Speaker 1: One of my strongest childhood memories was the nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: six Olympics in Montreal, my homeland's first Olympic Games. I
Speaker 1: was a kid. My family didn't have a television, but
Speaker 1: we rented one just for the occasion. Two rabbit ears
Speaker 1: on top of a grainy black and white set. We
Speaker 1: put the TV in the fireplace because there was no
Speaker 1: other place for it, and I watched everything. The Romanian
Speaker 1: Nadya Komenich bewitching the world in gymnastics, my running hero
Speaker 1: John Walker powering away around the final curve to win
Speaker 1: the men's fifteen hundred meters. I still get nervous thinking
Speaker 1: about that race, and the women's ford by one hundred
Speaker 1: freestyle relay, maybe the greatest swimming race ever. I fell
Speaker 1: in love with the Olympics that summer, and these Olympic
Speaker 1: that I love and that so many millions of people
Speaker 1: around the world love might not exist if the Games
Speaker 1: had not been held in nineteen thirty six in Adolf
Speaker 1: Hitler's Germany. The modern Olympics started in eighteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: and if you've gone to any of those early games,
Speaker 1: you would think you were at some kind of side show.
Speaker 1: It was the Nazis who gave us the Olympics we
Speaker 1: have today. They were really really good at putting on
Speaker 1: a big show. Hitler one of the games to be
Speaker 1: a showcase of Aryan supremacy, to rally the German people,
Speaker 1: to give legitimacy to the band of thugs he had
Speaker 1: gathered around him, and to make the case that Germany
Speaker 1: was a true world power. And the United States went
Speaker 1: along with all of it. Why, that's what the new
Speaker 1: season of Revisionist History is all about. Hitler's Olympics. Over
Speaker 1: nine episodes, my colleague Ben that Haffrey and I will
Speaker 1: tell the story of the games, behind the games, not
Speaker 1: who won what, not how a stirring come from behind
Speaker 1: burst of effort led to victory. Instead, we're exploring the
Speaker 1: furious machinations leading up to the Olympics and the genuinely
Speaker 1: difficult moral questions that surrounded the Berlin Games. And along
Speaker 1: the way we're going to introduce you to an extraordinary
Speaker 1: cast of characters. There's Charles Cheryl, diplomat, athlete, internationalist, man
Speaker 1: of parts, the ranking American member of the International Olympic Committee.
Speaker 1: I have led the hapless life of anybody you ever
Speaker 1: met in your life. We'll spend time with Avery Brundage,
Speaker 1: champion athlete, self made millionaire, a man who saw in
Speaker 1: the thirty six Games a chance to expel his personal
Speaker 1: demons and seize control of the entire Olympic movement, and
Speaker 1: the irony of it is. The more important the Olympic
Speaker 1: Games become, the more problems we have. An incredibly clear
Speaker 1: eyed American reporter named Dorothy Thompson. I think that Hitler
Speaker 1: is appreciable Nera shooting us, and therefore I think we're
Speaker 1: appuciably Nera requlying. Then there's Jesse Owens, winner of four
Speaker 1: gold medals, the African American star of the nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: six Games. That was the beginning to the end of
Speaker 1: a very long dream. I'm sure you've heard of Jesse Owens.
Speaker 1: But Ben is going to tell you a story about
Speaker 1: Owens that I guarantee you have not heard. Not to
Speaker 1: mention side trips to a small town in Alabama, a
Speaker 1: seminar on a crucial but all but forgotten Supreme Court
Speaker 1: case called Giles v. Harris O, and a lesson from
Speaker 1: a legendary triple jumper. He didn't have a jiggle, We
Speaker 1: didn't have a change. No, he didn't have a jiggle
Speaker 1: or a gideayo. Yeah. Heroes and villains, the clear eyed, in,
Speaker 1: the deluded, the forgotten, and the misunderstood, all of them
Speaker 1: going to Hitler's Olympics. You will never see the games
Speaker 1: the same way again. Subscribe to pushkin plus to hear
Speaker 1: the first five episodes of Hitler's Olympics early and ad free.
Speaker 1: Find pushkin plus on the Apple show page for revisionist
Speaker 1: history or at pushkint f M slash plus