How Hitler's Nazi regime weaponised motor racing

The Athletic Hello and welcome back to Ant Colossally, that's History. I'm Richard Williams and as ever I'm joined by my friend and co-host Matt Bishop on our mission to re-appraise motor racing history. Yes and what a topic we're tackling today Richard. This is history with a capital H. Yep, many history podcasts have charted the rise and indeed the fall of Nazism in Germany in the first half of the 20th century. But in this episode we're going to be looking at how sport and particularly motorsport was used as a tool or you might say weapon of the Nazi state. And this is a topic that you're very well versed in Richard because you've written a book about Richard Seaman, a race with love and death I believe it's called. Richard Seaman obviously the famous British pre-war Grand Prix driver who drove for Mercedes-Benz in the late 30s. Yeah, Richard Seaman was somebody I grew up reading about when I was a kid because he'd been an inspiration to sterling masks and peter collins and my call for on that generation of post-war British drivers. And I was always very interested in his story, this young guy who made his way through motor racing and eventually got to drive for Mercedes-Benz. And then was killed in 1939 just a few weeks before the start of the war while he was leading the Belgian Grand Prix in fact. So I did a lot of research and of course a lot of it took me into the 1930s and the politics of the time because if you were an Englishman and you wanted to or you were invited to drive for Mercedes you had to be signed off by Adolf Hitler. Get his approval. I mean it's hard to think about that now really isn't it how you know a patriotic Englishman Richard Seaman could have raced with in a Mercedes with a swastikor on the side of his car and would raise his hand in a Nazi salute when he when he won a race. That's hard to think of so many years later but it happened didn't it? Yes it did happen and it happened because the Mercedes team and the outer union team the two big German Grand Prix teams were bankrolled by Hitler's national socialist government and they were a kind of weapon of the state in that sense. So yes I think we should then I mean Richard Seaman is a fascinating subject and we should probably do a podcast on him another time but we should start really with talking about how Nazism and Motorsport how they should ever have become intertwined in the first place. And I guess the answer to that lies with Hitler himself Adolf Hitler himself because he was a huge car enthusiast wasn't he Richard. I mean it's reported that he even had a picture of Henry Ford on the wall of his office at the Nazi party headquarters in Munich. Well Hitler was was a car fan he had his first Mercedes in 1923 and ten years later when he was elected just very shortly after being elected at the Berlin Motor Show he made a ground announcement of his motorization project which fell into three parts one was the construction of the outer barns the Europe's first motorway network. Which would speed German civilians around the country but would also be rather useful for getting your army from one side of the country to the other if you if you so needed. The second was the creation of the people's car which became the Volkswagen and the third was the Motorsport effort in Grand Prix racing which was the thing that would really wait for flag for the supremacy of German engineering. And we'll talk about precisely that over the next hour but I think I'll just say a little bit about the Volkswagen literally the people's car in German you know launched in the mid 30s. The first people's car of its kind well you could say the Ford Model T as well but but bringing auto automotive transport to the masses in that sense. And of course a hugely successful car that became the best selling car of all time globally and was still being made I think 60 years later in South America, Mexico and Brazil. And obviously Volkswagen now the Volkswagen Audi Group one of the largest multinational corporations in the world but it all came from Hitler's. We're really to have people's car and it was designed by Ferdinand Porsche actually wasn't it yes it was who designed a lot of interesting things by that point including the big Mercedes sports cars of the late 20s the SSK's which were the super cars of their time and Porsche was behind those and then he went on to design the first out of union. In the in 1934 35 their first Grand Prix car so he was a very significant figure in all this at the time. I mean we have to suspend our obvious distaste for Nazism and that goes for everything we're going to say going forward we can't suspend it. We can't suspend it we have to state it categorically yes you're I'm properly admonished there Richard but you know what I meant we don't suspend it we we categorically categorically stated obviously nonetheless those cars those 30s marks utterly beautiful machines and incredibly highly engineered I'm Bernie Eccleston used to buy them whenever he could I think I believe he did. So it's very interesting to reflect on the way that the the German car industry came from nothing really in a way after the war Germany had suffered from the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 which you know in which Britain France said that they couldn't have an army or an Air Force anymore and they had to make all kinds of reparations that they did have a bit of a recovery during the 20s. But then of course there was the great Wall Street crash and the worldwide financial depression which hit Germany very hard because it wasn't really that strong position at the time. So Mercedes for instance which had been busy in the first world war making all kinds of things like fuselages for German fighter planes. After the war they concentrated on cars and trucks built their staff up to 15,000 people had 15,000 workers in the factory just outside Stuttgart but then when the crash came that went down to 5,000 and the production of vehicles went right down and not until 1933 when Hitler and the National Socialists came in did it pick up partly through government encouragement and subsidy of course. Yeah I mean people might not all know you know the state Germany was in between the wars in that sense partly as you say as a result of being punished by the Allies after the first world war. I mean my grandmother Barbara wall as a journalist and Barbara Lucas as a novelist was a rare thing for a woman at the time she was she wrote for the observer and the spectator in the 30s and she went to Italy and Germany. And