Doomed to Fail - Ep 117 - The Olympics Pt 2: Nazi Showboating in 1936 Berlin

Episode Date: June 26, 2024

Olympics Part 2! 1906 - 1950! We're going to talk about some of the events leading up to the biggie - the 1936 Berlin Olympics. When Germany was picked to host the Olympics, it was 1931, and Germany was a VERY different Germany. In 1936, Hitler was Chancellor for three years, and he could not wait to show everyone how great Aryans were at everything. Except, that's not the case. We'll talk about the US teams winning in Basketball & Crew - and we'll, of course, talk about the GOAT, Jesse Owens.We are following the Olympics like hawks getting ready for Paris! There are SO many Track & Field events! Which are your favorites? Tons of Sources:https://guides.osu.edu/jesse_owensGames of Deception: The True Story of the First U.S. Olympic Basketball Team at the 1936 Olympics in Hitler's Germany - https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/games-of-deception-the-true-story-of-the-first-us-olympic-basketball-team-at-the-1936-olympics-in-hitlers-germany_andrew-maraniss/26182973Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics - https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/triumph-the-untold-story-of-jesse-owens-and-hitlers-olympics_jeremy-schaap/332178/Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law - https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/hitlers-american-model-the-united-states-and-the-making-of-nazi-race-law_james-q-whitman/13535250/Olympic Salute - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-olympic-salute-we-dont-use-anymore-because-it-looked-too-much-like-heiling-hitler-19789031/Olympians in the Holocaust - https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-jewish-olympians-among-hitlers-victims/Olympia - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3LOPhRq3EsAfrican American Athletes - https://www.ushmm.org/exhibition/olympics/?content=aa_athletes&lang=en Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Boom, we are back, Taylor. Happy, happy, happy Wednesday. Happy Wednesday. A nice, smooth, easy week so far. Hopefully it's been easy for all of our listeners as well.

And for you, Taylor. I mean, they're all exactly the same. They're exactly the same. I know. This is our life. Taylor, are you going to be introducing us? Yes. Because you fired me from that role.

Welcome, friends, the doomed to fail. We're the podcast that brings you twice a week. History's most epic disasters and notorious failures. I am Taylor, joined by Fars. Fars, doing well. I'm doing well. Is one, like, revising and writing scripts on or he needs to be i mean he's the one with the opinion so tell your friends um yeah yeah

anyway it's my turn today it's your turn oh we're going to do a guessing game or is it going to be futile um well i told you i was going to do last week because i'm doing a four-part series olympics one part two thank you part two um so we are going to talk about the olympics between the beginning and 1950 and a lot of stuff happens and I read several books this week I have a lot of articles in the notes but the two books that I read

one of them was called Games of Deception the true story of the first U.S. Olympic basic ball team and then I read triumph for the untold story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics I also not for this But in the last couple of years, I have read a book called Hitler's American Model, the United States and the making of Nazi race law. So I'm going to talk about that a little bit. And then I have some articles as well that I read. So we will kind of get to all of that. I kind of go back and forth in this story. I'm not sure how organized I am.

But it's super interesting. So let's talk about it. To recap, last week, we talked about the ancient Olympics, how you get an Olympics and some stuff to prep for the Olympics this year. Have you seen more Olympics news since then, Fars? Is it like in your algorithm now? It is not. It is not. Luckily, luckily the overlords have not discovered this. Well, hopefully we'll get there. So we're going to go to Germany, to Hitler's Germany, specifically for the 1936 Olympics.

And before that, let's talk about other things that happened up until 1936. So as we learned, the Olympics were sort of restarted at the very, very end of the 1800s. were a couple um they were tied to like world's fairs and trying to get it to um be popular again in 1906 the olympic games were held in athens they're not officially recognized as olympic games now because of like some rule thing that i don't understand but they were more organized than the other ones and got people kind of to be like okay we actually can do this every four years you know and what no sweet so a couple of things that we know that we like well we people who have seen the

Olympics and like remember parts of it that you kind of like think have always been there one thing is this one in 1906 started the parade of nations so do you know what that is everyone walks in yeah so grace will always start and the host nation always ends and everything else is in alphabetical order so to just sidetrack about that tradition so someone will every country has someone carry the flag and in the beginning you would when you pass the host city's leaders like the people in charge of the host committee the president whatever the people in charge of the country you would dip your flag so one person's carrying your country's flag you would dip the flag that is something that almost immediately stopped happening

because in like the early 1900s there was there were games in london and an irish-american person was a flag holder and he was like, fuck you, England. And he did not dip the flag to the king because Irish, obviously, like, a lot of animosity between those folks. So, and then, so they kind of stopped doing it. And so you kind of don't see, you don't really see that anymore. There's also an Olympic salute,

which is raising your right hand kind of off to the side, but it looks a lot like a Nazi salute. It sounds like a sick hill. Like, almost exactly. So they stopped doing that in like the 1940s, because they were like, yeah, this looks a little bit too much like the Hitler salute, and we don't want anyone to do that. So now you just kind of like walk by and like maybe wave, maybe have your hands over your heart,

something like respectful, but you don't do any sort of like special salute. In the 1912 Olympic Games were held in Stockholm. And the big thing there, Jim Thorpe won gold medals in both the pentathlon and the decathlon. He was stripped of his medals due to the amateur rules, but he got them awarded post-Humon post-death in 1983. 1912 is also the first time they used electric timing, start timing things. So things can get a little bit more accurate because people are winning by like, speaking of like measurements by like tenths of a second, you know.

