Hitler’s Olympics

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.

saw in the 36 Games a chance to expel his personal demons and seize control of the entire

Olympic movement.

we have.

nearer replying.

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.

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.