WEBVTT - Hitler’s Olympics, Part 6: The Jiggle & the Giddy Up 0:00:06.680 --> 0:00:15.600 Pushkin the Collock Street tears around the clay circle with 0:00:15.640 --> 0:00:18.040 a spoon of the wind, increasing his lead with every stride. 0:00:18.520 --> 0:00:22.880 Also, about four thousand athletes competed in the nineteen thirty 0:00:22.880 --> 0:00:27.880 six Olympic Games, but Jesse Owens is the one people remember. 0:00:28.040 --> 0:00:30.240 Streak Jesse Owens in one hundred meters. 0:00:33.200 --> 0:00:34.519 The yata go out in front of that cap of 0:00:34.600 --> 0:00:38.560 coming second up on him. 0:00:38.680 --> 0:00:42.080 Jesse Owens was born in Alabama, the son of a sharecropper, 0:00:42.479 --> 0:00:47.360 self effacing, soft spoken, and an unbelievable athlete. In nineteen 0:00:47.400 --> 0:00:49.839 thirty five, as a twenty one year old, he had 0:00:49.880 --> 0:00:53.680 already set three world records in a single day, all 0:00:53.720 --> 0:00:57.600 in the same hour. With a bad back, Where's mister 0:00:57.960 --> 0:00:59.640 runner makes the others look as if they're working? 0:01:00.120 --> 0:01:03.639 He wins the final and equals the worlds record time, and. 0:01:03.600 --> 0:01:07.839 In nineteen thirty six even the Germans were expecting something 0:01:07.880 --> 0:01:09.280 great from him. 0:01:09.760 --> 0:01:13.280 Now, how many broad medals do you hope to win? 0:01:13.400 --> 0:01:14.840 The two cord metimes? 0:01:15.880 --> 0:01:19.680 It's to desire very athlete to win a first place. 0:01:19.440 --> 0:01:20.559 In the an Olympic Games. 0:01:21.319 --> 0:01:23.959 In nineteen thirty six, he was slated to compete in 0:01:24.000 --> 0:01:27.120 three events, and since I'm in three events. 0:01:27.240 --> 0:01:29.440 I hope to you emerge with three victories. 0:01:29.640 --> 0:01:34.800 I hope one meets one hundred meters two hundred. 0:01:33.920 --> 0:01:38.640 Meters and rogum one hundred meters two hundred meters and 0:01:38.720 --> 0:01:42.120 the broad jump. Later they added a fourth event, the 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:45.480 four by one hundred meter relay. He would win gold 0:01:45.800 --> 0:01:49.840 in all four, the only person to win four gold 0:01:49.880 --> 0:01:53.360 medals in the Berlin Olympics. And that is why you 0:01:53.400 --> 0:01:56.560 know the name Jesse Owens. But it all could have 0:01:56.560 --> 0:02:04.120 turned out differently because of that broad jump. You've seen 0:02:04.120 --> 0:02:06.680 a broad jump before today it's called the long jump, 0:02:06.840 --> 0:02:09.320 and it's one of the more dramatic Olympic sports. The 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:12.040 jumpers sprint down the runway, hit a take off board 0:02:12.080 --> 0:02:15.520 and they look like they're flying and then they land 0:02:15.639 --> 0:02:19.520 in a huge spray of sand. So the morning of 0:02:19.560 --> 0:02:23.240 August fourth, nineteen thirty six, ten thirty am in the 0:02:23.240 --> 0:02:27.839 reichs sport Feld, it's the long jump qualifying rounds. Best 0:02:27.880 --> 0:02:31.079 jumpers go on to the final. Owens had just run 0:02:31.120 --> 0:02:34.320 his heat in the two hundred meters immediately after he 0:02:34.320 --> 0:02:36.880 headed over to the pit. It was the third day 0:02:36.880 --> 0:02:38.960 of the Games, and by then he already had his 0:02:38.960 --> 0:02:42.880 first gold medal, so it was a surprise when he 0:02:42.919 --> 0:02:45.920 botched his first jump. By some accounts, he thought it 0:02:45.960 --> 0:02:49.440 was a practice run no sweat, though he had two 0:02:49.680 --> 0:02:53.680 more tries, so he lined himself back up and started 0:02:53.760 --> 0:02:58.840 jogging down the runway. He took off and came up short. 