So in 1920, they were in Antwerp. And this was the introduction of the Olympic flag, which is those five rings that we see all the time. And the first Olympic oath. So every Olympics, one athlete will take an oath on behalf of every. one. It's basically like, I'm going to be a good sport and try my best and blah, blah, blah. Great. So that was, that still happens, but happened in, in 1920. Was it a flame around at this point? Not yet. Not yet. Good question. So in 1924 was the debut of the Winter Olympics. So they were held separately, but it's the first time like figure skating was in the summer Olympics. I was kind of like figuring that out in 1924. There was a man named, Paavo Normie, who was the Flying Finn from Finland, who won five gold medals in track and field,

which was like a huge, so he became like really famous from that. In 1928, and Amsterdam was the first time women were allowed to compete. So before this, it's just been just been dudes. So now women are allowed to compete. And this is when the Olympic flame is introduced. So in what year? 1928. Got it. And the Amsterdam games. In 1932, the games were, in Los Angeles. And another person, a woman named Mildred Zaharius, she won two gold medals. That was a big deal. It was obviously 1932 was the Great Depression. So the games, they actually did a really good job organizing them. And it was the first time they built an Olympic village for the athletes. And so that was like something that Los Angeles was credited for. So those are just some

like fun facts about things that happened at the other Olympics. I'm sure there's like inspirational stories, but we're not going to have time for that. But I'm sure they exist. So 1936, we are in Berlin. This is what we're going to talk about for the most part today. Some of the fun facts is this was the first time that the Olympics were televised live. So this is like a new technology. It was only, you could only really see it like in and around Berlin but still it was a technology so like there's a story where like the athletes are in the Olympic village and they're able to watch the competition and that's the first time that it ever happened people were like this is happening now like super big deal that it was live just for

context 50 years after the first time we can televise the Olympic game in the immediate vicinity where the game is taking place we launched the Hubble telescope that can take a picture of 250,000 galaxies in deep space and show us the original nation point of the earth. Things are moving too fast. Crazy. Anyway, you go ahead. I know.

You're totally right. And then this was also the first time that the flame was lit in Greece and brought to the host city. So that tradition started here. And they still do that now. So like someone in Greece who laid it and then they're like run it all over the world, you know? And then they bring it to the final place.

Did you know that? Yeah. That's pretty cool. So is it true though? Is it really true? Has that really been the same flame for all those years? I think it's a new flame every time. but maybe it is the same flame

it just keeps going. I mean, who would know if it wasn't? True. What do you do? The DNA tests of flame? Exactly. What are you going to do? I feel like someone's probably fallen or like dropped it

or left it at a bar, you know. I'm sure there is something. My dad told me this story. I don't know if it's true and I have no no sources for this. We're like a Canadian team won the Stanley Cup and they had a party in the next morning. Like one of the guys neighbors called him and was like, dude, you left a Stanley Cup on the lawn. I do love the idea of like some German runner getting drunk and some beerhole and leaving the Olympic flame there.

Yeah. I feel like someone, didn't someone recently drop like the World Cup trophy off a bus like in the middle of the parade? I feel like he like dropped it and it was pretty funny. So we're in Berlin again. Berlin got the Olympics in 1931. So they talked about before you get the okay to host Olympics.

like 10 to five years before you actually host them. So 1931, Berlin got the games, and that was a very different Germany than the Germany of 1936. So Hitler became chancellor on January 30th, 1933, and the Nazis are now in power, and they're starting to do, they've already done a ton of stuff. It's before Kristallnacht,

where they destroy just like thousands of Jewish businesses all over the country. But it is after the Nuremberg rallies, So people can see that the Nazi regime is like really, really strong in Germany. And they do, of course, like every city that hosts the Olympics, try to hide their bad things. So they do things like declare the week of the opening ceremonies, the week of laughter. They want everybody just be in a good mood. They hide their anti-Semitic posters. So they're like, we still believe this.

But no one else is going to understand. So let's like take these posters down. they send thousands of Romani people to concentration camps they send unhoused people to jail they are just like you know cleaning up the streets any way that they can and again like everybody who host the Olympics they always do this um so they're also like very very obviously prepping for war so they're like oh no no no no no like we're super cool we just like are like Germany like whatever no big deal but like people are getting there and They compete in the games, and they're like, are they building tanks next door? Because they totally are. You know, like, it's very clear that they're prepping for war. They're going to instigate something big, but they're trying to hide it. They brought back banned books, which is ridiculous.

But they like have them back on the shelves for a little bit so people don't realize that what it's happening. And some big concentration camps have just opened. Zoxenhausen just opened. So nobody ever didn't know that this stuff was happening. but they were like trying their best to hide it. A little bit of just history is that eventually 30 people who had won Olympic medals from around Europe were killed in concentration camps eventually because they were Jewish. One really good, a couple examples, they're just so sad.

A young man, they're all very, very young, named Bronislaw, Czech. He was an alpine jumper from Poland. He died in Auschwitz. Victor Perez was a French boxer. He died in the walkout. of Auschwitz in 1945 he was only 33 but while they were in the constitution camps they would make him like box other people even though he was like an olympian you know and like make him hurt people for like their sport bronislaw check they offered him um clemency if he would

coach the german high jumping or alpine jumping team and he said no so he ended up dying there as well i mean i probably would have done it my prize is not worth that much So we're going to focus on the 1936 Summer Olympics, because that's the big one. But there was a 1936 German Olympics. It was in Garmish Parton-Kirchen, Germany, from February 6th to February 16th. It was the only winter games that have ever been held in Germany. It was the last one before the war. It was really militarized.

So by the time the summer games happen, there will be less military. So like in the first, in the winter games, they had like, you know, everyone was wearing their unit. Like the SS was there. Hitler youth were all wearing their uniforms. So they really, it was really intimidating and scary. People were like, they said it and they saw it. So at the time of Summer Olympics happened, they're a little bit less militarized. Like they just like, they're not, but they look a little bit less.

