July 11, 2024 • 35 mins
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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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Pushkin October thirty first, nineteen thirty five, Park Avenue, mid Taiminhattan.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
A great two friends from the Advertising Club of New
York City and present another interesting luncheon meeting of this organization.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
The meal is served grilled Boston squad with Chris bacon
or breaded vealsteak Vienna style, followed by old fashioned strawberry shortcack.
The plates are cleared away. The president of the club
introduces the head table, a long row of distinguished gentleman,
and then the agenda of the day.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
The Olympics to be held in Germany in nineteen thirty six.
Forgetting the thought of every nation the world over, it
seemed fitting then that we should go to our guest
of the day.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
He gestures to a man sitting next to him with
a fabulous, thriving mustache, Charles Hitchcock Cheryl.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Why do we call on General Cheryl? First of all,
he's an athlete himself. He's probably the only man who
won seven intercillegiate championships while attending jail.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
He lists Cheryl's many accomplishments, his time as a diplomat,
his training as a lawyer, his service in the New
York National guard.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Probably, though I should emphasize above everything else, the fact
that for fifteen years he's been a member of the
American Olympic Committee, in a nice little Olympic committee, and
we've asked him to come here to clear up the
fall which some feel exists about this nineteen thirty six
(02:13):
Olympic situation.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
And there is no better man to clear up this
Olympic situation than Charles Hitchcock. Cheryl, of course, he opens
his Advertising Club talk with a joke.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Your president has spoken as though I was dead and
in a coffin, and he was speaking at the funeral.
He left out what I think is the most important
thing that he put and that is that I have
led the happiest life of anybody you ever met in
your life.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
He beams, He looks around happily, his eyes twinkle. This
is his kind of room. He launches into a brief
and modest account of his sprinting accomplishments at Yale. He
speaks of his key role in the invention of the
crouching start on how the press love to talk about it.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
I have a wife at pome So, sir, you've getched
the myathletic path. She says, why is it that whenever
you achieve anything, they must sprint half naked pictures of you?
Speaker 1 (03:29):
And then Charles Cheryl tells the assembled group the story
of how he has rescued the Olympic Games from the
doubters and the naysayers, not once, but twice. Welcome to
episode three of Hitler's Olympics, our story about the nineteen
thirty six Games, the most important games in the history
(03:51):
of the Olympics. In the previous installment, we met our
would be hero, Charles Cheryl, who single handedly broken the
deal in Vienna, promise that he believed would save the
nineteen thirty six Olympics, a promise from the Nazis not
to exclude Jewish athletes from the Games. But now the
(04:11):
deal is imperiled, there are renewed calls for an Olympic boycott,
and our hero has been compelled once again to come
to the rescue. All human societies organize themselves into a pyramid,
with ordinary people at the bottom and elites at the top.
(04:35):
And the crucial thing about the world Charles Cheryl grew
up in America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century,
is at the top of the pyramid is really really small.
It's a pinprick. It's basically rich white men. And if
you were all so handsome and a fraternity brother from Yale,
so much the better. Charles Cheryl was all those things.
(04:58):
He was at the very apex of the pinbrick. And
right from the beginning what distinguished Charles Cheryl was his
intuitive understanding of the rules that governed the top of
the pyramid, like, for example, never say a discouraging word
about another person in that tiny group at the very
very top. I'm reading to you now from Cheryl's unpublished memoirs,
(05:21):
where he recounts the story of the time he was
part of a group visiting the White House and presented
the first Lady, Grace Coolidge, with a bouquet of roses
that had been named in her honor. I did this,
Cheryl writes, with the comment that the presentation of coolidge
roses to missus Coolidge was but holding the mirror up
(05:42):
to nature. She replied, not exactly, because the roses are blondes,
and I am a brunette. Ernest cafalis all round. Rule
number two. If you are outside this type, little sir,
at the top of the pyramid, Charles Cheryl doesn't see you.
(06:04):
This is a crucial point. There is a certain kind
of racist who is racist because he or she harbors
an obsession with the other. In the Jim Crow South,
for example, swimming pools were segregated because white people didn't
want to share the same water as black people. The
idea that something might wash off black skin and linger
in the water gross them out. It kept them up
(06:27):
at night. It was visceral. That's not Charles Cheryl. He
has plenty of black people in his life. They work
in the kitchen, they take his coat, but the thought
that he is sharing his Manhattan townhouse with them does
not keep him up at night. He has arranged his
life so that he doesn't have to think about them
at all. So when it comes to the nineteen thirty
(06:49):
six Olympics and Jews in Germany, you might be wondering,
is Cheryl a n anti Semite? Well not like Hitler
was an anti Semite. Hitler got all worked up about Jews.
People like Cheryl, on the other hand, kept their voices down.
What is the attitude of these this kind of person
(07:10):
in this era towards Jews.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Let's see where to begin.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Nick Lemon historian.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
So you're really talking about these sort of upper patrician classes, right.
So typically these people lived inside a series of institutions
that were quote unquote restricted, which meant, you know, in
the broadest sense, only gentlemen could be in them, and
(07:40):
in this specific sense usually meant no Jews. So this
would apply to you know, private clubs, neighborhoods that often
had deed restrictions that you know, no Jews could live there.
You know, very very often workplaces had rules against Jews
who's being hired. It was understood that Jews weren't allowed
(08:04):
in this world of sort of upper class gentlemen and ladies.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
People in Cheryl's class arranged their lives so that they
didn't have to deal with Jews.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
And I think they would have thought, you know, Jews,
or course, they're vulgar, they're not gentlemanly, they think about
money all the time, things like that.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
But they didn't think of Jews. To use one of
Hitler's favorite words, as Vermin. Cheryl's great friend on the
International Olympic Committee was the group's president, the Belgian count
unreaded by La Tour. Remember Latour's wife was the one
who wrote Hitler a thank you note when he invaded Belgium.
(08:48):
Now she wouldn't call herself a Nazi. She would say
that sending a thank you note to your invaders upon
the occasion of your country's invasion was just good manners,
like sending a bud cake to the family that moves
into the mansion across the street. The Count, meanwhile, once
said of Jews in a letter to a friend that
he wasn't fond of them. He wrote, the Jews usually
(09:12):
quote shout before there is reason to do so. The Jews,
in the view of the cultured men of the European aristocracy,
were annoying and vulgar and a little bit exasperating. But
the Count was quite clear that you couldn't ban Jews
from the Olympics. Just because a particular race was annoying
(09:33):
and vulgar didn't mean that they couldn't participate in say
the long Job. People like bay Latour and Charles Cheryl
liked Jews in theory, but just not in practice, in
contrast to the Nazis, who didn't like Jews in practice
or in theory. In nineteen thirty five, that distinction seemed important.