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:03.640 He had one jump left. If he screwed up that 0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:06.240 last jump, he'd have been out of the contest, and 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:08.919 he'd have gone from being the only athlete to win 0:03:09.040 --> 0:03:11.760 four gold medals in nineteen thirty six to one of 0:03:11.840 --> 0:03:15.080 three athletes who'd won three golds, right up there with 0:03:15.200 --> 0:03:18.919 Conrad Frey and Hendrika Mastenbroke, who actually would have had 0:03:19.040 --> 0:03:22.600 more total medals than him. And I ask you, be honest, 0:03:23.120 --> 0:03:27.400 have you ever heard of Conrad Fray and Hendrika masten Broke. No, 0:03:28.080 --> 0:03:32.680 And probably if he'd missed that final qualifying jump, you 0:03:32.760 --> 0:03:39.200 wouldn't have heard of Jesse Owens either. So after the 0:03:39.240 --> 0:03:45.680 first two misses, Owens was rattled. But then something miraculous happened, 0:03:46.640 --> 0:03:51.320 something that changed the course of Jesse Owens's life and 0:03:51.400 --> 0:03:53.040 made him a legend. 0:03:56.720 --> 0:04:01.480 I'm Malcolm Gladwell. Welcome to revisionist history about things overlooked 0:04:01.480 --> 0:04:05.640 and misunderstood in this episode, Ben and Aph Haffrey and 0:04:05.680 --> 0:04:08.080 I are talking about one of the biggest stories to 0:04:08.120 --> 0:04:12.520 emerge from the Berlin Games. A story about two athletes 0:04:12.800 --> 0:04:17.880 making good on the promise of the Olympics, cross cultural understanding, 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:22.719 sportsmanship against all odds. A moment that became key to 0:04:22.760 --> 0:04:26.200 the Olympic mythology and to the legend of Jesse Owens. 0:04:26.880 --> 0:04:32.480 A powerful, incredibly important story that's hiding a very big secret. 0:04:39.200 --> 0:04:42.280 It was cool that day in August. Clouds had rolled 0:04:42.279 --> 0:04:45.960 in over the stadium. Around one hundred thousand people were 0:04:46.000 --> 0:04:51.200 in the stands watching in America's most famous athlete, Jesse Owens, 0:04:51.360 --> 0:04:55.760 was screwing up badly, which makes no sense. All he 0:04:55.839 --> 0:04:59.200 had to do was jump seven point one five meters 0:04:59.200 --> 0:05:02.400 to qualify. He already had a world record for jumping 0:05:02.440 --> 0:05:05.760 a meter farther than that, So what was going wrong? 0:05:07.200 --> 0:05:10.560 Malcolm and I had decided to ask an expert a legend. 0:05:10.600 --> 0:05:13.840 Actually it was about ten years ago, so the age 0:05:13.920 --> 0:05:17.320 is sixty five, I think, and I jumped further than 0:05:17.360 --> 0:05:20.200 my high school mark is sun right, yeah, and. 0:05:20.200 --> 0:05:22.400 You're the first American who jump fifty seven feet. 0:05:22.760 --> 0:05:27.159 Yeah, one of the greatest American triple jumpers of all 0:05:27.200 --> 0:05:29.200 time Milan Tiff. 0:05:30.440 --> 0:05:33.560 I actually jumped sixty feet but they didn't wouldn't recognize 0:05:33.560 --> 0:05:36.799 it because I jumped out of the pit And. 0:05:36.800 --> 0:05:37.720 Where did you do that? 0:05:38.040 --> 0:05:38.320 Right here? 0:05:38.360 --> 0:05:42.680 You say wow, and I jump. I completely jumped over 0:05:42.760 --> 0:05:44.920 the sand pit and landed on the grass. I had 0:05:44.920 --> 0:05:46.599 grass stands all over the back of me. 0:05:48.480 --> 0:05:50.679 Going to see Milan was Malcolm's idea. 0:05:51.760 --> 0:05:54.600 So when I was in high school, starting at the 0:05:54.640 --> 0:05:58.120 age of twelve, I became a competitive runner, and I 0:05:58.200 --> 0:06:01.159 was obsessed with track and field, and I subscribe to 0:06:01.200 --> 0:06:04.040 Track and Field News, the Bible of the sport, as 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:11.520 it's called. And Miller Tiff was this extraordinary. First of all, 0:06:11.560 --> 0:06:14.600 he was astonishing looking. He looked there was something kind 0:06:14.640 --> 0:06:18.279 of ethereal about him, and he had as a kid, 0:06:18.320 --> 0:06:20.840 he couldn't walk because he had I think polio or something. 