Revisionist History Pushkin

In the early 1930s, Adolf Hitler granted a rare interview to the American journalist Dorothy Thompson. When Hitler later came to power, and prepared to stage the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Thompson’s warning about the man she’d met would frame the central debate over the games: Should we go? 
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Charles Sherrill was everything a gentleman of his generation was supposed to be: rich, handsome, charming, Ivy-Leagued. He was impossibly well connected and extravagantly mustachioed. He was also the person who, as much as anything, decided whether American athletes would participate in the 1936 Olympics. Faced with one of the great moral dilemmas of the day, America needed the wisdom of Solomon. Instead, it got the wisdom of Sherrill. 
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With the fate of the Olympics on the line, Charles Sherrill travels to Germany to take up the question of Jewish athletes directly with the Führer. We dig through a dusty archive to uncover a long-buried account of their meeting. The wolf met with the chicken. Guess who won? 
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The cheerleader-in-chief for the American Olympic movement was a brilliant, self-made Chicago tycoon named Avery Brundage. Brundage did more to ensure the success of the Berlin Games than anyone except Hitler. But what exactly were his motivations? We meet the man behind the curtain and witness his secret shame.
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A German Jewish high-jumper is determined to get her shot at Olympic greatness. And an idealist faces an existential choice. In the fifth episode of Hilter’s Olympics, Avery Brundage faces the reality for Jewish athletes in Nazi Germany and makes a critical decision.
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Adolf Hitler swept to power in Germany in the early 1930s and soon set out to stage the most extravagant and spectacular summer Olympics yet: the 1936 Berlin Games. And countries around the world dutifully put together their teams and made the trip to Germany. Why?
In this new nine-part series Hitler’s Olympics, Malcolm Gladwell and Ben Naddaff-Hafrey explore the games behind the Games, the most consequential Olympics in history. Along the way, they meet a collection of the world’s daffiest aristocrats. A couple of American construction moguls. A legendary triple-jumper. And one discerning journalist.
Heroes and villains. The clear-eyed and the deluded. All of them going to Hitler’s Olympics.
Hitler’s Olympics launches June 27th. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus now to hear the first five episodes on launch day, or listen for new episodes every Thursday for the next nine weeks.
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