DPTJ Script: How Mercedes powered Hitler’s motorsport arms race
On the complicated legacy of Mercedes-Benz in Grand Prix racing
In the build-up to the 1934 German Grand Prix, the already formidable Nürburgring was transformed. Gone were the days of packing a race track with nothing but enthusiasts; under the control of new chancellor Adolf Hitler, motorsport was the ideal venue in which to display the might of his new, robust Germany under the Third Reich.
Track facilities were draped in swastika flags, while a regiment of brownshirts had marched for weeks from Berlin to be present at the July event. Over 150,000 spectators had descended on the rural track, keen to lay eyes on the new German racing machines that promised to be unstoppable — The Mercedes W25, and the Auto Union P-Wagen.
Marvels of automotive innovation, these Grand Prix cars were heavily funded by the German government and looked set to dominate the European racing scene in just the same way that Hitler was hoping to dominate the entire continent: Resoundingly, quickly, and packed with pageantry designed to inspire a nationalistic zeal.
This month on “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys,” we're digging deep into Nazi participation in Grand Prix racing with a two-part series, with each episode focusing on one of the two state-funded automotive programs. We'll be starting off with Mercedes, then dig deeper into the exploits of Auto Union in the next show with an eye to understanding the complex and often uncomfortable role that motorsport played in the revitalization of the German military after the country was devastated by the First World War.
Over the next two episodes, we'll trace the origins of the automobile in Germany and investigate the impact of the Treaty of Versailles on both industry and national image in order to link Hitler's ascension to power with his emphasis on revitalizing the automotive and motorsport industries. Naturally, we're going to begin with a titan: Mercedes.
World War I and the racing world
Before we dig too deeply into the motorsport explosion funded by the Nazi regime, I want to take a moment to talk about why that happened, and what greater purpose it served.
To do that, we first need to look back at the close of World War I. The conflict had begun on that same day in 1914, when Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was assassinated by a Bosnian Serb named Gavrilo Princip. Germany was a close ally of Austria-Hungary, while Serbia was protected by Russia. After Ferdinand's assassination, Germany encouraged Austria-Hungary to declare war on Serbia. Just a few days later, on August 1, Germany declared war on Russia, then France two days after.
Germany had grown strong since the late 1800s, uniting with several other nearby countries and ramping up industry, which included the production of arms to supply a strong military. When the conflict kicked off, the country felt it needed to go on the offensive to avoid being overtaken by enemies. It did so by attacking France, an ally of Russia, and violated a neutrality agreement that had been established in Belgium.
I won't get into the details of the yearslong conflict, but critically, when World War I came to a close on June 28, 1919 with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was pegged as the primary aggressor.
The treaty forced Germany to accept blame for the war, which resulted in a serious weakening of the state. First and foremost, the Treaty of Versailles stated that Germany must repay the Allies for the devastation caused by the war. While it'd be impossible to calculate the exact sum of the damage, a commission set losses at around $33 billion in 1921 — which is an unthinkable amount of money today, let alone in wartorn Europe. Even though economists warned that no country could ever pay back that kind of debt without basically upsetting the balance of the world's economies, the Allies demanded Germany do so, and the Treaty of Versailles also included punishments if Germany missed payments.
The fiscal weakening was only one part of a multi-pronged attempt to cripple Germany. The second prong was a near-total destruction of the country's military. Conscription was banned, tanks were banned, its air force was outlawed, and the number of personnel in both the army and navy were capped in order to prevent any significant mobilization. Only certain factories were allowed to produce things like weapons, and the Allies planned to keep a close eye on those factories.
And the final prong of the Treaty of Versailles involved chopping down Germany's territories. It was forced to give up its overseas colonies and to relinquish control over the land around its borders. By losing land, Germany lost a significant portion of its iron and coal producing regions, as well as a decent portion of its population. Further, large swaths of the country were also demilitarized.
Germans were horrified. They'd been expecting some kind of treaty, yes, but they hadn't expected to be so economically weakened. They hadn't been invited to negotiate the terms of the treaty, which gave them a sense that they were being handed a dictated peace, not a genuine peace, and they resented the fact that they'd been forced to take sole responsibility for the onset of war.
The Kaiser government didn't collect taxes from Germans while the war was going on, instead selling war bonds to the public to fund the advance. But after the war, hyperinflation meant those bonds were worthless — and with its various industries kneecapped, unemployment skyrocketed.