I remember her telling me she's dead of course now I remember her telling me that she the inflation was so galloping in Germany at the time I don't know if it's an apocryphal story but I'm not going to accuse my my late grandmother of telling a porky so let's hope it isn't but she said that people would take wheelbarrow's full of money to buy their shopping and they'd find that the wheelbarrow was stolen and the money left. That's the nature of the inflation so really it was an extraordinary thing now returning to or moving away from that background around the really difficult situation in Germany which of course led to to Hitler in some ways bringing Hitler into it but also there's a story isn't there about caratjola so Rudy Rudolph caratjola who's one of the great drivers of silver arrows. Didn't he have a car delivered or did he have to deliver a car tell us the story well caratjola was the came up in the 20s and was clear that he was the new German ace and he drove from the Sadies in the 20s the cars that third and Porsche had designed and they managed to revive the fortunes that had been left in a bay in the 1914 when actually they'd won the. The French Grand Prix the last. Grand Prix before the first world war so caratjola was pretty instrumental in the Renaissance in the 20s and actually he he did so well that he set himself up as a Mercedes dealer on the Kaffurstendum in Berlin which is the kind of. Region street of Berlin the big Porsche shopping street but then when the crash came actually sold his dealership but he was still very well in with Mercedes on that side and in 1931 before Hitler came to power he'd ordered from his friend who was the Mercedes dealer in Munich he'd ordered a special. limousine, custom built, 7.7 litre black convertible, bulletproof windows and a glove compartment fitted with a hidden pocket for a revolver, perhaps to shoot himself eventually, who knows. Anyway, this car took a long time to build, not surprisingly, and I think Hitler was getting a bit impatient. So when they finished it, they've sweetened the experience by getting Caraccio to deliver it to him. So which should be, I don't know, one doesn't like to draw comparisons nowadays. But if you can imagine Lewis Hamilton delivering a car to the Prime Minister, or indeed to the king, that would be roughly equivalent, I suppose. And Hitler's relationship with Mercedes has always been good. They had in fact supported his political party, the National Socialists, before they came to power, through Wilhelm Kissel, who was the president of the board of the Chairman of the Board of Mercedes. And a banker called Straub, I think, who was the head of the Deutsche Bank, and also the president of the Mercedes trustees. So they were pretty well in with this government that was going to come in. And one of the first things that happened after Hitler had announced his motorisation project was that Kissel asked on behalf of Mercedes for a million Reichmarks in order to fund the Grand Prix project. Fascinating. So Caraccio had been asked to run that rather onerous errand for Hitler. But he was never a member of the Nazi party himself, I don't think. No, he wasn't. All the German drivers who raised to Mercedes were members of the NSKK, which was the sort of German equivalent of the RAC, to which all racing drivers had to belong. Of the three big German drivers with Mercedes in the '30s and the German Lang was a member of the Nazi party, that was because he'd come up as a mechanic and he felt that really it was probably a safe piece of ticket. A form-brow-kitch perhaps was. No, he wasn't actually. He was just actually, even though his uncle was the commander of the armed forces. And he was a sort of Prussian officer in all but name, but he wasn't actually a member of the party and neither was Caraccio. So the result of all this, Hitler's enthusiasm, was that two companies, Mercedes-Benz and Alta Union embraced this race for speed, creating these extraordinary cars, very, very powerful cars. We were talking about 90 years ago and they said 500 horsepower, V12s, V8s, V16s in some cases, extraordinary cars, brilliant drivers, and totally outclassed the Italians, the Alphas and Maserati's of the time. But of course, then came the Second World War and I'm just jumping forward and we'll jump back, but it's an interesting detail because the Alfettas had been outclassed in the '30s by the Alta unions and Mercedes. But after the Second World War, of course, when Formula One was inaugurated in 1950 or when the Formula One World championship was inaugurated in 1950, the Alfettas reign supreme because the Marx and Alta unions weren't allowed to compete or didn't feel able to compete. That's true, isn't it really? Yes, it is. The Alfettas had been put away for the war and brought out and there were no Mercedes around. Alta Union weren't making, I don't even exist anymore at that point. And the Alfettas and the Ferraris and the Maserati's ruled the Rousse until 1955, when the Siller Arrows came back in the shape of Mercedes. And that was a little bit like, you know, in the '20s, it was all about legatis and delargeurs and Maserati's and Alphas. And the early '30s too. But then when the two German teams were unveiled in 1934 and then began to race seriously in 1935, everything changed completely. And really from 1935 to the outbreak of the Second World War, only one Grand Prix was won by a non-German team that was Nouvellari in an Alfa at the Nouvellgring in 1935 with a very famous display of virtuosity. But every other race was won by either Mercedes or Alta Union. And Ville Helmkisswell hadn't got his million Reichmarks, but Hitler did give Mercedes half a million Reichmarks and 300,000 to Alta Union, which was a sort of merged project of four manufacturers, Audi, Hortch, Van der Rhe and DKW, who were all road car manufacturers and they got together. And created this team in a town called Zickau in Nouvellgring Germany. And that's where the auto-unions came from and Porsche designed those as we've said before. And those two went head to head. And it's quite interesting that the Audi broke cover first with their amazing rear-engine V16 car, which was silver. And they broke some records at Alvus, the high-speed track in Berlin. And then Mercedes launched their car, which was initially painted white, which was the German traditional German racing color, all Mercedes races had been white before that and the other German teams. But this was a weight limit formula, 750 kilograms, so every ounce counted. And the next time the Mercedes were seen, they'd had their