Yeah, look, I'm big at it as ship, but we should.

Speaker 3 (48:50):
Yeah yeah, it's it's the exact same type of ship.
Yeah yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:55):
In private letters to other Olympic officials, Brundage went out
of his way to argue the Nazi party line claim
that most of the German Jewish athletes hadn't even been
good enough to qualify. Right, like they let a couple
of charity cases in. Right, you're still angry at the Nazis.
You know, these people would never have qualified if we
hadn't put on pressure. And that's bullshit. Gretel Bergmann had

(49:15):
to give up her seat on the British Olympic team
to compete for Germany, and she didn't get to compete.
She's led into a trial, and in her trial performances
to qualify for the German Olympic team, she equals the
all time German woman's high jump record. She does as
well as the best a German woman has ever done
at the high jump. In her qualifier and then after

(49:36):
the British team departs for Berlin and she can't go back,
she sent a letter saying, hey, actually you weren't good
enough lmao. Sorry we fucked you over here. Wow, it's
so bad for her. I mean, at least she's in
the fucking UK, right, so, but it's a real bummer, man.
I'm gonna quote from Carolyn Marvin again. Not only did
Jews exalt there and this is her talking about Brundage,

(49:58):
not only did Jews exalt their own medical interests above
the independence of amateur sport. Not only did they fail
to appreciate the contribution of the Olympic movement to whatever
restraint they're at exercised. But also, Brundage argued, with increasing irritation,
Jewish protest would be counterproductive.

Speaker 3 (50:12):
In the long run.

Speaker 2 (50:13):
An Olympic boycott on account of the Jews would excite dangerous,
possibly uncontrollable anti Semitic sympathies in America.

Speaker 3 (50:20):
Yeah that's right.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
Yeah, but we might have to murder you guys if
you all, if you don't let us play do the
high job, you know. Yeah, that's not our fault, that's
on you.

Speaker 3 (50:28):
Yeah, Yeah, you can't blame us for one is eventually
went down. Yeah, this is like, it's just so fucking sickening,
just like the way in which people just just hearing
people complain is enough to turn anyone into a Nazi.

Speaker 2 (50:45):
Yes, well, and the thing that enrages them so much
is that these complaints why they're reacting so negatively to
the complaints. It's the same way like a two year
old screams if they like grab a toy on the
shelf at the store and you take it away, as
they're afraid these mean old activists are going to take
away their toy.

Speaker 3 (51:04):
They're fustrake. I was going to be in the Olympic committee.
I was going to do to hundred. What was going
to be the bu jumper.

Speaker 2 (51:10):
Yeah, you know, like that's that's what's going on here, right, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (51:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:13):
Brundage again he is kind of groundbreaking and how he
publicly justifies racism because after he goes on this like
you know, you guys better be worried if you if
you protest you loud. He's like, now, I know a
lot of smart conservative Jews and they all agree with me, right,
they all think I'm in the right, So I'm not racist, right,
the smart conservative Jews that I won't name all say

(51:35):
I'm right.

Speaker 3 (51:35):
You know, yeah, yeah, yeah, listen, I got I got
binders full of Jews who think that, yeah, Jews complain
too much and are not good at sports.

Speaker 2 (51:44):
He's also he uses the racism that's been drum up
by the boycott to try and raise money for the Olympics.
He writes a strategy letter to the AOC to his
colleagues and says, the fact that the Jews are against
us will arouse interest among thousands of people who have
never subscribed before if we approached it. And because he's

(52:04):
that kind of sociopath, and this is this is something
the Nazis wouldn't do, not because it's worse, but this
is just a very American.

Speaker 3 (52:11):
Way of being shitty. At the same time.

Speaker 2 (52:13):
As he's like, oh yeah, we can fund raised off
of this racism, he's like, you know what else we
could do. We got to tell a bunch of rich
Jews that if they donate money to like put up
Olympic ads, you know, that'll help convince the Germans to
be less mean to the Jews. You know, you can help,
you can help your fellow Jews. If you give some
money to the Olympics, ye.

Speaker 3 (52:30):
Know right, and it'll help change it'll, it'll, it'll warm
you know Hitler's cold, cold heart.

Speaker 2 (52:38):
That was the one thing that could have stopped Hitler
from his madness is if the Olympics had had a
bigger boat billboard.

Speaker 3 (52:45):
I've been wrong this whole time. You know, maybe I
thinks this whole Jews should die thing.

Speaker 2 (52:52):
I'm going to call back my friend and take some ecstasy.
Cut to like one of those nineties in the movie,
Montash said, Shitler Vonnarus.

