Behind the Bastards - Part Two: How Avery Brundage Gave Hitler an Olympics
Aired: 2024-06-27
Duration: 01:21:52


=== Muppets and Murder (05:22) ===

[00:00:01]  Cool zone media.
[00:00:05]  Yeah, so I don't know.
[00:00:06]  I mean, I guess it depends on what you consider to be murder.
[00:00:09]  Like, I don't really think it was murder because, you know, I was pretty wasted.
[00:00:15]  So, like, I feel like that is a mitigating factor.
[00:00:17]  But oh my God, we're recording.
[00:00:20]  Hey, sorry.
[00:00:22]  This was a podcast.
[00:00:23]  Well, this was not a podcast.
[00:00:25]  I didn't realize we were recording.
[00:00:26]  I was just talking to Matt Lieb about our weekend on Sesame Street.
[00:00:30]  Yeah, mine was also good on Sesame Street.
[00:00:32]  And great on Sesame Street.
[00:00:34]  Yes, legal analysts are split on whether or not the Sesame Street weekend we had was legal or not.
[00:00:43]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:00:44]  And it's, I think what's most important to note is that Big Bird is up in a farm in the country now, and he's doing great.
[00:00:51]  He's fine.
[00:00:51]  He's fine.
[00:00:52]  He's good.
[00:00:53]  Nobody should look into like the will that is totally legitimate that will be found in this house.
[00:00:59]  Anyway, Matt, we're still in our Burton Ernie bed reading a bedtime story, a two-hour bedtime story.
[00:01:06]  Yeah, two hours.
[00:01:07]  I love great story.
[00:01:09]  Boy, I have an important question, and I feel like Matt would give a fantastic answer to this question.
[00:01:15]  Which fictional TV character would you let defend you in court?
[00:01:19]  Oh, God.
[00:01:20]  I mean, the obvious one is Foghorn Leghorn because he already sounds like a rooster lawyer.
[00:01:27]  But if I had to go, does it have to be a cartoon?
[00:01:31]  No, I think it's just fictional.
[00:01:35]  So just any podcast.
[00:01:36]  So it could be, you know, from either shows that you, I mean, you could pod yourself the gun or pod yourself the wire.
[00:01:45]  Where are you?
[00:01:46]  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.
[00:01:54]  I feel like fucking I think the good doctor would be pretty good at it.
[00:02:00]  Okay.
[00:02:01]  Okay.
[00:02:01]  See, me, I'm picking my cousin Vinny.
[00:02:05]  Sure, sure.
[00:02:06]  Largely because I would like to meet Marissa Tomei.
[00:02:08]  Oh, yeah.
[00:02:09]  That would be sick.
[00:02:11]  But also, I feel like he will get me off the camp out of this murder rap that I shouldn't catch for whatever happened to Big Bird, which I'm not sure.
[00:02:20]  It doesn't matter what happened to Big Bird.
[00:02:22]  The point is, you know, we're going to be fine.
[00:02:25]  We're going to be fine.
[00:02:27]  Big Bird is still alive.
[00:02:29]  I do kind of want to see.
[00:02:32]  I mean, this is adjacent to Sesame Street.
[00:02:34]  Sure.
[00:02:34]  But I do feel like right after my cousin Vinny, they could have done a sequel, but where the rest of the cast are Muppets.
[00:02:41]  And that would have been a great movie.
[00:02:43]  They could have done that for a lot of things.
[00:02:45]  I feel like the original could have had Muppets in it and it would have worked out pretty well.
[00:02:49]  There's not really many movies out there that couldn't also work being a combination live-action Muppet movie.
[00:02:56]  You know, Godfather, fucking the pianist.
[00:03:00]  Sure.
[00:03:01]  Oh, yeah.
[00:03:01]  Definitely the pianist.
[00:03:02]  Captain Corelli's Mandolin for sure.
[00:03:05]  I mean, it just works.
[00:03:07]  So that's the cold open, everybody.
[00:03:09]  We're going to talk more about Avery Brundage when we get back.
[00:03:16]  This is an iHeart podcast.
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[00:03:34]  He's going to get what he deserves.
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[00:05:22]  I actually, I thought it was.