In 1922, when it came time for Germany to pay its first reparation installments, the country had no money to offer. As a result, French soldiers occupied the Ruhr, Germany's most valuable industrial area, with the goal of collecting those missed payments by taking goods from the country. While they were supposed to focus on taking coal or industrial goods, the Allied soldiers also made a point of blocking shipments of food and other supplies into Germany. Germans started to practice something they called “passive resistance” by destroying their own goods, which resulted in a violent conflict between the locals and the French soldiers, and Germany had to step in to help rehabilitate over 100,000 German citizens that had been displaced in the conflict.
And then, without any of the income from the Ruhr region, Germany's economy spiraled. The country printed more banknotes, which in turn made those notes worthless and saw the cost of basic goods escalate. Wages for the few folks who did find employment had to be paid daily, because a twice-monthly payment would have required wheelbarrows to cart all that money around.
France was rightfully angry at Germany, but its retaliation was severe. Countless Germans were left impoverished, trying to find a way of life in the rubble.
It makes sense, then, that many of those Germans were irate at their own government for signing the treaty that was killing the country. One problem was the whole ‘German guilt’ thing; in Germany, most people believed that their country had gotten involved in the war as a response to Russia mobilizing its army. And if Russia wasn't to blame, then certainly Austria-Hungary should have taken a bulk of the blame. Germany may have been involved, but it wasn't the only country at fault.
The Weimar Republic had been established as Germany's government after the war, but the constant economic problems destabilized it right out of the gate, and many German citizens were keen to oust those officials as soon as possible, as they blamed them for bowing to the Allied forces. This was a hugely tense atmosphere, ripe for misinformation, disinformation, and retaliation — including something we've come to call as the “stab-in-the-back myth.”
Basically, this myth claimed that Germans didn't lose World War I on the battlefield; they actually lost it at home, where Jews, socialists, and communists conspired to actively undermine the war effort. It didn't matter that this myth was just that — a myth. It provided an explanation for a truly horrifying period of time for many Germans and softened them to accepting more radical, extremist, and nationalist ideals, all while shifting the blame to already marginalized parties.
One of the big proponents of this belief was Adolf Hitler, who was quick to adopt antisemitic, anti-capitalist, anti-Marxist, and nationalist ideals after World War I. As early as 1919, he was subscribing to the belief that Germany's ills could be traced back to various groups of people who weren't his ideal German national citizen, and he was using his strong speaking skills to start moving up the ranks of power. In these speeches, he'd rail against the Treaty of Versailles and the politicians that made it happen and the Jewish folks he felt destabilized Germany to begin with. He was good at promoting his speeches and rallies, and he was good at speaking to the fears and resentments that had bubbled up during war, if only to manipulate those sentiments to serve his own political needs. Before long, he was climbing up the ranks of Germany's political system, and no one would stop him.
But what did this have to do with cars? Well: Hitler was an avid auto enthusiast, but beyond that, he appreciated what a thriving automotive scene meant. It meant industry was thriving in your country, that people were not only employed but that they were crafting something exceptional. It meant Germany could negotiate for supplies with other countries, meaning it wasn't as hated or feared as before. It meant the country was starting to see beyond mere survival and looking ahead to a future characterized by innovation and growth. It meant Germany had once again come to play on the world stage.
Just how important was the auto industry to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party? Well, on February 11, 1933, less than two weeks after becoming chancellor of Germany, he capped off a tour of speeches with one of the biggest events of them all: The Berlin Motor Show.
There, Hitler promised to slash taxes and regulations that suppressed the auto industry, to build a robust national highway system, to dominate international motorsport, and to evolve the auto industry in line with the aviation industry. He ended his speech by proclaiming, “These momentous tasks are also part of the program for the reconstruction of the German economy!” and with that, the show opened.
To further bolster Germany's automotive efforts, Hitler called the National Socialist Motor Corps, or the NSKK, into action. This organization had been founded in 1931, with roots tracing even further back, and it was tasked with training German citizens in the art of motor skills, including driving, racing, and maintaining their machines.
Why? Well, that brings into play another of Hitler's aims. A strong automobile industry lent itself to the development of a strong military industry. Yes, technically Germany was still barred from developing military machinery… but the automotive development made for a pretty compelling cover story for any mobilization activity. If an automaker was building a powerful engine, then the easy cover story was that it was going in a race car. If that engine also happened to be a perfect fit for, say, a tank or an airplane, well — that was merely an unintended consequence. And if countless swaths of German citizens were being trained to drive and maintain the cars flooding their roads, and those citizens just happened to become very good at commanding armored military vehicles in the future, well — that wasn't the publicly stated point, but it was quite a nice consequence.