Speaker 3 (53:08):
Beautiful.

Speaker 2 (53:10):
At the end of nineteen thirty five, as the AAU
met to take its final vote on whether or not
to boycott the games, Mahoney continued to push the AAU
to follow their collective conscience, telling gathered members the Nazi
government wants more than American participation in a sporting contest.
It wants to bring the American dollar into the very
weakened Nazi treasury. And it wants you to picture Hitler

(53:31):
with Uncle Sam standing behind him and saying we are
with you, Adolph. And he is right on the money there.
All of his efforts are for not. Though the AAU
delegates vote fifty eight to fifty five ish in favor
of attending the Olympics. Similar campaigns across the so called
free world also collapsed under Hitler's charm offensive. Two days
before the opening of the Games, at the thirty fifth

(53:52):
session of the IOC, so with the session of the
Committee right before the game start, Balley la Tour makes
good on his promises to Avery Brunded. He orchestrates a
coup against Ernst Yankee, the only member who've pronounced like
three different ways, you know, the guy, the only member
of the IOC who wasn't a piece of shit, the
one good guy.

Speaker 3 (54:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:10):
Yankee is expelled by a forty nine to zero vote.

Speaker 3 (54:13):
J yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:15):
Now General Cheryl is dead by this point. He drops
dead right after coming back with hell yeah from his Hitler.
So at least he got to That's nice, though, you know,
he died, but at least he got to see Hitler.

Speaker 3 (54:26):
Yeah yeah, yeah. He just probably died when he was
doing autoerotic exixiation to a picture he drew of Hitler's dick.

Speaker 2 (54:34):
Yeah yeah. That was the style at the time, yep.
And so in nineteen thirty six, Brundage was present for
the opening ceremonies of the Berlin Olympics, marching at the
head of the US delegation. As you'd expect, the city
was filled with battalions of uniformed Wehrmacht soldiers, a show
of force somewhat at odds with the peaceable dream of
Olympic competition. Some people are alike, boy, it seems like

(54:56):
there's a lot of tens of thousands of uniforms marching
around at this peaceful event.

Speaker 3 (55:02):
Sure are a lot of guns at this peace competition.

Speaker 2 (55:05):
Yeah, I feel like the other countries don't have tens
of thousands of uniformed soldiers marching around. Maybe an honor guard,
you know, you do a little twenty one gun saluted.
This is a lot of guys.

Speaker 3 (55:14):
Yeah, this is a bunch of guys. Well it's okay
because they're they're doing race walking, so that's fine. Kiltoe, yeah, step,
whatever you want to call it.

Speaker 2 (55:24):
Kind Of at the start of the events, we get
a chapter of one of the more complicated sporting stories
of the of the Nazi era, which is the Hindenburg
Sales into Berlin, with Max Schmelling on it.

Speaker 3 (55:35):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (55:35):
Yeah, Schmelling is a He's he's a German boxer. He's
one of the best boxers of his day, and he is.
He has just gone up against a guy named Joe Louis.

Speaker 3 (55:44):
Joe Louises.

Speaker 2 (55:45):
If you talk to boxing people and you ask who
is the best boxer of all time, you'll get a
number of different names, but the name you might get
most often is Joe Lewis. He's at least got to
be up there. He's like twenty years. He's basically very
close to undefeated. I think his records like fifty four wins,
four losses, like forty two of those wins are by
knockout right. And one of the very few men to

(56:08):
beat Lewis in a fight was Smelling and Shmelling does
it when he's thirty, so he's considered over the hill.
Schmelling is able to win because he spends He just
like obsessively watches every fight Lewis has been in and
like learns his strategy and he wins. And this is
seen is like this huge thing for the Nazis, proof
of racial superiority. It's, you know, a great lead into

(56:29):
these games. What's kind of weird on the backside of
this is that for all of that, like Shmelling and
Lewis and Schmelling will have a rematch that Lewis wins,
and it's made in this very big propaganda thing for
the US. Joe Lewis is treated like shit by the
United States his whole life because he's a black man,
like he's when he's put in the army to have
like a pr role basically, and he's still discriminated against

(56:51):
massively one of the only white guys in the world.
He's not shitty to Joe Lewis, is Max smelling out
and Smelling pays for his funeral when he dies. They
are friends for life.

Speaker 3 (57:01):
Yes, yes, they're best friends forever. And if you know,
if at any moment you want to feel really good
about the United States for like, you know, being against
Nazism and all that stuff, do yourself a favor and
don't just because remember that so many of the people
we're talking about, whether it's ahead of these like you know,

(57:22):
Olympic committees or like people who are like generals in
the military, they're all just like, listen, we also hate Jews,
and yeah, we also discriminate openly against all African Americans
in this country. So it's it's really you.