(09:58):
Oh Ru three from the top of the pyramid. Remember
when we said in the last episode that another of
the people Cheryl reminds us of is Candide's pangloss, the
man who believes that all is necessarily for the best end. Essentially,
everything happens for a reason, and a good reason at that.
(10:19):
I mean, how could it not when you're living a
life like Charles Hitchcock Cheryl.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
I have led the happiest life of anybody you ever
met in your life.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
That's not just a statement of character and disposition, It's
an ideological belief. He looks around at those who would
question the status quo, radicals, communists, suffragette's Jews, and he says,
what are you complaining about? From where I sit at
the top of the pyramid, the view is pretty great, Okay,
(10:52):
final rule of pyramids and maybe the most important. From
his happy perch high up on the pyramid, Charles Cheryl
con trucks the following syllogism. If we are really happy
with things just as they are, then what do we
make of those at the very top responsible for keeping
things just as they are? We like them a lot.
(11:16):
Charles Cheryl's great literary accomplishment, Apart from the books he
wrote about Stained Glass was an ambitious work of history.
He told the story of Otto von Bismarck, the nineteenth
century strong man who unified Germany. Bismarck was a master strategist,
steely character, enormous, bushy eyebrows, a furious mustache, a jaw
(11:39):
chiseled from the finest Bavarian granite, a row of medals
on his crisply starched tunic. They called him the Iron Chancellor,
and in his treatise Cheryl compared Bismarck with his other
great man crush, the Italian strong man Benito Mussolini Ilduchack
(12:00):
vor of modern fascism. Cheryl admired Bismarck, but Mussolini, for
Il Ducce he had true passion. In the course of
his research, he would visit Mussolini in his massive office.
As he would write, it is a fashion for writers
upon Mussolini to describe this lofty room, devoid of all decoration,
(12:21):
as an entirely appropriate background for this forthright statesman. Possibly
they are right, but I see a wider, bolder background
for him. Il Ducjay would come striding over, and Cheryl's
heart would go all a flutter looking back on the memory,
He wrote, if he has known you several years, the
(12:44):
greeting is pleasingly cordial, his caesar like features lighting up,
and those piercing eyes softening into friendliness, and then a
good manly handscheck. Was Cheryl's Bismarck and Mussolini a good book?
Probably not. It got a three sentence review in the
(13:05):
American Journal of Sociology, ending with the line Cheryl's special
field of competence would appear to be handling and assessing
columns of marching men. A lesser man would be crippled
by a sentence like that, but not Charles Cheryl. Because
when Cheryl sent Mussolini his book, Il Ducce liked it
(13:26):
so much he gave Cheryl the highest of all Italian
military and civilian honors. He made him a Knight Grand
Cross of the Order of the Crown of Italy, a
gold star, plus a striking right shoulder sash. Mussolini sent
it in a box to New York, where it arrived
in time for Cheryl's twenty fifth wedding anniversary, a dinner
(13:50):
at the Pier Hotel with one hundred and forty two guests,
where the honor was pinned on Cheryl's chest by the
Italian Consul General in the presence of the French, Argentine,
Spanish and Cuban ambassadors and Dutch, Swedish, Greek and Czechoslovak ministers.
A guess list that all of us have dreamt about
(14:11):
for our twenty fifth wedding anniversary. Let the assistant professors
of sociology write what they choose about the book. Our
hero was now a Knight of the Grand Cross of
the Order of the Crown of Italy. Now think back
(14:32):
to Dorothy Thompson, America's most celebrated foreign correspondent, who famously
interviews Hitler in nineteen thirty one when he is on
the cusp of power. Thompson's day job is not a
lot different from Cheryl's. As part of his diplomatic duties
or his role at the IOC, Cheryl goes around Europe
meeting with heads of state and aristocrats. As a foreign correspondent,
(14:56):
Thompson does the same thing. I'm sure they meet some
of the same people, but she's not at the top
of the pyramid. She was raised by a struggling preacher.
Her mother died when Thompson was a child. Her life
experiences haven't made her comfortable with power or left her
thinking that the world is just fine the way it is.
Quite the opposite. When Thompson got out of college, she
(15:19):
immediately threw herself into the suffrage movement. She spent three
years on that fight, and when it finally looked like
women might get the vote, she decides, I want to
find the next fight, and she buys a ticket on
an ocean liner, and.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
Then she landed in Europe just as fascism was starting
to build.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
The historian Sarah Church, well.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
It's actually important that we all remember that that fascism
was by no means a German phenomenon, especially in the
nineteen twenties, or uniquely certainly not a uniquely German phenomenon.
And in the twenties it's Mussolini. Well, of course gives
it its name. So Thompson traveled to Italy. She encountered
Italian fascists. She was educating herself about Italian and European fascism.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
She marries a Jew, a Hungarian writer, a radical. She
meets his crowd, artists, writers, outsiders.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
This was an experience, a relationship that opened her eyes
and her understanding to political conversations in Eastern Europe around
the rising tensions and all of the volatility of the
European political situation at that time. So by the time
Hitler came into power in nineteen thirty three, she'd spent
(16:30):
a decade becoming an, you know, pretty expert. Certainly for
an American, she probably had a more nuanced understanding than
virtually any other American of her generation, because she'd spent
the best part of that decade living among Europeans who
were breathing and debating and arguing and figuring out what
these new fascist movements were going to mean.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
But I was care, I want to go back to
the thing about she starts with the suffrage movement, and
I wondered whether that experience kind of permanently sensitizes you
to the kind of the plight of the powerless in
a certain way, Like, I might be really hard to
(17:13):
be pro fascist if you spent your early twenties fighting
for women suffrage, don't you think?