So like the Hitler youth get to wear like later hosen instead of their terrifying uniforms. Just to like kind of balance it and look less scary. It's kind of more scary when they're not wearing the uniform. It's like when like a kid is evil. And it's like, the fact that they're a kid and don't look evil is what makes it more scary. And like, also, I don't know, have you, you've been to Germany. Yeah. Everyone looks the same.

I mean, I can't say that, but you don't, no, not you, you, you, you don't, no, not you, you, you don't, you can't. Everyone, German is tall and blonde. Like, they look the same. They kind of engineered it that way, though. Exactly. So, like, they, like, this is like, going there and seeing everybody, like, being like, we're super happy. You'd be like, like, okay. Like, you're very, you're really stressing me out, German children, especially in this time.

So some of the, some other just facts about those Winter Olympics, there were 28 countries that participated. It was Liechtenstein's first time. And everything like kind of went okay, but everything was covered in swastikas. People were a little bit creeped out. So there was. But why were they creeped out? They didn't know what that meant of that time. They did. They knew. They knew. They knew that they were like persecuting Jewish people. They knew that They were, you know, fascists. Like, they knew those things. And then they, like, saw the way that they were acting, you know, like, it was creepy and weird.

Has there ever been a time when a political symbol being used for by a country was a good thing? I don't know. I can't think of it was a single time. I mean, you get, like, nationalists. I know that Ben Franklin wanted our national bird to be a turkey. Did you learn that in elementary school? That's a little different. that would be cute instead of a bald eagle

that would have been very cute um in super troopers two farva shoots a bird and that dot it like falls out and they go farver that's a bald eagle it's like really funny well I'm thinking okay so the hammer and sickle that was the communist symbol and that became the national flag of the USSR

the swastika was a Nazi symbol that became the national flag of german like I don't think it's ever been a good thing and so actually I wrote this sound later but let me skip to it because we looked this up last night. Juan asked a good question. So last night, Juan and they were watching a movie

that I'm going to tell you about in a little bit. But so the current German flag is three colors. It's black, red, and gold, like three bars. That flag was adopted after World War I because you'll remember that, like, Germany is just newly unified. So before World War I, it like barely had time to be a country before World War I happened. It was like a bunch of,

little like principalities or whatever and then it became one thing so that was a german flag then when the nazis became into power they changed it to black white red so their colors but still the three bars and then it just became the swastika that we all know like the red with the white circle and the swastika and that became germany's flag and then after world war i wrote then they just said fuck it it's a swastika that's like they made it that and then after world war two it went back to where it had been that's what it is today. Interesting. Well,

I guess, given how new a country it was, nobody's attached to the flag at that point. Like, yeah, like whatever, making a swastick, who cares?

I mean, it's not good, but still. I also follow a Instagram account called Old Hollywood Swoon, and they always talk about how handsome Captain Von Trapp is from Sound of Music.

Have you seen Sound of Music? Yes, guess the answer to that. I don't know. You can surprise me. So there's a part where he gets home from his honeymoon in Austria and they have put Nazi flags up on his house and he takes them down and tears them up. And then the Instagram account is always like, girls only want one thing. And it's Captain Von Trapp staring up like tearing up a Nazi flag.

Wait, was Donald Sutherland this guy? No. Oh, okay. Um, no. Um, anyway. Um, anyway. He's a real person. Yeah.

Where the sound of music's a real story. Yes. okay i went yeah we can talk about this later i know a lot of the time of music but yes the von traps are real um and captain von trapp he did a thing in world war one where like he killed a lot of people in a submarine and there's a couple like things about his his past that are interesting that we can talk about later we're in the summer Olympics now there's swastikas everywhere some of the stuff that happened like in the background is hitler's obviously like super excited to have Aryans win everything because that's his philosophy deal yeah he's

kind of known he's kind of known for this yeah that's his thing and so it's fun to be like we really showed him because we have some you know black people from america won a bunch of events and like that's great but we have to remember and we'll talk about this a bunch that in america Hitler was literally looking at the way that we segregated race as a model for what they were going to do in Germany. They obviously went further but that was like it was

he knew that that was like America had no moral ground to stand on when there's segregation and horrible inequality in America in 1936, you know. So there were like I said, black and Jewish athletes on the American teams,

But it wasn't, like, easy for them to get on there. And they were treated differently. Some of them didn't go out of, you know, people knew what was going on in Germany. And people would say, like, don't go. We should boycott this. And then some of them were like, let's show them that we can do this, you know. So there's like one Jewish person on the U.S. basketball team. Like, he was very brave to go, you know.

But he was like, we have to show them like, we are athletes and all the things. The, it's all amateurs, like we said before. But there are, like, amateur leagues that people are in. And if you're like, there are a couple ways to get in. If you're really, really good, you're going to get, like, sponsored and be able to get in. If you are like, oak, if you're rich, you can also get in. You know what I mean? Like, if you're rich and you have the time to, like, practice and do all the things,

you'll be able to get in. So in Germany, they were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. If you're a member of an amateur club, you can be in the Olympics. Like, we're not discriminating against anyone. But, like, no Jewish person could join the amateur clubs. So it was like, I didn't say that, you know, but obviously, no, there's no Jewish people in there. 49 countries were in the Olympics. Around 4,000 athletes competed.

The Soviet Union didn't go. I feel so bad for athletes when there's like, even like the one that was moved for COVID or when they like, their country decides to boycott it. Because like we said last week, like, you train your whole life for this like one thing. And if you, the four years difference is huge. Yeah. Like you're not going to be the same person when you're like 28, you will be when you're 32. Yeah. So, so, you know, some people did boycott.

