Pablo Torre Finds Out - Meet the Tree: Why Jesse Owens Really Brought Hitler's Olympic Gift Home

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Adolf Hitler gave the legendary runner a mysterious gift: four potted oak tree saplings — one for each of the four gold medals that Owens won, while surrounded by Nazis, in one of the greatest performances in the history of sports. Almost a century later, correspondent David Fleming examines what Owens decided to do with his so-called Hitler Oaks... and why that decision remains an enduring act of American defiance. Plus: tree people, myth-busting, redlining and witch-doctor science.This episode originally aired August 6th, 2024. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. When I first met the tree in probably 2016, I thought it was a perfect treat. Right after this ad. You're listening to Draf King's Network. Flem, I'm a plant guy. I'm a tree guy. You look behind you over your shoulder in our studio.

That is an homage to an interest that I have long held. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I don't know if you have a property full of greenery, but I don't. I live in the city here in New York. Thank you for being here, by the way. You're welcome. Actually, I thought that's why I was here to help you with your limelight hydrangeas,

which mine are really world-class. I'm just going to go ahead and say that. I'm jealous. I have like two dozen houseplants. Well, that's pretty good. But in a simulation of the real thing. And so as the lawn owner, as a guy with his own set of shrubbery, I just expressed jealousy at the outset here.

Yeah, I get it. But, you know, come down. We'll get you into nature. It's called forest bathing. Yes. We'll do that. We'll have like a retreat. A retreat.

We'll do a little gardening, some lawn work. It's real, though. Like forest bathing. Oh, is definitely real. Forest bathing, 100%. Restorative. So all of this brings us to the Olympics. Of course.

I mean, I'm sure that's where we're going on. Yeah, yeah. Because there's this photograph, Lamb, as we approach the closing ceremonies of the Olympics in Paris. There's a photograph that I think about whenever it's near the end of an Olympic Games. And it's a famous photo that you have done some research into for us that reveal that I had no idea what the fuck I was. even looking at. So explain when and where and what this photo is. We're sort of nearing the end of the Olympics.

You start to think about iconic moments. You think about incredible iconic performances. And always in my mind associated with that is this picture from the 1936 games. From the metal stand of the games, which were in Berlin at the time, what your eye sticks on with this photo are all the Nazi salutes. At the top of the medal stand, yes, not doing the Nazi salute, is who?

Is Jesse Owens? After the fanfares of the Olympic opening comes the most amazing performance by America's Black Street, Jesse Owens, in the 100 meters. The world's most superb runner makes the others look as if they're walking as he wins the final and equals the world's record time.

This and his later victory in the long jump may well be the athletic performances of the century. One of the greatest Olympic performances of all time, really to this day, bar none, Jesse Owens in 1936. He's receiving one of his four gold medals, but it's in a stadium full of people doing the Nazi salute, and he's next to a row of athletes and other people doing...

Officials. Right. And your eye is just stuck on that, and you don't really notice the same thing. secret little thing that we discovered that sent us down this rabbit hole. At the actual center of the photograph, I did not notice this until you told me to like zoom in on it. And when you zoom in on it, you see that he's carrying something that I'd never noticed before, Cleb. He's holding a tiny little oak sapling. Why? So in case you slept through every history class you may have ever taken, I do want to clarify that this is going

to be a story that starts with Jesse Owens, who's one of the greatest black athletes of all time, and also Adolf Hitler, who became the Chancellor of Germany when the Nazi Party came to power in 1933 in the aftermath of Germany losing World War I, which is why the 1936 Berlin Olympics wound up being this festival of swastikas and Aryan supremacy and anti-Semitic propaganda. As evidenced by that famous picture we just discussed. But that only begins to explain

why Jesse Owens was standing atop that metal stand, surrounded by Nazi salutes, and cradling this mysterious and tiny potted plant. So to do that, we have to go all the way back and talk about the Olympic Games and how in 1936 they were allowed to be in Berlin. The games were given to Germany years earlier, actually as a gesture to try and help bring Germany back into the world community. Spoiler alert, this effort did not pay off. Yeah, that was not a great idea. By 1936, of course, Hitler has come into power.