white paint stripped off to save weight and they were silver like the auto-unions. And a German radio reporter immediately christened them the silver filing, the silver arrows, and that's the nickname that we still have today, of course. Actually, a similar situation pertains today where we see unpainted carbon fiber on modern formal one cars. We do everything. Everything in pursuit of that ounce. Every ounce. You mentioned Nouvellari's great victory at Nouvellgring in 1935. And it's worth just dwelling on that. Because I mean, Nouvellari was 42. He wasn't a young man. I think his alpha had about 265 horse power. And I think the silver arrows had maybe about 120. Some of them had up to about 380 horse power. So, significantly more. Vom Browkicch was leading, wasn't he? And Hitler was present. And 300,000 local fans had come to see Germany triumph. And as they set off on the last lap, Nouvellari started pushing. And Vom Browkicch, who was a good driver, but not a great driver, of course, Nouvellari was one of the greatest drivers of all time. Nouvellari started pushing him and Vom Browkicch began to push hard and wore his tires out, basically. As a result of which, Nouvellari came round in one. To first of all, some disappointment in silence. But then I gather that the 300,000 fans saw genius at work and clapped. Hitler did not clap, I gather. Well, they'd been ready to play the German national anthem over the Tango, of course. And what they had, they had a 78 RPM record of it to play with the gramophone. So then they couldn't play that. So they had to scratch around. And I believe Nouvellari had brought a record of the Italian anthem with him. And they had to get that and play that in. Apparently he always carried it for luck. So there we are. Well, the shock of Nouvellari's victory in 1935 was all the greater because Mercedes and outer union have become their teams were such machines by that point, particularly Mercedes. When I was doing my research on Richard Seaman, I discovered that the Mercedes racing team alone had 380 people working on it. Just building their three or four grown pre-carns every year. And of course they had Alfred and Nouvellari, the great team manager and Rudolph, who went out great engineer and lots of other designers and so on. It was a pretty massive operation. Massive operation in some ways. This may be a stretch, but in some ways it it I've often thought there's a similarity that the race for speed between Mercedes and outer union was a little bit like the race for space between the United States and the USSR in the 60s. So 30 years later and it reminds me strangely the things and the places you end up doing and going to as a journalist. I remember in the late 1990s being invited funnily enough appropriately enough by Mercedes, who were then the engine supplier of the Macaron Formula One team. I was never honest at the time, I wasn't yet working for Macaron and I was invited to star city in Moscow, which I believe is going to be a great success. called "zviz" - apologies to Russian speakers. Something like "zvyodsky Gorodok" I believe, which means "star city" or is transliterated anyway, star city or translated as star city. And I went with Merck and David Korthard and we viewed the old installation where the cosmonauts and the spacecraft had been built and launched on my goodness. Absolutely fascinating, absolutely fascinating, but so primitive. You'd walk around and you'd see this is a spacecraft, this is a space capsule and you can't believe you wouldn't want to fly from here to Newcastle in it. We're speaking in London by the way. You wouldn't want to fly that far. They flew to space in it and the cockpit of these things. I mean they brought to mind a hawker hurricane in 1930s British fighter plane so antiquated, scarily antiquated and of course very dangerous and speed races and space races are both dangerous, especially back in the day and especially when the motivation is natural pride. And that feels like a good time to take our first break. Join us in a moment for part 2. So in part 1 we discussed Hitler's obsession with cars and his desire to develop Germany's automotive industry and dominate international motorsport. So now would probably be a good time to discuss motor racing in the first part of the 20th century before Hitler's rise to power because it wasn't German German cars or drivers who were dominant at that time, was it Richard? No, although they'd had a good period before the First World War immediately before when Mercedes and Opel were racing against O'Fear and Delage and various other manufacturers. But then came the First World War and that was the end of that for a bit. So the 20s really was dominated by Bugatti Alfa Romeo and Delage particularly and then Maserati came along too and that rolled into the 30s. And of course, Grand Prix races were still, they were a development of the great city to city or town to town races with which road racing had started. Often on giant triangular courses, you know, might be 60 or 70 miles. Well, that scaled down quite a lot particularly when circuits like Spar were devised which was still on public roads but very much shorter. But the races were long, you know, the races were several hours long, often six or seven hours long and very groovy. And not riding mechanics? With riding mechanics indeed who was sometimes quite necessary. It wasn't a job you'd necessarily volunteer for though, I wouldn't have thought quite dangerous, not have any control. Anyway, yeah, that was all part of it and then it began to get more, well, it was already getting more professional in the late 20s and when the Germans came along, it became, in a way it became the sport we know now with teams absolutely dedicated to technological evolution and to taking everything as far as it can possibly go and that's what the Germans did. So I think that's true. I think it was the first professional approach to international motorsport and the team ethos was there and as you say, hundreds of employees but also technical tour de force but also presentational. It's very important in all sport and particularly in motorsport now but presentationally, you know, that was very important to probably to Hitler but very important to outer union and Mercedes was it not? Oh yeah and the Nazis. The Nazis were great at presentation. Everything was black, white and red and very simple and bold and rather intimidating, of course, if you weren't part of it and got in type places and intended to be intimidating. You know, they think of the Nuremberg rallies and Hitler's speeches