Speaker 4 (17:18):
Yeah? Absolutely so. She certainly she had a strong sense
of sympathy and identification with people who saw themselves as
being an oppressed class and oppressed minority.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
The point is that when Dorothy Thompson thinks of Mussolini,
it is not to remark on his manly handshake and
piercing eyes. And when she goes to see Hitler, she
doesn't defer to him just because he's on the cusp
of running Germany. She sees him for what he is,
an angry, vicious demagogue. But if you are Charles Cheryl
(17:52):
looking at that same man, what do you see? You
see someone very different. In the summer of nineteen thirty five,
the deal to save the Games that Cheryl had hammered
(18:14):
out in Vienna two years before is imperiled. The Germans
had promised to keep their Olympic team open to Jewish athletes,
but Nazi anti Semitism is accelerating and people around the
world are threatening again to boycott the games. Cheryl is
worried that his diplomatic master stroke will come to nothing.
(18:36):
He knows he has to act, and now he sees
the mistake he made back in Vienna he dealt with underlings.
He realizes it's time to confront Herr Hitler himself. Does
he go through Putsy Hitler's wagner playing Harvard trained pr men.
Probably Putsy was always the point of entry for Americans
(18:59):
want again audience with her Hitler. If Charles Cheryl had
lived to see how things turned out with the Nazis,
he would have edited his papers, particularly the Chief Offender
scrap Book thirty five, that he would have buried in
the back yard of his estate in the Hamptons, along
with his Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the
Crown of Italy. That's what people like Charles Cheryl did
(19:22):
after the war, cleaned house. But Charles Cheryl died too soon,
and so there remains in the archives of the New
York Historical Society a love letter in seven doubles based
type pages. His Excellency, reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler received me
(19:43):
at noon August twenty fourth, nineteen thirty five in his
own private Munich residence. Let me, first of all, frankly
confess that this will not prove a journalistic interview with
Germany's chief of state. It merely narrates a foreigner's visit
to an undeniably great leader. As a gift, Cheryl brings
(20:05):
Hitler two of his books, his treatise on German Stained
Glass Windows, and of course his master work comparing Mussolini
and Bismarck. Then they talked man to man for an
hour and ten minutes. He wrote, I was immediately struck
(20:26):
by the fact that Hitler deliberately chose the seat facing
the window and its bright sunlight. When in nineteen twenty
one I talked with fifteen European prime ministers plus four
presidents and two years later nine kings, none of them
did this, nor have any leading statesman I have since
then met Charles Cheryl had nothing but respect for a
(20:48):
man unafraid to sit facing the window he goes on.
His photographers do him grave injustice in two Guards. They
do not show enough the strength of his upper head
above the expressive eyes, and give no hint of the
engaging human being he can be when he wants to be.
(21:11):
Dorothy Thompson, remember, looked into those same eyes and found
the peculiar shine which often distinguishes Genius's alcoholics and hysterics.
It's like they're meeting a different man. Thompson found Hitler formless, cartilaginous,
ill poised, and insecure, but Cheryl finds himself drawn to
(21:32):
Hitler's famously short mustache. It's not like Cheryl's mustache, which
of course is full and luxuriant and suggestive of all
manner of daring and panash. But something this concise yet
emphatic for the fur totally works. It suits Hitler's face
while speaking, because revealing all of the expression around the mouth.
(21:58):
Welcome to the top of the pyramid, my little mustachioed friend.
So what do the two men talk about? Here's Cheryl again.
Because I am a member of the International Olympic Committee,
we naturally spoke of our nineteen thirty six games schedule
for Berlin. In these he expressed keen interest. Then Cheryl
(22:22):
brings up what he calls the unfortunate Jewish question. Not
the Nazis' anti Semitic policies writ large, of course, but
the annoying controversy over Jews of the German Olympic team
and how it's threatening to derail the games. Cheryl has
a proposal for Hitler, a simple way to calm the
waters back in the United States. Just put a Jew
(22:46):
on the Olympic team. One will do. Cheryl even has
someone in mind, a fencer named Helene Mayer. Mayor is
German and living in Los Angeles. She's one of the
greatest fencers of all time. Technically she's only half Jewish
since her mom is a proper Arian. Cheryl thinks that
fact will help persuade Hitler. Plus mayor is blonde and
(23:07):
blue eyed and really looks the part. Hitler pushes back,
so Cheryl brings up the Vienna Declaration that it hammered
out two years previously at the Hotel Imperial Germany's agreement
in principle not to exclude Jews. Hitler says he's never
heard of the Vienna deal. Cheryl is shocked, what how
(23:28):
is that even possible? He doubles down. Hitler responds, German
sports are for arians only. Cheryl comes at him again.
It's back and forth, back and forth. Later, in a
note to Frank and Roosevelt's private secretary, Cheryl describes the
scene my book. Bismarck and Mussolini lay before him, and
(23:49):
he faced a fine limback portrait of Bismarck. It was
a last chance, so I went right at him with
a question, what would Bismarck, master of foreigner's psychology do today?
He was polite but showed nothing. Had My appeal won
no sign. Two titans duking it out at the top
(24:12):
of the pyramid. Mustache to mustache. It was dreadful nerve
for me to tackle him in his own Munich home.
But I am only a private citizen and he can't
eat me. Cheryl leaves the meeting, has his bold gambit worked,
daring her Hitler to put himself in autovon Bismarck's shoes
(24:33):
WWBD What would Bismarck do? Cheryl dashes off a letter
to his friend by latour. Prepare yourself, he says, for
the very real possibility that all of my brilliant diplomatic
stratagems in Vienna two years ago have come to Nod,
please speak to him. Cheryl pleads, we need Hitler to
(24:55):
compromise for the sake of the games. He writes, It
will be a trying test for even your remarkable tact
in Savo Affaire, and the sooner you meet the situation,
the better the hope for your success instead of a
destructive explosion. Did our hero endure a sleepless night in
(25:20):
his agonies? Did he turn the essential question on himself?
W w b D. What would Bismarck do if, say,
Mussolini renegged on an agreement, but then he gets a
note in the mail. It's there in the famous scrap
book thirty five, a little embossed card inviting him to
the Nuremberg Rally in mid September, the annual propaganda festival
(25:45):
put on by the Nazi Party. I'm sure you've seen
film clips, thousands of soldiers marching in lockstep, chanting Hyle Hitler.
Cheryl lives for moments such as these. Remember, even the
American Journal of Sociology has noted his taste when it
comes to columns of marching men. So he accepts the
(26:05):
invitation from the Nazi Party. He packs an overnight bag.
They offer him a ride on Hitler's train.
Speaker 5 (26:11):
He says yes, And then in his scrap book there
then follows many pages of press coverage Schwastika's Nazi propaganda
that he collected.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Mccullague bend Adaf Haffrey reporting on what he found in
Cheryl's papers at the New York Historical Society.