in Germany. Berlin's great day dawns with the arrival of the Olympic flame at the end of its 2,000 mile journey from Greece. And meanwhile, a packed stadium and flag-draped cheering streets greet Chancellor Hitler on his way to perform the opening ceremony. Like a modern Caesar, he stands on the balcony to receive the salutes of the athletes of 50 nations. The games go on in Berlin, and part of the ritual of the games in Germany was the idea that every gold medal winner would receive an oak sapling because of its historic connection to

Germany and Germany's history. And I didn't know this either, but to the German culture, an oak symbolizes, you know, the king of the forest. Right, because the oak is usually the biggest, tallest tree. And in German folklore, Germania represents the German people. she's wearing a crown of oak leaves. Right. So the oaks are very important.

And as a gesture, each person that won a gold medal, along with their gold medal, were given this tiny oak sapling and told to go back to where you're from around the globe and keep these trees, plant these trees, and watch them grow as a symbol of these games,

which on its face is kind of a good idea. Now, the flip side of this good idea, idea, is that these were Hitler's oaks. Correct. And were called as such. They were known immediately as Hitler Oaks. And so the Hitler Oaks, right, that came back with the U.S. gold medalists, what do we know about those Oaks and what happened to them?

So there were 24 American gold medals, which means there were 24 oak saplings, and almost all of them were lost or destroyed. discarded or just gotten rid of. Right, for the obvious reason of not wanting to have a Hitler oak in your yard. Right. Cannot blame anybody for that. Yeah, a gift bag from history's greatest monster. Not necessarily what I would have put on, you know, in my own front yard.

Yeah, yeah. Thanks Hitler for the merch, but I'll pass. And so the obvious question then is why the fuck would Jesse Owens of all people, Phleg, be the one to become the caretaker of a Hitler oak. That's what we're going to find out. But it's not just Jesse Owens. In the last hundred years, an entire community has come together to, they have fallen in love with this tree, and they have come together to save this tree.

So at the risk of just stating the obvious, it is important that we recall what it would have been like to be Jesse Owens in the night. 1930s in a segregated United States. Because Jesse Owens was black, he was not legally eligible to receive a college scholarship, for instance, let alone get on-campus housing. And then, when he finally worked hard enough to make the U.S. Olympic team, despite all of that and more,

Jesse Owens discovered that the games were being held in Nazi Germany. An event that the NAACP, alongside many, many others, were all saying that Jesse Owens should not attend. He was being torn in both directions, whether to go, whether to stay home, whether to take on Hitler, whether to just boycott the whole thing. You have to remember Jesse Owens, he grew up in Cleveland, he went to Ohio State.

Jesse Owens was a world-renowned athlete after the 1935 Big Ten Championship, which some people refer to as the greatest 45 minutes in sports. In the span of 45 minutes in 1935, Jesse Owens set or tied four world records in track and field. He's setting or tying a world record every 11 minutes? Yes. This is the milieu unto which he has to make a decision

of, am I the greatest track star in America going to go overseas and essentially enable potentially a propaganda operation for Adolf Hitler. He is the single greatest track and field athlete in the world, but there was a serious and strong campaign

to try and encourage him not to go, to just sit it out, to not let his abilities bring attention to Hitler's theories about Aryan supremacy. And so I reached out to Dr. Damien Thomas, who is the sports curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Yes.

And he helped explain what Jesse Owens had to deal with even before the games. At the time, I think people were trying to figure out how to best deal with the threat that Hitler posed. Do you appease him? Do you play along? Certainly there were discussions, and people,

People asked him not to participate, but a boycott would have largely been unprecedented. And it's a lot to ask Jesse Owens. And we see that there was widespread support of African-American athletes to ultimately participate because there were 18 African-Americans who participated. And that was by far the largest contingent of African-Americans who had participated in the Olympics up to that time. So there were all these athletes who were going to the games. The ones who didn't want them to go, they were being branded by the U.S. Olympic Committee as un-American agitators.