and all the banners and then then you reef and stars films of what went on and the Olympics in Berlin in 1936, of course. And it was all about presentation and it wasn't, you know, in a way it was to scare the outside world, you know, if we can make cars that go like this, what else do you think we can do? It was to impress the German population as well, I think it was to make, you know, after a difficult time following the defeat in the First World War and then the financial crash, you know, it was to make them feel, oh well, you know, something good is happening here. We've got pretty full employment, albeit with some slave laborers here and there. And, you know, we've got money in our pockets and we've got these signs that we are leading the world in various fields of modern human endeavour. Do you think we could draw a parallel or is this a stretch between New Vilari's success at Nuremberg ring in 1935 and Jesse Owens success in Berlin in 1936? Oh, very much so, yes, that's a very good parallel. You know, the 1936 Berlin Olympics were supposed to be the showpiece of Aryan supremacy on every level. And then along comes Jesse Owens, the American sprinter who was black and who, of course, you know, wipes the floor with everyone and, you know, becomes the sort of hero of the hour, which, you know, definitely puts the Nazi high commands, noses out of joint. So yeah, Nuremberg Lari was a bit like that, although, of course, Nuremberg represented another of what became the Axis powers. And he wasn't black unlike Owens. So that was a setback, but on the other hand, you know, the Berlin Olympics did do basically the job it was supposed to do. I mean, they built this amazing stadium in Berlin, you know, one of the sort of Albert Speer showpieces. You know, if it had carried on, if they hadn't got beaten in the Second World War, the whole of Berlin would have looked like that, you know, it was going to become a kind of like Rome, like Imperial Rome, you know, just this kind of showpiece for this extraordinary architecture. So that was important. Max Schmeling, a German boxer, knocking out Joe Lewis, who was a black heavyweight champion of the world in Madison Square Garden in 1936. That was another big success for the Nazi sports program. Joe Lewis got his own back a couple of years later in the rematch and finished off Schmeling and got his title back. But those things were really important, really significant. I mean, we didn't use or they didn't use the word marketing back then, but it was marketing, wasn't it, really? Yes, it was marketing, not just a regime and a government but a philosophy for sure, you know, we are better than you in every way. It wasn't sports washing. I mean, we sometimes say that racing and other sports taking place in places like Saudi Arabia, nowadays, is sports washing. I don't think it was that because they didn't think there was anything to wash, was there at that point? That may be true. I think there's a little bit of sports washing involved, but we are, you know, Germany, Germany didn't have a great reputation internationally after the First World War, so they were trying to, you know, they were burnishing that reputation again, re-burnishing it and trying to create Germany as a force to be reckoned with. And of course, in 1935 or '36, '35, I think, they overthrew all the disarmament provisions of the Treaty of Versailles and revealed that they had acquired an Air Force that would have buffered and an army of the Verma, all along. And actually, the first Messerschmitt, ME109, was unveiled at an air show, and the very first one had a Rolls-Royce engine, fun, lean, and then when it reappeared in production form a little while later, I think, the following year, suddenly it had a Dame Le Bents V12 engine of 33 liters, which had been designed at the Mercedes factory and was just just 33 liters. Just 33 liters. Yeah, nothing special. So it was all about, there was a bit of sports washing, not that we called it, that then there was a bit of marketing, not that we called it that, then, and it was about the might of the Third Reich. It was about the image. Yes. The image they were creating an image. And you know, he used Lenny Riefenstahl, Hitler used Lenny Riefenstahl his favourite filmmaker to make films about the Olympics and about his Nuremberg Ravies, Triumph of the Will, those films, you know, which, and that was all part of it, that was image building. So I think since you are a biographer of Richard Seaman, I would just like to ask you again, we touched on it very briefly earlier, but you know, you only have to Google images of Richard Seaman in his Mercedes, and you will see it decked out in swastikas. It might be hard to look at now, but it's a fact. As I say, or him giving the Nazi salute, which he did on the podium in Nerva Gring in 1938, it makes you queasy, or it makes me queasy sometimes to look at it. And of course his mum, his mother, didn't approve, did she? Why didn't you do it? What was he conflicted? Tell us a little bit about that. He was conflicted in a sense, in the moral sense, not in the sporting sense. You were offered a seat by Mercedes in 1937, and he got it through taking part in a sort of talent spotting exercise at Monza. Mercedes took a car down and five drivers, I think, the rest of them were German. Or one was Swiss, the others were German, and Seaman was easily the fastest. So they offered him a contract. He'd had two very good seasons in Wattir Epps, the sort of formula, two of its time. So he was obviously very talented, and he proved at this test at Monza that he was the best of the available talent. And they wanted a fourth driver. And his parents had been vehemently anti-German. His father died in the middle of all this, but his mother continued that belief that, you know, basically German he was a bad thing. He wasn't happy when he took a German wife. No, no. And he had misgivings about taking the contract from Mercedes. He actually had a correspondence with Earl Howe, who was the kind of senior figure in British motor racing at the time. Who had been an MP, who knew all the cabinet ministers, knew all the heads of the armed forces, and said, what should I do? I've been offered a contract by this team. Could you take soundings, ask people what they think. And the sounding came back that it was such a big thing to be offered a contract by the absolute number one team of the time. Actually, it conferred kind of honor on Britain, on the British driver should have been invited. And it was an opportunity not to be missed. So he signed up. And on very good terms, he