0:06:21.000 --> 0:06:24.840 And he was also an artist, really really bright colors 0:06:24.960 --> 0:06:29.440 and kind of wildly imaginative and a little bit psychedelic. 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:32.640 But I was I was just obsessed with him as 0:06:32.680 --> 0:06:37.800 this kind of like this this strange, otherworldly figure. And 0:06:37.800 --> 0:06:39.880 he was a favorite in nineteen eighty. Had we not 0:06:39.880 --> 0:06:42.520 boycotted the nineteen eighty Games, he might well have won 0:06:42.520 --> 0:06:45.360 a gold medal. Anyway, I cannot wait. He's going to 0:06:45.400 --> 0:06:48.080 be He's going to be a little bit. He might 0:06:48.160 --> 0:06:49.839 be a little I don't know, but I have a 0:06:49.880 --> 0:06:53.320 sense that he might be. He might be a little 0:06:53.640 --> 0:06:54.200 out there. 0:06:55.839 --> 0:06:58.160 This turned out to be pretty prescient. After meeting the 0:06:58.240 --> 0:07:00.480 lawn Tiff, I felt like I had take in some 0:07:00.560 --> 0:07:03.160 kind of intense psychedelic the effects of which I've yet 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:03.960 to wear off. 0:07:04.120 --> 0:07:06.120 The first humans. It's unbelievable. 0:07:06.560 --> 0:07:09.240 I understood that to walk is just to take a 0:07:09.320 --> 0:07:13.080 number of tiny, long jumps. I found myself transfixed by 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:16.480 an actually gorgeous painting of Milans portraying a pair of 0:07:16.520 --> 0:07:20.640 empty tidy whities suspended in a blue abstract space called 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:24.160 mysteriously palm springs, and. 0:07:24.080 --> 0:07:26.800 The birds and the trees would all fly down. They're 0:07:26.840 --> 0:07:29.200 just tapped into the same frequency as I have when 0:07:29.200 --> 0:07:30.160 I'm running and jumping. 0:07:31.040 --> 0:07:33.480 We flew out to Los Angeles, where he lives, so 0:07:33.560 --> 0:07:36.040 he could take us out to the UCLA track, And 0:07:36.200 --> 0:07:39.080 when we got there there were several helicopters hovering above 0:07:39.160 --> 0:07:41.400 us the whole time, which only made everything a little 0:07:41.440 --> 0:07:45.160 more surreal. And Olympic legends just walking up to him 0:07:45.200 --> 0:07:49.840 literally bowing down. This I think because they wouldn't normally 0:07:49.960 --> 0:07:53.160 see him. He told us he prefers to run in 0:07:53.200 --> 0:08:00.280 the morning, by which he meant three am. Tif us 0:08:00.280 --> 0:08:02.760 out to the broad jump pit to help us get 0:08:02.800 --> 0:08:06.680 inside Jesse Owens's mind, which we thought he could do 0:08:06.840 --> 0:08:09.920 because he's a master of the approach the part Jesse 0:08:09.960 --> 0:08:14.280 Owens was screwing up, but also because so you actually 0:08:14.320 --> 0:08:15.600 knew Jesse Owens when you were a kid. 0:08:15.720 --> 0:08:20.679 Yeah, yeah, you know that sit and he tell the stories, yeah, 0:08:20.960 --> 0:08:23.360 and not hear all the stories. And you know, he 0:08:23.400 --> 0:08:25.840 talked about his experience in Berlin. 0:08:27.200 --> 0:08:30.120 You know, we asked him to tell us about how 0:08:30.160 --> 0:08:31.640 you're supposed to approach a jump. 0:08:32.080 --> 0:08:34.719 Yeah, you gotta have a gidea up first, that kind 0:08:34.720 --> 0:08:37.040 of rockings. You have to have some or a jiggle 0:08:37.040 --> 0:08:39.080 where you will call it. Yeah, you have to have 0:08:39.160 --> 0:08:41.640 a jiggle or a gide up before you even get 0:08:41.679 --> 0:08:42.320 into your run. 0:08:42.600 --> 0:08:45.559 Yeah, that adjustice your run. Is that why this is 0:08:45.600 --> 0:08:48.160 obviously the broad jump but lose long. I noticed he 0:08:48.200 --> 0:08:50.160 does this sort of like hitch in his leg before 0:08:50.160 --> 0:08:50.920 he starts running. 