And there's one other key factor here, too — one that I think can be easily ignored because it's harder to quantify. That had to do with bolstering the German spirit and once again uniting the country's people. For decades, to be German was to be looked down upon by the international community, and there wasn't much to be proud of.
The automotive industry, though, was just that: An industry. It could provide jobs. The workers in those jobs could contribute directly to the economy. And if the best of their cars were entered into races on the international motorsport scene, and if those cars could beat the best of the competition from, say, Italy or France, then that gave Germans something to be proud of. Something to feel good about. After years of being treated like a weak link in the European food chain, Germany could start to reassert itself as an apex predator, at least on the race track. The athletes racing the cars could be seen as the finest specimens Germany could produce, the engineers a sign of Germany's fabulous intelligence. Aryans, Hitler claimed, were the superior race, and he would use motorsport as one way to prove it.
But even in the 1930s, the auto industry in Germany was still depressed. It was rebuilding, yes, but it wasn't exactly in a position where it was going to be comfortable dedicating tons of resources to building racing machines.
Well, the government would be willing to step in to provide a little financial assistance.
Mercedes: A history
Even in the 1930s, the company we know today as Mercedes Benz was known to be a force to be reckoned with. I'm going to be digging deeper into the company's foundation in the next episode, because the roots of pretty much all commercial combustion-engined car sales can be traced back to a man named Karl Benz. But how had the company survived World War I? What had its racing program been like before the interruption of the war? And to what heights could it ascend in the future?
The Mercedes we know today has evolved countless times over the years. As we said, its roots are in Carl Benz's patent for the Benz Motorwagen, the first automobile powered by an internal combustion engine. But it also has ties to the conversion of a stagecoach into an automobile that was affected by Gottlieb Daimler and engineer Wilhelm Maybach. The first Mercedes automobile was sold in 1901 by the Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft company, and its success can largely be attributed to Daimler employee Emil Jellinek-Mercedes, who had an eye for marketing and felt that one of the best ways to promote his employer's latest machinery would be to enter it in some races.
Both Benz and Daimler manufactured cars independently until 1926. In both the marketplace and in the racing scene, they were formidable rivals, with both becoming massive players in the German economy.
But after the close of World War I, both companies faced a crisis. Automobiles were being taxed as luxury items by the government, which meant that they were being priced out of reach of the average consumer. Gasoline was scarce, so if you were able to buy a car, you would have had no way to drive it. And, as we mentioned earlier in the episode, Allied soldiers swept in to snatch Germany's key resources as a way to make up for the country's nonpayment of its reparations, and the workplace strikes that further hampered production.
With the foundation of their industry snatched out from beneath them, Germany's automakers needed to find a way to survive. Daimler considered selling a few of its manufacturing sites but ultimately decided against it in order to produce things like bicycles that were cheaper and that had more utility to people who couldn't get their hands on gasoline.
In 1923, it was clear that this burgeoning auto industry was about to die if something didn't change — and with the political climate still thick with international angst, survival came down to the companies themselves. Benz had already been feeling the pain, and it had already proposed a merger with Daimler back in 1919. Daimler rejected it, perhaps hoping that the economic crisis would prove to be a passing fad, and both companies struggled through the next few years as separate entities.
But the economy didn't improve, and in 1924, both firms met to hash out the terms of a deal named the Agreement of Mutual Interest. Under this deal, Benz and Daimler would standardize design, production, purchasing, sales, and even advertising, though both companies would still technically be preserving the distinct identities of their individual brands. This was basically just a way for them to pool resources in the interest of keeping both companies alive.
Even that wasn't enough, though, and on June 28, 1926, Daimler and Benz merged into a company we now know as Daimler-Benz AG. There was no real need for the outfits to maintain separate identities at this point, necessitating a new brand name under which to market their jointly-produced vehicles. They settled on Mercedes Benz, paying homage to Benz founder Carl Benz and to Daimler's most successful car model, the Mercedes. Of note here is the fact that the Daimler name couldn't be used because Gottlieb Daimler had allowed a ton of other companies to use the name when they purchased patents to manufacture similar machinery; Gottlieb Daimler hadn't given his consent for his name to be used for this specific affair, and considering that he had died in 1900, there was no real way to actually gain that consent. Thus: Mercedes.