got a good salary. He'd also got a trust fund from his dad who died. And a quite a rich man, yep. And his mother, it actually bankrolled his early years of racing too. I think she probably spent the equivalent of what would now be three million quid on his work in the junior formula, which is only what people do nowadays through cutting and F3 and so on. But anyway, he got himself a very nice villa on the Stambeger say, in a 30 miles from Mercedes factory. And then he got himself a German wife. He met this 18-year-old. He was 24 at the time. He met this 18-year-old girl called Erica Pop, whose dad was the chairman of BMW. And the founder of BMW, actually. And they wanted to get married. And his mother was vehemently opposed to the idea of him marrying a German girl. Absolutely opposed. So she came and met Erica and discovered that she was indeed as charming as she was beautiful. And in other circumstances, had she been an English girl, she would have been perfect. But she couldn't stand for it. And eventually their relationship, Dick and his mother, their relationship fractured and was still fractured when he died, sadly. Very sadly. But when he did die, and that was obviously its bar in '39, I believe Hitler sent a huge wreath to the funeral again, his mother didn't want anything to do with that. No. In fact, Mercedes sent representatives, of course, Neibauer and Caraccio and the Fombrachic, who were there. And the German Embassy was there. And Hitler sent a giant wreath, I mean, it was about seven feet tall, of white lilies. Which was taken to the church in Knightsbridge, where the funeral was held. But then mysteriously disappeared. It was not taken to the grave in Patnievelle, Cemetery. It's believed that it was actually given to Mercedes representatives in London to dispose of quietly. We may never know. We will never know now. But the third interesting to talk about Richard Seaman, and obviously we talked about some of the other drivers. And we will do over the next little while. But the cars, the cars were extraordinary. I mean, the outer Union type A, the P-Vargan. Designed by Dr. Ferdinand Porsche again. And again, Porsche designed it. Mid-mounted. Well, rear-engine, mid-mounted. You can call it. Supercharged V16. Very powerful. Must have been a nightmare to drive. Particularly in the wet. Took the likes of Nouvellari to master it. Yes, very interesting. The first guy who really mastered it in Grand Prix Racing was Bound Rosemar, who came directly from motorcycle racing. And of course, Nouvellari, who when Rosemar had been killed, took over as outer Union's number one driver, had also come up through motorbikes before becoming the greatest four wheel drivers. So it was said that because it was so unusual to have a mid-engine car and to have that much power, that it somehow took a guy who was used to motorcycles to master it. Whether that was really true or not, goodness knows. But that's the way it worked out anyway. That Rosemar came in with no real reputation in car racing. And in 1936, he won the German Swiss and Italian Grand Prix. And was European Champion immediately. And there weren't very many Grand Prix in those days that counted towards the European Championship, which was the equivalent of today's world. Probably five or six years. That's right. And the three won Germany. The Nouvellering Switzerland at Remgarten in Bound. And Italy at Monso, they were three of those. Winning at Remgarten, not for the faint hearted. No, particularly dangerous circuit. Or, well, challenging, should we say? I think you were right first time. Well, yeah. I mean, they're all dangerous. Well, they certainly were all dangerous. They're all dangerous. Some are more challenging than others. And Remgarten really was one of them, especially in the rain, I think. But, you know, the number green, the Nordschliefer, you know, with its 147 corners. That was challenging. No picnic either. No picnic either. So, yes, Rosemar mastered the outer Union. Yes, Nouvellari did. I think also, particularly in Hillclimes, hand-stucked. Yeah. Hand-stucked. And I was at Prescott. Obviously in England, Prescott in 2016, to see his son, Hans Joachim Stuck, drive the car that he had, that Hand-stuck had raced at Prescott or not raced, but driven up the hill at Prescott 80 years before in 1936. You know, again, it's a 500 BHP plus V16 rear-engine extraordinary car. I'm water sight and what a sound. I have to say. Anyway, Hans Joachim Stuck, proudly driving his dad's car up the hill. And I actually remember, and I've noted it down, what contemporary reports said at the time in 1936, because it rained. It rained at Prescott. And I'll read it to you. It's very short, but it's interesting. So, Hans Stuck, that's the dad. Hans Stuck Sr. had to cope with heavy rain and it was described as follows. And I quote, "Spectators who brave the rain were rewarded by the most ferocious series of tapes." "Spectators who brave the most ferocious series of tape wags we have ever witnessed." Stuck's elbows rising in turn, high above the car's sides as he corrected skid off the skid. And he finished his run with a particularly huge skid, as he crossed the line, which must have made the timing officials jump for their lives. Hans Joachim Stuck, I can't say that. Hans Stuck's wife, the Hans Stuck of the 30s, Hans Joachim's dad, his wife was a very serious man. was half Jewish, she was a tennis player, and I think it was him who wanted to get rid of him to stop him driving cars because you couldn't have that, you know, and somehow he was prevailed on to desist and allow and to continue racing. Well, he did race in Grand Prix as well, but I think he was most famous as the King of the Hills, wasn't he? He was, he was, yes, European, European champion, but then Mercedes came back in 37 and you know, they got their three big German drivers and it was interesting to see that Herman Lang started winning. He won in Tripoli and won at Arvus and Karateola won at the Nobel Green and at Brehmgarten again and the von Braukhitch one at Monaco. The race at Arvus in 1937 was a very special one. It wasn't actually one of the races that counted to the European Championship, but because Arvus was such an extraordinary circuit, you know, it was a dual carriage where you raced up one and back down the other. There was a hairpin at one end, a flat hairpin at the other end by this time. There was a 43 degree banking, you know, which you couldn't stand up on. With no, with no catch fencing or any no fencing, no lip or anything at the top to stop you going over. And the two Straits were six