Speaker 5 (26:31):
There's an amazing photo of him at the Nuremberg Rally
at some official events surrounding it, with all these medals
on his tuxedo jacket, sort of gazing up at the
ceiling in awe, because you imagine he's in some vast
hall surrounded by just they look, there's such prototypical Nazis.
So it's just this man kind of daphly wandering around
(26:55):
this grand hall, surrounded by these deeply evil people, and
completely unaware of the historical significance of what he's witnessing,
other than that it's a very important event and therefore
must be prepared for his scrapbook.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
The nineteen thirty five Nuremberg rally is where Hitler announced
the so called Blood Laws, outlawing marriage between Arians and
Jews and stripping German Jews of their citizenship. It was
the clearest articulation yet of the Nazis' murderous anti Semitism,
and for many Americans, Nuremberg put the conundrum of the
games into sharp focus. If that's who these people are,
(27:35):
can we really go there? But that's not how Cheryl
sees it.
Speaker 5 (27:40):
So what does he do at the Nuremberg rally? He
collects signatures he and his scrap book has autographs from
people he met at the Nuremberg rallies that are scrawled
on this one of the brochures from it, describing what's
going to happen on September in nineteen thirty five and
(28:01):
then there's all these pencil signatures from what I can
only assume it's prominent members of the party.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
He's fan blowing the Nazi Party.
Speaker 5 (28:09):
It's but it's like that, yeah, he's he was not
even Yeah. I don't think that Charles Cheryl would approve
of a campaign to exterminate the Jews. I think he
all he can recognize is force, wilfulness and power, and
so he understands that this will be a good one
for the scrap book or the after dinner toast. But
there's something about that the autographs thing I found very
(28:33):
It's it's really chilling, and there's like, is there has
to be a it's it feels like a different category
than the banality of evil. It's like the there there,
we have to invent a new term for the relationship.
Charles Cheryl bears to this evil.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
I'm with you. He's so, he's he's got he's just
he's just, he's he's just unbelievable. At the end, a
top Nazi official pulls him and tells him her, Cheryl,
we have good news for you. We are inviting the
half Jew Helene Mayer to join the German Olympic team.
Mission accomplished, he sails for home on the S S. Normandy,
(29:16):
the largest and fastest passenger ship of its day. He
steps off the boat and is mobbed by reporters. I
am more convinced than ever that America should take part
in the Olympics, he says, and I'm probably the best
friend the Jews have in America. Then he makes a threat.
(29:37):
I'm not here to stop any antisemitic waves, but I
warn of the danger of such a development. If five
million Jews in the United States can make one hundred
and twenty five million Americans pull the chestnuts out of
the fire for the Jews in Germany, Jews Cheryl is
(29:58):
saying shouldn't complain about anti Semitism because that will cause
anti Semitism. Besides, having not given you exactly what she wanted.
Helene Mayer a brilliant fencer and a Jewish, or at
least the daughter of a Jew, which ought to count
for something. Right, aren't you happy now? Charles Cheryl chose
(30:19):
to resolve the dilemma of the pure competition in an
impure place by layering a flimsy piece of wallpaper over
the menace that was the Nazi regime and hoping no
one will look underneath. Remember Dorothy Thompson's taxonomy of who
goes Nazi? Mister b It's like she was writing with
(30:40):
Charles Cheryl in mind. His code is not his own,
it is that of his class. No worse, no better.
He fits easily into whatever pattern is successful. That is
his sole measure of value. Success. Nazism as a minority
movement would not attract him. As a movement likely to
(31:00):
attain power, it would. He goes home to his Manhattan townhouse,
rests his weary head in triumph, and a week later
takes the stage at the Advertising Club of New York City,
where he will say.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
I have led the happiest life of anybody you ever
met in your life.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Charles Cheryl will not live to see the Berlin Olympics.
He will die of a heart attack at his Paris
townhouse the following June, a few weeks before the spectacle
of the opening ceremonies in Berlin. That is a shame.
Few would have enjoyed that bit of fascist pageantry more
than Charles Hitchcock Cheryl. So the Advertising Club speech is
(31:59):
really the last time we will see him in his element,
and he has a message for the world that day.
It's about the Jews. They are violating the rules of
the pyramid. People are supposed to be nice to each other.
People are supposed to accept the world as it is,
be glad for it. People at the bottom are supposed
(32:20):
to stay out of sight, and everyone should revere the
people at the top. But ever since he stepped off
the normandy and said that bit about how Jews shouldn't
really complain about antisemitism because that will cause antisemitism, people
had been mean to him. This is what he wanted
to tell the August members of the Advertising Club of
(32:42):
New York. He has been wronged.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
After all my years of arding a square deal for Jews.
They called me andy Jewish. Many questions have been asked
me by telephone a letter about the type of communication
that have been coming in since my arrival from abroad
(33:09):
ten days ago. In the first place, almost all the
Jewish letters, I'm sorry to say, have been either abusive
or threatening.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
He goes on and on. He is aggrieved, heavy hangs
the head, the worse the crown.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
This force is me, and I say it with deef emotion.
So there's this from those friendly efforts in the future.
But neither that incident nor the torrent of Jewish abuse
recently poured upon me can succeed in making me Auntie Jules.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
He doesn't hate the Jews, he's trying to say, but
he will not stand with them again because his feelings
have been hurt. And then our wounded lion raises his
heavy head and says.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Enough, everybody has a perfect right to have an opinion
on this much discussed question. But now that decision to
go to Berlin has been definitely made by the only
American group having the right of decision.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
That would be people like Charles Hitchcock Cheryl, the people
at the top of the pyramid.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
It would be well to remember General Grant saying the
close of our civil war, let us have tea.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
And with that the room rises in loud agreement on
to Berlin.
Speaker 6 (34:37):
General cherfls, you have quickened our democratic faith by telling
us of that global international democracy, the Olympic Gay and
let us run with patients. The race that is set.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Before religion's history is produced by ben Na daph Haffrey,
Tolly Emlin and Nina Bird Lawrence. Our editor is Sarah Nix.