But let's talk about some things that happen before you talk about some of other stories. So there were the opening ceremonies, obviously, which is like the big pomp thing. And the biggest question was like, who was going to do the Nazi salute? Because Hitler was there. And, you know, in the book I read, talks about like, you could tell when Hitler was coming because people were like, like losing their fucking minds on the street. You know, like hundreds of thousands of people, like giving the Nazi salute, so excited to see him in the arena.

They're so excited that he's there. And so who is going to salute him and who isn't? Most countries didn't. Some of them did. Like, obviously, like Japan did the Nazi salute. The Bulgarians fucking loved it. And they stepped it up and did goose steps. They were like, we love you.

Like, they were super into it. The U.S. walked by with their hands on their hearts some of them did the Olympic salute which was close but like it's easy on television in 1936 it'll look the same exactly so they were like oh no

the Olympic salute you're like yeah whatever so there was a lot of a lot of that happening also the Hindenberg was there which is kind of fun the Hindenberg flew over a couple times so all of this is being recorded by Lenny Riefenstahl have you ever heard of her No. Okay.

So I wrote, This bitch deserves her own episode because I will probably talk about her maybe next year on Women's History Month because she's like a so interesting. But she was a German filmmaker. And so she made the movie The Triumph of the Will, which is about the Nuremberg rallies, like the big Nazi rallies. And she made a movie called Olympia about the Olympics. So she was Hitler's like documentarian. And she got to live to be 101. like she got off like she was like at hitler's house like good friends with him and making this

propaganda for him and she got to live to be 101 which i think is absolutely bullshit and i did read a book called hitler's furies about like the women in in iraq in his circle and then like another one that pisses me off it's like ilsa cock she was uh the bitch of boogunwald she was a terrible terrible terrible person and she died by suicide in 1960s or fuck her to the moon and back so So Buckline Refinstall, but I did watch her movie last night on YouTube. You can see it. It's, um, there's no way. You watch Triumph of the Will.

No, I watched Olympia. I think I've seen parts of Triumph of the Will, but I watched Olympia, which is the one that she made. So there's like stories of her like, you know, running around with her cameras, fighting with garbles, trying to like make sure that she could see everything. So she recorded the opening ceremonies. The first like 10 minutes are like this really weird like artsy thing with like scarves in the air and the acropolis and like all these things and then she has the some of the um some of the

athletics in there so she there's no way to understand how excited the germans were about this so like no way to like understand underestimate or underestimate but like they were so excited about this and so the the movie shows them you know like in the streets and in the crowds just like being super excited um another fun thing is they let out hundreds of birds at the end and they pooped everyone which is hilarious predictably um but if you do watch it i'll put the link to the the the youtube version i watched there's a bunch of them but at a minute 58 is when you can see jesse owens doing the doing the long jump that we'll talk about but that's what that's what you'll want to see after this after this episode so that's where you want to go um taylor um lenny

She has a website that's still up and active And the homepage looks like a Nazis Site Like the font and the colors and everything look at But then if you click on her biography It just shows all these like pictures of her Being a cool, awesome Having a great life

There's pictures of her with McJacker for some reason Yeah You believe that she like saw some September 11th. There's her with those two tiger guys. What are their names? Siegfried and Roy. Thank you.

Yeah, she lived a great life. I mean, not a well-lived life. No, but it is absolute bullshit that she got off. Yeah. Totally.

I definitely want to talk more about her later. So there are several black people there. there were other black, especially track and field folks on the U.S. teams, and I'll talk a little bit about them later. The, oh, one more thing. Oh, in 1955, Refinished All agreed to remove some Hitler from her movie so she could have it screened to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Like, oh, guess who else was there? The Nazi Charles Lindbergh was there. and he sat next to Gurring the whole time and talked about the Air Force.

Wait, the actual Lindbergh was there? Yeah. Yeah. Because he was like an American, but he was obviously also a Nazi, which we've mentioned in passing before. So he was super excited to be there and meet with, especially Gurring, who was in charge of the German Air Force.

Yeah. So that's opening ceremonies. another thing to note is Hitler's plan was for the next one the 1940 Olympics would plan to be in Tokyo and then after that they would just all be in Germany of course because they would win everything right like that would they would be in Germany for

you know the thousand years of the Reich or whatever um also to note these stadiums that they built in 1936 later they would be the places where they would do mass shootings you know like as the world was ending as like their world was crumbling they would do like last minute shootings in there

um the I read a book about basketball because there's like a big basketball story here that I'll tell you about. But the Nuremberg, after the Nuremberg trials, the people who were hung, they were, it was on a basketball court. So it's like basketball became like a national sport. And it's where they ended up actually like executing a lot of the Nazis on a basketball court, which is just creepy interesting. Yeah. So let's talk about the U.S. team. So the United States team, again, for amateurs, they got there in kind of a roundabout way because Olympics is pretty new.

But, like, track and field is actually pretty popular. People, like, know good track and field people, so other sports are starting to get more popular. And the teams would qualify, but then, like, not have enough money to get to New York because they had to take a boat from New York to Europe. So they would do things like fundraise in their communities to be like, you know, we need $1,000 to get this basketball team all the way over to New York City. There were qualifiers on Randall's Island, which is right next to Astoria Queens, like on the Triborough Bridge. and the swimming trials were in a pool in Astoria Queens that I used to live right next to. One and I lived right next to this pool.

It was like a beautiful outdoor pool and it had like a diving area and like an Olympic-sized pool and it would be open in the summer for people to go in and swim. That was built specifically for that. During the qualifiers on Randall's Island, President Roosevelt was there to help kick them off.

And also a young boy from Queens named Anthony Benedetti. sang at the opening of the Olympic trials in 1936 and later he would be Tony Bennett. No way. It's kind of fun. Yeah. What was he saying?