miles each, six miles, one way and six miles coming back. So you got up to some speed. Anyway, they created both teams, the German teams created streamlined cars for this particular race in 1937 and they were probably the most extraordinary Grand Prix cars ever built. And in fact, you have to say, you know, whether or not they got throstickers on the tail fairings, they were credibly beautiful cars. And of course, you know, the perfect representation of the Nazi ideology, you know, these amazing silver machines completely destroying everything else. We've talked about the outer union, the astonishing technical innovations. We haven't really talked about the Mercedes W25, which was the car they launched in 1934-35, which had a straight eight supercharged engine, front engine in the conventional way unlike the outer union, that's still very impressive and intimidating piece of kit. And it was a car that was very difficult to control the first one, the W25. And it was often said, when Simon did his test from Mercedes, he spun on his first run and came back in and said, and Neubert said, don't worry, everybody even Caraciel spins, spun the first time they drove this car. But then a couple of years later, they, it evolved into the W125, same idea, same layout, but much better suspension, much lower center of gravity and more formidable. And that's when Mercedes really started winning. Actually, that reminds me of a story, the Merc 125, a W125, because in the late 90s, Mercedes laid on one to be demonstrated at the old Halkenheim, the one with the long, long straights through the forest. For David Koolfarth, McLaren Mercedes driver to demonstrate. And he did demonstrate it, frightened the life out of him. The next day, the next day, Emerson Fitty Poulty, who just had his enormous shunt at Michigan, where he hit the wall at 235 miles an hour, and was limping and was already a certain age, got in the car, put a cloth leather helmet on to be authentic. One big puff of a big cigar got in there and drove it at 170 miles an hour. The real stuff, the real deal, anyway, that's a good time to take a break Richard. And when we come back, I'd love you to tell us the story of burnt Rosemary's actually finally tragic record-breaking attempts. So welcome back. And before the break, I think I teased a little bit of a teaser, saying Richard, would you tell us the story about burnt Rosemary and the extraordinary streamliner that finally, of course, was a tragic story with his speed attempts. Yes, well, by 1937 Rosemary had become, he'd really overshadowed Caratiala a bit as the German motoracing hero. And even more so when he met a woman called Ellie Binhorn, who was an aviator or an aviattrix, as they were in the other days. She was the sort of German amelior airheart. She'd made lots of long-distance flights, solo flights, to Australia, for instance. And at one point, she did the classic thing of forced landing in the Sahara and was rescued by twer eggs after, in her five days, I'll learn in the desert kind of thing. So she was young, beautiful, very courageous, clearly adventurous. And they met on the podium, I think, of the Czech-Grawn Priet Brno. And immediately established a relationship fell in love, I think you would say. And got married. And I think Simon describes at one point sitting in, I think it was in Berlin before, in the week of one of the Gronpris, at Arvis and seeing a Messerschmitt Typhoon, which was a four-seater Messerschmitt Goverbed, and knowing that that was Ellie Binhorn and Bert Rosemary going to the racetrack. Well, anyway, they became the sort of golden Aryan couple as far as the National Socialists were concerned. The Sadie's and Outer Union started taking record-breaking very seriously. And there was a sort of Reich speed week on the Frankfurt to Darmstadt out of Barn, which I think was the first one that was completed. Anyway, they'd close off a section of it so they could race up and down, do their timed kilometer runs, and break records, which they both did. And they were, the two teams were vying for supremacy at this endeavour. So one day in 1937, the two teams were both there to compete against each other really, setting new records. And they both had streamlined cars, very, very spectacular. Caraciela had a Mercedes, the beautiful slippery body, and Rosemary had an Outer Union, which in a way was the first ground-effects car because the designer was trying to get air to flow under the car in such a way as to suck it down and increase the attraction. And Caraciela went out and set a couple of records at about 268 miles an hour, I think, average speed. Amazing. The measured kilometer or whatever it was. Amazing. It was 268 miles at 432 kilometers per hour. Amazing. And Caraciela noticed that it was a windy day that was a cross-bid of a cross-wind. And on this measured kilometer, there were trees on either side. It was kind of wooded out of barn, but there were gaps in the trees. And the trees weren't in leaf either, so the wind was whistling through a bit. And he had noticed that a one-gap in particular, the cross-wind was throwing the car a bit off track. And he came back and said, "I'm not going to go out again." But Rosemary, wanting to beat Caraciela's time, went out in the outer union. And sure enough, when he got to the gap in the trees, 260 miles an hour plus, it really sent the car sideways and lost control, went off the track. Hit a tree, he was thrown out and killed. Although, I think there wasn't a mark on his body strangely enough, but he was killed. And a great shock to Germany to lose this hero. So there had to be a kind of state funeral. Joseph Goebbels, I think, wanted an SS funeral. Because, you know, like the German driver's he'd been given a rank in the SS. I think he was a storm-furer. Ellie Binhorn, not being a convinced Nazi, as indeed Rosemary might not have been, didn't want an SS funeral, but was overruled and sure enough, you know, the full thing was got out. Hitler sent Ellie Binhorn, the widow, a message, a letter which read, "May your grief be lessened by the knowledge that your husband died fighting for Germany." And if there was any doubt about the German government's attitude to motorsport and its users in image building, Hitler laid it to rest with that sentence. I think he died fighting for Germany. My word. He certainly did lay it to rest there. I think that fascinating character obviously rose mayor and a tragic end. And another driver we've talked about, but on passant really rather than in any focus, is Manfred von Brauchich. Now oddly, since I wasn't around in the 