(35:12):
Fact checking by Arthur Gomperts and JAYL Goldfein. Original scoring
by Luis Garra, mastering by Flawan Williams, Sarah Buger and
Jake Gorsky. Engineering by Nina Bird Lawrence. Our executive producer
is Jacob Smith. Special thanks to Karen Chakerji. I'm Malcolm
(35:33):
Gladwell
Pushkin October thirty first, nineteen thirty five, Park Avenue, mid Taiminhattan.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
A great two friends from the Advertising Club of New
York City and present another interesting luncheon meeting of this organization.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
The meal is served grilled Boston squad with Chris bacon
or breaded vealsteak Vienna style, followed by old fashioned strawberry shortcack.
The plates are cleared away. The president of the club
introduces the head table, a long row of distinguished gentleman,
and then the agenda of the day.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
The Olympics to be held in Germany in nineteen thirty six.
Forgetting the thought of every nation the world over, it
seemed fitting then that we should go to our guest
of the day.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
He gestures to a man sitting next to him with
a fabulous, thriving mustache, Charles Hitchcock Cheryl.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Why do we call on General Cheryl? First of all,
he's an athlete himself. He's probably the only man who
won seven intercillegiate championships while attending jail.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
He lists Cheryl's many accomplishments, his time as a diplomat,
his training as a lawyer, his service in the New
York National guard.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Probably, though I should emphasize above everything else, the fact
that for fifteen years he's been a member of the
American Olympic Committee, in a nice little Olympic committee, and
we've asked him to come here to clear up the
fall which some feel exists about this nineteen thirty six
(02:13):
Olympic situation.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
And there is no better man to clear up this
Olympic situation than Charles Hitchcock. Cheryl, of course, he opens
his Advertising Club talk with a joke.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Your president has spoken as though I was dead and
in a coffin, and he was speaking at the funeral.
He left out what I think is the most important
thing that he put and that is that I have
led the happiest life of anybody you ever met in
your life.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
He beams, He looks around happily, his eyes twinkle. This
is his kind of room. He launches into a brief
and modest account of his sprinting accomplishments at Yale. He
speaks of his key role in the invention of the
crouching start on how the press love to talk about it.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
I have a wife at pome So, sir, you've getched
the myathletic path. She says, why is it that whenever
you achieve anything, they must sprint half naked pictures of you?
Speaker 1 (03:29):
And then Charles Cheryl tells the assembled group the story
of how he has rescued the Olympic Games from the
doubters and the naysayers, not once, but twice. Welcome to
episode three of Hitler's Olympics, our story about the nineteen
thirty six Games, the most important games in the history
(03:51):
of the Olympics. In the previous installment, we met our
would be hero, Charles Cheryl, who single handedly broken the
deal in Vienna, promise that he believed would save the
nineteen thirty six Olympics, a promise from the Nazis not
to exclude Jewish athletes from the Games. But now the
(04:11):
deal is imperiled, there are renewed calls for an Olympic boycott,
and our hero has been compelled once again to come
to the rescue. All human societies organize themselves into a pyramid,
with ordinary people at the bottom and elites at the top.
(04:35):
And the crucial thing about the world Charles Cheryl grew
up in America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century,
is at the top of the pyramid is really really small.
It's a pinprick. It's basically rich white men. And if
you were all so handsome and a fraternity brother from Yale,
so much the better. Charles Cheryl was all those things.
(04:58):
He was at the very apex of the pinbrick. And
right from the beginning what distinguished Charles Cheryl was his
intuitive understanding of the rules that governed the top of
the pyramid, like, for example, never say a discouraging word
about another person in that tiny group at the very
very top. I'm reading to you now from Cheryl's unpublished memoirs,
(05:21):
where he recounts the story of the time he was
part of a group visiting the White House and presented
the first Lady, Grace Coolidge, with a bouquet of roses
that had been named in her honor. I did this,
Cheryl writes, with the comment that the presentation of coolidge
roses to missus Coolidge was but holding the mirror up
(05:42):
to nature. She replied, not exactly, because the roses are blondes,
and I am a brunette. Ernest cafalis all round. Rule
number two. If you are outside this type, little sir,
at the top of the pyramid, Charles Cheryl doesn't see you.
(06:04):
This is a crucial point. There is a certain kind
of racist who is racist because he or she harbors
an obsession with the other. In the Jim Crow South,
for example, swimming pools were segregated because white people didn't
want to share the same water as black people. The
idea that something might wash off black skin and linger
in the water gross them out. It kept them up
(06:27):
at night. It was visceral. That's not Charles Cheryl. He
has plenty of black people in his life. They work
in the kitchen, they take his coat, but the thought
that he is sharing his Manhattan townhouse with them does
not keep him up at night. He has arranged his
life so that he doesn't have to think about them
at all. So when it comes to the nineteen thirty
(06:49):
six Olympics and Jews in Germany, you might be wondering,
is Cheryl a n anti Semite? Well not like Hitler
was an anti Semite. Hitler got all worked up about Jews.
People like Cheryl, on the other hand, kept their voices down.
What is the attitude of these this kind of person
(07:10):
in this era towards Jews.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Let's see where to begin.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Nick Lemon historian.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
So you're really talking about these sort of upper patrician classes, right.
So typically these people lived inside a series of institutions
that were quote unquote restricted, which meant, you know, in
the broadest sense, only gentlemen could be in them, and
(07:40):
in this specific sense usually meant no Jews. So this
would apply to you know, private clubs, neighborhoods that often
had deed restrictions that you know, no Jews could live there.
You know, very very often workplaces had rules against Jews
who's being hired. It was understood that Jews weren't allowed
(08:04):
in this world of sort of upper class gentlemen and ladies.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
People in Cheryl's class arranged their lives so that they
didn't have to deal with Jews.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
And I think they would have thought, you know, Jews,
or course, they're vulgar, they're not gentlemanly, they think about
money all the time, things like that.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
But they didn't think of Jews. To use one of
Hitler's favorite words, as Vermin. Cheryl's great friend on the
International Olympic Committee was the group's president, the Belgian count
unreaded by La Tour. Remember Latour's wife was the one
who wrote Hitler a thank you note when he invaded Belgium.
(08:48):
Now she wouldn't call herself a Nazi. She would say
that sending a thank you note to your invaders upon
the occasion of your country's invasion was just good manners,
like sending a bud cake to the family that moves
into the mansion across the street. The Count, meanwhile, once
said of Jews in a letter to a friend that
he wasn't fond of them. He wrote, the Jews usually
(09:12):
quote shout before there is reason to do so. The Jews,
in the view of the cultured men of the European aristocracy,
were annoying and vulgar and a little bit exasperating. But
the Count was quite clear that you couldn't ban Jews
from the Olympics. Just because a particular race was annoying
(09:33):
and vulgar didn't mean that they couldn't participate in say
the long Job. People like bay Latour and Charles Cheryl
liked Jews in theory, but just not in practice, in
contrast to the Nazis, who didn't like Jews in practice
or in theory. In nineteen thirty five, that distinction seemed important.