=== IOC President Ban (14:56) ===

[00:05:23]  I got that wrong.
[00:05:23]  But hey, no one's perfect.
[00:05:25]  We're pretty close, though.
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[00:05:42]  This month, hear from top streamer Zoe Spencer and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum-Pierre as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up.
[00:05:51]  There's an economic component to community thriving.
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[00:05:59]  Listen to Eating While Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:06:10]  And we're back.
[00:06:11]  So, if Pierre de Coubertin was the Jesus Christ of the Olympics, and he kind of was, Henri de Ballet-Latour was the Apostle Paul.
[00:06:20]  We mentioned him in the last episode.
[00:06:22]  This is kind of the guy.
[00:06:24]  Coubertine, when he gets too old, Henri is the dude who kind of follows him as the king of the Olympics, you might say.
[00:06:31]  That's not what they call it, but that's what I'm going to call it.
[00:06:34]  Because Henri de Ballet-Latour was a Belgian aristocrat.
[00:06:37]  His father was a count and former governor of Antwerp, which of all the parts of Belgium is certainly one of them.
[00:06:44]  He had been elected de Coubertine's successor as president of the Olympics in 1925.
[00:06:48]  And as the 1930s dawned, his primary claim to fame was that in 1928, he had tried to ban women from the Olympics.
[00:06:56]  Hell yeah.
[00:06:57]  So that's Ballet Latour.
[00:07:01]  Things are too easy for broads in 1928.
[00:07:04]  Yeah, no, this is going to be men only from 1928 onward.
[00:07:08]  All dudes.
[00:07:09]  I just want to see men in tight spandex dancing, dancing.
[00:07:13]  I would like to see a man do what Simone Biles does.
[00:07:17]  Yeah, listen.
[00:07:18]  Can you share?
[00:07:19]  Why not?
[00:07:19]  I literally can't because she is one of one.
[00:07:21]  Thank you so much.
[00:07:22]  Okay, but if I try hard enough, I could probably do those flips.
[00:07:28]  Yes.
[00:07:29]  What I saw the first time I met you is you have a real Simone Biles energy.
[00:07:33]  Absolutely.
[00:07:34]  I'm limber and I'm fun.
[00:07:36]  That's right.
[00:07:37]  That's right.
[00:07:38]  And much too tall.
[00:07:41]  You know who's not limber or fun was Henri de Ballet Latour.
[00:07:46]  Cool.
[00:07:46]  Yeah.
[00:07:46]  Now, I learned he was a piece of shit from the book Berlin Games by Guy Walters.
[00:07:51]  But whenever I learn 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 there trying to diplomatically describe how much a dude sucks, presumably while battling the horde of bots that today's International Olympic Committee commands to whitewash their history.
[00:08:10]  And sure enough, when I went to Henri's wiki, I found this.
[00:08:14]  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 Olympics.
[00:08:32]  Oh boy.
[00:08:33]  Feels like a buried lead there.
[00:08:37]  Is that not the name of the subsection?
[00:08:41]  Antipathy, huh?
[00:08:43]  Yeah.
[00:08:44]  Well, this does give me an opportunity to use my Netanyahu soundboard that I just invented.
[00:08:49]  You're good.
[00:08:50]  All right, there we go.
[00:08:51]  And here's another one.
[00:08:52]  Crazy Jews.
[00:08:53]  Crazy Jews.
[00:08:54]  That's going to be popular.
[00:08:57]  So since Balay Latour was a raging anti-Semite, that's what, I mean, I think we could all do that in our heads.
[00:09:04]  You hear someone described as having antipathy towards Jews.
[00:09:07]  That's the most racist man you've ever heard of.
[00:09:09]  Although not in this case, because Hitler is also a part of our story.
[00:09:12]  Yeah, he's around at the same time.
[00:09:15]  And because Balay Latour, he is going to push back on some of Hitler's discrimination against Jewish athletes.
[00:09:22]  He gets more credit than he deserves because he is at no point is he doing it because it's really wrong.
[00:09:27]  He's doing it because like, well, I know I should do this because the Olympics is supposed to be for everyone.
[00:09:32]  And I kind of hate these people, but all like, I have to demand they at least pretend not to be racist, the Nazis, against these people that I also hate.
[00:09:42]  Yeah.
[00:09:43]  We have to put on a good face.
[00:09:44]  You know, it's like, you need to wear a mask if you're going to hate Jews.
[00:09:47]  Come on, Hitler.
[00:09:48]  Right.
[00:09:48]  Right.
[00:09:49]  And the problem for Balay Latour, who's again, he's president of the IOC, which is the international committee.
[00:09:55]  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?
[00:10:03]  So Brundage is like a local Olympic leader and Balay Latour is running the whole shebang, right?
[00:10:09]  And so Balay Latour, Brundage desperately wants to be on the IOC.
[00:10:14]  And he is eventually going to get on it and later will be president of the IOC.
[00:10:18]  And he's looking, he has to, he has to kind of, he has to make Balay Latour happy in order to be able to make that jump, right?
[00:10:24]  So this is like, from a career point of view, what's going on here.
[00:10:27]  And the problem for both Balay Latour and Brundage is that 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.
[00:10:40]  And this, they don't like directly say Jews can't be in the Olympics, but because they have made it impossible for Jewish people to be a part of any of the things that funnel people into the Olympics, right?
[00:10:51]  So it's a de facto ban, right?
[00:10:52]  Yeah.
[00:10:53]  I think there is eventually like a straight up ban, but it starts as just sort of like, well, we have now made it impossible for this to happen, right?
[00:10:59]  Yeah.
[00:10:59]  Avery Brundage, again, also sees this as a problem, but he's also very racist.
[00:11:03]  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.
[00:11:11]  So we don't like that you've made this impossible, but we also basically agree with why you hate the Jews, right?
[00:11:20]  We do think they run an international conspiracy.
[00:11:22]  We're very racist.
[00:11:24]  Listen, listen, I get where you're coming from with the whole Jews thing.
[00:11:29]  But I'm just saying, you know, it's trying to ban them.
[00:11:32]  Yeah, I'm trying to square that with letting everyone compete in sport.
[00:11:36]  And it's a tricky one.
[00:11:37]  It's hard.
[00:11:38]  It is such a, it's such an interesting because there's a lot of these kinds.
[00:11:42]  You even run when you read through like wartime memoirs of like Americans, there's a lot of like patent, pretty racist against Jewish people.
[00:11:51]  And then like the Holocaust becomes clear.
[00:11:53]  And there are a number of folks who are like, oh, I guess I'm not that kind of racist.
[00:11:57]  Sure.
[00:11:58]  I learned something about me through this whole experience.
[00:12:00]  And isn't that what war is all about?
[00:12:02]  Right.
[00:12:03]  Learning that you're not as bad as others.
[00:12:07]  Yeah.
[00:12:08]  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.
[00:12:18]  Now, this goes in a number of different directions.
[00:12:20]  First off, they're just kind of like, we don't even want to host the games.
[00:12:22]  If you guys are going to be dicks about this whole us oppressing Jewish people thing, and then they're like, yeah.
[00:12:28]  If 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.
[00:12:36]  Yeah.
[00:12:37]  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 Leveld, and he's like half Jewish, right?
[00:12:48]  And so they try to fire him and the IOC is like, well, you can't, right?
[00:12:51]  Like then we definitely will.
[00:12:53]  And so like he's going to be Leveled is like in such an awkward position where he is part Jewish.
[00:12:59]  He has actively been discriminating, discriminated on.
[00:13:01]  And this, in this entire pre and during the Olympics period, he is also the head of the German Olympic Committee still.
[00:13:08]  And it's one of those like, I definitely know there were definitely people at the time, like Jewish refugees and stuff, who attacked him for being a traitor.
[00:13:17]  I also like, well, I don't know, man, what happens to your family if you are that publicly like that?
[00:13:24]  I'm not going to, I don't have it in me to judge people in that situation.
[00:13:28]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:13:29]  It's a bit tricky if you're a German Jew at this time.
[00:13:34]  You're like, maybe we can like reason with him.
[00:13:38]  Yeah.
[00:13:39]  Yeah.
[00:13:39]  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 traitor, right?
[00:13:47]  Right.
[00:13:48]  The Nazis ban Jewish athletes from competing, from using public training facilities and from holding membership in any of the sporting organizations that funnel competitors up to the Olympics.
[00:13:56]  This sparks outrage in the United States.
[00:13:58]  And the U.S., we're really interested that it's interesting in this period because we are as racist as we have ever been in the 1930s.
[00:14:06]  But anytime somebody comes straight out and makes their politics at a national level, you can get away with that at a local level in the South, especially.
[00:14:15]  But if you come out at a national level and make your politics be about racial exclusion, Americans don't generally like that, right?
[00:14:22]  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.
[00:14:30]  Yeah.
[00:14:30]  And that offends them, right?
[00:14:31]  Of one day not being racist or the idea that like, no, we're not actually racist.
[00:14:37]  Because on a national level, we're really, really polite about segregation.
[00:14:41]  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 U.S. are black American athletes.
[00:14:49]  And they have a really good point, right?
[00:14:51]  Because they're like, well, but we have like a lot of the same laws.
[00:14:54]  Like I can't play in most of the same facilities that like the people running the Olympics play in.
[00:14:59]  Right.
[00:14:59]  Like, so why, why am I pissed about Germany in particular, right?
[00:15:03]  Yeah.
[00:15:04]  And it's like, well, yeah.
[00:15:05]  I mean, from the position of like, yeah, you're a black boxer in like 1935 or whatever.
[00:15:10]  I understand that argument.
[00:15:11]  I certainly can't.
[00:15:12]  It's kind of like you get with black strikebreakers during like the Cold Wars, where it's like, well, they wouldn't let you be part of the union.
[00:15:19]  Like, what are you supposed to do?
[00:15:20]  Right.
[00:15:21]  Like, you got a family to feed.
[00:15:22]  Yeah.
[00:15:24]  Oh, I guess in this case, you're legally not allowed to feed your family by being good at sports.
[00:15:28]  So there is that difference.
[00:15:30]  So there's a boycott campaign that starts to consolidate around the 1936 games, as Carolyn Marvin lays out in an article for the Journal of American Studies.
[00:15:40]  Telegrams, phone calls, and letters demanding an official American reaction besieged Brundage as the president of the AOC, and he released 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 equality of all races.
[00:15:57]  To Brundage's irritation, this was reported as an official challenge to German Olympic Committee policy.
[00:16:02]  He had only meant to reassure the American public upon whose goodwill Olympic activities depended.
[00:16:07]  He explained in a letter to the nervous Dr. Leveld, facing problems of his own and fearing the defection of the large and prestigious American team.
[00:16:14]  So he talks when he really shouldn't have, and it causes problems for Leveld over in Germany.
[00:16:20]  And, you know, Leveld's, again, in a very tough position.
[00:16:23]  Now, back in 1930, before the Nazis were in charge, the American Olympic Committee had sent a guy named Gustavus Kirby to observe construction efforts for the stadium to make sure that the plans for the 36 Olympics were going according to like plan.
[00:16:38]  And he was the first guy that Belay 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.
[00:16:49]  Yeah, they were also worried, like, are they going to start another war?
[00:16:52]  Right?
[00:16:52]  Is there going to be a big European war?
[00:16:54]  And so his job, by way of defending the Olympics, Kirby has to like argue that Germany is never going to do another war.
[00:17:02]  Oh boy.
[00:17:03]  And here's what Kirby writes: The German psychology is not that of deception.
[00:17:08]  The world war was not only in their hearts, but also on their lips before it was precipitated.
[00:17:13]  And that if the rest of the world were blind, it certainly was not because Germany had for years been boasting.
[00:17:18]  And therefore, if the present activity were being directed toward a warlike end, we would certainly hear of it and know of it.
[00:17:24]  Yeah, I think we'd know if Germany had some sort of ambitions towards a war.
[00:17:31]  Yeah.
[00:17:32]  God, talk about whiffing it.
[00:17:34]  Yeah.
[00:17:36]  Oh, beautiful stuff.
[00:17:37]  So, somehow, this failed to reassure anybody.
[00:17:40]  Belay Latour, 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.
[00:17:55]  I love the middle ground of this where they're just like, Listen, I'm no fan of the international Jew.
[00:18:02]  Right?
[00:18:03]  I think we can all agree with that.
[00:18:04]  Of course, the Nazis are right about everything except their laws.
[00:18:08]  Yeah, except the whole part where they're molesting them.
[00:18:10]  All right, let's not molest.
[00:18:12]  It's so funny.
[00:18:15]  I mean, it's not like this is one of the worst things that ever happened in history.
[00:18:18]  And it keeps being repeated in various forms down through the ages.
[00:18:22]  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.
[00:18:31]  It's like that Simpsons line: No one who's German could be a bad man.
[00:18:40]  So Belay 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.
[00:18:50]  Shut the fuck up.
[00:18:51]  And like they always just the good part, and then just like, and I acknowledge again that the Jew cries out in pain before he strikes you.
[00:19:01]  I acknowledge this.
[00:19:03]  Yeah.
[00:19:03]  Yeah.
[00:19:03]  We've got to put pressure on the Nazis, but also I'm really bad.
[00:19:07]  Like, let me be clear about this.
[00:19:09]  I suck so hard.
[00:19:11]  No, I'm just as evil as you guys.
[00:19:13]  Don't get me wrong.
[00:19:14]  You know, white population.
[00:19:14]  I just don't want to do anything about it.
[00:19:16]  I just want to get angry on Reddit about it.
[00:19:18]  You know, that's me.
[00:19:20]  I got like 1488 in my fucking Twitter handle and everything.
[00:19:25]  So both Brundage and Belay Latour did strongly disagree with the fact that the Nazis had banned Jews from qualifying to compete in the Olympics.
[00:19:33]  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?
[00:19:40]  The only people you can exclude are professional athletes because they're fundamentally bad people for making money.
[00:19:46]  Exactly.
[00:19:46]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:19:47]  They're destroying sport by feeding their families with it.
[00:19:50]  It is a fascinating set of moral lines these people draw.
[00:19:56]  So the American Olympic Committee voted to boycott the games if Germany didn't reverse course.
[00:20:01]  And Brundage supported the resolution initially.
[00:20:03]  And it passes easily because, again, Americans don't like being seen as racist, right?
[00:20:09]  Had the story ended there, Brundage probably would never have made behind the bastards.
[00:20:13]  He would have been yet another guy in the 20s who had some shitty opinions, but ultimately did the right thing, right?
[00:20:17]  Supporting the boycott, I would argue, was the right thing to do.

=== Moral Lines Drawn (02:06) ===

[00:20:20]  Sure.
[00:20:21]  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.
[00:20:30]  And they all thought the Nazis were actually pretty cool.
[00:20:33]  They're all like, I think they're on to something.
[00:20:37]  There's one guy who doesn't suck in the Fancy Boys Olympic Club, and it's Commodore Ernest Yankee, like J-H-N-C-K-E, who is the former assistant secretary of the Navy.
[00:20:49]  So there's another guy, a general, General Sheryl, who's on the Olympic Committee, who does suck and is basically a Nazi.
[00:20:54]  But Commodore Jonki is like, and I'm not saying he's like woke by whatever standards people use today, but he's like, the Nazis are bad and we shouldn't, we shouldn't humor Hitler with an Olympics, right?
[00:21:07]  Like he wants this and we shouldn't give Hitler the things that he wants, right?
[00:21:11]  Love it.
[00:21:11]  So yeah, his colleagues want him out as a result of this.
[00:21:14]  Now, they will eventually force him out.
[00:21:16]  They can't do it right away.
[00:21:17]  There's like, you got to have, you got to basically have a whole vote.
[00:21:20]  He's got to do like some Emperor Palpatine Star Wars prequels politics shit to make this happen, right?
[00:21:25]  Right, right.
[00:21:26]  Ballet Latour is going to be a big part of that.
[00:21:28]  So while they're waiting to be able to force him out, Ballet Latour promises Brundich, 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.
[00:21:39]  And if you fix this boycott situation, his seat will go to you, right?
[00:21:44]  And that's the thing Avery Brundich is always.
[00:21:46]  That's all he wants.
[00:21:47]  Advancement.
[00:21:48]  That's what he craves.
[00:21:51]  Yes.
[00:21:52]  And we all crave advancement.
[00:21:53]  And really, the only way to advance is to buy the products sponsored on the show.
[00:21:59]  A lot of people don't know this, actually, but one of the products sold on this show is a seat on the IOC.
[00:22:06]  And if we get enough listeners on the IOC, we can make my old hometown of Idabel, Oklahoma be the site of the new Olympics.
[00:22:13]  And I just think that would be kind of funny.
[00:22:15]  That would be sick.
[00:22:16]  That would be diagnosed.
[00:22:18]  North Korea marching through the streets of Idabel.
[00:22:21]  Let's do it, guys.
[00:22:22]  I do kind of feel like they're going to run actual Olympic ads on our shows during the games.