1930s and neither my friend were you. But oddly I have met or I did meet Manfred von Brauchich. In the most extraordinary place I met him, he was 91 at the time, I met him in Alexandra Palace. In North London at the launch of the 1997 Macrarram Mercedes Formula One car. I was a journalist at the time. I hadn't started work at Macrarram, and that wasn't for another 11 years in 2008. But I just can't tell you how confused this 91-year-old man was. Standing with military bearing, watching the spice girls and Jemuriqui perform while Mickahacken and David Koolford kind of danced about with them. I just don't think it was what he was expecting at all. I mean, he had a strange life of course. He'd raced for Mercedes in the '30s. And as you touched on his father, Volta von Brauchich was a general, then a field marshal, in a very, very, very senior in World War II and was arrested on charges of war crimes after the cessation of hostilities then. And by the way, was in turn briefly in a prison of war camp in Wales, but then managed to return to Germany and died of natural causes we believe before he was ever tried, which was going to be. Anyway, so that was Manfred Stad, Manfred von Brauchich. After the war, Manfred had to flee. He fled to South America, didn't like it there. Return to West Germany, of course, as it was then, was arrested for espionage and went to prison in the early '50s. And then he's, I don't know why I'm laughing, it's very sad. But then his wife, Gisela, I think you might pronounce it, committed suicide. And he moved to East Germany in the '50s. So I mean, Manfred von Brauchich, the man who famously said after a race, champagne for Karate Chauder and me and a beer for Lang. Because Lang was the ex mechanic, yes. So he wasn't worthy of champagne, he had to have beer. But a rather tragic life, I think he was a storm-furer as well. Yeah. Well, he came from the Prussian military families, he was expected to go into the army, but I think he fell off his horse at one point, banged his head and wasn't considered suitable for military service, but fine to drive a 500 horsepower, a Grand Prix car, which he did. When he went to, eventually he went to live in East Germany, having been in jail in the West. And he was in charge of the movement to uphold the Olympic ideal, which of course was an ideal that East Germany did everything in its power to uphold. Absolutely. Yes. With its fantastic state-sponsored doping progress. Yes. Lots of medals in being. Not a lot of honor. Not a lot, no. But that's fantastic that you met him in those circumstances with the Spieska. That's a wonderful story. Extraordinary, extraordinary. He was genuinely non-plussed by the whole thing. I can tell you. I can tell you. Not a bad driver, not a brilliant driver. No, he was bit wild. I mean, you talked earlier about a race in which he destroyed his tires. I think he did quite a lot of that. In 1938, he was leading the German Grand Prix at the Norbert Gring with Dickseeman in second place. And Seeman was kind of holding station. He knew that a German was supposed to win this home race. But Bracket should have really done his tires in and he came in for a pit stop to change them. And Seeman came in behind to change his two-hose precaution. From Bracket, just carcourt fire while it was being refueled. And Seeman didn't quite know what to do. Am I supposed to go out? Well, you know, they're putting the fire out. And Bracket just got out for a no-bar. The team manager waved him out, so he went out and won the race. And Bracket, they put the fire out and he managed to get back in. But then he went off and crashed and so's. That's where Seeman got his great victory in the 1938 German Grand Prix. And indeed, had to stand on the podium next to from Bracket. And while the German National Anthem was played and make a very, very half-hearted Hitler's saluting, in fact, he looks more like a man trying to flag a bus down outside the Ritz. You know, somebody saluting out of Hitler. So great drivers at the time though. And we've mentioned obviously Nouvellari. We've mentioned Rosemeyer. We've mentioned Karakchola, also one of the greats, brilliant in the wet. Absolutely brilliant in the wet. We haven't mentioned Vatsy, but he was a great driver at the time, of course. But the driver I wanted to ask you about, who perhaps isn't as well remembered now, a French Jewish driver, René Dreyfus. Tell us a little bit about him and his part in this story. Yeah, well Dreyfus was obviously a great driver. Before them, the Sadie's appeared. You know, he'd been winning races. He was more of a temporary of Nouvellari and Vatsy. And I think he'd been considered for the German teams, but he was Jewish. So he was out of consideration, all of a sudden, for that. But he got a little bit of revenge in 1938 at the Grand Prix in Poe in southern France around the houses, a bit like the Monaco Grand Prix. And the season, Mercedes had just launched their W154, which was their new machine for 1938. It was unlike the previous courage. It'd been a straight eight. It was a V12 and it was built to this new 3-liter supercharged formula. You could either have a 4.5 liter on the supercharged or 3-liter supercharged. And Mercedes and auto union book both went for the 3-liter option. So the W154. Mercedes decided to take it down to Poe where auto union weren't going, just to give it a run-out with Caracel, they're in Lange, and thinking they wouldn't get much opposition. But then through a series of mechanical misfortunes, mostly, they didn't win the race. And René Dreyfus, in a rather outdated French-built Delay, managed to win on home soil, which was headlines. French car beats the German giants. In fact, it didn't mean that much. Delay would never win anything else about season against the German teams. But it was certainly a nice thing for Dreyfus, who went on. He went to New York to live in New York and became a restaurant. He did. With a very successful restaurant, I think, there. And for many years afterwards. Yes, and I think motoring journalists who went to New York would often go and visit him and eat there. Maurice Hamilton has told me that he's done just that. I'm sure he did. Yep. I never ate that, did you? I did not. No. The other driver we haven't mentioned is Herman Lang. Really? We haven't touched on him. And his background is a mechanic. He joined the Mercedes organisation as the lowest of the low. But he became a test driver and he was a local man, working class, became how much talent he got. And he found his way into the Grand Prix team. And by 1938, he was the boy. He was the four drivers they had by that time. He was really the quickest in winning the races. He became a European champion. And they all, very interestingly, they all survived the war. All the significant figures in that team. The drivers, Karachiola from Brakic, Lang, and the manager, Neu Bar and the chief engineer, they all managed one way or another to survive. Not a bad idea, where he drew a Mercedes salary until 1942 when I think Govels put a stop to it. And Lang emerged after the war, still driving. And in fact, in 1997, he was the only driver. 