Right. So this is an enormous news story. And once he gets there, again, another spoiler alert, Jesse Owens fucking destroys everybody. He wins gold in the 100 meter dash, in the 200 meter, in the 4x100. Yes. And then the long jump. The long jump.

of those, if you see the film of it, it's one of those things where you and I, we've watched athletics, we've covered athletics, we've interviewed athletes, it's one of those moments where even almost 100 years later, your jaw drops. It's almost like he's detached from the gravity of the earth. And when you think he's supposed to start coming down, he keeps going. And you're like, this is a hundred years ago. A hard thing for Adolf Hitler to see and feel great about. Right. I'm a human being watching this 100 years later in awe. And then I think, oh my God, Hitler had to watch Jesse Owens do this right in front of his face. Yes, the entire point was that here was going to be the proof that Germany was supreme, that white supremacy was real.

And Jesse Owens explodes that four different times. And so this brings us to the thing that I, the most famous image that has been passed down through history, which is the story of what happens when Jesse Owens finally confronts Adolf Hitler face to face, because Adolf Hitler, as, again, the leader of Germany, is the guy who's also greeting all of the athletes at the end. And the story is that Adolf Hitler refuses to shake the hand, the black hand of the American Jesse Owens. And that is part of the mythology that's grown out of what Jesse Owens did.

But it's not actually the whole full, true story. So Hitler attended the first day of the Olympics. And what he did is he went and greeted the German athletes who had won medals and had performed triumphantly. The International Olympic Committee went to him and said that you just can't shake the hands of the Germans. You have to shake the hands of all of the winners if you're going to shake hands. And so Hitler decided that he was no longer going to shake anyone else's hand. So then when Jesse Owens wins and there's no handshake, people began to speculate, well, has Hitler snubbed Jesse Owens? Is this a racial moment? Is this somehow demeaning to Jesse

And so I'm just going to jump in here to say that I did not plan on exonerating Adolf Hitler in any way when producing today's episode. But yes, Damien Thomas is correct. Hitler's refusal to shake the hand of Jesse Owens in Berlin was not actually specific to Jesse Owens at all. After day one, Hitler did not publicly congratulate any of the gold medalists. But the big reason that so many of us Americans have heard that story and have assumed it to be true for so long is relevant here as well. So it turns out that this was a part of the myth

that Jesse Owens himself perpetuated for years for a whole other set of reasons that sort of just takes us further down this story. The story became really important for Jesse Owens later on because in his post-running career, he would often make money on the banquet circuit. And this became one of the most popular stories that he would tell about this missed opportunity with Hitler and how he was snubbed. And it was a way of sort of denouncing Germany and their racist politics. And he was celebrated because people wanted to feel good about America, vis-a-vis Germany, and vis-a-vis America's own racial history. And so it was a key story that sat at the heart of his ability to make money in his post-racing career.

So the banquet circuit that Dr. Thomas referenced, I did not know that Jesse Owens was making appearances. like as a speaker making money doing that. Right, because your assumption is this guy is a worldwide hero. Yes. He's an American Olympic icon. He just beat Hitler. Surely he comes home to an America where it's ticker-tape parades and endorsements and never has to lift a finger the rest of his life.

It's the exact opposite. No, of course. It's a reminder that, again, we're in the 30s. Jesse Owens is a second-class citizen in the United States. I mean, Owens himself even said, Hitler refused to shake my hand, but so did the president of the United States. Right. By the way, this was FDR.

FDR, that's the America that he came back to. It's a place where he has to work as a janitor. It's a place where he has to work as a custodian. He's also a gas station attendant. It's a place where when he does get invited, to a celebration of the Olympic heroes at the Waldorf Astoria. He's got to go in through the freight elevator. Jesse Owen struggled financially.

You know, he had some failed business ventures. He had some tax problems. And he was often forced to engage in some things, which he would later feel a bit embarrassed, in his later life. One of these such examples was when he engaged in a racing exhibition in Cuba, and he raced a horse in an exhibition race.

Cuba, Jesse Owens the Ebony Street of Olympic Games, celebrates a turning professional by racing against a horse. Jesse had a start of 40 yards and 100, and he won by inches. There was also a moment where he had a race with Joe Lewis. It was a race that he also found to be demeaning because he was crawling and Joe Lewis was running backwards. Also during his time, he worked with the Harlem Loetrotters as a middle-aged man would run around the court during half-time jumping over her roots as part of the entertainment for the Harlem Loatriders game. So he had to do a number of things like that in order to survive financial.