(09:58):
Oh Ru three from the top of the pyramid. Remember
when we said in the last episode that another of
the people Cheryl reminds us of is Candide's pangloss, the
man who believes that all is necessarily for the best end. Essentially,
everything happens for a reason, and a good reason at that.
(10:19):
I mean, how could it not when you're living a
life like Charles Hitchcock Cheryl.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
I have led the happiest life of anybody you ever
met in your life.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
That's not just a statement of character and disposition, It's
an ideological belief. He looks around at those who would
question the status quo, radicals, communists, suffragette's Jews, and he says,
what are you complaining about? From where I sit at
the top of the pyramid, the view is pretty great, Okay,
(10:52):
final rule of pyramids and maybe the most important. From
his happy perch high up on the pyramid, Charles Cheryl
con trucks the following syllogism. If we are really happy
with things just as they are, then what do we
make of those at the very top responsible for keeping
things just as they are? We like them a lot.
(11:16):
Charles Cheryl's great literary accomplishment, Apart from the books he
wrote about Stained Glass was an ambitious work of history.
He told the story of Otto von Bismarck, the nineteenth
century strong man who unified Germany. Bismarck was a master strategist,
steely character, enormous, bushy eyebrows, a furious mustache, a jaw
(11:39):
chiseled from the finest Bavarian granite, a row of medals
on his crisply starched tunic. They called him the Iron Chancellor,
and in his treatise Cheryl compared Bismarck with his other
great man crush, the Italian strong man Benito Mussolini Ilduchack
(12:00):
vor of modern fascism. Cheryl admired Bismarck, but Mussolini, for
Il Ducce he had true passion. In the course of
his research, he would visit Mussolini in his massive office.
As he would write, it is a fashion for writers
upon Mussolini to describe this lofty room, devoid of all decoration,
(12:21):
as an entirely appropriate background for this forthright statesman. Possibly
they are right, but I see a wider, bolder background
for him. Il Ducjay would come striding over, and Cheryl's
heart would go all a flutter looking back on the memory,
He wrote, if he has known you several years, the
(12:44):
greeting is pleasingly cordial, his caesar like features lighting up,
and those piercing eyes softening into friendliness, and then a
good manly handscheck. Was Cheryl's Bismarck and Mussolini a good book?
Probably not. It got a three sentence review in the
(13:05):
American Journal of Sociology, ending with the line Cheryl's special
field of competence would appear to be handling and assessing
columns of marching men. A lesser man would be crippled
by a sentence like that, but not Charles Cheryl. Because
when Cheryl sent Mussolini his book, Il Ducce liked it
(13:26):
so much he gave Cheryl the highest of all Italian
military and civilian honors. He made him a Knight Grand
Cross of the Order of the Crown of Italy, a
gold star, plus a striking right shoulder sash. Mussolini sent
it in a box to New York, where it arrived
in time for Cheryl's twenty fifth wedding anniversary, a dinner
(13:50):
at the Pier Hotel with one hundred and forty two guests,
where the honor was pinned on Cheryl's chest by the
Italian Consul General in the presence of the French, Argentine,
Spanish and Cuban ambassadors and Dutch, Swedish, Greek and Czechoslovak ministers.
A guess list that all of us have dreamt about
(14:11):
for our twenty fifth wedding anniversary. Let the assistant professors
of sociology write what they choose about the book. Our
hero was now a Knight of the Grand Cross of
the Order of the Crown of Italy. Now think back
(14:32):
to Dorothy Thompson, America's most celebrated foreign correspondent, who famously
interviews Hitler in nineteen thirty one when he is on
the cusp of power. Thompson's day job is not a
lot different from Cheryl's. As part of his diplomatic duties
or his role at the IOC, Cheryl goes around Europe
meeting with heads of state and aristocrats. As a foreign correspondent,
(14:56):
Thompson does the same thing. I'm sure they meet some
of the same people, but she's not at the top
of the pyramid. She was raised by a struggling preacher.
Her mother died when Thompson was a child. Her life
experiences haven't made her comfortable with power or left her
thinking that the world is just fine the way it is.
Quite the opposite. When Thompson got out of college, she
(15:19):
immediately threw herself into the suffrage movement. She spent three
years on that fight, and when it finally looked like
women might get the vote, she decides, I want to
find the next fight, and she buys a ticket on
an ocean liner, and.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
Then she landed in Europe just as fascism was starting
to build.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
The historian Sarah Church, well.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
It's actually important that we all remember that that fascism
was by no means a German phenomenon, especially in the
nineteen twenties, or uniquely certainly not a uniquely German phenomenon.
And in the twenties it's Mussolini. Well, of course gives
it its name. So Thompson traveled to Italy. She encountered
Italian fascists. She was educating herself about Italian and European fascism.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
She marries a Jew, a Hungarian writer, a radical. She
meets his crowd, artists, writers, outsiders.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
This was an experience, a relationship that opened her eyes
and her understanding to political conversations in Eastern Europe around
the rising tensions and all of the volatility of the
European political situation at that time. So by the time
Hitler came into power in nineteen thirty three, she'd spent
(16:30):
a decade becoming an, you know, pretty expert. Certainly for
an American, she probably had a more nuanced understanding than
virtually any other American of her generation, because she'd spent
the best part of that decade living among Europeans who
were breathing and debating and arguing and figuring out what
these new fascist movements were going to mean.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
But I was care, I want to go back to
the thing about she starts with the suffrage movement, and
I wondered whether that experience kind of permanently sensitizes you
to the kind of the plight of the powerless in
a certain way, Like, I might be really hard to
(17:13):
be pro fascist if you spent your early twenties fighting
for women suffrage, don't you think?
Speaker 4 (17:18):
Yeah? Absolutely so. She certainly she had a strong sense
of sympathy and identification with people who saw themselves as
being an oppressed class and oppressed minority.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
The point is that when Dorothy Thompson thinks of Mussolini,
it is not to remark on his manly handshake and
piercing eyes. And when she goes to see Hitler, she
doesn't defer to him just because he's on the cusp
of running Germany. She sees him for what he is,
an angry, vicious demagogue. But if you are Charles Cheryl
(17:52):
looking at that same man, what do you see? You
see someone very different. In the summer of nineteen thirty five,
the deal to save the Games that Cheryl had hammered
(18:14):
out in Vienna two years before is imperiled. The Germans
had promised to keep their Olympic team open to Jewish athletes,
but Nazi anti Semitism is accelerating and people around the
world are threatening again to boycott the games. Cheryl is
worried that his diplomatic master stroke will come to nothing.