Just weeks after Mercedes Benz merged, its motorsport program saw its first success. Rudi Caracciola — who, despite his surname, was decidedly German — took victory at the 1926 German Grand Prix in driving rain. He was just 25 years old and earned the name Regenmeister, or Rainmaster, thanks to the exceptional nature of his drive.
To stick it out through these next difficult years, the Mercedes-Benz board decided to limit the number of car models the new brand would produce, and to refine the manufacturing process at the outfit's major factories. A longtime Benz employee named Wilhelm Kissel took over, and one of the key promotional tools for the brand would be motorsport.
At least, until 1930. The year before, the US stock market crash had decimated economies all around the world, and Mercedes Benz was feeling the pain. The company sent off letters to its greatest drivers — including Caracciola — to inform them that it would be stepping back from the world of motorsport, that the competitive arm of the company was dead. Caracciola went immediately to Stuttgart in hopes of convincing Kissel to change his mind, but the Mercedes Benz man was adamant: Racing was a luxury that simply could not be tolerated.
Next, Caracciola headed over to the office of Alfred Neubauer.
Neubauer was, to put it simply, a presence. Tall and portly, he'd been a racing driver until the very moment he was decimated in competition by none other than Rudi Caracciola back in the mid-1920s. It was enough to convince the man from Neutitschein to hang up the goggles and pick up the stopwatch. If he couldn't be a driver, he would become a team manager, and he would do it in a way no one had done it before.
If you had attended a race in the 1920s or 1930s, Neubauer would have been impossible to miss. Decked out in a thick trench coat with a slew of stopwatches hanging from his neck, he transformed the amateur world of race team organization into a refined art. He was the man who invented the chalkboard pit signs that informed his drivers of their position in the race and their gaps to the cars in front and behind. He required an almost surgical precision to the process of the pit stop, chopping down the time it took to service a vehicle from minutes to seconds. And despite the fact that he wasn't much older than Rudi Caracciola, Neubauer had become something of a father figure and mentor to the driver who had just discovered that he’d be unemployed heading into 1931.
So, it was to Neubauer that Caracciola went next to lament his fate.
But Caracciola didn't arrive alone. He'd brought with him his girlfriend Charly, and as Caracciola spoke with Neubauer, it was Charly who suggested that if Mercedes wouldn't continue in motorsport, well — Rudi may very well have to find employment with another team. Alfa Romeo, perhaps.
The mere suggestion was enough to send Neubauer into fits; even then, there was a sense of betrayal about one of Germany's best drivers going off to compete for an Italian team, this feeling that it would be a slap in the face to the might of the slowly healing German auto industry. When Rudi and Charly left his office, Neubauer went directly to consult with Wilhlem Kissel.
Racing, he argued, must continue at Mercedes. If it was too expensive for the manufacturer itself, why not allow Caracciola to buy a discounted version of the SSK, the team's racing machine? Why not allow Neubauer to serve as Caracciola's manager, to assemble a small staff of his own, to return to the racing circuits of the world in order to continue dominating as Caracciola and his Mercedes had done all throughout 1930? Neubauer was convinced that the program could pay for itself.
The history books show that Alfred Neubauer was right, but in late 1930, Mercedes felt like it was taking a massive risk in allowing its dedicated motorsport manager to continue competing.
Neubauer once again turned to his penchant for perfection in preparing Caracciola and the new, smaller Mercedes team for the first marquee event of the 1931 racing season: The Mille Miglia.
The annual 1,000-mile event had become a point of pride for the Italian motorsport industry, and the organizers believed that no foreign driver could ever hope to conquer the rambling course that wound through towns large and small, up mountains and down into valleys. Only the Italians would have the time to even consider driving parts of the course, and even then, there was no real expectation that anyone would drive the full thing before the race. That mindset was reflected in an entry list that was almost entirely composed of Italian teams and Italian drivers racing Italian cars.
The expectations about the kind of car and driver that could win this race shattered in the face of Alfred Neubauer's Mercedes team. Most outfits treated the Mille Miglia as an adventure into the unknown; once their driver launched from the start line, he effectively dropped off the map until he hit the next checkpoint.