Speaker 2 (57:40):
Know, Yeah, it's one of those I'm always every time
it comes around the Normandy anniversary, the anniversary of Stalingrad.
But I've got nothing but respect for the people who
actually had to fight the.

Speaker 3 (57:51):
Not and every single soldier went in there and kicked
Nazi ass. I love country.

Speaker 2 (57:58):
This country wound up politics just barely missing, you know that.

Speaker 3 (58:03):
Yes, so by by a fucking by a fraction, by
a hair we ended up not being aligned with this
Nazi project, and.

Speaker 2 (58:12):
A lot of guys like Brundage probably went to his
grave regretting that, you know.

Speaker 3 (58:16):
Yeah, yeah, well you at least you would hope.

Speaker 2 (58:18):
So, yeah, so we have our Nazi Games. The Berlin
Games start out. The theme of the day is this,
like you know, the the opening of the Olympics is
all of these German like military marches, right, and everyone
else kind of just with their athletes walking around being like, boy,
it seems like there's a weird number of soldiers every ship.

Speaker 3 (58:38):
We didn't bring enough guns? Should we have guns?

Speaker 2 (58:41):
In fact, when he shows up, when Hitler shows up,
he's he's marching with ballet letur and leveled.

Speaker 3 (58:48):
Right.

Speaker 2 (58:48):
These other IOC representatives, right, and they are like fucking
The President of the Olympics is next to Hitler and
they are flanked by dozens of SS men like a
political games. Nothing going on with this, this SS march
to the Olympic stadium.

Speaker 3 (59:03):
This is all just about piece and sports spainship.

Speaker 2 (59:07):
In the book Berlin Games, Guy Walters writes, by the
time Hitler reached his seat at four h five pm,
there was no doubt that he was already the star
of the Olympics. These were his games now, not ballet
le Tours and most certainly not Kubertin's. As if to
reinforce the Nazification of the Games, the orchestra struck up
with Deutschland uber Alles and the Horst Wessel Song, both
of which and herald at the start of the Winter

(59:28):
Games back in February. So that's great now. A major
topic of discussion was the precise nature of the salutes
that different Olympic teams chose to make as they marched
past Hitler in the reviewing stand. This was complicated by
the fact that the Olympic salute. There's an Olympic salute.

Speaker 3 (59:45):
Oh, I didn't know there was an Olympic salute.

Speaker 2 (59:47):
Well, I don't think we use it anymore because it's
basically a reversed Nazi salute. They're very similar, and this
is because we've been doing variants of the solute that
the Nazis what like for a long time. But also
Hitler is known for he's kind of a lazy guy
a lot of the time, and so sometimes when Hitler,
prior even to this, he'll give he'll use the wrong
arm to do his fascist salute. When the Greeks give

(01:00:10):
an Olympic salute and Hitler responds with an Olympic salute,
no one's really sure. Well, we're not sure if the
Greeks meant to do a fascist salute, and we're not
sure what Hitler meant to do. Nobody actually knows.

Speaker 3 (01:00:21):
Hitler is the one guy he always says that that
little hile, right, he's really lazy with it. He has
a lazy hile. He really he really half asses the higle. Yeah,
I guess it's because they're him. He's like, I don't
have to hile that much.

Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
Yeah, I mean to be fair to Hitler, which I
usually don't say. It is all like, yeah, he shouldn't
hile him. That is kind of weird, right, I don't know,
I don't know, I'm not going to be seat.

Speaker 3 (01:00:47):
Fair to Hitler, he said, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
So the French come by next and they do another
Olympic salute, but the crowd is mostly Germans. They did
mostly Germans who lived through World War One and like
the starvation and mass death and so a lot of
people kind of interpret what the French team is doing
as a fascist salute, which they see is not that
they don't see that as the French thing we're fascist too.
They see it as like the French being like, hey,

(01:01:13):
things are good now, We're not going to have another
war because like most of this audience of Germans really
don't want another war with France. It was a bad
time that yeah, And so they the audience cheers when
they see the French do this because they're like, hey,
maybe wait, maybe I don't have to send my son
off to dialect my brother did and Flanders or whatever

(01:01:36):
my friend's drowning mud. Yeah sounds great. Hitler is really
unhappy with this because he hears a bunch of Germans
cheering for the French and he's like, well, maybe they
really don't want.

Speaker 3 (01:01:45):
What what is about to happen? Right? Albert Nazis, like
what is going on here?

Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
Albert Spear describes Hitler as quote more disturbed than pleased
by the Berliners cheers. The British come next, and this
is there's some moments of pride for both the Brits
and the Americans. Here the British and also India and Australia,
who are part of the British Empire. They don't salute
at all, and neither do the Americans, who are lit
in their march by Avery Brundage. And here's how Guy

(01:02:14):
Walters describes that moment. The United States was one of
the last teams to enter the stadium. We were a
total disgrace, recalled Joanna de Tuscan. About thirty or forty
non members of the team, fat with cigarette actions on
their clothes, marched at the head of the team. Marty
Glickman felt that the word marching was inappropriate to describe
how the Americans proceeded. American athletes don't march very well,

(01:02:34):
he wrote, We kind of moved in our usual loose
skated walk, and the team's head was Avery Brundage, who
was neither fat nor a smoker, and was one of
the few who really did march, and honestly, I have
some American pride for that. Yeah, we've bet are fascist
at the front, but everyone else just.

Speaker 3 (01:02:50):
Looks like shit still around, hungover as hell, Chane smoking. Yes,
that is shit like that. That makes America great. You know.
That's the fact that we're just like Listen, I learned
how to do one thing really well. I'm not also
going to get march. Yeah, I'm gonna get good at this.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
Fuck you, I'm literally Jesse Owens.

Speaker 3 (01:03:10):
I don't have to impress you. Yeah, I'm doing this
for a metal later.

Speaker 2 (01:03:15):
Yeah, yeah, I'm going to continue that quote. As the
Americans marched past Hitler, they removed their boaters and clutched
them to their hearts. Whereas other flags were dipped in
honor of the fewer, the stars and stripes remained resolutely aloft,
which caused a murmur of discontent around the stadium. Marty
Glickman recalled the moment when the team passed Hitler. We
looked up at the box where he was flanked by
Gerrying and Gebels and Hesse and Himmler and all the

(01:03:37):
rest of the Nazi hierarchy, and you could hear the
comment run through our crowd as we were walking in. Hey,
he looks like Charlie Chaplin. And this has been pretty
America critical, as we often are, but by God, am
I proud to hear that.

Speaker 3 (01:03:54):
Yes, it's beautiful. I've got that Lee Greenwood song running
in my heart. Now it's beautiful. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:06):
So we will continue at some later date with the
story of Hitler at the Olympics and maybe finish up
some Avery brundage. But you get the gist of why
brundage sucks with all this.

Speaker 3 (01:04:15):
Yeah, it seems like a dickhead to complete. Yeah, I
don't I don't like him, and I don't support him.
I'll tell you that he's a bastard.

Speaker 2 (01:04:24):
Yeah, well I reckon. That'll do it for us. Here
at Behind the Podcast a podcast about bastards. Matt leeb
Bara podcast Bar New pod h A S B A
R A h.

Speaker 3 (01:04:43):
A s B A r A. Uh. Yeah, you can
check it out wherever podcasts are given it away for free.
Uh and you know to uh, you know, to quote
Benjamin and Yahoo. I want you to come should it come,
So check it out. Also, I just want to give

(01:05:06):
a quick shout out to just a couple of live
shows Francesca and I are doing. We're going to be
in We're going to be in Chicago during the DNC
doing a couple of shows Monday, August sixteenth, and I
think Tuesday, August seventeenth, we're going to be at Lincoln Launch.
One is going to be a live podcast Situation Room

(01:05:28):
Slash Bad Haspara. The other is going to be a
stand up show. So yeah, check out, check out that
if you're in Chicago August, you know, fucking nineteenth, August twentieth,
come please, it'll be fun.

Speaker 2 (01:05:42):
So yes, check that out. See Matt and Francesca live.
And you won't see us live because we don't have
any plans to do that in these time soon. Maybe
someday again.

Speaker 3 (01:05:53):
You guys should. It would be sick.

Speaker 2 (01:05:56):
One of these days I'll leave my house again, Matt.
I keep saying in that and not leaving my house,
but one of these days I might.

Speaker 3 (01:06:03):
Anyway, it's great out there in the world, bro, you know. Yeah,
that's what everyone says about the world. Yeah. Everyone loves
the world and how good it is.

Speaker 2 (01:06:12):
Yeah, that's the overwhelming thing I get from social media.
People are happy about the world.

Speaker 3 (01:06:16):
If you go outside world good, nothing bad ever happened.

Speaker 2 (01:06:20):
Yeah, all right, everybody go be like an Olympian and
touch grass.

Speaker 1 (01:06:29):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
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