Hitler’s Olympics
2024-06-21 00:04:29
<p>Revisionist History is Malcolm Gladwell's journey through the overlooked and the misunderstood. Every episode re-examines something from the past—an event, a person, an idea, even a song—and asks whether we got it right the first time. From Pushkin Industries. Because sometimes the past deserves a second chance.</p> <p>To get early access to ad-free episodes and extra content, subscribe to Pushkin+ in Apple Podcasts are pushkin.fm/pus.</p> <p>iHeartMedia is the exclusive podcast partner of Pushkin Industries.</p>
One of my strongest childhood memories was the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, my homeland's
first Olympic Games. I was a kid. My family didn't have a television, but we rented
one just for the occasion. Two rabbit ears on top of a grainy black and white set. We
put the TV in the fireplace, because there was no other place for it. And I watched.
Everything. The Romanian Nadia Comaneci bewitching the world in gymnastics. My running hero John
Walker powering away around the final curve to win the men's 1500 meters. I still get
nervous thinking about that race. And the women's 4x100 freestyle relay. Maybe the
greatest swimming race ever. I fell in love with the Olympics that summer. And these Olympics
that I love, and that so many millions of people around the world love, might not exist
if the Games had not been held in 1936 in Adolf Hitler's Germany.
The modern Olympics started in 1896, and if you had gone to any of those early Games,
you would think you were at some kind of side show. It was the Nazis who gave us the Olympics
we have today. They were really, really good at putting on a big show. Hitler wanted the
Games to be a showcase of Aryan supremacy, to rally the German people, to give legitimacy
to the band of thugs he had gathered around him, and to make the case that Germany was
a true world power. And the United States went along with all of it. Why? That's what
the new season of Revisionist History is all about. Hitler's Olympics.
Over nine episodes, my colleague Ben Nadath Haffrey and I will tell the story of the Games
behind the Games. Not who won what. Not how a stirring come-from-behind burst of effort
led to victory. Instead, we're exploring the furious machinations leading up to the Olympics,
and the genuinely difficult moral questions that surrounded the Berlin Games. And along
the way, we're going to introduce you to an extraordinary cast of characters. There's
Charles Sherrill, diplomat, athlete, internationalist, man of parts, the ranking American member of
the International Olympic Committee.
I have led the happiest life of anybody you ever met in your life.
We'll spend time with Avery Brundage, champion athlete, self-made millionaire, a man who
saw in the 36 Games a chance to expel his personal demons and seize control of the entire
Olympic movement.
And the irony of it is, the more important the Olympic Games become, the more problems
we have.
An incredibly clear-eyed American reporter named Dorothy Thompson.
I think that Hitler is appreciably nearer shooting us, and therefore I think we're appreciably
nearer replying.
Then there's Jesse Owens, winner of four gold medals, the African-American star of the 1936
Games.
That was the beginning to the end of a very long dream.
I'm sure you've heard of Jesse Owens, but Ben is going to tell you a story about Owens
that I guarantee you have not heard.
Not to mention side trips to a small town in Alabama, a seminar on a crucial but all-but-forgotten
Supreme Court case called Giles v. Harris, oh, and a lesson from a legendary triple jumper.
He didn't have a jiggle.
He didn't have a jiggle.
No, he didn't have a jiggle or a giddy-up.
Heroes and villains, the clear-eyed and the deluded, the forgotten and the misunderstood.
All of them going to Hitler's Olympics.
You will never see the Games the same way again.
Subscribe to Pushkin Plus to hear the first five episodes of Hitler's Olympics early and
ad-free.
Find Pushkin Plus on the Apple show page for Revisionist History or at pushkin.fm.
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