Anthony Benedetto. Anthony Benedetto. That's so cute. Isn't that cute? So he was nine years old. Is he still alive? No, he just died like last year. I was looked at up. Yeah. But he I saw him sing one time and he was I mean, obviously it was insane.

But yeah, I thought that was fun. So, this little Italian boy from Queens. So the U.S. team, once everybody qualified, like, you know, whatever, and they get to New York to go to Europe, they take a ship called the SS Manhattan from New York City. So once on board, they had a ton of food, and that's something that they talk about in every book I read. Like, the food was really good. They had a bunch of drinks.

Jesse Owens was a little bit C-Sick, so he didn't eat a lot. One fun story, there's a woman swimmer named Elie. in our home. She seems fun. She got kicked off the team for being drunk every night. And she was like, even drinking, I'm going to beat every world record. Like, what is wrong with you? And she said, quote, this chaperone came up to me and told me it was time to go to bed. God, it was about nine o'clock. Who wanted to go down in the basement and sleep anyway? I said to her, oh, is it really bedtime? Did you make the Olympic team or did I? And I had a few glasses of champagne. I love that for her. So it seems fun. She was married a bunch. She was in movies with another Olympian that was there. And, who won the decathlon. She was married to a Hollywood guy. This is like later, just like a fun side. And she got divorced. And her alimony was $30,000 per month,

which is equivalent to $340,000 today. Which is dumb and amazing. So she's great. She's in the swimming hall of fame. She seems fun. At the pier when the SS Manhattan was going off to Europe, one dude, there's one, dude with a sign that was like, don't go. Like, the Nazis are bad. Don't go. But obviously

they went. Once I got to Germany, there were a bunch of Germans there waiting for them, looking all the same, you know, being really happy to see them. The men got to stay in an Olympic village that was very nice. And I have pictures of like Jesse Owens's room. In Olympic Village is now like a museum. But it was very nice. They had chefs that made food from all over the world, which is very interesting. They had German chefs making, like, Indian food. You know, like, I'm really impressive. I'm sure it tasted amazing.

I'm sure Germans cooking Indian food came out. That Germans, like, they made Japanese food. Like, that is pretty impressive. That they would, like, bother to do that. The women, of course, were in a shitty dorm with, like, no food and they slept on straw mattresses. But the men's dorm was really nice in the Olympic Village. Fun. Yeah.

So, okay. tell you can ask a question yes please has questions are you going to talk about Helen Mayor more no okay who is that so when the boycott

was being kind of bandied about from other countries Hitler allowed one Jewish woman to take part her name is Helen Mayor and she ended up having to flee the country after

I bet she did she won silver and I have no idea what she won silver and it's called women's foil I don't know what that means I think it's fencing it says it's German fencer fencer that's cool

good for her I mean it's yeah really crazy and she yeah she looks cool because because I'm also like

do you win or do you lose because if you lose you prove to them that you're not superior but if you win you put it in their face that you are superior like what do you do you leave as fast as you can exactly right oh poor thing she died of cancer and if you too yeah no there's so many stories of like little ones that I'd love to talk about and I didn't get to that one but yeah that's super interesting um yeah um so okay I have a couple's forced to tell you about basketball so I read a book about basketball

Basketball was, like, relatively new during this time. This was the first time basketball was in the Olympics. James Naismith, who's the dude who invented basketball, he did it similarly to the peer who started the Olympics. Like, he thought that people needed more sportsmanship, more physical activity. He introduced it at a YMCA and they would bring it around to college campuses. The rules would change a little bit, but essentially he's a person that, like, invented modern basketball. he the people on the basketball team played for amateur basketball teams which like they're still playing on like a team which seems rational but whatever and a lot of them came from the universal pictures basketball team which is fun that they had one and there were these were the guys who needed to fundraise and eventually they would lose their jobs and when they came back there wouldn't be a team anymore but they did get to go to do it. The team was entirely white.

There was one Jewish person on the team. James Naismith actually got to go. So when he got there, no one really knew who he was. And then someone said, he's a guy who invented basketball. And then he got more of a welcome and he got like tickets to go see it. But he was there. And the U.S. did win. They won the gold.

But they played against like a bunch of other teams who played it a little bit differently against it was like brand new. The way that they had made the ball, they made it. have like stitches like a football you can't dribble that because the stitches are in the way yeah you know the film the team from the philippines was so good they considered having a separate category for short people because they were so good but they didn't stand a chance and um the final game was in outside in a flooded field that was like covered two inches in mud and then they had like the ball was like totally waterlogged and they had to like try to get it to work and they the USB Canada 19 to 8 in the final game and won the gold battle.

Right now, if you were, you could put LeBron James against all 10 from, actually you put them against every person combined and you just, I should have 1,000 to 1 point. A thousand percent. Yeah, but it's brand new, which is kind of fun. It's like a brand new sport, like pretty much for the world. And then it gets into the Olympics. Another thing about boats, George Clooney made a movie called The Boys in the Boat. I didn't watch it, but like it's like another Olympic.

feel-good movie. It was kids from the University of Washington. They ended up narrowly... Do you know what I mean? They ended up beating the Germans and the Italians, which was great. But that's what happened. I'm sure there's like personal struggles in there as well

in the movie that I didn't know watch. It doesn't matter. Yeah, I'm not going to watch it. The personal struggles of people that have been dead for 100 years don't really matter. Germany's metal count, like they kind of blew it out of the water. 101 to the U.S.,

which is number two of 57 in 1936 yeah nice yeah probably as i mean home to advantage that's probably a thing but i guess what it really boils down to is like you don't really care that your country was number one again not to make fun of curling i know we have a lot of curling listeners out there but if you win gold and curling it's not nobody's going to care as much of you win gold in like vicar skating or in like gymnastics right yeah and i think it's like a matter of percentages too like, of course, like, the United States in China and Russia always have the most medals in all of the Olympics, because they have most people, you know? And if you're like, if 0.001% of population is great at gymnastics, like, you know, that's a lot more people here than it is in France. Right. You know? Um, so yeah, I think that they have a lot more athletes too, just in general. But like, I think that's on purpose because they were, you know, trying to prove that they won. So, okay, the reason that we're here is to talk. talk about track and talk about Jesse Owens. Do you know who Jesse Owens is? Yeah, of course. So my cousin and Juan's cousin both went to the Ohio State University where