=== Buying IOC Seats (04:17) ===

[00:22:26]  I do kind of feel like NBC or whoever the fuck owns the streaming rights.
[00:22:31]  Hell yeah.
[00:22:32]  I'll take their money.
[00:22:33]  I'll take their money and I will make them do the discus on the cow farm where I grew up.
[00:22:38]  Anyway, here's some ads.
[00:22:43]  On a recent episode of the podcast, Money and Wealth with John O'Brien, I sit down with Tiffany the Budginista Alicia to talk about what it really takes to take control of your money.
[00:22:54]  What would that look like in our families if everyone was able to pass on wealth to the people when they're no longer here?
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[00:24:34]  Hello, gorgeous.
[00:24:35]  It's Lala Kent, host of Untraditional Le La.
[00:24:38]  My days of filling up cups at surah may be over, but I'm still loving life in the valley.
[00:24:43]  Life on the other side of the hill is giving grown-up vibes.
[00:24:46]  But over here on my podcast, Untraditional Le La, I'm still that Lala you either love or love to hate.
[00:24:52]  I've been full-on oversharing with fans, family, and former frenemies like Tom Schwartz.
[00:24:57]  I had a little bone to pick with Schwartzy when he came on the pod.
[00:25:00]  You don't feel bad that you told me I was a bootleg housewife?
[00:25:02]  I must flipped a pizza in your lap.
[00:25:04]  Oh, God, I literally forgot about that until just now.
[00:25:08]  Sorry, I don't want to blame all of that.
[00:25:10]  I got to blame that one on the alcohol.
[00:25:12]  This is about laughing and learning when life just keeps on laughing because I make mistakes so that you guys don't have to.
[00:25:18]  We're growing, we're thriving, and yes, sometimes we're barely surviving, but we do it all with love.
[00:25:24]  It's unruly, it's unafraid, it's untraditional Ila.
[00:25:28]  Listen to Untraditionally Lala on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:25:34]  I'm Iris Palmer, and my new podcast is called Against All Odds.
[00:25:37]  And that's exactly what the show is about: doing whatever it takes to beat the odds.
[00:25:41]  Get ready to hear from some of your favorite entrepreneurs and entertainers as they share stories about defying expectations, overcoming barriers, and breaking generational patterns.
[00:25:50]  I'm talking to people like award-winning actress, producer, and director, Fiva Lingoria.
[00:25:56]  I think I had like $200 in my savings account, and my mom goes, What are you going to do?
[00:26:01]  And I was like, I'll figure it out.
[00:26:03]  We had a one-bedroom apartment for like $400 a month, and we all could not afford.
[00:26:06]  Like, I was like, How am I going to make $100 a month?
[00:26:10]  I'm opening up like I've never before.
[00:26:12]  For those of you who think you know me from what you've seen on social media, get ready to see a whole new side of me.
[00:26:17]  Listen to Against All Odds with Iris Palmer as part of the Michael Tura Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:26:29]  I went and sat on the little ottoman in front of him.
[00:26:32]  I was, hi, dad.
[00:26:34]  And just when I said that, my mom comes out of the kitchen and she says, I have some cookies and milk.
[00:26:41]  This is badass convict.