0:08:51.920 --> 0:08:55.199 Yeah, it's like a dance. It's like it's like a preparation. 0:08:55.360 --> 0:08:56.880 Can you show us what your gidea up. 0:08:56.880 --> 0:08:59.560 Was, Well, it's like a one, two, three, four five, 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:01.000 then you start your run. 0:09:01.200 --> 0:09:01.680 Yeah. 0:09:01.720 --> 0:09:05.400 And I told it to Willie Banks world record, taught 0:09:05.400 --> 0:09:05.719 it to. 0:09:07.160 --> 0:09:11.360 Bike Pile world record. We gave it a shot on 0:09:11.400 --> 0:09:14.439 the track where at the very same time actual Olympic 0:09:14.520 --> 0:09:18.160 athletes were practicing for this year's games. Was it embarrassing? 0:09:18.400 --> 0:09:22.160 It was mortifying. Did we set a world record? Not 0:09:22.280 --> 0:09:26.000 even close. Did we become friends with any Olympians they 0:09:26.040 --> 0:09:29.439 were otherwise occupied. But this is the kind of dedication 0:09:30.000 --> 0:09:34.040 that deep historical investigations demand. What was Did Jesse Owens 0:09:34.080 --> 0:09:34.680 have a gidayup? 0:09:35.080 --> 0:09:37.960 No, he had a stand start because he was a sprinter, 0:09:39.360 --> 0:09:42.280 you see. Yeah, that's why he was losing the steps 0:09:42.320 --> 0:09:45.280 all the time. He didn't have a jiggle, well, he 0:09:45.360 --> 0:09:47.360 didn't have a che No, he didn't have a jiggle 0:09:47.440 --> 0:09:47.800 or a get. 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:49.120 Yeah. 0:09:49.160 --> 0:09:51.600 And it took his competitor to say, man, come on, 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:53.560 you gotta do something first. 0:09:55.000 --> 0:09:58.800 Jesse Owens's competitor, facing down the pit through export fold 0:10:00.640 --> 0:10:07.520 Long Lutzlong was Germany's champion broad jumper, Hitler's champion, and 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:11.080 he looked the part a fine ak line nose framed 0:10:11.080 --> 0:10:14.160 by your classic blonde hair and blue eyes. As Owens 0:10:14.200 --> 0:10:17.240 wrote later, Hitler was in the stadium that morning to watch. 0:10:17.880 --> 0:10:20.920 Owens knew that he'd like nothing better than to see 0:10:20.960 --> 0:10:24.520 a black man lose to an Arian. The thought was 0:10:24.640 --> 0:10:28.240 nanging at him, messing up his focus. And then he'd 0:10:28.280 --> 0:10:30.680 looked up at the box where Hitler had been watching 0:10:30.720 --> 0:10:35.120 the games and saw that when Owens's turn came, Hitler 0:10:35.400 --> 0:10:40.240 had just left. It made his blood boil. That's why 0:10:40.240 --> 0:10:42.920 he was fouling out. He was psyched out by all 0:10:42.960 --> 0:10:46.400 of it, distracted, and when he saw how amazing Lutslong 0:10:46.520 --> 0:10:49.240 was at the broad jump, he began wonder if there 0:10:49.280 --> 0:10:52.600 was something true about all this Arian stuff. He was 0:10:52.640 --> 0:10:56.640 down to his last jump, and then came the miracle. 0:10:58.440 --> 0:11:02.000 In an autobiography he published in nineteen seventy eight, Owens wrote, 0:11:02.320 --> 0:11:05.319 suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was 0:11:05.400 --> 0:11:07.600 Lut's Long. Look. 0:11:08.480 --> 0:11:11.240 There is no time to waste with manners. What has 0:11:11.320 --> 0:11:12.120 taken your goat. 0:11:12.920 --> 0:11:14.520 Obviously we had to reenact this. 0:11:15.840 --> 0:11:18.240 I had to smile a little in spite of myself 0:11:18.520 --> 0:11:22.800 hearing his mixed up American idiom ah. Nothing I said, 0:11:23.160 --> 0:11:25.760 you know how it is. He was silent for a 0:11:25.760 --> 0:11:30.520 few seconds. Yes, he said, finally, I know how it is. 0:11:31.040 --> 0:11:33.440 But I also know you are a better jumper than this. 0:11:34.320 --> 0:11:38.640 Now what has taken your goat? I laughed out loud 0:11:38.640 --> 0:11:41.880 this time, but I couldn't tell