(18:36):
He knows he has to act, and now he sees
the mistake he made back in Vienna he dealt with underlings.
He realizes it's time to confront Herr Hitler himself. Does
he go through Putsy Hitler's wagner playing Harvard trained pr men.
Probably Putsy was always the point of entry for Americans
(18:59):
want again audience with her Hitler. If Charles Cheryl had
lived to see how things turned out with the Nazis,
he would have edited his papers, particularly the Chief Offender
scrap Book thirty five, that he would have buried in
the back yard of his estate in the Hamptons, along
with his Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the
Crown of Italy. That's what people like Charles Cheryl did
(19:22):
after the war, cleaned house. But Charles Cheryl died too soon,
and so there remains in the archives of the New
York Historical Society a love letter in seven doubles based
type pages. His Excellency, reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler received me
(19:43):
at noon August twenty fourth, nineteen thirty five in his
own private Munich residence. Let me, first of all, frankly
confess that this will not prove a journalistic interview with
Germany's chief of state. It merely narrates a foreigner's visit
to an undeniably great leader. As a gift, Cheryl brings
(20:05):
Hitler two of his books, his treatise on German Stained
Glass Windows, and of course his master work comparing Mussolini
and Bismarck. Then they talked man to man for an
hour and ten minutes. He wrote, I was immediately struck
(20:26):
by the fact that Hitler deliberately chose the seat facing
the window and its bright sunlight. When in nineteen twenty
one I talked with fifteen European prime ministers plus four
presidents and two years later nine kings, none of them
did this, nor have any leading statesman I have since
then met Charles Cheryl had nothing but respect for a
(20:48):
man unafraid to sit facing the window he goes on.
His photographers do him grave injustice in two Guards. They
do not show enough the strength of his upper head
above the expressive eyes, and give no hint of the
engaging human being he can be when he wants to be.
(21:11):
Dorothy Thompson, remember, looked into those same eyes and found
the peculiar shine which often distinguishes Genius's alcoholics and hysterics.
It's like they're meeting a different man. Thompson found Hitler formless, cartilaginous,
ill poised, and insecure, but Cheryl finds himself drawn to
(21:32):
Hitler's famously short mustache. It's not like Cheryl's mustache, which
of course is full and luxuriant and suggestive of all
manner of daring and panash. But something this concise yet
emphatic for the fur totally works. It suits Hitler's face
while speaking, because revealing all of the expression around the mouth.
(21:58):
Welcome to the top of the pyramid, my little mustachioed friend.
So what do the two men talk about? Here's Cheryl again.
Because I am a member of the International Olympic Committee,
we naturally spoke of our nineteen thirty six games schedule
for Berlin. In these he expressed keen interest. Then Cheryl
(22:22):
brings up what he calls the unfortunate Jewish question. Not
the Nazis' anti Semitic policies writ large, of course, but
the annoying controversy over Jews of the German Olympic team
and how it's threatening to derail the games. Cheryl has
a proposal for Hitler, a simple way to calm the
waters back in the United States. Just put a Jew
(22:46):
on the Olympic team. One will do. Cheryl even has
someone in mind, a fencer named Helene Mayer. Mayor is
German and living in Los Angeles. She's one of the
greatest fencers of all time. Technically she's only half Jewish
since her mom is a proper Arian. Cheryl thinks that
fact will help persuade Hitler. Plus mayor is blonde and
(23:07):
blue eyed and really looks the part. Hitler pushes back,
so Cheryl brings up the Vienna Declaration that it hammered
out two years previously at the Hotel Imperial Germany's agreement
in principle not to exclude Jews. Hitler says he's never
heard of the Vienna deal. Cheryl is shocked, what how
(23:28):
is that even possible? He doubles down. Hitler responds, German
sports are for arians only. Cheryl comes at him again.
It's back and forth, back and forth. Later, in a
note to Frank and Roosevelt's private secretary, Cheryl describes the
scene my book. Bismarck and Mussolini lay before him, and
(23:49):
he faced a fine limback portrait of Bismarck. It was
a last chance, so I went right at him with
a question, what would Bismarck, master of foreigner's psychology do today?
He was polite but showed nothing. Had My appeal won
no sign. Two titans duking it out at the top
(24:12):
of the pyramid. Mustache to mustache. It was dreadful nerve
for me to tackle him in his own Munich home.
But I am only a private citizen and he can't
eat me. Cheryl leaves the meeting, has his bold gambit worked,
daring her Hitler to put himself in autovon Bismarck's shoes
(24:33):
WWBD What would Bismarck do? Cheryl dashes off a letter
to his friend by latour. Prepare yourself, he says, for
the very real possibility that all of my brilliant diplomatic
stratagems in Vienna two years ago have come to Nod,
please speak to him. Cheryl pleads, we need Hitler to
(24:55):
compromise for the sake of the games. He writes, It
will be a trying test for even your remarkable tact
in Savo Affaire, and the sooner you meet the situation,
the better the hope for your success instead of a
destructive explosion. Did our hero endure a sleepless night in
(25:20):
his agonies? Did he turn the essential question on himself?
W w b D. What would Bismarck do if, say,
Mussolini renegged on an agreement, but then he gets a
note in the mail. It's there in the famous scrap
book thirty five, a little embossed card inviting him to
the Nuremberg Rally in mid September, the annual propaganda festival
(25:45):
put on by the Nazi Party. I'm sure you've seen
film clips, thousands of soldiers marching in lockstep, chanting Hyle Hitler.
Cheryl lives for moments such as these. Remember, even the
American Journal of Sociology has noted his taste when it
comes to columns of marching men. So he accepts the
(26:05):
invitation from the Nazi Party. He packs an overnight bag.
They offer him a ride on Hitler's train.
Speaker 5 (26:11):
He says yes, And then in his scrap book there
then follows many pages of press coverage Schwastika's Nazi propaganda
that he collected.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Mccullague bend Adaf Haffrey reporting on what he found in
Cheryl's papers at the New York Historical Society.