Jesse Owens went. And I texted them both. And I was like, is there Jesse Owens stuff at Ohio State that like talks about him? And one of the cousins sent me back, said, yes, every single sports thing is named after him and sent me a website to an archive that has like his papers from when he went to Germany, tons of pictures from his life. It's super, super helpful. And then the other cousin said, is that a football thing? Which made me laugh. Which I can almost understand because Ohio State is so up and up its own ass about.

About football. Yeah. The Ohio State University. No. I know. So yes, Jesse Owens was the fastest man in the world during in 1936. Who's the fastest man in the world today? Still got to be Usain Bolt, right?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Have you seen the videos of him, like, slowing down and laughing? Like, he's just so fast. He does a thumbs up. He stops and he does the thumbs. It's so cool. He's so fast.

Yes. Insane Bull is the fastest man in the world right now. Jesse Owens was the fastest man in the world in 1936. And, like, it's a shame that we can't put them in the same circumstances and have them race. You know, like, if Jesse O'N. Owens had access to painters or even like skin tight clothing you know what could he have done differently and who would win like all that stuff was really fun to think about so james cleveland owens was born september 12 1913 in alabama he was the grandson of an enslaved person

and his parents were sharecroppers they moved to ohio when he was nine for like better opportunities and when he was in school his teacher asked him his name and he said j c which is James Cleveland, but she heard Jesse. That's what she wrote down, and that became his name. He didn't, because he had like a really thick southern accent. And she didn't understand what he was saying. So he became Jesse. Jesse Owens will always be working besides doing track and besides going to school and besides

having a family. He had a ton of jobs his whole life. Well, he was in junior high. He was working to deliver groceries after school. But his track coach, Charles Riley, knew there was something special, like, saw him running and was like, this is different. and convinced him to run before school. So before school he would run, he'd go to school, then he'd work all night, just like always, always busy.

He met his wife, Minnie Ruth Solomon, when they were in junior high. So they were like, always together. They had their first child in 1932, and they didn't get married until 1935. But during this time, while he's in high school, he's a new dad, he's working all these jobs. he is breaking records, like, unbelievable. He equaled the world record in the 100 yard dash and the long jump in 1933 at the National High School Championships. In college, he's going to get a whole bunch of other awards.

I'll talk about in a second. But just to note, him and Minnie, they get married on July 5, 1935, and they'll be married until his death. So, and he has two more children with her. Do you have a question? No. Okay. So he's at Ohio State.

He is great, but he doesn't get a scholarship because he's black. You know, like, that's just, he's still, like, fighting against that. The team is a traveling team, but he has to travel separately from everybody else. He can't stay in the same hotels that they stay at and he can't eat the same food that they eat because there's a lot of places that just, like, literally won't let him in. Yeah, that's a green book situation. So he has a job with a local legislature. He has a job at a gas station, which is like a bunch of other jobs while he's running track. while he's in school, while he's on the traveling team, he goes to LA and it's in the papers

that he's hanging out with this woman who's like a socialite. And then his wife is pissed, obviously, because she's at home with a baby. And as soon as he gets home, they get married. Because he was like, sorry. In 1935 and 1936, he won eight gold medals in the NCAA championships, four in each. That record wouldn't be beat until 2006. So he was just like winning medals. One of the biggest days in sports was March 25th, 1935, during the Big Ten track meet in Ann Arbor. He set three world records and tied a fourth. So he's like this college kid, just like literally setting world records. He did a world record for the long jump at 26 feet and 8 and a quarter inches, which would last 25 years.

He got a goal in the 220-yard sprint, the 220-yard low hurdles. And like the way he would run the hurdles wasn't like the right. we had to run it. He would just, like, run really fast and, like, kind of hop and, like, do it again. But he was still so much faster than everybody else, that didn't matter. I do. When I see them do their hurdles and I see them kick their legs up, I'm like, that looks so much harder to do it that way than they're, like, just hop over it. Totally. So he would just, like, hop over it. But he was still faster than everybody else. And a lot of those records are actually, like, double records because, like, 220 yards is, like,

X amount of meters or whatever. So he's just, like, this kicking ass. Right. Taking names. So now it's time to get ready for the Olympics. Like he knows that he's going to go and he qualifies obviously pretty easily. A couple of people try to get him not to go, specifically the NAACP, you know, want the black athletes to boycott it because of Nazis. And the, I know this because I know a lot about the Roosevelt administration, but the president of the NACP at this time wrote Owens a letter, but he didn't. ended up not sending it.

But his name is Walter White, and that always makes he laugh because I think of Breaking Bad. Of course. Yeah. So, but he is going. He does go. He passed all the trials.

Obviously, there's a bunch of other people that are with him. He's on the SS Manhattan with everyone. He was very seasick the whole time, but he gets there and gets his balance again. It's like ready to run. There's two conflicting stories I read about shoes. One of them is probably not true that Adi Dasler of Adidas

sponsored his shoes, like gave him shoes. And then, Another one that he didn't have any shoes, so his coach bought them off the rack for him, just like regular shoes. They didn't have time to break them in. That one's probably more true than other one. He's in the Olympic Village, his diary, I read that in the Ohio Archive. He's having a good time.