I did not realize the degree to which Jesse Owens was a circus performer after having accomplished some of the greatest things in the history of sports. So Damia mentioned that Owens did find some of those things that he had to do to make a living degrading. And there's a great quote from Owens that said, people say it was degrading for an Olympic champion to run against a horse. But what was I supposed to do? I had four gold medals, but you can't eat four gold medals. By the way, that isn't just some clever rhetoric from Jesse Owens. Jesse Owens actually wound up giving one of his four gold medals from Berlin to a friend, to thank him for helping him find work in the entertainment industry.

And by the 1950s, Jesse Owens was reportedly so broke that he used the other three medals to pay for a hotel stay and his expenses in Pittsburgh. That's not all that awaited Jesse Owens upon his return to America, because not only did the guy work as a gas station attendant, as well as a janitor and a circus performer, his home, his neighborhood, entire urban sections of Cleveland, in fact, had been financially and ecologically degraded on the basis of race. This was thanks to a legal policy instituted by the aforementioned president,

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and that policy, which is now illegal today, was known as redlining. As part of the 1930s-era New Deal, the government insured mortgages for homeowners to prevent foreclosures during the Depression. Color-coded maps ranked loanworthiness of neighborhoods in more than 200 cities and towns across the United States. Green was super good in terms of the risk of loaning in that area, and then red was hazardous. Those redlined areas were deemed credit risks because of the residents' racial demographics. Today, those so-called hazardous neighborhoods consist of lower-income minority residents.

The goal of redlining at the time was to make it subtle. Federal government representatives would literally take a red line and mark out areas of cities, hundreds of cities, that they deemed unworthy of investment and risky for things like. mortgages and businesses. It was racism codified. It was discrimination literally mapped onto America itself.

It created huge sections of cities where if you can't invest, if you can't buy a home there, then over the next decades, over the next 90 years, people wouldn't bother to build parks and grow grass and plant trees. And so these sections, besides being sort of like lacking investment or home ownership, these areas of cities now are 5 to 20 degrees hotter during summers, which lead to exponentially more heat and health-related issues. Many redline districts are now the warmest areas in the United States. Research completed by the Museum of Science found redline neighborhoods, like Ruralin.

Roxbury and East Boston to be on average 2 degree Fahrenheit warmer than non-redline neighborhoods in Boston. These warmer areas tend to have fewer trees and parks to help cool the air. As a result, residents have higher energy bills, limited access to green space, and disproportionate risk of heat-related death. So what I am also finding out because of this episode is the degree of scientific research, to which health outcomes and life expectancies are tied to trees, to the way in which we need these things, these living things, to help create the life that America had promised its people. And this is not just like one random hippie saying this.

There is a whole body of research that shows that redlining connects to environmental injustice. And this is a study by Case Western Reserve University, Flem, which evaluated the map of Jesse Owens' Cleveland and showed that these same neighborhoods, a century later, as you were alluded to, remain the areas most plagued by poverty and crime. All of this being directly connected. There was also a study in 2022 by Maryland that pointed out, older, larger trees with more canopy can impact variables like heat islands,

air quality, soil health, and stormwater management. Higher tree diversity also leads to more resiliency against invasive pests and disease outbreaks. Differences in tree communities and size may help explain why red-lined spaces have become more associated with poorer health outcomes and shorter life expectancies for people living inside of them.

And the connection back to Jesse Owens is he came back to a place where he lived in Cleveland that was purposefully left devoid of trees. So the full accounting of everything that Jesse Owens was facing, the snubbing of his own president in FDR, the redlining of his country and specifically his own home, his own home neighborhood in Cleveland, just the degradation of being this circus performer character.

All of this infuses the four Hitler Oaks that he takes back home with a far more profound meaning. I think what happened next is one of the most heroic things that Jesse Owens ever did, right? Despite all the things that you just mentioned, all the things we talked about, the kind of country that he returned to

as an Olympic hero and was still a second-class citizen, despite all of that, Jesse Owens still has enough hope to take those oaks and not throw them in Lake Erie, not discard them, not give him away, he gets down on his hands and knees, and he digs, and he plants these trees.