him him Above all, 0:11:42.760 --> 0:11:45.320 I glanced over at the broad jump pit I was 0:11:45.320 --> 0:11:49.280 about to be called. Lutz didn't waste words, even if 0:11:49.280 --> 0:11:52.640 he wasn't sure of which ones to use. Is it 0:11:52.760 --> 0:11:57.560 what reichkanze Hitler did? He asked. I was thunderstruck that 0:11:57.600 --> 0:12:02.000 he'd say it. I start to answer, but I didn't 0:12:02.040 --> 0:12:06.240 know what to say. I see, he said, Look, we 0:12:06.400 --> 0:12:09.679 talk about that later. Now you must jump and you 0:12:09.760 --> 0:12:12.960 must qualify. But how I shot back? 0:12:13.880 --> 0:12:14.480 I have thought? 0:12:14.679 --> 0:12:18.079 He said, you are like Aya. You must do it 0:12:18.240 --> 0:12:20.280 one hundred percent correct. 0:12:21.040 --> 0:12:21.600 I nodded. 0:12:21.960 --> 0:12:25.240 Yet you must be sure not to foul. I nodded again, 0:12:25.600 --> 0:12:28.760 this time in frustration, And as I did, I heard 0:12:28.800 --> 0:12:33.320 the loudspeaker call my name. Lutz talked quickly. Then you 0:12:33.440 --> 0:12:37.080 do both things, Jesse. You remeasure your steps, you take 0:12:37.120 --> 0:12:40.520 off six inches behind the foul board. You jump as 0:12:40.559 --> 0:12:43.640 hard as you can, but you need not fear to foul. 0:12:44.960 --> 0:12:47.640 All at once, the panic emptied out of me like 0:12:47.679 --> 0:12:48.480 a cloudburst. 0:12:49.720 --> 0:12:52.360 Owens jogged up to the line and laid a towel 0:12:52.400 --> 0:12:55.280 to mark where Long had told him to jump. He 0:12:55.440 --> 0:12:59.440 lined up on the runway, maybe wiped his hands on 0:12:59.480 --> 0:13:04.439 his jersey, and then he ran one step, two steps, 0:13:04.720 --> 0:13:07.320 closer and closer to the pit, and then he hit 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:09.760 that mark on the towel, leapt into the air. 0:13:10.280 --> 0:13:12.920 And when he finally got that, he qualified. 0:13:13.040 --> 0:13:15.720 And later that day, with Hitler back in the stands, 0:13:16.080 --> 0:13:19.760 in the metal event itself well record, he set an 0:13:19.760 --> 0:13:25.360 Olympic record. And that's when Lootes along the aryan poster 0:13:25.520 --> 0:13:29.680 child who had just lost to Jesse Owens, hugged him 0:13:30.120 --> 0:13:31.839 in front of Adolph. 0:13:31.520 --> 0:13:34.200 Hitler, and the Hitler was pissed man. 0:13:35.920 --> 0:13:40.440 But Long didn't just embrace him. According to Jesse Owens, 0:13:40.880 --> 0:13:45.200 later that night they met up in the Olympic village. 0:13:46.200 --> 0:13:49.439 The hours ticked on and they stayed up late, talking 0:13:49.520 --> 0:13:52.400 about their lives, the state of the world, and the 0:13:52.520 --> 0:13:56.439 uncertain future. Some kind of strange bond had been formed 0:13:56.480 --> 0:13:59.640 between the men that day, because then the next day 0:14:00.080 --> 0:14:04.160 they did it again, and after that, again and again 0:14:04.880 --> 0:14:09.160 and again. Every single night of the games, they met 0:14:09.240 --> 0:14:13.360 up to talk. They became friends. The dream of the 0:14:13.400 --> 0:14:17.120 Olympics was real for them. They bridged an unbridgable gap 0:14:17.200 --> 0:14:23.000 between two cultures, two races. Something unbreakable had bound them. 0:14:23.440 --> 0:14:25.840 After the Games, when Owens was back in America and 0:14:25.920 --> 0:14:29.320 Lutzlang was still in Nazi Germany, they wrote letters to 0:14:29.360 --> 0:14:32.280 each other, even after long was serving in the Wehrmacht 0:14:32.280 --> 0:14:36.560 the Nazi army, back and forth across the Atlantic for years. 0:14:37.440 --> 0:14:42.680 They kept coming until right before Lutzlang was killed in 0:14:42.720 --> 0:14:46.800 the war. He was stationed in the deserts of North Africa. 0:14:47.560 --> 0:14:51.080 On some lonely desert hour, he sat down to write 0:14:51.200 --> 0:14:52.840 one last letter to his friend. 