Speaker 5 (26:31):
There's an amazing photo of him at the Nuremberg Rally
at some official events surrounding it, with all these medals
on his tuxedo jacket, sort of gazing up at the
ceiling in awe, because you imagine he's in some vast
hall surrounded by just they look, there's such prototypical Nazis.
So it's just this man kind of daphly wandering around
(26:55):
this grand hall, surrounded by these deeply evil people, and
completely unaware of the historical significance of what he's witnessing,
other than that it's a very important event and therefore
must be prepared for his scrapbook.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
The nineteen thirty five Nuremberg rally is where Hitler announced
the so called Blood Laws, outlawing marriage between Arians and
Jews and stripping German Jews of their citizenship. It was
the clearest articulation yet of the Nazis' murderous anti Semitism,
and for many Americans, Nuremberg put the conundrum of the
games into sharp focus. If that's who these people are,
(27:35):
can we really go there? But that's not how Cheryl
sees it.
Speaker 5 (27:40):
So what does he do at the Nuremberg rally? He
collects signatures he and his scrap book has autographs from
people he met at the Nuremberg rallies that are scrawled
on this one of the brochures from it, describing what's
going to happen on September in nineteen thirty five and
(28:01):
then there's all these pencil signatures from what I can
only assume it's prominent members of the party.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
He's fan blowing the Nazi Party.
Speaker 5 (28:09):
It's but it's like that, yeah, he's he was not
even Yeah. I don't think that Charles Cheryl would approve
of a campaign to exterminate the Jews. I think he
all he can recognize is force, wilfulness and power, and
so he understands that this will be a good one
for the scrap book or the after dinner toast. But
there's something about that the autographs thing I found very
(28:33):
It's it's really chilling, and there's like, is there has
to be a it's it feels like a different category
than the banality of evil. It's like the there there,
we have to invent a new term for the relationship.
Charles Cheryl bears to this evil.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
I'm with you. He's so, he's he's got he's just
he's just, he's he's just unbelievable. At the end, a
top Nazi official pulls him and tells him her, Cheryl,
we have good news for you. We are inviting the
half Jew Helene Mayer to join the German Olympic team.
Mission accomplished, he sails for home on the S S. Normandy,
(29:16):
the largest and fastest passenger ship of its day. He
steps off the boat and is mobbed by reporters. I
am more convinced than ever that America should take part
in the Olympics, he says, and I'm probably the best
friend the Jews have in America. Then he makes a threat.
(29:37):
I'm not here to stop any antisemitic waves, but I
warn of the danger of such a development. If five
million Jews in the United States can make one hundred
and twenty five million Americans pull the chestnuts out of
the fire for the Jews in Germany, Jews Cheryl is
(29:58):
saying shouldn't complain about anti Semitism because that will cause
anti Semitism. Besides, having not given you exactly what she wanted.
Helene Mayer a brilliant fencer and a Jewish, or at
least the daughter of a Jew, which ought to count
for something. Right, aren't you happy now? Charles Cheryl chose
(30:19):
to resolve the dilemma of the pure competition in an
impure place by layering a flimsy piece of wallpaper over
the menace that was the Nazi regime and hoping no
one will look underneath. Remember Dorothy Thompson's taxonomy of who
goes Nazi? Mister b It's like she was writing with
(30:40):
Charles Cheryl in mind. His code is not his own,
it is that of his class. No worse, no better.
He fits easily into whatever pattern is successful. That is
his sole measure of value. Success. Nazism as a minority
movement would not attract him. As a movement likely to
(31:00):
attain power, it would. He goes home to his Manhattan townhouse,
rests his weary head in triumph, and a week later
takes the stage at the Advertising Club of New York City,
where he will say.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
I have led the happiest life of anybody you ever
met in your life.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Charles Cheryl will not live to see the Berlin Olympics.
He will die of a heart attack at his Paris
townhouse the following June, a few weeks before the spectacle
of the opening ceremonies in Berlin. That is a shame.
Few would have enjoyed that bit of fascist pageantry more
than Charles Hitchcock Cheryl. So the Advertising Club speech is
(31:59):
really the last time we will see him in his element,
and he has a message for the world that day.
It's about the Jews. They are violating the rules of
the pyramid. People are supposed to be nice to each other.
People are supposed to accept the world as it is,
be glad for it. People at the bottom are supposed
(32:20):
to stay out of sight, and everyone should revere the
people at the top. But ever since he stepped off
the normandy and said that bit about how Jews shouldn't
really complain about antisemitism because that will cause antisemitism, people
had been mean to him. This is what he wanted
to tell the August members of the Advertising Club of
(32:42):
New York. He has been wronged.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
After all my years of arding a square deal for Jews.
They called me andy Jewish. Many questions have been asked
me by telephone a letter about the type of communication
that have been coming in since my arrival from abroad
(33:09):
ten days ago. In the first place, almost all the
Jewish letters, I'm sorry to say, have been either abusive
or threatening.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
He goes on and on. He is aggrieved, heavy hangs
the head, the worse the crown.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
This force is me, and I say it with deef emotion.
So there's this from those friendly efforts in the future.
But neither that incident nor the torrent of Jewish abuse
recently poured upon me can succeed in making me Auntie Jules.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
He doesn't hate the Jews, he's trying to say, but
he will not stand with them again because his feelings
have been hurt. And then our wounded lion raises his
heavy head and says.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Enough, everybody has a perfect right to have an opinion
on this much discussed question. But now that decision to
go to Berlin has been definitely made by the only
American group having the right of decision.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
That would be people like Charles Hitchcock Cheryl, the people
at the top of the pyramid.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
It would be well to remember General Grant saying the
close of our civil war, let us have tea.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
And with that the room rises in loud agreement on
to Berlin.
Speaker 6 (34:37):
General cherfls, you have quickened our democratic faith by telling
us of that global international democracy, the Olympic Gay and
let us run with patients. The race that is set.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Before religion's history is produced by ben Na daph Haffrey,
Tolly Emlin and Nina Bird Lawrence. Our editor is Sarah Nix.
(35:12):
Fact checking by Arthur Gomperts and JAYL Goldfein. Original scoring
by Luis Garra, mastering by Flawan Williams, Sarah Buger and
Jake Gorsky. Engineering by Nina Bird Lawrence. Our executive producer
is Jacob Smith. Special thanks to Karen Chakerji. I'm Malcolm
(35:33):
Gladwell
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