He doesn't forget him. He plants them. He brings him home to a place devoid of trees, and he plants him in the ground. So, Flam, it's time to do a thing that I've been waiting to do on this show for a year now, which is some tree forensics. So Jesse Owens comes back home. He has four gold medals. He has four trees. what happens to the Hitler Oaks?

Where does he plant the saplings? I've been looking into it for you. All right, I know you like the papers. I know you like the notes. You have your research. I've got my research. Okay, so here's what we know about the four oak saplings. Some sources say that he planted one at East Tech High School,

which is where he actually went to school, but it hasn't been verified. There are other stories that he planted one at his mother's home in Cleveland. again, that may have been torn down, can't be verified. There are also stories that he planted one on the campus at Ohio State, where he went to school. Again, not verifiable. The only oak sapling that we know for sure that's been authenticated

was at James Ford Rhodes High School, where Owens didn't go to school, but he practiced track there because they had a decent track and the conditions at his own school were no good. So we have the one. We have one Hitler Oak still standing at James Ford Rhodes High School. Well, not technically.

So we've got one tree authenticated. And what happens is around 2017, this oak tree, which is big and beautiful and right and has been on this campus for decades, it begins to reach the end of its natural life. And it's dying. And this incredible symbol is about to go away forever. And you remember that beautiful community that we mentioned earlier, that's where this whole community rallies to save a Hitler Oak. And so who are the people who are leading the movement to save a Hitler Oak?

My name is Jeffrey T. Boresby. I am the chief operating officer at Cleveland Neighborhood Progress. I'm a community development leader. My name is Beck Swab, and my title is Director of Conservation and Community Forestry at Holden Forest and Gardens. And so a simpler way to say that is, yeah, I'm a tree nerd, a tree scientist. I love talking about trees. These are some of my favorite people that we met on this journey, just because, again, they're so passionate and they're so just all in on this project. What happens is this great guy, one of the great guys that we met, Jeff Respby, he learns of the

Hitler Oak right around 2017, right at the exact time when the tree is beginning to die. When I first met the tree in probably 2016, I thought it was a perfect tree. I just want to pause the tape here. That's just one of the great declarations in the history of Palo Tore finds out. When I first met the tree. Yeah, I haven't met the tree, but I'm proposing a PTFO field trip so that we can all go meet the tree. We'll have our people call the trees people. Yes. It was 40 feet tall. It had big branches. It had leaves everywhere. And I was like, this is a gorgeous, amazing tree. And the tree

partners at Holden immediately looked at me like I had three heads and they're like, know that thing's clearly dying. A lot of times they'll actually like produce a lot more acorns or whatever their seed is because at the end of the life, they want to make sure they can put as much effort into reproduction as possible to pass on their genes. I've even heard people call it like the glory of a tree under stress because then sometimes they're just covered with flowers. And you're like, this tree is doing great. It's producing so many flowers and so many seeds.

But it's because it's under stress and it knows it's going out. And so it just spends that last burst of energy to try to make sure it sends its genetics forwards. You know, I just want to join in with the tree nerds and point out the sort of the beautiful moment that they're describing, which is when a tree reaches the end of its natural life, it puts all of its final energy into trying to ensure that its life will continue.

The glory of a tree under stress is truly a beautiful scientific concept. It's the second best line ever on your show besides I met the tree. Wait, so hold on. The tree that is beautifully dying, the Hitler Oak, how do they make sure that it does live on? What do you do with the acorns as it's gloriously perishing?

Well, that's exactly what I thought. I'm like, oh, so you just collect the acorns, right? And put them in some potting soil. And bam, you got another Hitler oak. But it's way more interesting and way more complicated than just planting an acorn. So if you want a genetically identical individual, what you can do is you get like a young twig essentially off of it.