0:14:54.200 --> 0:14:56.800 I am here, Jesse, where it seems there is only 0:14:56.880 --> 0:15:00.760 the dry sand and the wet blood. I do not 0:15:00.880 --> 0:15:04.360 fear so much for myself, my friend, Jesse. I fear 0:15:04.440 --> 0:15:07.680 for my woman, who was at home, and my young son, Karl, 0:15:08.480 --> 0:15:13.200 who has never really known his father. My heart tells me, 0:15:14.000 --> 0:15:16.680 if I be honest with you, that this is the 0:15:16.760 --> 0:15:20.480 last letter I shall ever write. If it is so, 0:15:21.680 --> 0:15:26.240 I ask you something. It is something so very important 0:15:26.280 --> 0:15:30.080 to me. It is you go to Germany when this 0:15:30.160 --> 0:15:34.960 war done. Someday find my Carl. And tell him about 0:15:35.000 --> 0:15:39.120 his father. Tell him, Jesse, what times were like when 0:15:39.160 --> 0:15:44.040 we were not separated by war, I am saying, tell 0:15:44.120 --> 0:15:47.640 him how things can be between men on this earth. 0:15:53.080 --> 0:15:56.320 There are tears in your eyes. You would not be alone. 0:15:56.360 --> 0:15:58.880 This story is a big part of the legend of 0:15:58.960 --> 0:16:03.560 Jesse Owens. If you look up Jesse Owens in the 0:16:03.720 --> 0:16:08.000 Encyclopedia Britannica, there's the story when they made a star 0:16:08.160 --> 0:16:12.080 studded Hollywood film about Jesse Owens's life. Lutslog and that 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:16.360 qualifying jump are the pivotal moment. Retelling this story would 0:16:16.360 --> 0:16:19.880 help launch the career of the greatest Olympic documentarian of 0:16:19.920 --> 0:16:23.200 all time, Bud Greenspan. And I'm not an auctioneer, but 0:16:23.400 --> 0:16:26.720 I think it is the reason why Lutslog's silver medal 0:16:27.200 --> 0:16:30.600 sold for nearly half a million dollars two years ago, 0:16:31.040 --> 0:16:34.840 about five times the amount earned for any other silver 0:16:34.920 --> 0:16:39.040 medal at auction. It's arguably the most important story in 0:16:39.120 --> 0:16:42.800 Olympic history. It is proof of the Olympic Dream. It 0:16:42.920 --> 0:16:45.560 made the case that it was good that America went 0:16:45.600 --> 0:16:48.840 to the vilin Games because it made possible this improbable 0:16:48.840 --> 0:16:53.640 friendship that transcended even the Second World war a story 0:16:54.040 --> 0:17:15.120 that was just too good to be true. This entire series, 0:17:15.240 --> 0:17:17.800 we've been telling stories about the way people made sense 0:17:17.840 --> 0:17:21.800 of having the Olympics in Nazi Germany, the distortions, the myths. 0:17:22.160 --> 0:17:25.320 And when I kept hearing about Jesse Owens's friendship with Lutzlong, 0:17:25.440 --> 0:17:27.239 I thought, we got to do an episode on this. 0:17:27.800 --> 0:17:30.760 Here's two people who saw each other clearly through all 0:17:30.800 --> 0:17:34.560 that moral fog. So I wanted to read more of 0:17:34.600 --> 0:17:37.120 what Owens and Long wrote to each other in those letters. 0:17:37.720 --> 0:17:40.240 I wrote to the Jesse Owens Archive at the University 0:17:40.240 --> 0:17:42.359 of Ohio for copies of the letters, and they didn't 0:17:42.359 --> 0:17:45.600 have any. They suggested I write to the family, but 0:17:46.200 --> 0:17:48.800 they didn't have any either. It seems strange to me 0:17:48.880 --> 0:17:51.280 that no one had kept them. So then I thought, 0:17:52.160 --> 0:17:55.520 maybe I'm just looking in the wrong country. 0:17:55.800 --> 0:18:00.520 My name is Gelindre. I was living in Leipzig, working 0:18:00.560 --> 0:18:04.280 in Leipzig for more than thirty years, and the last 0:18:04.720 --> 0:18:09.160 twenty five years as the director of the Sports Museum 0:18:09.280 --> 0:18:10.000 in Leipzig. 0:18:10.680 --> 0:18:16.120 And Leipzig has a connection to Long's life, right, that's right. 0:18:17.680 --> 0:18:23.840 Lutslan was born in Leipzig nineteen thirteen and he lived 0:18:23.880 --> 0:18:26.840 there almost till the end. 