Hitler’s Olympics, Part 2: Pangloss, Polonius, Prufrock

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Pushkin.

We can't. I have never had a single conversation where both you and I were not kind of grinning as we told Charles Charles stories.

Traces of him persist, only in little scraps, here and there. But in his day. When Sherrill gave an after-dinner speech somewhere, it made the times when Sherrill complained about his neighbor's dog, it made the times when he died, the New York Times wrote. No fewer than five stories, five, he was everywhere.

He knew everyone, he was friends with every American president, from Teddy to Franklin Roosevelt. He attended every reception of importance, every luncheon that mattered. In his 69 years, he crossed the Atlantic 90 times. He was in constant motion.

He was zelig.

Hold on, no, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

He's Polonius. I have to get this right here. We are okay.

So this is from Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, maybe T.s Eliot's most famous poem, and Prufrock is a kind of self-aware version of Charles Sherrill.

Oh, yes, here we are. Okay, no, I am not. Prince Hamlet nor was meant to be.

All is necessarily for the best end, and that's also Sherrill's kind of, that's his philosophy of inconsequence. Why really bother? Because everything's so great and it's just how it ought to be.

B.

Mr. B has risen beyond his real abilities by virtue of health, good looks and being a good mixer. He married for money, and he's done lots of other things for money. His code is not his own, it is that of his class.

No worse, no better. He fits easily into whatever pattern is successful, that is his sole measure of value success. Nazism, as a minority movement would not attract him as a movement likely to attain power, it would.

My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This is episode two in our series, Hitler's Olympics How and why America went to the 1936 Games.

Charles Sherrill grew up in Washington, D.

C. His father made a lot of money lobbying for the big railroad interests. He went to college at Yale, then worked for a time as a lawyer on Wall Street. He was tall, slender, with a long imperial nose, bright twinkling eyes, a full head of blonde hair and a thriving mustache. He wrote 20 books, mostly about stained glass.

It's his memoirs, though, that are a tour de force, an unpublished, 360-page compendium of every anecdote, accolade, witticism and celebrity encounter in his entire life.

Here is my favorite.

In October 1931, I had the honor of lunching alone at the White House with President Hoover. Because he wanted me to undertake a certain matter, which I guessed, he thought me reluctant to do. That opening is very Charles Sherrill. He was not the sort who volunteered, that would be gauche. He waited for opportunity to ask him to lunch.

It was an excellent luncheon, he continues, and I was pleased to see upon each of the four corners of the table small silver dishes containing cherries. I am very fond of cherries and so looked forward to indulging in them when the moment arrived. Therefore, while I was partaking out of a cup of soup, the president ate the cherries out of his dish and remarked to me, I see you do not like cherries. And then proceeded to eat all the cherries out of all four dishes. This stunned me, but, of course, I made no comment upon his disposal of all the cherries in sight.

The president then makes a pitch for the post. He wants Sherrill to take some minor ambassadorship, or blue-ribbon panel. Sherrill demurs. The president is crestfallen. But as they leave the luncheon, Sherrill turns to hoover and gently says. I think, sir, that you do not realize that a man does not always know just what the other man likes or does not like.

For example, at luncheon, you said I did not appear to like cherries, but you are mistaken because I am very fond of cherries. But there might be something else which I would like to do to serve you, which I like as much as I like cherries. And possibly it is something that you have not thought of in connection with me. And then the kicker. Perhaps this remark of mine has something to do with his subsequently asking me to undertake the embassy to Turkey. I mean, can you see why we are so fascinated with Sherrill? It's all there in the showdown over the cherry bowl.

His willingness to speak truth to power, his will to succeed, his daring, conversational gambits. Sherrill's most enduring fame, however, was as a sportsman he was a champion sprinter at Yale.

He never went to the Olympics, but he did briefly share the world record for the hundred yard dash. But that was just part of it. You know how sprinters crouch at the start of every race instead of standing? Charles Sherrill invented the crouching start, or at least he says he did.

So just so we know he's like, something meaningful is really going on. Booker T. Washington was one of the most important African American leaders of his generation. And they're talking about the central problem facing the American public. And Sherrill is like waiting impatiently. Because he said I followed him. And after the purpose of my visit was concluded and I rose to leave, the president asked my opinion of two bronzes.

One was the Bronco Buster, which had been presented to him by the Old Regiment, The Rough Riders. The other was the crouching start by Tate McKenzie. Ah, that's the statue I found in the museum. We are deep into digression mode here, but at some point, in our mutual obsession with Charles Sherrill. Ben found himself in a community museum in some waspy corner of Connecticut and stumbled upon a statue of a tall, handsome man. In a crouching start.