And I've done this process before, and I feel kind of like a witch when I'm doing it, because basically we'll take a tree that's in a pot and we'll get a twig from another tree and we cut the tree that's in the pot. And then we cut the twig off the tree and you have to like use a little knife to get it to line up exactly. And then you put them together and you just like wrap it with like a rubber band essentially and you dip it in wax. You try to do this in the winter when it's completely dormant. And then you put the spot where you put those two together.

You put that against a little heating bar and you heat it up. So it thinks it's the growing season and it's ready to grow. And then those two merge together and they become one tree. So I should point out that none of that sounds like it should work. Right. And then when the spring comes, it'll leaf out with the roots from the other tree and the trig from the L tree. So basically what you've done, you've taken a piece of this tree. You've given it new roots and a new life.

And it's basically a new individual that's only instead of the 80-something years old. that that whole tree is, that twig is only a couple of years old. That sounds crazy. That's how you reproduce a tree. Yeah, you create some kind of secondary zombie tree limb. You tie it together. Yeah. You make the tree think that it's growing season, and it grows.

I mean, they treated it. It was like a child. I got the idea that they were talking to it. They were checking in every day, waiting to see if it would produce buds or leaves. Like an actual living thing. They were all rooting for this Hitler oak to live. I don't know if you intended to make that pun, but I salute you nonetheless.

They were rooting for it to live. And it does. It works. I mean, all this sorcery, you know, it works. And they've managed to replicate and propagate these Hitler Oaks. And now they've grown over years into saplings that can be transplanted into the ground. And so now they've got full. four new genetically identical Hitler Oaks to stand for the four gold medals and the four original

oak saplings, and they plant them in different areas around Cleveland. All of this continuing to be an even greater active defiance than the one that had been mythologized in Berlin. And it goes on because now in Cleveland, these Hitler Oaks, they're helping to educate people about the importance of trees, about how to come. combat, redlining. And that's one of the environmental injustices that the community forestry community is trying to really face and address right now to say that we need to get more trees into these areas. Because as a tree person, I see all the benefits of trees. It helps mental health.

It helps stress. It makes it cooler when it's hot days. You know, it creates a space for community, for people to hang out. I'd like to think that, like, you know, Jesse Owens wants to see these trees grow and survive and thrive. But then it's also an opportunity for us to bring awareness to that issue and try to engage community members with it. So the trees themselves and the act of regenerating them and replanting them are now fighting a whole other fight in Cleveland. And so the obvious question near the end here, Flam, is whether anybody feels any

discomfort, residual lingering discomfort, from the fact that these are Hitler Oaks, that these are gifted, again, from one of history's greatest monsters. Yeah, and I think that's one of the best parts of this whole story. They mean so much more to the people in that community that they don't really see them that way. And today, with the eyes of a new generation of African American track stars looking on, the rebirth of Owen's old dying tree was planted in new ground next to the Rockefeller Park Lagoon. The new tree was propagated from the Jesse Owens Olympic Oak and planted right next to the site of the original.

So, Flam, what I'm finding out at the very end here is that we have been mislabeling the subject of today's episode. These are not actually the Hitler Oaks at all. No, they have over time, they have become, they've changed. and they mean something totally different now, they've become the Jesse Owens Oaks. These are the Jesse Owens, Olympic Oaks. They are nothing but that, the Jesse Owens Olympic Oaks.

His story is one of resilience. There was pressure to not participate in the 1936 Olympics. There was pressure to boycott because being black in America in 1936 was also one in which you were not afforded freedoms. You were not afforded full liberty. And he was denied that all the way. And so I actually think that makes it even more powerful.

I think it's important that we tell a well-rounded story about Jesse Owens, both about his triumphs and his challenges. He is someone who is reflective of a very important moment in African-American history. And so to that extent, I'm really glad that people are keeping these oaks. alive in keeping the story of Jesse Owens at the forefront of our national memory. Hitler kind of outsmarted himself by gifting to Jesse Owens the very thing that he could use

to fight racism and redlining in Cleveland. I mean, how about that for a transformation from Hitler to the Jesse Owens Oaks? Dave Lemming, thank you for reporting a story that continues to grow. Now you're going to pull out the puns. This has been Pablo Torre finds out a metal art media production.

And I'll talk to you next time.