Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics

by Jeremy Schaap

  All the momentum had swung to the anti-boycott forces, and the applause for Steers seemed to confirm Mahoney’s fears that he would not carry the day. Brundage had outmaneuvered Mahoney by timing his supporters’ final speeches so as not to coincide with the luncheon adjournment. It was left to Jack Rafferty, the union’s first vice president, to rally the pro-boycott forces, although it seemed it was already too late—the delegates were agitating for food. “A famous spell-binder,” according to the New York Times, Rafferty started by saying he had come 2000 miles from Texas; then he lambasted his colleagues. “We have become the greatest group of hypocrites on earth,” he said. He was now straining to be heard above the rattle of delegates rising from their chairs to go off to lunch. “We say we are trying to inculcate in youth the principles of fair play, and we give an example in our own councils of throttling free and open discussion in violation of an earlier agreement.”

  Then, to a mostly empty room, delegate Louis di Benedetto rose to speak. He said that participation would be a “betrayal of honor and sportsmanship by any Catholic, Protestant, or Jew who loves his God.”

  Then came the vote. If the resolution failed to pass, the boycott movement would be dead. The delegates’ vote was close, 58.25 to 55.75, but Brundage won. Barring some unforeseen development at home or abroad, the United States would participate in the Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Berlin.

  Jeremiah T. Mahoney shook his head in defeat and disgust. He still could not understand why his longtime colleagues—men of honor, he thought—would elect to legitimize the most evil government in history. A few minutes after the vote, he announced that he would not seek reelection as president. “I bow to the will of the majority,” he said. “But I could not in good conscience carry it out. When conditions change in Germany, the evidence will change my views. Under no consideration, therefore, can I accept nomination for any office in the Amateur Athletic Union.” Mahoney then also resigned from the American Olympic Committee, which he said “was afraid to face the facts that the holding of the 1936 Olympic Games in Nazi Germany is a travesty of the Olympics ideals of sportsmanship.”

  With Mahoney out, Brundage was drafted and elected president of the AAU unanimously. Soon thereafter, for his boycott stance, Jahncke was kicked off the International Olympic Committee and replaced by Brundage.

  As Mahoney stubbornly and implausibly vowed to continue the fight, word reached Jesse Owens that the boycott movement had been defeated. Now he knew that he would go to Berlin. There was, of course, still the possibility that he might be injured—or that somehow he would be upset at the Olympic trials. But that possibility seemed remote. Owens never thought about injuries, and it was almost impossible to conceive a scenario in which he would fail to qualify for at least three Olympic events. Oddly, Owens and Brundage, who would become enduring symbols of the good and bad of the Olympics movement, respectively, had won a joint victory. If not for Brundage’s pigheadedness, cunning, Germanophilia, anti-Semitism, and deep-rooted bigotry, Jesse Owens would never have become an Olympian.

  7

  A Blessing in Disguise

  * * *

  COLUMBUS, OHIO: DECEMBER 1935

  IN THE DAYS leading up to the AAU vote, Jesse Owens, the highest-profile American Olympic hopeful, found himself in a difficult position. He knew that if the United States did not participate in the Olympics, he might miss his chance at fame and fortune. And the politics of the boycott meant little to him. The indignities suffered by German Jews seemed almost mild compared to those he and his family had endured. But when he was asked his thoughts about the proposed boycott in a radio interview in November, he had taken a moral, unselfish position. “If there is discrimination against minorities in Germany,” he said, “then we must withdraw from the Olympics.”

  When Larry Snyder heard what Owens had said, he reacted protectively. Immediately he thought that Owens had lost his mind. He told him that the boycott would be pointless; that Germany was just the host of the games, not its governing body; and, most important, that it was too late to change the Olympic venue, and if the Olympics were held in Germany, Jesse Owens was going to Germany.

  In Columbus, Snyder was criticized for challenging Owens’s thinking, but he refused to be cowed. “Jesse Owens is sitting on top of the world today,” he said. “If he continues to participate in this activity, he will be a forgotten man.” Pointing out that Owens had not been invited to the upcoming Sugar Bowl track meet in New Orleans, he went on to say, “Why should we oppose Germany for doing something that we do right here at home?”

  When Owens and Snyder sat down to talk about the situation, Owens said that he had been running all his life to escape the American variety of Hitlerism.

  “All I want is the chance to run,” he said one night in Snyder’s office in Columbus.

  “I know,” Snyder said. “The boycott won’t happen.”

  But the uncertainty of the situation made Owens anxious. He knew that success at the games might change his life for the better. He knew that a boycott would mean four more years of training without pay, all the while getting older and probably slower. When Snyder had dressed down a group of students who had wanted Owens to go on the record supporting the boycott, Owens had been grateful.

  “I see no reason to get into a controversy about the Olympics,” Snyder told reporters on November 10. “The games have been awarded to Germany, all preparations have been made, and now some people want to have America withdraw just because some of the German policies are not approved by them.”