He's like, the food's good. Everyone's super nice because that was true. So it's also important to note that he's not the only black person on the team. There are 18 black athletes that go to Germany. I have a link to an article from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. that has some notes on them. But, you know, these were all, like, young men, like kids who were going to Europe to win these awards for their country and he's going home to a segregated America, you know.

So John Woodruff, who won the 800 meter, after he got home, he said, quote, after the Olympics, he had a track meet to run in Annapolis at the Naval Academy. Now, here I am, an Olympic champion. And they told the coach that I couldn't run. I couldn't come. So I stayed home because of discrimination. That let me know just what the situation was. Things hadn't changed.

Things hadn't changed. You know? Yeah, it's nuts. Nuts. So against all odds, the Germans are pumped about Jesse Owens because it's just so fast. And they're just like really excited to see him, you know? And so Hitler gets pissed because they cheer for him all the time. And Hitler's there and he's always mad about it.

Hitler does greet the first handful of gold medal winners. And I think, like you said, far as a lot of the gold medal winners are German. So the first couple events, Germans win, he greets them in like his box or whatever. And then he leaves before the first black person win something. And they were like, oh, he's busy or whatever. And then someone was like, you can't do this. Like, this is a bad look. So he didn't greet anybody else.

So he didn't look like he was discriminating. Obviously he was. Did he think that only Germans were going to win? or only like people were going to win that was the hope and that was what it would be like that was his Olympics would be like white people against white people forever

that was a plan I know and so he there are rumors that he did wave at Jesse Owens when he started winning his medals he may have he may have done his little half pile that he does sometimes

who knows what really happened but like they never met he never actually shook his hand like they never talked to each other um Jesse Owens did say quote Hitler didn't stub me It was our president who stubbed me The president didn't even send me a telegram

Which is true and fair Roosevelt didn't send him anything He should have What FDR? Yeah Weird So and then Hitler later was like Oh he was up later he was like

Yeah we definitely need to ban black people From the future Olympics Because they have an unfair advantage Because they're closer to living in the jungle Which is exactly something that Hitler would say When he was losing you know um i don't need to say what an asshole but you know what i mean so back to running jesse owens easily qualified for each of the things so he didn't just run he did a couple dashes he did

a long jump and he ended up doing the relay as well so he made a good friend with a german man named luce long l uz and i'm literally on his of Wikipedia page right now are you so lus long and jesse owens were legitimately friends there's a couple stories like jessie has had that um helped him with something but that's probably not true like they probably met after after the meet that's this is what that minute 58

on the Lenny Riefenstall movie shows them doing the long jump together and they show like Jesse Owens he wins but there's pictures of them walking arm and arm and this is like a tall man who looks like a Nazi he's like blonde you know wearing all white yeah his

I mean his their tracksuits have swastas on them I mean obviously but like it's just wild oh you can't make it out in the picture but I it's in like the middle yeah So Luce and and Jesse become friends. They would write letters back and forth after the Olympics. The last letter he sent to Jesse Owens said, Can you tell my son about the time that we ran together and people got along?

And then Luce was killed in Italy and the invasion of Sicily in 1943. And in the 1960s, Jesse did go back to Germany and meet with his son and tell him about his father. Aw. Yeah. So Jesse Owens wins four gold. medals. On August 3rd, he wins a 100 meter dash with 10.3 seconds. On August 4th, he wins a long jump. He wins at 26 feet 5 inches, which is still 3 and a quarter inches short of his own world record. So he didn't beat himself, but he beat everybody else. On August 5th, he won the 200

meter sprint with a time of 20.7 seconds. He, the second place silver medalist in that event was Mack Robinson, who was the older brother of Jackie Robinson. So V-Sporty, family, the Robinsons. In August 9th, he won his fourth gold medal in the four by 100 meter sprint relay. He had him had another black runner replaced two Jewish runners. And it's a little bit of controversy. Like, why did he replace them at the very end? Usually they don't put their best runners in the relay because they were so good anyway that they were going to win no matter what, even if they weren't the very best, but also then like, why wouldn't you just put your best runners in the relay? So there's like a whole bunch of back and forth.

as to why but either way he got his four gold medal and no one would get four gold medals in track until carl lewis did in 1984 so he did great in in the in the Olympics came home with with four with four gold medals and um yeah do you have a question you know can't be weird well no i'm i'm like now you know i was like actually looking at um you sane bold and i mean like i said before like there's some some sports where if you're the best of it you are upset, right? Like, Usain Ball's going to get 50,000 different contracts from shoe companies,

a cereal company, all that stuff. What did this guy get? Nothing. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. I'm like, man, all this, like, for what? I'm going to tell you what he got. He got nothing. Yeah.

I mean, today, I think around this down, everybody would be wearing Jesse Owens track shoes. You know, like, it'd be, he had all of the endorsements. It'd be a huge deal. But, yeah, no. So at the end of the Olympics, Hitler was embarrassed that all white people didn't win, which is great because he sucks. But Jesse Owens doesn't have a full-time job. He's still in college. He was in college during the 1936 Olympics.

He goes back to Ohio State. And this whole time, he's been in college. There was like a semester where he wasn't allowed to be on the track team because his grades were failing. And I'm like, when does this man have time to go to class? You know? Like he's a father. He has jobs. He has on the track team.