Chills went down his spine. Exactly exactly I laughingly declared my inability to give any unprejudiced answer because I was the first runner to use the crouching start.

Finally comes alive with the question of the origin of the crouching start. Presidents were impressed by Charles Sherrill. And so was an organization that lies at the very heart of this story the International Olympic Committee, the IOC. The IOC is the governing body of the Olympic Games. Then, as now, it is based in Lausanne, Switzerland, neutral territory. It has ultimate control over all aspects of the games, the rules, the events, the schedule where the games are held, who gets invited?

The organization's founder was Pierre de Coubertin, Baron de Coubertin, a French aristocrat. He got the Modern Games started in Greece in 1896, planted the seed, and from the beginning, he surrounded himself with his friends, basically other aristocrats. He referred to them as the trusted men. The baron's successor to run the IOC was Count Henri Dubayet Latour of Belgium. Someone once wrote of the Count's wife, the comtesse Elisabeth von Clary-Anne Aldringen.

She traveled widely as her husband was a passionate tourist. The Comtesse was also a Nazi who wrote a personal note of thanks to Adolf Hitler after he invaded her country. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Another Olympic Committee member, his Excellency, the most excellent, the Marquise of Samaranc, the Spanish aristocrat who ran the IOC for 21 years. One biographical note on Samaranc reads that quote. During his studies, he practiced roller hockey, for which he created world championships, which the Spanish team won roller hockey.

He picks a sport no one plays and then invents a World Championships where he has to be the favorite. I mean, that is just about the most perfect description of enterprising White guy privilege ever. And let's not forget about Lord David George Brownlow. Cecil Burley, heir to the Marquise of Exeter, who once ran around the upper promenade deck of the Queen Mary. Ocean Liner in 57 seconds, dressed in street clothes. A record that I'm pretty sure still stands. Burgley was the one who bestowed the gold and bronze medals on the American runners. John Carlos and Tommy Smith at the Mexico Games in 1968. Where on the victory stand the two famously raised glove fists in a black power salute. When asked why Carlos and Smith wore gloves that day, Burley said I thought they'd hurt their hands.

These were the men of the IO.C. They would meet every year or so in a grand hotel in one of the many storied capitals of Europe. Put on long black coats and striped pants and bowler hats, drink a lot of Chateau LaFitte Rothschild and regale each other with stories of past athletic triumphs. It was the greatest men's club in the world. And in retrospect, it was surely only a matter of time before the I.O.C. set their sights on a certain dashing, mustachioed sprinting champion from New York City. Who held the ear of presidents?

Let me read to you from the June 8th, 1922, edition of the New York Times. Olympic Committee Alex Sherrill Mr. Sherrill will bring a vast store of athletic knowledge to the committee. While at Yale, he won the intercollegiate 100-yard dash championship four years in succession. He was wait for it, the originator of the crouching Start, which is now used in all sprints in every section of the world.

Zelig Forskamp, Polonius Pangloss, Mr. B and the Thomas Edison of the Crouching Start. Our man of parts has now been given his greatest role ever. A member of the International Olympic Committee, and over the next decade, his medal will be put to the test. Do I dare to introduce yet another literary analog? Hercules, of course, whom the Oracle of Delphi directed to perform twelve trials in exchange for immortality? The slaying of the hydra, the cleansing of the Augean stables, on and on.

You read the Greek myths, and immediately you're thinking of Charles Hitchcock Sherrill. And by the way, where is the most famous depiction of the labors of Hercules in a sculpture found in the Temple of Zeus? At Olympia? It all fits.

Adolf Hitler's rise to the leadership of Germany was swift in 1923. In his mid-thirties, he makes an incredibly clumsy coup attempt in Munich and gets arrested. Spends nine months in prison, where he writes Mein Kampf, his vision for a new era in Germany, cleansed of Jews and outsiders. And as soon as he gets out, his star ascends. By the time our famous American journalist Dorothy Thompson interviews Hitler at the Kaiserhof Hotel in 1931. The Nazis are the second biggest party in the German parliament and gaining ground. And Thompson is trying to figure out whether Hitler can actually get elected chancellor, especially since he makes it clear that he doesn't actually believe in democracy.

Thompson wrote.

In itself, a fascinating idea, imagine a would-be dictator setting out to persuade a sovereign people to vote away their rights.

In 1933, Hitler pulls it off, he comes to power. Almost immediately, there's a boycott of Jewish businesses, people start beating up Jews in the streets, Jews get banned from professional organizations and sports clubs.