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:30.800 Rhor and her colleague, the sport historian Volker Kluge, have 0:18:30.880 --> 0:18:34.160 looked more deeply into the Jesse Owens luteslong story than 0:18:34.160 --> 0:18:34.800 anyone else. 0:18:35.160 --> 0:18:38.080 We got a lot of questions from all over the 0:18:38.119 --> 0:18:40.320 world about the legend. 0:18:41.160 --> 0:18:43.719 Jesse Owens told this story a lot of times. There 0:18:43.720 --> 0:18:46.240 are a few different versions, but Roor dug through the 0:18:46.240 --> 0:18:49.760 official reports about the games. They're over a thousand pages long. 0:18:50.680 --> 0:18:56.879 There is a very good documentation about the Olympics called 0:18:57.359 --> 0:19:02.640 Official Report of the nineteen thirty six Olympics, and they 0:19:02.760 --> 0:19:07.520 describe it very exactly what happens and where. 0:19:08.680 --> 0:19:12.600 Alongside that official report, the most important bit of documentary 0:19:12.600 --> 0:19:16.440 evidence is an article Kuga turned up written by Lutzlong himself. 0:19:16.760 --> 0:19:18.800 He was published about a week into the Games, and 0:19:18.840 --> 0:19:23.440 it's called Mine kamfmit Owens, My Struggle with Owens, which 0:19:23.600 --> 0:19:27.199 I suspect is a deliberate reference to Hitler's memoirs, but 0:19:27.480 --> 0:19:30.560 homages to Hitler aside. The article was part of the 0:19:30.600 --> 0:19:34.080 surprisingly positive press coverage in Germany about Jesse Owens's win, 0:19:34.800 --> 0:19:39.159 including a series of photographs of Jesse Owens and Lutzlog 0:19:39.720 --> 0:19:44.080 lying together in the grass of the Reichspoortfeld smiling. The 0:19:44.119 --> 0:19:46.879 photos are sometimes billed as having been taken after the 0:19:46.920 --> 0:19:50.680 competition when Owens won and Long hugged him. Long's wearing 0:19:50.760 --> 0:19:53.000 a dark turtle neck sweater and it looks like he's 0:19:53.000 --> 0:19:56.240 cracking a joke. Owens is beaming at him and wearing 0:19:56.240 --> 0:19:59.600 his Team USA crew neck. In the photo, they're so 0:19:59.760 --> 0:20:03.080 close it almost looks like they're touching. They look like 0:20:03.119 --> 0:20:06.600 real friends. So Gerlinda Ror and I turned our attention 0:20:06.800 --> 0:20:07.119 to that. 0:20:07.840 --> 0:20:13.960 So between the first three jumps and the final three jumps, 0:20:14.640 --> 0:20:17.119 these photographs were doing. 0:20:17.920 --> 0:20:21.280 Oh so these photos are taken even before Jesse Owens 0:20:21.320 --> 0:20:25.960 wins the gold Yes, oh wow, so it's even its prior. 0:20:27.280 --> 0:20:29.439 There's a good chance that photo was taken or at 0:20:29.480 --> 0:20:33.199 least commissioned by Lenny Riefenstahl, the legendary filmmaker for the 0:20:33.240 --> 0:20:36.440 Third Reich. The photos float freely around the Internet now 0:20:36.520 --> 0:20:38.639 you can find them on Getty Images. But at the 0:20:38.640 --> 0:20:41.560 time they were part of the Nazi propaganda push, meant 0:20:41.640 --> 0:20:44.600 to show that the Nazis weren't as prejudiced as they seemed. 0:20:45.480 --> 0:20:48.480 So we know that Lutes Along and Jesse Owens met 0:20:48.600 --> 0:20:51.159 at least for the time it took to take that photo, 0:20:51.520 --> 0:20:54.480 and they smiled at each other. Who knows what they said. 0:20:56.320 --> 0:21:01.160 But here's the strange thing. In his articles, Long mentions 0:21:01.280 --> 0:21:05.520 Jesse Owens's difficulty qualifying. He describes each of the three 0:21:05.600 --> 0:21:09.119 jumps he took, but he doesn't say anything about helping 0:21:09.200 --> 0:21:12.919 him with the approach, which is strange because that's the 0:21:12.960 --> 0:21:16.879 most important detail in the whole story. Owens is Long's 0:21:16.920 --> 0:21:20.359 biggest competitor. Owens is what stands between Long and the gold, 