But Neubauer wouldn't broach that uncertainty. Instead, he charted every single mile of the thousand-mile course and established a variety of locations for what he called “rolling depots” — or, trucks chock full of mechanics and spare parts. If anything went wrong during the event, there would be someone on hand to help solve the problem.
Caracciola won. It wasn't an easy victory; during the night, he dropped back through the running order, with his success largely coming thanks to an inspired drive through the final 250 miles of the event. But he did it, crossing the line with an 11-second lead over the Alfa Romeo of Giuseppe Campari. It was the first win for a German driver and a German car in the Mille Miglia — and it wouldn't be the last.
When Rudi Caracciola returned to Germany, he was summoned to speak with Wilhelm Kissel. No, it wasn't an offer of a full factory-backed ride, or a recommitment to spending the big bucks on motorsport. Instead, Kissel needed a favor; a special customer had ordered a bespoke Mercedes, and the factory had been delayed producing it. To smooth over any potential pain, could Caracciola drive that Mercedes right to the buyer? It would mean the world to this client, who would certainly appreciate speaking with a celebrity racer.
That client was none other than Adolf Hitler.
Caracciola was invited into Hitler's office, where a framed portrait of Henry Ford looked down on the two men as they conversed. Hitler congratulated Caracciola on the pride he brought to Germany with his Mille Miglia win, and then proceeded to pepper him with questions about Italy. How were the trains, the roads, the people? How did Italians feel about Benito Mussolini? What were the living conditions? The future chancellor was perhaps disappointed in Caracciola's vague answers; the driver had gone to Italy to race, not to take notes on the Italian political situation and way of life. After a brief demonstration of the Mercedes, where Caracciola was advised to keep speeds below 20 miles per hour in order to avoid any accidents. When he left, Caracciola came away with the impression that Hitler was perhaps not the most charismatic of leaders, but that his passion for motorsport was, at the very least, something to keep an eye on.
Nevertheless, Rudi Caracciola departed for Alfa Romeo at the end of the year. He knew his success with Mercedes that year had a limited shelf life, considering the fact that the automaker was still reluctant to invest in racing. In no time at all, the SSKL would be outdated, and there would be no hope of winning. No German automakers entered factory teams in Grand Prix racing in 1932 or 1933.
But in 1933, that promised to change. Rudi Caracciola was one of several German racing stars invited to the Berlin Motor Show where new chancellor Adolf Hitler announced that he would offer a total of 500,000 German marks to the automaker that announced its intention to return to Grand Prix racing.
And with that, the motorsport world was changed forever.
Nazi Germany and Grand Prix racing
When the Daimler-Benz board met at the automaker's Stuttgart headquarters shortly after the Berlin Motor Show, the moods of the assembled men had brightened considerably. After several difficult years, Mercedes was now greeted with an opportunity to redefine its brand on the world stage, and to solidify its position as a friend to the German government. It was once again time to go racing.
And that was largely thanks to the fact that many folks at Daimler maintained close ties to Hitler. The company advertised in Nazi newspapers and offered discounted vehicles to Hitler during his trips around Germany. The new chancellor was a fan of motorsport, so Mercedes would send its best drivers over to visit with Hitler — and when Hitler established the National Socialist Motor Corps, or NSKK, to establish a greater understanding of automobiles throughout Germany, those racers were required to become members. Mercedes board members raised money for Hitler's political campaigns, and in return, Hitler assured the manufacturer that it would receive favorable contracts in the future when it came time to start rebuilding the German Army.
The military aspect was huge. Orders for heavy trucks were coming in at record pace, and Hitler had also ordered Mercedes to build prototypes of airplane engines and tanks. After a lean period of production that saw Daimler profits fall, the board members were plenty pleased to take advantage of the injection of government funds in order to start cranking out military products.
Motorsport would take up much the same purpose by providing a huge propaganda blitz about the performance of German machinery and athletes. Manufacturers like Daimler also hoped to take advantage of an increased interest in their machinery by becoming bigger players in the export market. There was just one problem: Motorsport was expensive.
Heading into 1934, The Association Internationale des Automobile Clubs Reconnus (AIACR) — or, the sanctioning body that would become the FIA — had introduced a brand-new set of rules for Grand Prix racing. Speeds were limited to a maximum of 140 miles per hour, while each race car could only be 750 kilograms at its heaviest. Between the development required to build these cars and the staff required to run the race team, Wilhelm Kissel estimated that it would take at least one million marks per year to be able to find its competitive footing. In modern US dollars, we're talking in excess of $8 million today.