  Snyder was a progressive. Unlike Avery Brundage of the AOC and Dean Cromwell of USC, he was far from sympathetic to the Nazi cause. But his first loyalty was to Jesse Owens. He thought that if Owens got the chance to compete, he would win every event he entered. He knew, too, that then Owens would never have to look back. Of course, it is also crucial to remember that Snyder’s opinion was not informed by the gift of foresight. Like the AOC, he did not know, as we now know, that there would be a holocaust, that Hitler and his regime would eventually kill millions, that the Germans would attack Poland, France, and the Soviet Union. If he had known, he would have felt differently about the boycott. But in 1935 it was still possible to assume that European Jewry was not on the precipice of extinction, just as it was possible to believe that Hitler was not quite a madman. Everyone knew that Hitler disliked the Jews, but few imagined that he would attempt to exterminate them.

  In the end, Snyder convinced Owens to support participation in the Olympics, and Owens joined the other elite black athletes in signing a letter to the AAU delegates. But that was not the end of it; some black newspapers and leaders immediately pleaded with him to reconsider his position. In his hometown, for instance, the Call and Post urged Owens to reverse course, calling the Nazis “the world’s outstanding criminal gang.”

  For his part, Walter White felt that it was his personal duty to convince Owens—not Metcalfe or Peacock or Johnson, who had also signed the letter—that his initial, pro-boycott stance had been correct and that he had erred on the side of evil by flip-flopping. He sent him a telegram, which read, in part:

  December 4, 1935

  My dear Mr. Owens:

  Will you permit me to say that it was with deep regret that I read in the New York press today a statement attributed to you saying that you would participate in the 1936 Olympic games even if they are held in Germany under the Hitler regime. I trust that you will not think me unduly officious in expressing the hope that this report is erroneous.

  I fully realize how great a sacrifice it will be for you to give up the trip to Europe and to forgo the acclaim, which your athletic prowess will unquestionably bring you. I realize equally well how hypocritical it is for certain Americans to point the finger of scorn at any other country for racial or any other kind of bigotry.

  On the other hand, it is my first conviction that the issue of participation in the 1936 Olympics, if held in Germany under the present regime, transcends al
l other issues. Participation by American athletes, and especially those of our own race, which has suffered more than any other from American race hatred, would, I firmly believe, do irreparable harm. If the Hitlers and the Mussolinis of the world are successful it is inevitable that dictatorships based upon prejudice will spread throughout the world, as indeed they are now spreading. Defeat of dictators before they become too deeply entrenched would, on the other hand, deter nations, which through fear or unworthy emotions are tending towards dictatorships. I hope that you will not take offense at my writing you thus frankly with the hope that you will take the high stand that we should rise above personal benefit and help strike a blow at intolerance. I am sure that your stand will be applauded by many people in all parts of the world, as your participation under the present situation in Germany would alienate many high-minded people who are awakening to the dangers of intolerance wherever it raises its head.

  Very sincerely

  Walter White

  Secretary

  NAACP

  When the telegram reached Owens in Columbus, he read it slowly and carefully. Here he was, a twenty-two-year-old sprinter in the middle of one of the most complex controversies of the time. This was not an issue he was equipped to handle. He had none of Ben Johnson’s rhetorical talents—not yet. He had focused for so long simply on running and jumping. First Charles Riley and then Larry Snyder had told him that as long as he kept practicing, he would become the greatest track star the world had ever known. No one had foreseen complications such as those he was now confronting. No one had prepared him to be a symbol, or a trailblazer, or a statesman. Yet he was being asked, all but begged, by perhaps the most respected black man in the United States to take a stand that would necessarily prevent him from achieving all that he had worked so hard to achieve. To Owens, this was the height of arrogance. Who was Walter White to ask him, even to suggest to him, not to pursue Olympic glory in Berlin?

  All these thoughts were foremost in his mind as he walked to Larry Snyder’s office, telegram in hand. He wanted to show it to Snyder, to hear once and for all that he was making the right decision. But then suddenly he stopped in his tracks. He realized that he did not need Snyder to confirm what he already knew. As far as he was concerned, he was going to Berlin. In this debate, and this debate only, he would side with Brundage, who belonged to a whites-only club in Chicago, not with White, who had dedicated his life to racial progress. In seventy-two hours the AAU would decide once and for all whether Owens and the others would be allowed to compete in Berlin. But Owens already knew where he stood, so he turned around and walked back home. He would see Snyder later. At that moment, there was nothing for them to discuss.

  When the news arrived from New York that the boycott measure had been defeated, Owens was relieved. The uncomfortable controversy was over. In all likelihood, he would have the opportunity to compete in Berlin. At that point, his spirits needed lifting, since they had been dampened the day before by the announcement that Lawson Little, a golfer, had won the Sullivan Award, the Amateur Athletic Union’s highest honor. Little had won both the British and American amateur championships, two years in a row, a unique achievement, but not on a par with Owens’s accomplishments at Ann Arbor alone. Adding insult to injury, the names of all ten finalists for the award were announced, and while Eulace Peacock was one of them, Owens, absurdly, was not. Without publicly stating its reason for denying Owens a place among the finalists, the AAU nevertheless made it known that the controversy over his summer job at the Ohio statehouse was at the root of its decision; it did not matter to the AAU that Owens had paid back the money at issue, $159. Apparently the episode meant Owens could not have been the American amateur athlete who had “contributed the most to the cause of sportsmanship,” as the award criteria demanded.

