SPIELE ’36 OR THE FOURTH MEDAL
Predictably, Jewish athletes were banned from the Nazi team. What most Americans don’t know is that U.S. Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage cravenly allowed Hitler to dictate the makeup of the American team: two Jewish sprinters, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, were scratched from competition at the last minute, replaced by two African American athletes (who, ironically, were acceptable to Hitler because he couldn’t believe a Joe Louis or Ralph Metcalfe would threaten his toy supermen). Jesse Owens won four gold medals for the U.S., but overall American athletes were trounced by the Germans–deservedly so for swallowing the Nazi line that, as nonpersons, Jews were nonathletes.
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The Brundage surrogate is a Nazi stooge who spouts flawless German to his German mistress/secretary, dines with Hitler, and ruthlessly tries to browbeat the brave American coach, Pug Masterman, into dropping his Jewish runners, purportedly because their safety can’t be insured. (Pug had earlier fought an effort to segregate the men in the Olympic housing–the blacks were packed six to a room compared to two whites per room.) Pug succumbs to cancer and his successor, a Christian bigot, speedily implements the fuhrer’s commands.