52 in Mercedes went to Le Mans with two new coupes, which was their first really significant reentry into motorsport. He won 24 hours of Le Mans with a co-driver, which was a pretty big thing for Mercedes. Absolutely. Of course, Mercedes and Le Mans are separate podcasts. It's a good news. But we've touched on Farsi. Should we say something about him? Extraordinary figure. Yeah. Fragaidict. Yeah. Eventually, yes, morally. Eventually. He was in a Vavari's great rival. Absolutely. In Alphas and Bugatti's before the Mercedes and the Auto Unions came along. They had fantastic battles. When he was sort of, his image was the negative of Nivalari. Nivalari was all kind of passion and grand gestures and very thrilling and dramatic to watch. Farsi was a kind of colder figure. His driving wasn't much less dramatic, but that was his image. Then he fell in with a woman who became known as the White Lady and got seriously into morphine, I think it was. I think morphine and opium. I think that's the happiest thing. In the end, it didn't do his driving or his career very much. Who knew? I was going to say, "No, something Sherlock." But there you go. So listen, we've talked about some of these extraordinary characters, brilliant drivers, amazing cars, the way it was politicised and notcified by Adolf Hitler throughout that period. Summing up Richard, how do you look back on that period of motor racing history? I mean, no one can deny the extraordinary machines, the exceptional races we've described. And by the way, we could have talked for hours and described many more. But the backdrop against which they occurred casts a long shadow, doesn't it? Yes, it does. The last time those two teams, Mercedes and Arter Union, were seen, was on September 3rd, 1939, two days after Hitler invaded Poland and the very day that Neville Chamberlain declared that Britain was at war with Germany, two hours after that announcement in Belgrade. I thought it was Belgrade. It was Belgrade. A five-car grid competed in what was actually a pretty short race. It wasn't a Grand Approv. It wasn't. It was a Grand Prix, but not a Grand A-Prov, which was the races that counted towards the championship. But it was a race. And Mercedes sent two cars for Lang and von Brauchich. I think, Karetsche, who had gone off to Switzerland by that point. And out of Union sent two cars for Neville Ari and Hermann Moulin. And there was a very old Dugassi driven by a local bloke, and making up the five-carried. It was not uneventful. There were 50,000 spectators. And Neville Ari won. In fact, I think Lang had been the favorite to win and he'd been following, trying to overtake von Brauchich. He was first and second. And von Brauchich was doing what he usually did, which was going over the furches. And he threw up a pebble that smashed Lang's goggles and pushed up, got back to the pits. And the German teams always traveled with their own doctor, their shared a doctor between them. And he spent the rest of the race picking class fragments out of Lang's eyes. Anyway, Neville Ari won the race in the outer Union. von Brauchich was second and Moulin was third. Don't know what happened to the Bigatti. But of course, war had been declared. So they had to heightell it back to Germany. And the petrol situation was pretty critical. They were worried that if they went, the short cut via Hungary in their convoy of trucks, they wouldn't be able to get a neat fuel. So they went via Slovenia, Croatia and Austria. And they went in a convoy, the two teams in Convertress. And they had to keep a kilometer apart because it was hot. And there was so much dust that they'd been closer together, wouldn't be able to see. And then when the Mercedes team got back to Untertürkheim, their headquarters in Stuttgart, they found the whole thing being closed up and everything was impounded by the army for the duration. You know? The war had started, so that was a pretty strange end to the story of the Silver Arrows. But there was one thing left hanging over. Their record breaking had been very successful, but they had the ambition to take the world land speed record, which had been fought over during the 30s by three Englishmen, Malcolm Campbell, George Easton and John Cobb, and Cobb held the record at that point at 360 odd miles an hour. In the railton special? Yeah. Bonneville, I think. Yeah, Soft Plants. And Mercedes, okay, we've got to take this one too. So they commissioned Ferdinand Porsche to build the McCar, which was called the T80, which took a Messerschmitt M1 on 09 engine, boarded it out to 44 litres. And it was a six wheel car, four rear wheels driven. And they never finished it. Well, they didn't finish it at that time. But there was a half built version of it and the plans. And eventually, sometime long after the war, Mercedes, as you know, they do, they're very proud of the history of their sporting endeavors. They completed the car. So I think it's now in the Mercedes Museum. Nobody's ever tried to break a record in it. But that was just an extraordinary machine. So that was really the last effort and the thing that was left hanging over when the curtain came down. And that feels like a good time to say, and colossally, that's history. Some serious and important, actually, topics in this episode, I think, which we enjoyed digging into and we hope you enjoyed listening to it too. We'll be back with another episode next week. But, as I always say, if you're enjoying the show, please do follow or subscribe to the feed so you never miss an episode. And if you want to leave us a nice review on your podcast app of choice, we'd be enormously grateful as it really helps other listeners find the show. Indeed it does. And yes, we love hearing your feedback and we read it all. So if you want to get in touch with us, you can and please do drop us a line on podcasts at thehyphenrace.com or you can drop Richard or me a message on X, Twitter, the platform formerly known as Twitter, I'm @TheBishF1 and Richard is @RWilliams1947. Until next time, goodbye. We're Athletic.