The Nazis, it turns out, care a great deal about sports, about physical fitness, about vigorous competition, and their vision of sports does not include Jews. Germany's best tennis player at the time is Jewish Dr. Daniel Prenn, and he gets kicked off the country's Davis Cup team in the spring of 1933. The head of the German organizing committee for the Berlin Games, Theodor Levald, is stripped of his post because there were some Jewish people in his family tree.

In May of 1933, the German sports commissioner gives an interview where he says that.

The American Jewish Congress sends a telegram to the American delegates to the IOC, it says.

Now it's June 1933.

The IOC has its big meeting set for Vienna. It was almost certainly at the Hotel Imperial, a magnificent building in the Italian neo-renaissance style marble lobby, coffered ceilings, crystal chandeliers. No other place would be up to the IOC's standards.

Little-known fact about the Imperial, by the way, Hitler worked there briefly as a janitor when he was bumming around Vienna in his twenties. Sixty-six delegates are coming for the IOC meeting from every country of significance in the world. The men's club has gathered in their long black coats, their striped pants and bolder hats. A special program is printed up for all in attendance, which begins on its opening page with a questionnaire Are you a sportsman?

1. Do you play the game for the game's sake? 2. Do you play for your team and not yourself? 3.

Do you carry out your captain's orders without question or criticism? 4. Do you accept the umpire's decision? Absolutely. 5. Do you win without swank and lose without grousing?

And then the crucial one 6. Would you rather lose than do anything which you are not sure is fair?

The Vienna meeting focuses squarely on that sixth question. A true sportsman would rather lose than do anything that wasn't fair, and the delegates are perfectly aware of what's going on in Germany. Not letting Jews compete simply because they are Jews is, for the sportsman, surely, the definition of unfairness.

Our international Committee does not concern itself with internal athletic conditions in any country, but only with the choice of that country's members for its Olympic team.

Or they can convince the Nazis to have a change of heart when it comes to their Jewish athletes. What should they do?

Let us put ourselves in the mind of our hero Charles Hitchcock Sheryl. He has sailed the Atlantic 90 times. He has written a book on German stained glass windows, he knows the Teutonic soul. And did not Charles Hitchcock Sheryl? Stare down the president of the United States over the thorny issue of the disputed cherry Bowl?

Why bow to tyranny? Why not compel tyranny to bow to you? The last option to convince the Nazis to be less Nazi was the only choice. Sheryl sends a telegram home to the American Jewish Congress. Rest assured that I shall stoutly maintain the American principle that all citizens are equal under the law.

The key business of the Vienna meeting was conducted by a six-man executive committee headed by the Belgian Count. Henri Dubayet-Latour and Sheryl, by virtue of his stature as a diplomat and storied athlete, is the key player in that inner circle. They meet behind closed doors. Imagine a room full of mustachioed gentlemen in an ornate conference room festooned with portraits of other Mustachioed gentlemen. Sheryl Dubayet-Latour and the English delegate on one side of the Long Oak conference table.

The Germans on the other, it was a trying fight, Sheryl explains. Later, in a letter to a friend, the British said, Let the Germans be, but Sheryl would have none of it. The Germans yielded slowly, very slowly.

First, they conceded that the other nations could bring Jews. Then I went at them hard. Insisting that as they had expressly excluded Jews, now they must expressly declare that Jews would not even be excluded from German teams.

He would tell this story often in the intervening years.

Perhaps you will agree that I felt everyone at home and abroad thought that I was thus doing my best for the Jews.

Charles Sheryl confronts the contradiction of the Berlin Games, the cognitive dissonance of a pure competition in an impure place, and he resolves it.

Problem solved, right? Oh, no, problem is just beginning.

And it's all withstood the test of time.

Yet another way in which the world turns around. Charles Hitchcock Sheryl Anyhow, Mrs. Charles Hitchcock Sheryl takes the complete set of her husband's papers, has them preserved in perpetuity and apparently never checks to see what's in them. Or maybe she does, and she's fine with it. Now. It's crucially important that he dies in 36..

Original scoring by Luis Guerra, mastering by Flan Williams, Sarah Bruguera and Jake Gorski. Engineering by Nina Byrd Lawrence. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Special thanks to Karen Shikurji. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.

The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States since it was established in 1861. There have been 3,517 people awarded with the medal. I'm Malcolm Gladwell. And our new podcast from Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia is about those heroes, what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor Stories of Courage on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts sponsored by Lifelock.