State funding, then, was necessary for Mercedes to reenter the racing scene — but that was something that had been on the company's mind for quite some time, and Adolf Hitler had already promised to invest the moment he rose to power.
The announcement of the half-million-mark endowment to any German manufacturer who represented the country in the international Grand Prix scene was exactly what Mercedes needed.
There was just one problem: It wasn't going to get the sum.
A new company named Auto Union had popped up, and they'd gotten Ferdinand Porsche to design them a brand new race car in hopes of soaking up some of the funds on offer. We'll talk in more detail about Auto Union in the next episode of DPTJ, but in its broadest strokes, the company was founded when four struggling automakers merged together in order to continue to survive. Those automakers — Audi, Horch, DKW, and Wanderer — had never quite assumed the might of Mercedes, but because they were interested in racing, Hitler decided that it would only be fair to divide his 500,000-mark prize between the two companies.
Kissel protested. In March, he and other members of the Daimler board drafted a letter to Hitler that argued it deserved the full prize offering.
“Since in the course of the company's history,” the letter read, “our marque has contributed frequently and significantly to the respect paid to Germany at sporting events, we would dedicate all our skill and knowledge to this and would deem it an honor if we were enabled to represent the German flag in the future of the sport.”
Adolf Hitler agreed. He, too, thought the Reich should fund Mercedes’ ambitions. But he also continued to believe that Auto Union deserved the same, and so, he firmly decreed that both parties would split the half-million marks equally between them.
What to do? Well, there was really only one option: Daimler-Benz would go racing with its Mercedes marque, even though it wouldn't gain the full amount it had been promised. Yes, it would require more money pulled right from Mercedes’ pockets, but board members assumed that it would be a small investment in currying favor with the Nazi regime in the future.
During the winter, Mercedes embarked on an all-out effort to craft its upcoming Grand Prix challenger, which it termed the W25, designed by a Dr. Hans Nibel.
Dr. Nibel saw the 1934 Grand Prix ruleset differently than almost every other designer at the time. Remember that this is still fairly early in the history of automotive development, so things like aerodynamics weren't well understood. Most teams looked at the 750-kg weight limit of these new cars and assumed that a lower weight would necessarily mean a less powerful car because, in that era, they assumed you needed a heavier chassis to withstand all that extra power.
But Dr. Nibel disagreed. He felt that it would be possible to wedge a big, powerful engine into an extremely light but durable chassis — it would just take some creative thinking to fit all the necessary components together.
The result was the aforementioned W25. Its engine was somewhat unremarkable: It was powered by a supercharged 3.3-liter straight-eight, one that Mercedes was intimately familiar with. They'd tuned the engine to an extent that it could achieve 50% more horsepower than the rival Alfa Romeo P3, but they'd also ensured that the engine could cope with all that extra power.
It was in the construction of the rest of the car where Dr. Nibel got creative. Wherever possible, light metal alloys were used to cut down on weight, while the single-seater configuration — something new to Mercedes — provided a more centered weight distribution. Other advanced features included combining the gearbox and the differential to reduce the amount of moving parts, hydraulic brakes, front- and rear-wheel independent suspension, a low-slung configuration, and holes drilled through every possible area to reduce weight.
The 750-kg weight limit had been introduced to reduce speed, but Mercedes had found a way to create an even quicker car.
Prior to the start of the 1934 season, Adolf Huhnlein sat down with both Mercedes and Auto Union to rattle off a list of expectations for the conduct of the teams and drivers representing Germany. Hühnlein had been made Korpsfuhrer of the National Socialist Motor Corps, a job that he took extremely seriously and that he embarked on with passion. Between April and September of 1933, NSKK membership rose from 30,000 to 350,000 men. While you might be tempted to assume, then, that folks associated with the auto industry were more likely to trend fascist, the skyrocketing enrollment numbers came down in part to the fact that Huhnlein required membership in this organization for anyone who wanted to be part of a race team, motor club, or driving school. That included the Grand Prix drivers.
Because the NSKK was effectively a paramilitary organization, Huhnlein and Hitler had extremely strict rules. Naturally, drivers were expected to do everything they could to bring honor to Germany, but as international representatives of the Nazi party, they were also expected to conduct themselves in a certain fashion in public — including how much affection a driver was allowed to show his wife during pre- or post-race ceremonies.