=== Hitler Is Cool (15:48) ===

[00:26:44]  Right.
[00:26:44]  Just finished five years.
[00:26:46]  I'm going to have cookies and milk.
[00:26:48]  Come on.
[00:26:50]  On the Ceno Show podcast, each episode invites you into a raw, unfiltered conversations about recovery, resilience, and redemption.
[00:26:58]  On a recent episode, I sit down with actor, cultural icon Danny Trail to talk about addiction, transformation, and the power of second chances.
[00:27:07]  The entire season two is now available to binge, featuring powerful conversations with guests like Tiffany Addish, Johnny Knoxville, and more.
[00:27:15]  I'm an alcoholic.
[00:27:17]  And without this program, I'm a guy.
[00:27:21]  Open your free iHeartRadio app.
[00:27:23]  Your Cicino show.
[00:27:24]  And listen now.
[00:27:31]  All right, so we're back.
[00:27:32]  So I want to read a quote from Guy Walters describing kind of the conundrum that Avery Brundage is faced with.
[00:27:40]  Quote: Brundage knew that if he wanted to succeed him, Jonky, he would have to do exactly as the president and the vice president wished.
[00:27:48]  With the two men looking benevolently on Germany, Brundage decided that he would change his opinion to coincide with theirs.
[00:27:54]  It was nothing more than toadying.
[00:27:55]  From this moment on, Brundage would do everything in his power to ensure that his masters were satisfied.
[00:28:00]  And the best way he could do that was to ensure American participation at Berlin.
[00:28:05]  Had Brundage not been so personally ambitious, then a boycott would have been, if not inevitable, certainly more likely.
[00:28:12]  Nevertheless, the road to Berlin was long and it was to be heavy going.
[00:28:15]  Brundage's first task was to go to Germany at the behest of the American Olympic Association, a decision that had been taken in February.
[00:28:24]  So he's going to go to Germany and he's going to be assured.
[00:28:28]  He's going to take a little tour.
[00:28:30]  Yeah.
[00:28:31]  Everything in Germany is all good.
[00:28:34]  Everyone is chill and don't worry about any future wars.
[00:28:39]  That's just Jewish propaganda.
[00:28:41]  Right, right.
[00:28:41]  Our streets are filled with marching soldiers.
[00:28:44]  Don't worry about it.
[00:28:47]  We just like doing fucking heel-to-toe walking.
[00:28:51]  We like uniforms.
[00:28:52]  Who does racewalking?
[00:28:54]  We're racewalking just like you.
[00:28:56]  Different kind of race walking.
[00:28:58]  Yeah, it's a master race walking, but it's still we're into it.
[00:29:02]  We're just like you, bro.
[00:29:04]  We're just like you guys.
[00:29:06]  It was obvious from the jump that Brundage would approve entirely of the German efforts.
[00:29:10]  Before he left, he wrote this in an article for Olympic News.
[00:29:13]  The German committee is making every effort to provide the finest facilities and plans to reproduce the Los Angeles Olympic village.
[00:29:20]  We should see in the youth of Berlin the forebears of a race of free, independent thinkers 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.
[00:29:33]  Yes.
[00:29:34]  That's how I would describe 1936 Germans.
[00:29:38]  Tolerant of the rights of others.
[00:29:41]  That sounds like the Germany I know and have read about in history books.
[00:29:45]  People can't stop talking about how much they love an independent Poland.
[00:29:49]  It's the only thing on their list.
[00:29:52]  You can't walk down the fucking street without someone being like, you know, Polish independence is great.
[00:29:57]  Great.
[00:29:57]  I'm such a fan of their being because there was one last flag in Europe before Polish independence.
[00:30:02]  And I like it.
[00:30:03]  I like it.
[00:30:04]  It's good to have it.
[00:30:05]  That's nice.
[00:30:05]  If there's one thing we can all agree on here in Germany, it's that we have enough space for everyone.
[00:30:13]  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 Hilms in his book Berlin 1936, which I like less than Guy's book, but I appreciated this passage.
[00:30:29]  Brundage stayed in the capital of the Third Reich for six days, inspecting construction on the Olympic Stadium and other facilities, visiting a number of museums and generally enjoying life.
[00:30:37]  He had little time left over for meeting representatives of Jewish athletics.
[00:30:41]  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.
[00:30:50]  Great.
[00:30:51]  Great.
[00:30:52]  Cool.
[00:30:53]  I mean, that's not a bad point vis-à-vis the United States not doing well on this, but it's a bad point for you to make.
[00:31:01]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:31:02]  It's like, hey, you know, listen, we also don't allow Jews here.
[00:31:06]  So do what you need to do.
[00:31:09]  Who am I?
[00:31:09]  Racist as hell.
[00:31:10]  So who's to say the Nazis are bad?
[00:31:12]  Who am I to try to change any of this shit?
[00:31:16]  So now I'm going to give you the full story of his visit to Germany.
[00:31:19]  I just really found that paragraph funny.
[00:31:22]  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.
[00:31:30]  They held a party at a villa and he meets a guy named Carl Diem there, who's a he's tight with a lot of major German sporting officials.
[00:31:37]  He's a bigwig in German sporting.
[00:31:40]  Diem invites him to lunch the next day with Leboldt, that half-Jewish German sporting official, and Justice W. Meyerhoff, a Jewish member of Berlin Sports Club.
[00:31:50]  Meyerhoff had obviously faced repression at home, being a German Jewish athlete.
[00:31:55]  He had been forced out of athletics like every other Jewish person in Germany.
[00:31:58]  But when the boycott threats cropped up, the Nazis had said, hey, go put on a show for this American or else.
[00:32:04]  So he goes to lunch with Lebold and he tells Brundage, oh man, the Nazis, those guys are great.
[00:32:09]  You know, I tried to resign from my sports club.
[00:32:12]  He wouldn't even let me.
[00:32:13]  Wouldn't take my resignation.
[00:32:14]  I was so proud of them.
[00:32:15]  Great dudes.
[00:32:17]  Yeah, no.
[00:32:17]  Oh, those guys?
[00:32:18]  Oh, the people in the brown shirts?
[00:32:22]  No, they're cool.
[00:32:23]  They're cool as hell.
[00:32:24]  Yeah.
[00:32:25]  Well, we're all friends.
[00:32:26]  We all hang out.
[00:32:27]  Oh, this black guy?
[00:32:28]  No, I got it from we hugged too hard.
[00:32:31]  No, you know, I'm a runner, so like, I felt like fingernails were slowing me down.
[00:32:35]  I just took them all off myself, you know?
[00:32:39]  Just try and get more aerodynamic.
[00:32:44]  That's why I lost all this weight.
[00:32:45]  Yeah.
[00:32:48]  I'm just trying to make way for the Olympic level wrestling.
[00:32:53]  Diem later wrote of the meeting, Brundage was visibly impressed.
[00:32:57]  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.
[00:33:05]  When he arrived in East Prussia on September 12th, one day short of a 9-11, he was ready to believe whatever the Nazis told him, or one day long of a 9-11.
[00:33:14]  I messed up my 9-11 joke, but I was going to make one.
[00:33:17]  Anyway, I'm going to quote from Walters again.
[00:33:19]  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.
[00:33:26]  Brundage was further handicapped by his inability to speak German.
[00:33:30]  So any inferences that the Jewish sportsmen may have made would have been blocked out by the Nazis' interpreters.
[00:33:35]  Brundage also met his old friend von Halt, who assured him that there were no obstacles to Jews making the Olympic team, a pledge echoed by von Schammer und Osten, with whom the American got on well.
[00:33:46]  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 and order of the new Germany.
[00:33:54]  America could learn much from Germany, he was to say in a speech 18 months later.
[00:33:58]  She is efficient and hardworking and has spirit.
[00:34:02]  God.
[00:34:03]  It's so easy for this fool to be like, just, well, I'm convinced.
[00:34:07]  Well, yeah, that's all I needed to say.
[00:34:11]  They said the words that I came here desperately wanting to hear so that we could continue with the Olympics.
[00:34:16]  They told me what I wanted to hear and I didn't ask another question.
[00:34:20]  God.
[00:34:20]  So like most prominent people, after Avery died, his like, people had papers back then, right?
[00:34:26]  And his papers get donated to a museum.
[00:34:29]  And as a result, we have the notes that he took while writing out because he, when he gets back to the U.S., he gives a speech about his trip to Germany, right?
[00:34:36]  To the American Olympic Committee.
[00:34:37]  And the notes that he had while writing that speech include three bullet points that he took during his meeting with Hitler.
[00:34:44]  So while Brundage is like sitting down meeting Hitler, these are his notes.
[00:34:49]  One, a god.
[00:34:50]  Two, given back self-respect.
[00:34:52]  Three, a man of the people.
[00:34:58]  His first bullet point is a god?
[00:35:01]  Yes.
[00:35:03]  Oh my God.
[00:35:04]  Bullet point four, hot as fuck.
[00:35:06]  Bullet point five.
[00:35:07]  Dreamy eyes.
[00:35:09]  That is, we're going to like that some of, because other Olympic officials go and meet with Hitler.
[00:35:14]  Some of them are literally like, man, but you know what the photographers never get across is how good this guy looks.
[00:35:20]  Hey, why did you draw a picture of Hitler naked in the margins of your notes here?
[00:35:27]  Avery, this speech is just a drawing that you label as what I assume Hitler's penis looks like.
[00:35:34]  Are you doing okay?
[00:35:35]  Oh, yeah.
[00:35:36]  So did it go well?
[00:35:37]  Yeah.
[00:35:38]  I mean, it is, we do get, like, it's funny that the pubic hair is shaved like the mustache.
[00:35:43]  We get it.
[00:35:43]  We get the bit, but it's not a speech, really.
[00:35:46]  It's a lot of detail on the vein here.
[00:35:48]  Yeah.
[00:35:51]  So it becomes clear at this point that Avery Brundage was not just an Olympics obsessive who got tricked by the Nazis or even caved to them because he wanted a job.
[00:35:59]  He was himself a howling fascist, right?
[00:36:03]  And so once he returned, he gives this big speech to the American Olympic Committee.
[00:36:07]  And in it, he complains that before Hitler, Germany had suffered from debt, undernourished youth, feverish gay, and nightlife until the hardest young men, by which he did not mean to imply gay, but rather the brown shirts, rose up to fight back.
[00:36:24]  That's right.
[00:36:24]  Of Hitler's.
[00:36:26]  Yeah, things are just too gay here.
[00:36:28]  It was too gay in Berlin.
[00:36:29]  They didn't stop it with violence.
[00:36:31]  That is what he's literally saying.
[00:36:32]  I mean, that was a very popular conservative talking point of the day.
[00:36:35]  And today, of 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.
[00:36:47]  I love that.
[00:36:47]  He's like, look, maybe I'm wrong, but like, it seems good.
[00:36:50]  It seems fine.
[00:36:51]  Dirty job, but someone literally has to do it.
[00:36:54]  Yeah.
[00:36:55]  And he's like, you know, obviously the Jews should be able to compete, but, you know, they're leaders in communism.
[00:36:59]  So it's understandable that the Germans would need to get a handle on him, right?
[00:37:03]  That's right.
[00:37:04]  Avery also noted that the Germans had promised that no Jews would be prohibited from competing in any way.
[00:37:10]  So there really was no need for a boycott.
[00:37:13]  Quote, I was given positive assurance in writing that there will be no discrimination against Jews.
[00:37:18]  You can't ask for more than that.
[00:37:20]  And I think the guarantee will be fulfilled.
[00:37:24]  Wait, he wrote down you can't ask for more than that.
[00:37:26]  You can't ask for more than that.
[00:37:27]  That's funny.
[00:37:28]  Hitler said they weren't going to do anything bad.
[00:37:31]  Are you telling me that they can't be trusted?
[00:37:34]  Yeah.
[00:37:34]  He wrote it down on a piece of paper.
[00:37:36]  I mean, who the fuck would go against something they wrote on paper, bro?
[00:37:40]  It is like, wow.
[00:37:42]  Not in Avery's defense, but it's wild.
[00:37:44]  But basically every man who is of his socioeconomic level anywhere in power in the West during this period is doing the same thing.
[00:37:51]  It's being like, well, Hitler said he's not a bad guy.
[00:37:53]  Who are elitist?
[00:37:54]  Who are we to argue?
[00:37:56]  Oh, man.
[00:37:57]  It is.
[00:37:57]  It really does go to show that people really are willing to believe whatever someone in a nice suit tells them and is written down on some nice, glossy paper.
[00:38:09]  Like, you know.
[00:38:10]  I think the key corollary to that is if that makes their lives easier, right?
[00:38:14]  Right.
[00:38:15]  Avery's life is made hard by challenging Hitler, so he won't challenge Hitler.
[00:38:19]  So he needs to believe that Hitler's dope, right?
[00:38:21]  Yeah.
[00:38:22]  But so does everyone else.
[00:38:23]  So does everyone else who's believing him.
[00:38:25]  You know, there's like enough people out there who are just, they want to believe that everything's going to be okay for whatever reason, whether it's because they want to compete in the natural human desire.
[00:38:38]  Right.
[00:38:38]  But it's like just this general idea of like, you know, the problem is that these oppressed people complain too much is kind of the through line with all these people.
[00:38:49]  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.
[00:38:58]  So I'm just not gonna.
[00:39:00]  Right.
[00:39:00]  Yeah.
[00:39:00]  There's just no incentive for me to not believe this blatant lie.
[00:39:06]  Yeah.
[00:39:06]  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?
[00:39:11]  Yeah.
[00:39:12]  Like, yeah, it's, it's great.
[00:39:16]  Anyway, that's how humans apparently are.
[00:39:20]  The crux of his argument in favor of Germany actually rested on a quite cunning stance, which is that he had succeeded in getting the Nazis to promise to let Jews participate in the games.
[00:39:30]  This, he told the American Olympic Committee, was all the Olympics could do, since they were fundamentally an apolitical organization.
[00:39:37]  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.
[00:39:47]  This argument works, and you can see again how that's a comforting argument to make, right?
[00:39:53]  We simply can't care about much beyond this, right?
[00:39:55]  Yeah, we're apolitical.
[00:39:57]  We have to be apolitical.
[00:39:58]  Yeah.
[00:39:59]  The AOC has another vote and they reverse their position.
[00:40:02]  Balay La 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.
[00:40:14]  Many people wondered if Avery might be full of shit.
[00:40:18]  One of them was his successor at the Amateur Athletic Association, which Brundich had controlled as president until leaving that year to run the AOC.
[00:40:26]  This guy was a judge, Jeremiah Mahoney, and he publicly accused Brundich of having been whined and dined by Hitler and claimed that behind the scenes, he'd sought to intimidate anyone who didn't trust the Nazis.
[00:40:38]  And Mahoney is a pretty cool guy in this, although he is also going to wind up in a really awkward situation.
[00:40:44]  But for the next year, Mahoney is going to be one of the leading figures in the effort to force a U.S. boycott of the Olympics.
[00:40:50]  A vote is set for December 1935, and that August, 20,000 people show up for an anti-fascist rally at Madison Square Garden.
[00:40:58]  That same month, August of 35, the IOC tried to deflect criticism by sending another delegation to Berlin.
[00:41:04]  So they're like, well, sending Brundage didn't work because they're just like, well, he seems to really like Hitler.
[00:41:09]  So let's send a Germany.
[00:41:10]  He's like swastikas on all of the official notepaper here.
[00:41:14]  He's growing a mustache and I don't like where it's going.
[00:41:16]  Yeah, people aren't starting to believe he may not be, you know, an impartial third-party observer here.
[00:41:23]  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 Sherill.
[00:41:31]  Now, Sheryl Chucky, Chucky S, is one of the three Americans on the IOC board, and he has the distinction of maybe being the shittiest person in an organization that hired entirely based on how much you sucked.
[00:41:43]  In Berlin 1936, Oliver Helms writes of him, quote, his main qualification for this task was something completely different, a conspicuous personal fascination with Adolf Hitler.
[00:41:54]  As long ago as June 1933, in a letter to the New York Times, Sheryl had praised the newly elected German chancellor as the strongest man in Europe.
[00:42:02]  On 24th of August, 1935, when Sheryl was received by Hitler for an hour-long conversation, it was a dream come true.
[00:42:09]  The retired army general seemed to feel as if he'd been called to something higher.
[00:42:14]  Perhaps he saw himself as the new U.S. ambassador in Berlin.
[00:42:17]  In any case, he wrote up a report on his meeting with Hitler and sent it to none other than Franklin D. Roosevelt.
[00:42:22]  Sheryl raved about Hitler's personal modesty, his impressive physical condition, and his upstanding character.
[00:42:29]  From the point of the bullet points on that one.
[00:42:31]  Yeah.