  Owens’s ego was only somewhat soothed ten days after the Sullivan snub, when the Associated Press released the results of its nationwide poll to determine the outstanding athlete of 1935. Again he did not win. In fact, he did not even place (Little finished second). Joe Louis, who had become a top contender and the biggest draw in boxing by knocking out former champions Primo Carnera and Max Baer, took the top spot. But Owens did finish third, just ahead of Jay Berwanger, the University of Chicago running back who had just won the first Heisman Trophy (at that time called the Downtown Athletic Club trophy—it had not yet been named for John Heisman), and Mickey Cochrane, the catcher-manager of the world-champion Detroit Tigers.

  But Owens’s mood was soon darkened again. On December 28, when he was stripped of his athletic eligibility by Ohio State for failing his fall psychology course.

  Breaking the news to Snyder was the hardest part. Over the phone. But to Owens’s surprise, Snyder was encouraging, not disappointed or angry. “This is only a small setback,” he said, trying to be heard over the sound of Bing Crosby on the radio. Then, brightening, “You know, this might be all for the best.”

  “How’s that?” Now Owens was both disappointed and confused.

  “We can take this time to really work together, to focus on technique, without worrying about results. Your body can use the rest, too.”

  “But I don’t want to let down the team. I’m the captain.”

  “Jesse, don’t worry about that. You’ll be back. This will all work out for us.”

  When he met with reporters the next day, Owens struck just the right tone of humility, confidence, and determination. “I am disappointed,” he told them. “After all, the school has done so much, and when it comes time to pay dividends and you can’t, it kind of hurts . . . I haven’t had much time to study, you know. I work two hours a day at the legislature and four hours a day at the gasoline station.” Then, defiantly, he made a vow. “Above all things,” he said, pointing his finger, “I’ll pass those fifteen hours of study next quarter.”

  His pride was wounded. It bothered him that the whole world had been made aware of his academic failure. He had flunked the course’s final examination—five essays and seventy-five true-or-false questions—and would miss all the winter meets, with the possible exception of the Millrose Games in New York, which he could enter as an independent competitor.

  In February, as Owens’s exile stretched into its second month, Snyder, as was his wont, tried to accentuate the positive. “We regret having Owens out of our indoor meets, but looking at it from a national standpoint, his ineligibility is a blessing in disguise,” he said to a group of reporters. He was in sweats, directing an indoor practice. He spoke slowly and clearly, to have his point register. “Jesse is the greatest track star in the country, and his late start is certain to give America several points in the Olympics.”

  8

  Jew Kills Nazi

  * * *

  GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN: WINTER 1936

  IN FEBRUARY 1936, in the charming twin Alpine villages known collectively as Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the world got a sense of how the Nazis would manage the games of the Eleventh Olympiad in Berlin in August. The Fourth Olympic Winter Games were a splendid celebration of snow and ice, dominated, as always, by the ladies’ figure-skating competition, which Sonja Henie won for the third consecutive time. Norway’s answer to Sweden’s Greta Garbo, Henie charmed the Führer and everyone else. Her elegant figure-eights were the perfect counterpoint to the goose-stepping in the snowy streets. Compared to the previous games, held in Lake Placid, New York, in 1932, in an atmosphere uncharged by politics and militarism, the games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen were a fascist show. Regular army soldiers were constantly parading through town. Black-shirted members of the SS were the Olympic security force. They were everywhere, demanding credentials, blocking access, intimidating journalists and spectators.

  William L. Shirer was among the journalists who lamented the situation. “Too many S.S. troops and military about,” he wrote in his diary, “not only for me but especially for Westbrook Pegler! But the scenery of the Bavarian Alps, particularly at sunrise and sunset, superb, the mountain ai
r, exhilarating, the rosy-cheeked girls in their skiing outfits generally attractive, the games exciting, especially the bone-breaking ski-jumping, the bob races (also bone-breaking and sometimes actually ‘death-defying’), the hockey matches and Sonja Henie.”

  It was to the great good fortune of Pegler’s readers that he decided to cover the winter games. Casting his jaundiced eye on the Third Reich for the first time, he described things most of his fellow newspapermen ignored. In particular, he was fascinated by Hitler, not the spellbinding Führer he had read about but the plain, dumpy human presence he found. “So far as his appearance goes,” Pegler wrote from Garmisch on February 20,

  it is not hard to imagine him back at his old trade, standing on a scaffold painting the side of a house, but we know the man who now stands on a reviewing platform receiving the patriotic and personal adulation of more than a hundred thousand Germans is a tremendous power, and it makes your flesh squirm on your bones to reflect that a nod or shake of his head can start a war that would kill millions of men or prevent a war and spare their lives. All this power resides in the person of a man who weighs about 200 pounds and wears a belted down leather overcoat and a brown military cap and smiles much more than you would expect him to. He has rather heavy eyelids and from the set of his mouth under his small mustache it would seem that he had his share of trouble with his teeth.