0:21:20.560 --> 0:21:22.560 and yet Long goes out of his way to help 0:21:22.600 --> 0:21:25.199 Owens get to the final You would think in an 0:21:25.280 --> 0:21:28.439 article about the Olympic Spirit, Long would mention that they 0:21:28.480 --> 0:21:31.720 were trying to prove that they were unprejudiced. Also, in 0:21:31.800 --> 0:21:33.600 Nazi Germany, it would have been a way for an 0:21:33.640 --> 0:21:37.199 arian to take credit for a black man's success. But 0:21:37.280 --> 0:21:41.719 he doesn't mention it. Okay, So maybe all the meaningful 0:21:41.760 --> 0:21:44.280 stuff happened in those Long talks in the Olympic village. 0:21:44.359 --> 0:21:48.720 What about those I didn't think that. It cannot be 0:21:48.720 --> 0:21:52.960 because Lukslong didn't live in the Olympic village. Oh really, 0:21:53.840 --> 0:21:59.119 he didn't live here. I know from his family and 0:21:59.560 --> 0:22:06.199 from photographs and from a diary of his mother that 0:22:06.680 --> 0:22:11.159 after the opening of the Olympic Games he went back 0:22:11.400 --> 0:22:13.520 home from Berlin to Leipzig. 0:22:13.920 --> 0:22:17.080 And did he go home to Leipzig after the broad jump? 0:22:17.280 --> 0:22:19.080 He wasn't. He would go home at the end of 0:22:19.119 --> 0:22:19.560 each day. 0:22:19.880 --> 0:22:25.840 No, not each day. After his competitions started. He lived 0:22:25.920 --> 0:22:28.360 in Berlin in another hotel. 0:22:29.440 --> 0:22:32.640 All right, So the Long talks seem less likely, though 0:22:32.680 --> 0:22:36.040 there are two pieces of evidence that cut the other way. First, 0:22:36.240 --> 0:22:38.919 a few days after the broad jump, a newswire service 0:22:38.920 --> 0:22:42.760 wrote that quote something like a damon and pytheis friendship 0:22:42.800 --> 0:22:46.639 has sprung up between Ludslog and Jesse Owens. Though I 0:22:46.680 --> 0:22:48.600 think that's just a reference to the hug on the 0:22:48.640 --> 0:22:51.520 field that all the reporters would have seen. But then 0:22:51.600 --> 0:22:54.199 there's an athlete who, decades after the Games claimed that 0:22:54.280 --> 0:22:56.600 she went out drinking in Berlin with Owens and Long. 0:22:57.359 --> 0:23:00.199 But Volker Kluga thinks the timing of her story is 0:23:00.200 --> 0:23:04.360 implausible given her events schedule. Also, I can't find any 0:23:04.400 --> 0:23:07.639 record of it in Owens's Olympic diaries. Owens is on 0:23:07.680 --> 0:23:10.399 the record saying quote, I didn't get a chance to 0:23:10.440 --> 0:23:13.200 go out of the Olympic village. In fact, I never 0:23:13.280 --> 0:23:16.320 did leave the village. The only time that I was 0:23:16.400 --> 0:23:18.880 ever out of the village was at the time when 0:23:18.880 --> 0:23:22.400 we went to the Olympic Stadium to compete. I mean, 0:23:22.560 --> 0:23:25.760 they had some intense schedules to keep. Actually, even Hitler 0:23:25.760 --> 0:23:28.439 couldn't keep up with their schedules. The fearor liked to 0:23:28.440 --> 0:23:31.199 sleep late. He famously slipt through a lot of d 0:23:31.280 --> 0:23:35.280 day and probably for the same reason, he wasn't even 0:23:35.280 --> 0:23:37.840 in the stands the morning of the broad drum qualifiers, 0:23:38.160 --> 0:23:41.119 which is why it's not actually possible that he walked 0:23:41.160 --> 0:23:48.159 out on Owens. That leaves us with the letters. So 0:23:48.240 --> 0:23:52.840 then the final piece of the legend is these letters, 0:23:52.880 --> 0:23:55.960 these sort of beautiful letters that Letslong writes to Jesse 0:23:56.080 --> 0:24:00.880 Owens from the front, from the battle fields of the war. 0:24:01.880 --> 0:24:04.200 And I've not been able to find any archival record 0:24:04.200 --> 0:24:05.960 of those letters, have you. 0:24:07.280 --> 0:24:13.280 I asked his middle when she was living still in Hamburg, 0:24:13.960 --> 0:24:21.280 and she said there were letters. We got to our atlas, 0:24:22.040 --> 0:24:27.000