=== Praising The Dictator (09:42) ===

[00:42:32]  God.
[00:42:33]  Just like some guy just sent me Hitler smuts.
[00:42:35]  So I don't know.
[00:42:36]  He drew him as pregnant for some reason.
[00:42:38]  Not really sure what to do with this.
[00:42:40]  I think this is just fan fiction at this point.
[00:42:44]  And thus was created deviant art.
[00:42:47]  I'm going to continue that quote from Helms.
[00:42:49]  Please.
[00:42:50]  In his conversation with Sheryl, Hitler made no concessions.
[00:42:53]  Jews were not being discriminated against, he lied.
[00:42:55]  They were merely being treated as separate from the German people and thus could not be members of the German Olympic team.
[00:43:01]  Sheryl pressed the Führer on the issue.
[00:43:03]  He was Germany's friend, he said, and wanted only the best for the country.
[00:43:06]  But if the Führer insisted on this position, the IOC would take the games away from Berlin.
[00:43:11]  Hitler snarled that in that case, the Third Reich would stage a purely German Olympic Games.
[00:43:16]  Now, we'll start our own Germany with hookers, blackjacks.
[00:43:20]  He was lying about this.
[00:43:22]  In the early days of the Third Reich, his hold on power was not yet total.
[00:43:25]  The army still represented potential resistance, and Germany was still pretty weak militarily and economically compared to its neighbors.
[00:43:32]  Hitler could not afford to put on a German games that would have had a fraction of the grandeur of the Olympic Games, and the gesture would have made Germany look like even more of a pariah state than it actually was.
[00:43:43]  The 1936 Olympics were more than anything, Germany's attempt to show themselves as turning back towards the rest of the world.
[00:43:50]  For all of his talk of autarky, of independence for Germany, this mattered to Hitler.
[00:43:55]  He wanted Germany to take, I mean, the phrase he would use a lot was: Germany needs to take its place in the sun, right?
[00:44:00]  You can't do that if you're like holding your own sad loner Olympics for people nobody likes.
[00:44:06]  We're calling it the no Jews Olympics.
[00:44:08]  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.
[00:44:16]  Yeah, that was basically the idea.
[00:44:18]  But it matters a lot to Hitler that Americans in particular will be at his games.
[00:44:22]  So he does actually listen when Cheryl makes an offer.
[00:44:25]  And Cheryl's offer is: look, man, I'm not asking you to actually treat Jewish people better.
[00:44:31]  If you just have the Jewish sports federations nominate a couple of athletes, take them on as the phrase Cheryl uses is token Jews for the German team.
[00:44:40]  Yeah, no, it's good.
[00:44:42]  He's groundbreaking racism here.
[00:44:44]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:44:45]  They're just saying it out loud, which is nice.
[00:44:47]  Yeah.
[00:44:48]  Yeah.
[00:44:49]  Not only does Hitler agree to the idea, but he invites Cheryl to attend a special event that year, a rally in Nuremberg.
[00:44:57]  You know the one.
[00:44:58]  Heard of it.
[00:44:59]  Heard of it.
[00:45:01]  Immediately after that rally, the Nuremberg laws, which officially codified the elimination of Jewish rights in Germany, were announced.
[00:45:07]  Cheryl returned home, pretending this had not happened.
[00:45:10]  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.
[00:45:17]  So everything's good.
[00:45:19]  Everything's cool.
[00:45:20]  There's going to be a couple of token Jews.
[00:45:22]  We got this.
[00:45:22]  Don't worry.
[00:45:23]  Please let it go forward.
[00:45:25]  And the Nazis do pick a couple of Jewish people.
[00:45:28]  One of them is Helena Meyer.
[00:45:30]  Meyer is a prodigy fencer.
[00:45:32]  She's very good at fencing.
[00:45:34]  And she is currently, because, you know, she's living through this whole period.
[00:45:38]  She sees what's happening in Germany.
[00:45:40]  And so she goes to college in California.
[00:45:42]  She goes to a small college in California.
[00:45:44]  Good call, given the time.
[00:45:45]  Yep.
[00:45:46]  And it's one of those things, she actually didn't consider herself Jewish.
[00:45:49]  She's raised Catholic, but her dad, I think, is Jewish, right?
[00:45:52]  So the Nazis do consider her that.
[00:45:54]  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.
[00:46:04]  Yeah.
[00:46:04]  Right?
[00:46:04]  Yeah.
[00:46:05]  Yeah.
[00:46:06]  No, for sure.
[00:46:07]  That's not how it works.
[00:46:07]  Yeah.
[00:46:08]  No, it definitely works that way.
[00:46:10]  He's just like, no, I'm not like a Jew Jew.
[00:46:14]  Right, right.
[00:46:15]  Don't worry about that.
[00:46:16]  She gets publicly invited to the Olympics, and there's some back and forth.
[00:46:20]  She publicly declines at a point, but basically her line is, I want my citizenship restored.
[00:46:24]  And they restore her and her family's citizenship, right?
[00:46:27]  And Helena's line, again, is basically that, like, well, I'm half Jewish and not observant, so I shouldn't be persecuted.
[00:46:32]  The Nazis, again, don't really agree to this, but they pretend to.
[00:46:35]  Another German Jewish athlete they're going to pick out is Gretel Bergman.
[00:46:39]  Bergman had immigrated to the United Kingdom for college.
[00:46:42]  She was an exceptionally talented runner and long jump competitor.
[00:46:46]  She was so good at this that her college in the UK gives her a handicap when she is competing at like local events, and she still wins all of them.
[00:46:54]  Damn.
[00:46:55]  She's just very good at this.
[00:46:57]  Nice.
[00:46:58]  Since Jewish athletes have been banned from public competition at home, she decides to try out for the British team.
[00:47:03]  And she's like, look, I'll play for Britain and I'll beat my own former country.
[00:47:08]  And that'll be kind of nice as a Jewish exile, right?
[00:47:11]  Like sounds satisfying, right?
[00:47:13]  And she's particularly excited because when she has her big qualifying competition and does, in fact, qualify for the UK Olympic team, her father is there.
[00:47:22]  He manages to secure approval to visit England on business.
[00:47:26]  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.
[00:47:33]  And his presence thus is kind of a threat from the Germans.
[00:47:35]  They're like, well, we can either send your father to you or we can take him away.
[00:47:40]  Whose team do you want to be on?
[00:47:42]  You know?
[00:47:43]  And, you know, again, that's why I'm not going to, I've got no judgment for Gretel here in deciding to, you know, try out for the German Olympic team.
[00:47:52]  Because Brundage and Belay 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.
[00:48:06]  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?
[00:48:17]  They don't actually care that conditions have changed, just that they can argue they have.
[00:48:22]  If Brundage had been at all aware or concerned by this, he showed no sign of it.
[00:48:26]  In late 1935, his only real worry was that Jewish American sporting associations were continuing to advocate for a boycott of the Berlin Olympics.
[00:48:34]  Brundage declared this a Jewish communist conspiracy using language he may well have taken back from his 1934 trip to see the Reich.
[00:48:41]  Judge Jeremiah Mahoney, president of the Amateur Athletic Association, which organized the U.S. Olympic trials, continued to attack him as a Nazi stooge, alongside U.S. socialist groups and even a number of conservative politicians.
[00:48:54]  And I'll give some credit to New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia there, who was like, nah, man, we shouldn't do this.
[00:49:00]  We shouldn't go do an Olympics over there.
[00:49:01]  Seem bad.
[00:49:03]  Congratulations, LaGuardia.
[00:49:05]  You earned your airport.
[00:49:06]  Yeah, I was going to say, only good guy that's ever been had an airport named after them.
[00:49:12]  I don't know the rest of them.
[00:49:13]  Dulles?
[00:49:14]  Definitely not good.
[00:49:15]  Definitely not a good guy.
[00:49:16]  Oh, boy.
[00:49:17]  Bad airport guy.
[00:49:19]  Yeah, Dulles and Reagan airports are like the warring war crimes airports up there.
[00:49:24]  And then a little north, you got LaGuardia.
[00:49:26]  So there we go.
[00:49:27]  Hey.
[00:49:28]  Yeah.
[00:49:29]  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 guess because a big part of it is a number of black athletes who have a really good point.
[00:49:39]  In October of 1935, Mahoney tells a crowd at Columbia University that he wished to God, quote, the Nazis could witness an athletic competition in this country.
[00:49:49]  The next guy up after him is Ben Johnson, a black American Olympic sprinter.
[00:49:54]  And when Mahoney says this, Johnson gets kind of pissed.
[00:49:57]  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 in Olympic selections.
[00:50:06]  And it's like, that's a fair point.
[00:50:08]  He probably shouldn't have said the Nazis should see how we do sports here.
[00:50:12]  Yeah.
[00:50:12]  Here's how we do sports here.
[00:50:14]  Mahoney, maybe you should see how we do sports here.
[00:50:20]  Now, Jesse Owens, who I think people still broadly know, know of, was going, I mean, he's in the 36 Olympics.
[00:50:27]  He's going to win like fucking everything.
[00:50:28]  He's the fastest man alive, right?
[00:50:30]  But he goes back and forth on whether or not to boycott the Olympics beforehand in 35.
[00:50:35]  During a November of 1935 radio interview, he stated his opinion that the U.S. should withdraw if Germany continued to discriminate against minorities, as he put it.
[00:50:44]  But his coach talked to him out of it by using the same logic Ben Johnson had used.
[00:50:48]  Why would you oppose Germany for doing the same shit your fellow citizens do to you, right?
[00:50:54]  And the NAACP head, Walter White, no relation, writes a letter.
[00:51:00]  He considers making like a big open statement.
[00:51:03]  Basically, the NAACP supports a boycott.
[00:51:06]  He never actually does that, but he does write a letter to Owens where he's like, you should consider boycotting, basically.
[00:51:14]  Even so, they never kind of tip into doing it.
[00:51:18]  And Owens obviously does not ultimately boycott the Olympics.
[00:51:21]  But the amount of popular support for a boycott in late 1935 terrifies Brundage, who feels his chances of being appointed to the IOC committee slipping away.
[00:51:30]  In late 1935, he was a constant voice for U.S. participation, telling anyone who would listen, revolutionaries are not bred on the playing field.
[00:51:39]  See, 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.
[00:51:48]  They don't believe it when I brought the piece of paper.
[00:51:52]  I brought the paper.
[00:51:54]  Why don't they understand that Hitler says he's not going to hurt him?
[00:51:57]  Yeah, Hitler is cool.
[00:51:59]  He dresses good.
[00:52:00]  He's godlike and he is a strong dick vein.
[00:52:03]  I'm drawing it right here in the margins of my notes.
[00:52:08]  These Jews don't believe a word of it.
[00:52:11]  Speaking of dick veins, do you know what will make your dick vein pop?

