[3] According to sportswriter William Oscar Johnson in a 1980 article in Sports Illustrated, Brundage was "the kind of man whom Horatio Alger had canonized—the American urchin, tattered and deprived, who rose to thrive in the company of kings and millionaires".

In 1920, there was public outcry when the AOC chartered a disused troopship to carry home America's representatives in the 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerp; much of the team instead booked passage by ocean liner.

In 1932, soon after winning three medals at the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, track star Mildred "Babe" Didrikson appeared in an automobile advertisement, and the Brundage-led AAU quickly suspended her amateur status.

[b][19] The Berlin Games were thrown in doubt, however, by the German July 1932 elections, in which the Nazi Party, led by Adolf Hitler, unexpectedly won the most seats in the Reichstag, the national legislature.

"[26] According to historical writer Christopher Hilton in his account of the 1936 Games, "Baillet-Latour, and the great and good around him, had no idea what was coming, and if the [IOC's] German delegates kept offering assurances, what else could they do but accept them?

These included Brundage's admiration for Hitler's apparent restoration of prosperity and order to Germany, his conception that those who did not work for a living in the United States were an anarchic human tide, and a suspicious anti-Semitism which feared the dissolution of Anglo-Protestant culture in a sea of ethnic aspirations.

[41] However, "Lasker, to his credit, refused to be blackmailed,"[41] writing to Brundage that "You gratuitously insult not only Jews but the millions of patriotic Christians in America, for whom you venture to speak without warrant, and whom you so tragically misrepresent in your letter.

[42] Immediately upon arrival in Germany, Brundage became headline news when he and the AOC dismissed American swimmer Eleanor Holm, who was a gold medalist in 1932 and expected to repeat, for allegedly getting drunk at late-night parties and missing her curfew.

There were various rumors and accounts of the married swimmer's pursuits while on board the ship; the gossip included statements that she was at an "all-night party" with playwright Charles MacArthur, who was traveling without his wife, actress Helen Hayes.

"[46] Butterfield noted that through the efforts of sportswriters who supported Holm, "Brundage became celebrated as a tyrant, snob, hypocrite, dictator and stuffed shirt, as well as just about the meanest man in the whole world of sports.

[53] Glickman conceded college favoritism as a possible reason, but thought anti-Semitism more likely, and his position—that he and Stoller had been replaced so as not to embarrass Hitler by having him see Jews, as well as blacks, win gold medals for the US track team—hardened in the following years.

"[54][55][56] In the report that he submitted after the Games, Brundage called the controversy "absurd"; he noted that Glickman and Stoller had finished fifth and sixth at the Olympic trials at New York's Randall's Island Stadium and that the US victory had validated the decision.

[59] Brundage wrote to a German correspondent regretting that Leni Riefenstahl's film about the Berlin Olympics, Olympia, could not be commercially shown in the United States, as "unfortunately the theaters and moving picture companies are almost all owned by Jews".

"[71] He often concluded speeches by quoting from John Galsworthy: Sport, which still keeps the flag of idealism flying, is perhaps the most saving grace in the world at the moment, with its spirit for rules kept, and regard for the adversary, whether the fight is going for or against.

The dispute proved difficult, and the IOC initially voted to cancel the tournament and eliminate ice hockey as an Olympic sport, but relented as organizers had sold thousands of tickets.

They made a major breakthrough when the IAAF (led by the Marquess of Exeter, the former Lord Burghley) recognized a separate East German team beginning with the 1966 European Athletics Championships.

[93] Brundage found his view, often expressed in the press, that physical education and competitive sports made for better citizens, especially in the event of war, more enthusiastically embraced in the Soviet Union than in the United States.

According to David Maraniss in his account of the 1960 Rome Games, Brundage's admiration for the Soviet Union's sports programs "in some ways mirrored his response two decades earlier to his encounters with Nazi Germany".

[94] On his return, he related in an article for The Saturday Evening Post that he had confronted Soviet officials with information from defectors stating that the USSR was running year-round training camps and giving athletes material inducements for success.

[98][99] Matters came to a head in 1952, when the mainland NOC (the All-China Athletic Federation), considering itself a continuation of the pre-1949 committee, wrote to the IOC stating that it desired to participate in the Helsinki Olympics to be held that year.

[120] In future years, the sale of television rights became a major source of revenue for the IOC, rising to $10 million by the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, and $1.2 billion, long after Brundage's death, at Athens in 2004.

Prior to the Olympics in Mexico City in October 1968, some African Americans, led by activist Harry Edwards, had urged a boycott of the Games, but found little enthusiasm among athletes, reluctant to waste years of effort.

The two men, after receiving their medals from IAAF president Lord Exeter, and as "The Star-Spangled Banner" played, raised black-gloved fists, heads down, in salute of black power.

There, before the audience in the stadium and the millions watching on television, Brundage offered what Guttmann called "the credo of his life": Every civilized person recoils in horror at the barbarous criminal intrusion of terrorists into the peaceful Olympic precincts.

[139] According to future IOC vice president Dick Pound, the insertion of the Rhodesian issue into the speech "was universally condemned, and Brundage left office under a cloud of criticism that effectively undermined a lifetime of well-intentioned work in the Olympic movement".

IOC director Berlioux stated that Brundage would come to the Château de Vidy and take telephone calls or look at correspondence while he waited for Lord Killanin to turn to him for help.

Brundage, who applied for a commission in the Army Ordnance Corps but was rejected, in the postwar period became a member of the Construction Division Association, composed of men who had built facilities for the military, and later became its president from 1926 to 1928.

[154] Although the start of the Depression in 1929 was a major setback for Brundage, he rebuilt his wealth by investments in real estate, also accepting interests in buildings he had constructed in lieu of payments the owners were unable to make.

Brundage made another major donation in 1969 (despite a fire which destroyed many pieces at his California home, "La Piñeta" near Santa Barbara in 1964), and left the remainder of his collection to the museum in his will.

"[179] Andrew Leigh, a Member of the Australian House of Representatives, criticizes Brundage for expelling the two athletes in Mexico City, calling him "a man who'd had no difficulty with the Nazi salute being used in the 1936 Olympics".