But he also is going to school. Um, after the games are over, he gets sent around Europe to do like exhibitions with the team, but he doesn't make any money from that. It's sort of like a way for the American Olympic committee to like make back some of the money they spent, but doesn't go to the athletes. He does take a few. He gets offered some things like some big endorsements, but they're all not real. They're just to like get in the paper, you know, to be like, oh, we offered Jesse Owens $50,000, but they don't know one really like was going to follow through on that. Um, he does take a couple of. below level endorsements, which means that the amateur league kicks him out and now he can't run anymore. He just can't win. Like there's just no we're waiting for him. When he gets back to New York, like literally the day goes back to New York, him and his wife can't get a hotel room because no one will let him in because he's black. Finally, the Hotel Pennsylvania lets them stay where they have to go in through the service entrance. So he comes home and this is actually something that I just saw via my algorithm on Instagram, but the history channel has a new show.

that just premiered this week about what happened when he gets back because he gets back and he's just a black guy on racist America, you know? Like, it doesn't matter that he was an Olympic hero. He works at gas stations. He would race horses. Like, he would run a track next to a horse. Like the horse, he would get like a little of a head start and just like run next to each other. He said, quote, people say it was degrading for an Olympic champion to run against a horse. What was I supposed to do? I had four gold medals, but you can't eat four gold medals. So he did a lot of work.

He had a dry cleaner that failed. He did work at Ford for a while in the Civil Rights Division. He campaigned against President Roosevelt. He filed her bankruptcy in 1966 and got in trouble for tax evasion. So he was never rich. He never had a lot of money. Eisenhower sent him around the world as a goodwill ambassador, which is fun. So he became a speaker and I would talk.

He would speak at like colleges. He got an honorary degree from Ohio State, I think, later. So he was like, he was sort of those things, but it wasn't like lucrative. When Jesse Owens was 35, he started smoking cigarettes, and that's what killed him. So he spoke a pack a day from when he was 35 until he died in 1980 of lung cancer, lung cancer. And he is buried in, in Ohio. And he died on March 31st, 1980.

Jimmy Carter said, quote, perhaps no athlete better symbolize the human struggle against tyranny, poverty, and racial bigotry after he died. So after these Olympics, there wouldn't be another one. The Olympics in 1940 got canceled, and 1944 got canceled,

and then the next one would be in 1948 in London, but guess who wasn't invited? Germany. Yep, in Japan. I mean, I don't feel bad for them. I don't either. They were not invited. So I definitely,

there's a bunch of movies about Jesse Owens that look good. The book Triumph was really good. It's just like so exciting to see someone just be excellent at something and so insane to see them not get Eddie to get treated so terribly when they get home. You know, that's such a big discrepancy. So next week We're going to go from 1950 to 1980 and talk about stuff that happened

During those Olympics So one thing on the Jesse Owens Wikipedia page that I found really fun and interesting Is that a movie Get Out The The girl's dad Who played Oh God, I forgot his name

He was on West Wing Yeah, yeah, Bradley Something Anyways, he's like the bad guy um he apparently said that he lost a qualification round to jesse owens in 1936 and that is when he started researching how to replace his brain with the brain of a black person crazy right yeah the movie's wild let's watch that again it's pretty good yeah um fun well that's well not fun it's not good um it's wild i mean i i recommend

mind watching Olympia just like having it's not there aren't a lot of words in it it's mostly just like sounds but watching that him uh jesse owens and lutzong do the long jump is really cool i'm sure i'm sure yeah looking at the pictures of them it's um you know it kind of it kind of speaks to what you mentioned before to like the whole point of of the limbics just of bringing people together but and like that's kind of how it always felt like on a political level too it's like if the people could talk to each other without the governments then the people would be fine. It's the government's getting in the middle of it that causes issues.

I agree. And that relationship we had with that guy, Louis Long was a good example of that. Yeah. That's cute. Sweet. So our four-parter is down to two more parts. We're going to kick this off again next week. And which parts are we getting to next week?

So I know something happened in 1960. So I have a book that I'm going to read. What is it called? It is called. It's about 1960. in Rome it says let's see have my thing here

oh it says Rome 1960 the Olympics that changed the world I don't know how it changed the world I'm going to read that book and tell you and then I'm also going to talk about the Munich I was going to ask all the Munich one that movie is amazing I know I don't think I've seen it

but I think I should obviously see it It is very very very well done Was it Spielberg that did it? It stuck my memory like it was one of those movies that like just you just like every now And then they're like, what was that memory of I have? And it's like, oh, yeah, that thing, that movie.

Yeah. 2005. Yeah, it was Spielberg. Yeah. Something else I wanted to tell you when you were talking about yours is the guy who wrote the book, Chernobyl, that was like what the show was like based off of. Not like based off of, but like that book was like used to like do the HBO show. Just wrote a new book on The Challenger. I'm on the list to get it.

Sweet. From the library. I'm on, I'm on, I'm on, in 14 weeks. I can, I can listen to that, to it. He wrote Minda and Chernobyl, Adam Higginbotham, but I'm excited to read the Challenger book. Right. Because that's crazy. I would do the space shuttle ones, but they're so, I mean, it is so not obscure.

Like, everybody who's paid any attention knows every detail. Yeah. So, I know. Um, well, Taylor, thank you for sharing. and we have plenty more Olympic news to look forward to in the next two weeks I haven't heard anything about the um um um hoop in the sun yet oh we almost watched the sun movie last night I think we'll watch it tonight the shark one it's so stupid you love it

I can't wait um and hopefully by the time we join you again uh those two poor bastards on the international space station on their way home Godspeed. Godspeed. I wonder what they're doing right now. They have like cards. Like what are they doing? Is there the show them?

Nothing. It's just like praying that this all works out. I wonder what the internet speed is up there. I can download our show. Anyways, anything else to say, Taylor? That's it. No, thank you so much.

If you need anything, have any ideas for us. We're at DoomDevelopPod at gmail.com. Find us on social media. And please, please, please review us on Apple Podcasts because that helps people find us. I'm also doing a TikTok every day and some person was like

I love this and they downloaded it all for episodes so we got like a huge bump and downloads one day so that was super exciting so thanks person continuing to do that forever thank you person and Taylor thanks try my best

awesome okay well go ahead and turn it off