=== Strong Dick Vein (04:18) ===

[00:52:14]  Ooh, a lot of things.
[00:52:16]  But what do you have in particular, Tiffany?
[00:52:18]  Possibly the sponsors of this podcast.
[00:52:20]  It's before.
[00:52:22]  I love it.
[00:52:23]  Pop my dick vein with your hymns.
[00:52:26]  I don't know if it's him.
[00:52:28]  I think it's him's.
[00:52:28]  We've had him, I think.
[00:52:30]  Anyway.
[00:52:33]  On a recent episode of the podcast, Money and Wealth with John O'Brien, I sit down with Tiffany the Budgeta Alicia to talk about what it really takes to take control of your money.
[00:52:44]  What would that look like in our families if everyone was able to pass on wealth to the people when they're no longer here?
[00:52:50]  We break down budgeting, financial discipline, and how to build real wealth, starting with the mindset shifts too many of us were never, ever taught.
[00:53:00]  Financial education is not always about like, I'm going to get rich.
[00:53:04]  That's great.
[00:53:05]  It's about creating an atmosphere for you to be able to take care of yourself and leave a strong financial legacy for your family.
[00:53:14]  If you've ever felt you didn't get the memo on money, this conversation is for you to hear more.
[00:53:20]  Listen to Money and Wealth with John O'Brien from the Black Effect Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:53:31]  Hey, Ernest, what's up?
[00:53:32]  Look, money is something we all deal with, but financial literacy is what helps turn income into real wealth.
[00:53:38]  On each episode of the podcast, Earn Your Leisure, we break down the conversations you need to understand money, investing, and entrepreneurship.
[00:53:46]  From stocks and real estate to credit, business, and generational wealth, we translate complex financial topics into real conversations everyone can understand.
[00:53:55]  Because the truth is, most people were never taught how money really works.
[00:53:59]  But once you understand the system, you can start to build within it.
[00:54:03]  That means ownership, smarter investing, and creating opportunities not just for yourself, but for the next generation.
[00:54:09]  If you want to learn how to build wealth, understand the markets, and think like an owner, Earn Your Leisure is the podcast for you.
[00:54:16]  Listen to Earn Your Leisure on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:54:24]  Hello, gorgeous.
[00:54:25]  It's Lala Kent, host of Untraditional Ila.
[00:54:28]  My days of filling up cups at sir may be over, but I'm still loving life in the valley.
[00:54:32]  Life on the other side of the hill is giving grown-up vibes.
[00:54:35]  But over here on my podcast, Untraditional Ila, I'm still that Lala you either love or love to hate.
[00:54:42]  I've been full-on over sharing with fans, family, and former frenemies like Tom Schwartz.
[00:54:47]  I had a little bone to pick with Schwartzy when he came on the pod.
[00:54:49]  You don't feel bad that you told me I was a bootleg housewife?
[00:54:52]  I must flipped a pizza in your lap.
[00:54:54]  Oh, God, I literally forgot about that until just now.
[00:54:58]  Sorry, I don't want to, I don't want to blame all of that.
[00:55:00]  I got to blame that one on the alcohol.
[00:55:02]  This is about laughing and learning when life just keeps on lifting.
[00:55:06]  Because I make mistakes so that you guys don't have to.
[00:55:08]  We're growing, we're thriving, and yes, sometimes we're barely surviving, but we do it all with love.
[00:55:14]  It's unruly, it's unafraid, it's untraditional Ilala.
[00:55:18]  Listen to Untraditional Ila on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:55:24]  I'm Iris Palmer, and my new podcast is called Against All Odds.
[00:55:27]  And that's exactly what the show is about.
[00:55:29]  Doing whatever it takes to beat the odds.
[00:55:31]  Get ready to hear from some of your favorite entrepreneurs and entertainers as they share stories about defying expectations, overcoming barriers, and breaking generational patterns.
[00:55:40]  I'm talking to people like award-winning actress, producer, and director, Fiva Longoria.
[00:55:46]  I think I had like $200 in my savings account, and my mom goes, What are you going to do?
[00:55:51]  And I was like, I'll figure it out.
[00:55:52]  We had a one-bedroom apartment for like $400 a month, and we all could not afford.
[00:55:56]  Like, I was like, How am I going to make $100 a month?
[00:55:59]  I'm opening up like I've never before.
[00:56:02]  For those of you who think you know me from what you've seen on social media, get ready to see a whole new side of me.
[00:56:07]  Listen to Against All Odds with Iris Palmer as part of the Michael Tura Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:56:19]  I went and sat on the little ottoman in front of him.
[00:56:22]  I was like, hi, Dad.
[00:56:24]  And just when I said that, my mom comes out of the kitchen and she says, I have some cookies and milk.
[00:56:31]  There's this badass convict.