“Motor racing,” read NSKK propaganda, “is no longer primarily about personal success but a never-ending struggle for the success and honor of the Reich.”
And it was in this pre-season meeting that the NSKK outlined all those rules and expectations, while also charting a list of races to run in a way designed to maximize German victory.
The year got off to a slow start, in large part because star driver Rudi Caracciola had been severely injured the year before. After the close of 1933, Alfa Romeo announced it would be ending its racing program, leaving Caracciola with nowhere to go and little time to find a ride. His close friend Louis Chiron found himself in the same boat, having been fired by Bugatti, and together, the two purchased some Alfa Romeo 8Cs and formed their own racing team, Scuderia C.C.
But at the Monaco Grand Prix, three of Caracciola's four brakes failed heading into Tabac, and he had to make a choice: Crash into a wall, or leap into the sea. He went with the former, the impact crushing his right leg. He spent the year bouncing between different hospitals and his home in Switzerland, trying to regain strength in a leg that had become an inch shorter in surgery. To make matters even worse, his loving wife Charly was killed in an avalanche, leaving Caracciola with, effectively, nothing to live for.
It was his friend Louis Chiron and his girlfriend Baby Hoffman who brought Caracciola back to life. Chiron arranged for Caracciola to drive a lap of honor at the Monaco Grand Prix behind the wheel of a Mercedes convertible, and though his injured leg ached, he had made up his mind: Racing was what he was meant to do, and he would do it with Mercedes.
There were surely doubts on the part of the race team, but by 1934, Caracciola had become an integral part of the team. Obsessed with cars growing up, he'd ended up taking a job with an automaker named Fafnir before moving off to sell cars for Daimler in 1923. Every so often, Daimler would provide him with a car to drive, and he began to make a name for himself — and for Mercedes — on racing circuits around Europe. The team didn't owe him a guaranteed Grand Prix drive, but at the very least, it needed to allow him to test the incoming W25.
It was off to AVUS, a mighty stretch of straight road connected by two sharp turns, for that first test. It was a mind-numbing track, one that would force Caracciola to keep the accelerator pressed firmly to the floor on the straights, brake hard for one of the turns, and maneuver an intimidating banked section that comprised the other turn. For a driver whose right leg was in pain, behind the wheel of a car that one Mercedes driver said felt like driving a fast touring car on ice, it would be no easy feat.
And yet he managed a lap of 235 kph — or, 146 miles per hour. It was enough. Alfred Neubauer asked him then and there to join the Mercedes team. Enlisting in the National Socialist Motor Corps was a requirement of him doing so, and Caracciola wasted no time signing up.
Word of the two formidable racing machines — the Mercedes W25, and the competing Auto Union P-Wagen, which we'll dig into in more depth in the next episode — spread like wildfire throughout the European racing scene. The two machines were drastically different, but both were quicker off the line, faster down the straights, and tighter through the corners than anything anyone had ever seen before. Manfred von Brauchitsch, whose uncle Walther had become commander-in-chief of the German army, was confident enough to tell the media that “We shall win tomorrow because we are the strongest team.”
That early July race was set to take place at Montlhéry in France, the very day after what we later came to call “The Night of the Long Knives” — where Hitler ordered the killing of his rivals in order to assume more complete power, without any threat of a challenge. Had a Mercedes or an Auto Union gone on to win that day, it would have cast a grim pall over the motorsport scene — but instead, it was Louis Chiron in an Alfa who took victory as, one after another, the W25s and the P-Wagens fell apart.
Chiron celebrated his win, but it came with a sense that time was running out. The German cars may have failed this time out, but the raw pace they showed was a clear sign of things to come. Mercedes and Auto Union clearly had the resources required to return to their headquarters and whip up solutions.
And those solutions were in full effect two weeks later at the German Grand Prix — an event that had become a significant rallying point for the Nazi Party. A regiment of brownshirts had marched for weeks all the way from Berlin to be in attendance, while the Nürburgring itself was adorned in swastika flags and parading rows of soldiers designed to instill a sense of both pageantry and pride into the hearts of the 150,000 fans who had flocked to the German countryside in hopes of seeing a dominant display of force.
Already, the Nazi party was beginning to reap the rewards of Germany's automotive might. NSKK propaganda read, “Motor racing is no longer primarily about personal success, but a never-ending struggle for the success and honor of the Reich,” and that was clear as motorsport innovations began to find their way into the fighter planes, military trucks, and armored vehicles being manufactured by the very automakers fielding these race cars. Forty percent of the Mercedes team budget was coming directly from government financing; Hitler had only promised the outfit 500,000 marks, and instead had provided them with 907,000 when the power of their machinery became clear. For every accomplishment, they were afforded bonus checks that encouraged them to keep pushing for more performance.