=== Joe Lewis Propaganda (15:38) ===

[00:56:33]  Right.
[00:56:34]  Just finished five years.
[00:56:36]  I'm going to have cookies and milk.
[00:56:38]  Come on.
[00:56:40]  On the Ceno Show podcast, each episode invites you into a raw, unfiltered conversations about recovery, resilience, and redemption.
[00:56:48]  On a recent episode, I sit down with actor, cultural icon Danny Trail to talk about addiction, transformation, and the power of second chances.
[00:56:56]  The entire season two is now available to binge, featuring powerful conversations with guests like Tiffany Addish, Johnny Knoxville, and more.
[00:57:05]  I'm an alcoholic.
[00:57:07]  And without this program, I'm going to die.
[00:57:11]  Open your free iHeartRadio app, search the Ceno Show, and listen now.
[00:57:21]  We're back.
[00:57:23]  So, Brundage was willing to acknowledge in private his belief that, quote, the Hitlerites did not intend to live up to the pledges given to the IOC.
[00:57:31]  But his overwhelming public sentiment was that those mean old Jews were trying to ruin everyone else's good time.
[00:57:37]  Surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise.
[00:57:40]  As he told the secretary of the British Olympic Association, my own view is that we are pandering too much to the Jews.
[00:57:47]  In an article for the Journal of American Studies, Carolyn Marvin summarizes his growing anti-Semitic paranoia.
[00:57:53]  The Jews were complaining too much, first, according to a peculiarly circular IOC standard of evidence as to whether their complaints had substance, and second, because they were like that.
[00:58:02]  Brundage regularly observed in his correspondence with other sports officials that the Jews have been clever enough to realize the publicity value of sport.
[00:58:10]  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 a position in certain branches of life and have, as the Jews very often do when they get in the majority, misuse their positions.
[00:58:28]  Oh, God.
[00:58:29]  That's the second point of, you know, the Jews are like that.
[00:58:33]  You know how they be.
[00:58:35]  You know how they are, yeah, right?
[00:58:37]  It's interesting that that language has still been going around.
[00:58:39]  Yeah.
[00:58:41]  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 is ornamented through everything.
[00:58:58]  Just this like this way of using sport and sportsmanship and kind of like the, you know, oh, they're always, they're overrepresented and they're everywhere and they complain all the time.
[00:59:11]  It's like the exact same type of shit.
[00:59:13]  And it's used to, you know, it's, I don't know, it's the beginning of what is an eventual, you know, movement to try to hurt.
[00:59:25]  This, try to force them out of public life yes, which is a prelude to worse things.
[00:59:30]  A prelude to worse things, exactly.
[00:59:32]  It's interesting too, that you bring that up.
[00:59:34]  I think we're gonna have to do another episode because there's so much.
[00:59:37]  There's still more on Brundage than i've wrote, but there's also there's so much about the 36 Olympics, and one of them is they have a trans panic.
[00:59:44]  Um, like that, they have a panic over what they think are.
[00:59:48]  They don't use the term transgender, this course um, I don't really think anyone did, but they have.
[00:59:52]  They have what is a panic over that?
[00:59:54]  And, like every time that happens, what actually happens is a bunch of a bunch of people who are assigned, were assigned female at birth and who, identified as female, were just baselessly attacked uh, because they didn't look feminine enough to some rando in the audience.
[01:00:10]  Yeah yeah um, like it's, it's all the same shit, like it's the same like, 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 sympathetic towards her than you, but like that doesn't make that right, you know yeah, but it is like it's always the same thing.
[01:00:29]  There's only one playbook.
[01:00:31]  It just always works pretty well.
[01:00:33]  Yeah, and I think it's because of the way in which people kind of idealize and almost uh, idealize sports and make them uh, you know, fake themselves out into thinking they're an apolitical expression of like uh, fair competition or whatever.
[01:00:47]  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 uh, of what sports is and what it's supposed to be and uh, and they, you know, but really it's to mask this like I mean, they would say the same things.
[01:01:04]  Listen, i'm no fan of trans people.
[01:01:06]  I think we can all agree that yeah yeah look, i'm bigoted as shit, but we shouldn't.
[01:01:11]  Yeah yeah it's, it's the exact same type of shit.
[01:01:14]  Yeah yeah yeah, uh.
[01:01:15]  In private letters to other Olympic officials, Brundage went out of his way to argue the Nazi party line, claiming that most of the German Jewish athletes hadn't even been good enough to qualify.
[01:01:24]  Right like, they let a couple of charity cases in.
[01:01:27]  Right, you're still angry at the Nazis.
[01:01:29]  You know, these people would never have qualified if we hadn't put on pressure, and that's bullshit.
[01:01:34]  Gretel Bergman had to give up her seat on the British Olympic team to compete for Germany and she didn't get to compete.
[01:01:42]  She 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.
[01:01:50]  She does as well as the best a German woman has ever done at the high jump in her qualifier.
[01:01:56]  And then, after 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.
[01:02:04]  Wow, it sucks.
[01:02:06]  So bad for her.
[01:02:07]  I mean, at least she's in the fucking Uk right, so right, but it it's.
[01:02:11]  It's a real bummer man.
[01:02:13]  Yeah, i'm gonna quote from Carolyn Marvin again.
[01:02:16]  Not only did Jews exalt their and this is her talking about Brundage not only did Jews exalt their own political interests above the independence of amateur sport.
[01:02:23]  Not only did they fail to appreciate the contribution of the Olympic movement to whatever restraint Hitler had exercised, but also Brundage argued with increasing irritation, Jewish protest would be counterproductive in the long run.
[01:02:34]  An Olympic boycott on account of the Jews would excite dangerous, possibly uncontrollable, Anti-semitic sympathies in America.
[01:02:41]  Yeah, that's right.
[01:02:42]  So he's like, look, we might have to murder you guys if you all uh, if you don't let us play, do the high jump, you know yeah, that's not our fault, that's on you.
[01:02:49]  Yeah yeah, yeah.
[01:02:50]  You can't blame us for what is eventually going to happen.
[01:02:55]  This is like, it's just so fucking sickening.
[01:02:57]  Just like the way in which people just hearing people complain is enough to turn anyone into a Nazi.
[01:03:06]  Yeah.
[01:03:07]  Well, and the thing that enrages them so much is that these complaints, why they're reacting so negatively to the complaints, is 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.
[01:03:25]  They're fucking sick.
[01:03:26]  I was going to be on the Olympic committee.
[01:03:28]  I was going to do the hundred.
[01:03:29]  I was going to be the birthday to jump in.
[01:03:31]  You know, like that's that's what's going on here, right?
[01:03:33]  Yeah.
[01:03:34]  Yeah.
[01:03:34]  Brundage, again, he is kind of groundbreaking in how he publicly justifies racism because after he goes on this like, you know, you guys better be worried if you if you protest too loud, he's like, now I know a lot of smart conservative Jews and they all agree with me, right?
[01:03:49]  They all think I'm in the right.
[01:03:51]  So I'm not racist, right?
[01:03:52]  The smart conservative Jews that I won't name all say I'm right, you know?
[01:03:56]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:03:58]  Listen, I got, I got binders full of Jews who think that, yeah, Jews complain too much and are not good at sports.
[01:04:05]  He's also, he uses the racism that's been drum up by the boycott to try and raise money for the Olympics.
[01:04:12]  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 they are approached.
[01:04:22]  I bet it works.
[01:04:24]  And because he's that kind of sociopath, and this is something the Nazis wouldn't do.
[01:04:29]  Not because it's worse, but this is just a very American way of being shitty.
[01:04:33]  At the same time, as he's like, oh, yeah, we can fundraise off of this racism.
[01:04:36]  He's like, you know what else we could do?
[01:04:38]  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.
[01:04:46]  You know, you can help.
[01:04:48]  You can help your fellow Jews if you give some money to the Olympics.
[01:04:51]  You know, that's right.
[01:04:52]  It'll help change.
[01:04:53]  It'll, it'll, it'll warm, you know, uh, Hitler's cold, cold heart.
[01:04:58]  That was the one thing that could have stopped Hitler from his madness is if the Olympics had had a bigger billboard.
[01:05:06]  I've been wrong this whole time.
[01:05:08]  You know, maybe I should rethink this whole Jews should die thing.
[01:05:13]  I'm going to call back my friend and take some ecstasy.
[01:05:16]  I'm going to Bonnaroo.
[01:05:21]  Cut to like one of those 90s end movie montages.
[01:05:25]  Hitler and Bonnaroo.
[01:05:28]  Oh, beautiful.
[01:05:30]  At the end of 1935, 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.
[01:05:46]  It wants to bring the American dollar into the very weakened Nazi treasury, and it wants you to picture Hitler with Uncle Sam standing behind him and saying, we are with you, Adolph.
[01:05:55]  And he is right on the money there.
[01:05:58]  All of his efforts are for naught, though.
[01:05:59]  The AAU delegates vote 58 to 55-ish in favor of attending the Olympics.
[01:06:05]  Similar campaigns across the so-called free world also collapsed under Hitler's charm offensive.
[01:06:10]  Two days before the opening of the games, at the 35th session of the IOC, so with the session of the committee right before the games start, Balay Latour makes good on his promises to Avery Brundage.
[01:06:21]  He orchestrates a coup against Ernst Yankee, the only member pronounced like three different ways.
[01:06:26]  You know the guy, the only member of the IOC who wasn't a piece of shit.
[01:06:28]  The one good guy.
[01:06:29]  Yeah.
[01:06:31]  Yanke is expelled by a 49 to zero vote.
[01:06:34]  Damn.
[01:06:35]  Yeah.
[01:06:36]  Now, General Sheryl is dead by this point.
[01:06:38]  He drops dead right after coming back with his Hitler.
[01:06:43]  So at least he got to, that's nice though.
[01:06:45]  You know, he died, but at least he got to see Hitler.
[01:06:47]  You know?
[01:06:47]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:06:48]  He just probably died when he was doing autoerotic asphyxiation to a picture he drew of Hitler's dick.
[01:06:55]  Yeah, yeah, that was the style at the time.
[01:06:57]  Yep.
[01:06:58]  And so in 1936, Brundage was present for the opening ceremonies of the Berlin Olympics, marching at the head of the U.S. delegation.
[01:07:05]  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.
[01:07:15]  Some people are alike.
[01:07:16]  Boy, it seems like there's a lot of tens of thousands of uniformed soldiers marching around at this peaceful event.
[01:07:23]  There are a lot of guns at this peace competition.
[01:07:26]  Yeah.
[01:07:26]  I feel like the other countries don't have tens of thousands of uniformed soldiers marching around.
[01:07:30]  Maybe an honor guard, you know, you do a little 21-gun salute.
[01:07:33]  This is a lot of guys.
[01:07:34]  Yeah, this is a bunch of guys.
[01:07:36]  Well, it's okay because they're doing race walking.
[01:07:40]  So that's fine.
[01:07:41]  Kilto, goose step, whatever you want to call it.
[01:07:45]  Kind of at the start of the events, we get a chapter of one of the more complicated sporting stories of the Nazi era, which is the Hindenburg sails into Berlin with Max Schmelling on it.
[01:07:56]  And Schmeling is a, he's, he's a German boxer.
[01:08:00]  He's one of the best boxers of his day, and he has he has just gone up against a guy named Joe Lewis.
[01:08:05]  Joe Lewis is, 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.
[01:08:12]  But the name you might get most often is Joe Lewis.
[01:08:15]  He's at least going to be up there.
[01:08:17]  He's like 20 years.
[01:08:18]  He's basically very close to undefeated.
[01:08:20]  I think his record is like 54 wins, four losses, and like 42 of those wins are by knockout.
[01:08:27]  And one of the very few men to beat Lewis in a fight was Schmelling.
[01:08:31]  And Schmelling does it when he's 30.
[01:08:33]  So he's considered over the hill.
[01:08:35]  Schmeling is able to win because he spends, he just like obsessively watches every fight Lewis has been in and like learns his strategy.
[01:08:41]  And he wins.
[01:08:42]  And this is seen as like this huge thing for the Nazis.
[01:08:45]  It's proof of racial superiority.
[01:08:48]  It's, you know, a great lead-in to these games.
[01:08:51]  What's kind of weird on the back side of this is that for all of that, like Schmelling and Lewis and Schmelling will have a rematch that Lewis wins and it's made into this very big propaganda thing for the U.S. Joe Lewis is treated like shit by the United States his whole life because he's a black man.
[01:09:06]  Right.
[01:09:06]  Like he's when he's put in the army to have like a PR role, basically, and he's still discriminated against massively.
[01:09:13]  One of the only white guys in the world who's not shitty to Joe Lewis is Max Schmelling.
[01:09:17]  And Schmelling pays for his funeral when he dies.
[01:09:20]  Like they are friends for life.
[01:09:22]  Yes, yes.
[01:09:22]  They are best friends forever.
[01:09:24]  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.
[01:09:36]  Just because remember that so many of the people we're talking about, whether it's the head of these like, you know, Olympic committees or like people who are like generals in the military, they're all just like, listen, we also hate Jews and we also discriminate openly against all African Americans in this country.
[01:09:58]  So it's, it's really, you know, yeah, it's one of those, I'm always, every time it comes around, the Normandy anniversary, the anniversary of Stalingrad, like I've got nothing but respect for the people who actually had to fight the Nazis.
[01:10:13]  100%.
[01:10:13]  Every single soldier went in there and kicked Nazi ass.
[01:10:17]  I love it.
[01:10:18]  This country wound up politically, just barely missing, you know, that.
[01:10:25]  Yes.
[01:10:25]  So by a fucking, by a fraction, by a hair, we ended up not being aligned with this Nazi project.
[01:10:32]  And a lot of guys like Brundage probably went to his grave regretting that.
[01:10:37]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:10:37]  Well, at least you would hope so.
[01:10:40]  Yeah.
[01:10:40]  Yeah.
[01:10:41]  So we have our Nazi games.
[01:10:43]  The Berlin Games start out.
[01:10:45]  The theme of the day is this, like, you know, the opening of the Olympics is all of these German like military marches, right?
[01:10:51]  And everyone else kind of just with their athletes walking around, being like, boy, it seems like there's a weird number of soldiers here.
[01:10:58]  Everyone else, like, shit, we didn't bring enough guns.
[01:11:00]  Should we have brought guns?
[01:11:02]  And in fact, when he shows up, when Hitler shows up, he's marching with Ballet Latour and Leewold, right?
[01:11:09]  These other IOC representatives.
[01:11:11]  And they are like fucking the president of the Olympics is next to Hitler and they are flanked by dozens of SS men.
[01:11:17]  Like, a political games.
[01:11:20]  Nothing political going on with this SS march to the Olympic stadium.
[01:11:24]  This is all just about peace and sportsmanship.
[01:11:28]  In the book Berlin Games, Guy Walters writes: By the time Hitler reached his seat at 4:05 p.m., there was no doubt that he was already the star of the Olympics.
[01:11:35]  These were his games now, not Ballet Latour's, and most certainly not Kubertin's.
[01:11:40]  As if to reinforce the Nazification of the games, the orchestra struck up with Deutschland Uberales and the Horst Wessel song, both of which had heralded the start of the Winter Games back in February.
[01:11:51]  So that's great.
[01:11:52]  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.
[01:12:01]  This was complicated by the fact that the Olympic salute, there's an Olympic salute.
[01:12:05]  Oh, I didn't know there was an Olympic salute.
[01:12:07]  Well, I don't think we use it anymore because it's basically a reversed Nazi salute.

=== Reversed Nazi Salute (09:40) ===

[01:12:11]  They're very similar.
[01:12:13]  And this is because we've been doing variants of the salute that the Nazis want for a long time.
[01:12:18]  But also, Hitler is known for he's kind of a lazy guy a lot of the time.
[01:12:22]  And so sometimes when Hitler, prior even to this, he'll give, he'll use the wrong arm to do his fascist salute.
[01:12:29]  And so when the Greeks give an Olympic salute and Hitler responds with an Olympic salute, no one's really sure.
[01:12:34]  Well, we're not sure if the Greeks meant to do a fascist salute and didn't like it.
[01:12:38]  And we're not sure what Hitler meant to do either.
[01:12:40]  Nobody actually knows.
[01:12:42]  Yeah, Hitler is the one guy.
[01:12:44]  He always does that little hile, right?
[01:12:46]  He's really lazy with it.
[01:12:48]  He has a lazy hile.
[01:12:50]  He really half-asses the heil.
[01:12:52]  Yeah.
[01:12:53]  I guess it's because they're hiling him.
[01:12:55]  He's like, I don't have to hile that much.
[01:12:57]  Yeah, I mean, to be fair to Hitler, which I usually don't say, it is all like, yeah, he shouldn't hile him.
[01:13:03]  That is kind of weird, right?
[01:13:04]  I don't know.
[01:13:05]  I don't know.
[01:13:05]  I'm not going to backseat Sighei.
[01:13:07]  Be fair to Hitler, he said.
[01:13:10]  Jesus.
[01:13:13]  So the French come by next and they do another Olympic salute, but the crowd is mostly Germans.
[01:13:18]  They did mostly Germans who lived through World War I and like the starvation and mass death.
[01:13:23]  And so a lot of people kind of interpret what the French team is doing as a fascist salute, which they see as not that they don't see that as the French saying we're fascist too.
[01:13:32]  They see it as like the French being like, hey, things are good now.
[01:13:35]  We're not going to have another war.
[01:13:36]  Because like most of this audience of Germans really don't want another war with France.
[01:13:41]  It was a bad time.
[01:13:42]  I remember they did this.
[01:13:44]  They were like, no, that sucks.
[01:13:45]  Let's be cool.
[01:13:46]  Yeah.
[01:13:46]  And so the audience cheers when they see the French do this because they're like, hey, maybe we don't, maybe I don't have to send my son off to die like my brother did in Flanders or whatever.
[01:13:56]  I don't have to see my friends drown in mud.
[01:13:59]  Yeah, sounds great.
[01:14:00]  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 what is about to happen, right?
[01:14:08]  Albert Schmidt.
[01:14:09]  Are you guys even Nazis?
[01:14:10]  Like, what the fuck is going on here?
[01:14:13]  Albert Speer describes Hitler as, quote, more disturbed than pleased by the Berliners' cheers.
[01:14:18]  The British come next, and this is, there's some moments of pride for both the Brits and the Americans here.
[01:14:23]  The British and also India and Australia, who are part of the British Empire, they don't salute at all.
[01:14:29]  And neither do the Americans, who are led in their march by Avery Brundage.
[01:14:34]  And here's how Guy Walters describes that moment.
[01:14:36]  The United States was one of the last teams to enter the stadium.
[01:14:39]  We were a total disgrace, recalled Joanna de Tuscan.
[01:14:42]  About 30 or 40 non-members of the team, fat with cigarette ashes on their clothes, marched at the head of the team.
[01:14:48]  Marty Glickman felt that the word marching was inappropriate to describe how the Americans proceeded.
[01:14:53]  American athletes don't march very well, he wrote.
[01:14:56]  We kind of moved in our usual loose-gated walk.
[01:14:58]  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.
[01:15:04]  And honestly, I have some American pride for that.
[01:15:07]  Yeah, we've got our fascist at the front, but everyone else just looks like shit stumbling around, hungover as hell, chain smoking.
[01:15:15]  Yes, that is shit like that that makes America great.
[01:15:19]  You know, it's the fact that we're just like, listen, I learned how to do one thing really well.
[01:15:24]  I'm not sure.
[01:15:25]  I'm also going to march.
[01:15:27]  Yeah.
[01:15:27]  I'm going to get good at this.
[01:15:28]  Fuck you.
[01:15:29]  I'm literally Jesse Owens.
[01:15:31]  I don't have to impress you.
[01:15:32]  Yeah.
[01:15:34]  I'm doing this for a medal later.
[01:15:36]  Yeah.
[01:15:36]  Yeah.
[01:15:37]  I'm going to continue that quote.
[01:15:38]  As the Americans marched past Hitler, they removed their boaters and clutched them to their hearts.
[01:15:43]  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.
[01:15:50]  Marty Glickman recalled the moment when the team passed Hitler.
[01:15:54]  We looked up at the box where he was flanked by Gohring and Goebbels and Hess and Himmler and all the rest of the Nazi hierarchy.
[01:15:59]  And you could hear the comment run through our crowd as we were walking in: Hey, he looks like Charlie Chaplin.
[01:16:09]  And this has been pretty America critical, as we often are, but by God, am I proud to hear that?
[01:16:15]  Yes, no, it's beautiful.
[01:16:16]  I've got that Lee Greenwood song running in my heart now.
[01:16:22]  Oh, it's beautiful.
[01:16:23]  Look at this silly ass.
[01:16:25]  Yeah.
[01:16:26]  So we will continue at some later date with the story of Hitler at the Olympics and maybe finish up some Avery Brundage.
[01:16:33]  But you get the gist of why Brundage sucks with all of this.
[01:16:35]  Oh, yeah.
[01:16:36]  Seems like a dickhead.
[01:16:37]  Reasonably complete.
[01:16:38]  Yeah.
[01:16:39]  I don't like him and I don't support him.
[01:16:41]  I'll tell you that much.
[01:16:43]  No.
[01:16:43]  He's a bastard.
[01:16:45]  Yeah.
[01:16:46]  Well, I reckon that'll do it for us here at Behind the Podcast, a podcast about bastards.
[01:16:53]  That's right.
[01:16:54]  Matt Lieb, Bad Hasbara podcast.
[01:16:58]  Bad has Bara, new pod.
[01:17:02]  H-A-S-B-A-R-A, right?
[01:17:04]  H-A-S-B-A-R-A.
[01:17:06]  Yeah, you can check it out wherever podcasts are given away for free.
[01:17:12]  And, you know, to you know, to quote Benjamin Netanyahu.
[01:17:19]  I want you to come.
[01:17:20]  I want you to come.
[01:17:23]  So check it out.
[01:17:25]  Also, I just want to give a quick shout out to just a couple of live shows Francesca and I are doing.
[01:17:33]  We're going to be in Chicago during the DNC doing a couple of shows.
[01:17:39]  Monday, August 16th, and I think Tuesday, August 17th, we're going to be at Lincoln Lodge.
[01:17:46]  One is going to be a live podcast, Spituation Room/slash Bad Has Barra.
[01:17:50]  The other is going to be a stand-up show.
[01:17:52]  So yeah, check out that.
[01:17:55]  If you're in Chicago, August, you know, fucking 19th, August 20th, come, please.
[01:18:01]  It'll be fun.
[01:18:02]  So, yes, check that out.
[01:18:04]  See Matt and Francesca live.
[01:18:07]  And you won't see us live because we don't have any plans to do that anytime soon.
[01:18:12]  Maybe someday again.
[01:18:14]  You guys should.
[01:18:14]  It would be sick.
[01:18:17]  One of these days I'll leave my house again, Matt.
[01:18:20]  I keep saying that and not leaving my house, but one of these days I might.
[01:18:23]  Anyway, it's great out there in the world, bro.
[01:18:26]  You know?
[01:18:26]  Yeah, that's what everyone says about the world.
[01:18:29]  Yeah, everyone loves the world and how good it is.
[01:18:32]  Yeah, that's the overwhelming thing I get from social media.
[01:18:35]  People are happy about the world.
[01:18:36]  If you go outside, world good.
[01:18:38]  Nothing bad ever happened.
[01:18:40]  Yeah.
[01:18:41]  All right, everybody.
[01:18:43]  Go be like an Olympian and touch grass.
[01:18:49]  Behind the Bastards is a production of CoolZone Media.
[01:18:53]  For more from CoolZone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com.
[01:18:57]  Or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
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