At the 1934 German Grand Prix, Hans Stuck took the checkered flag behind the wheel of an Auto Union. The full force of the German machinery had yet to be unlocked as many other drivers retired, but it did kick off a pattern of dominance that would go on to last the remainder of 1934 — and well into the rest of the decade.
It was dominance characterized by an attention to detail that no one had ever seen in Grand Prix racing. The cars were stunning, yet, but the German teams didn't hesitate to find an advantage wherever they could. Germany's national racing color, for example, was white — but in an effort to find even a fraction of additional pace, Mercedes and Auto Union stopped painting their cars, leaving the metal bodywork exposed and earning them the Silver Arrows nickname.
The Silver Arrows arrived at races with truckloads of personnel and equipment. In the pits, they cordoned off their cars, covered them in cloth, and shooed away any photographer who might try to get a photo of the engine. Mechanics and drivers kept their cards close to their chests, unwilling to expose any secret that could benefit the competition. During pit stops, a formidable army of mechanics would descend upon the car, each completing one or two tasks to utmost perfection. Alfred Neubauer, head of the Mercedes racing program, was known for fastidiously laying out the pits in such a way that all the necessary equipment was readily available, and for becoming the first person to devise a pit-to-driver communication system to keep his drivers abreast of any changes in the race or demands from the team.
Coming into 1935, Mercedes had already begun assisting Hitler in the rearmament of Germany through early military contracts, while the government began to lay the fault of the country's failures squarely at the feet of the so-called “enemies of the Reich.” It was becoming impossible to avoid… but for drivers like Rudi Carracciola, it was fairly easy to push these increased tensions to the side and focus on motorsport. Over the off-season, Mercedes had refined the faults of the W25, and Caracciola was able to take an early season victory at Tripoli in a win that Daimler-Benz hailed as showing the “absolute superiority” of German technology.
And it would go on to be a dominant showing for Carracciola and the Mercedes team. Of the seven events comprising the official Grand Prix season, they won five: The French Grand Prix at Montlhéry, the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa, the Swiss Grand Prix at Bremgarten, and the Spanish Grand Prix at Lasarte. He was crowned European champion.
International tensions simmered that year. When German drivers swept the podium in France, fans actively booed the French ministers in attendance, frustrated that their own countrymen were unable to build a car worthy of competing on their own soil. In October, Benito Mussolini ordered Italian troops to invade Abyssinia, and the lack of response from France and England helped him realize that aligning with Hitler may very well prove fruitful; as such, when it came time to sign drivers for the coming season, Mussolini ordered his Italian teams to specifically hire drivers from Italy. All the while, Hitler was personally approving driver hires for German teams; Louis Chiron was only barely approved, while at Auto Union, Hans Stuck was almost fired because he was married to a woman with a Jewish grandfather.
The 1936 championship would go to Bernd Rosemeyer of Auto Union, with Mercedes struggling to keep up and ultimately withdrawing partway through the season to focus on their next racing machine. But the following year, the tides of favor would once again swing back around to Mercedes.
Mercedes Grand Prix racing: 1937 to 1939
Grand Prix racing was ruled by the French, who had become horrified at how resoundingly they were being beaten by German cars and German drivers at every turn. So, the AIACR put its heads together, and for 1937, it unveiled a new regulatory set that it hoped would handicap the German operations.
Rather than limit weight, this ruleset limited engine capacity, with a hope of lowering speeds and allowing a broader variety of cars to participate. The AIACR implemented a sliding weight-to-engine ratio, where unsupercharged cars could have a maximum engine capacity of 4.5 liters and a minimum weight of 850 kg. Supercharged cars could have a maximum of three liters for the same 850 kg weight limit. Critically, any kind of fuel was allowed.
The plan backfired almost instantly. The German government was willing to offer Mercedes and Auto Union absurd amounts of money to craft these new machines, and their ongoing experiments with fuel mixtures would inherently give them an advantage as well. The best France could come up with was a subscription fund set up in such a way that motorsport enthusiasts could purchase lapel badges, with the money from those purchases going to fund French racing teams. It was clear from the start that it wouldn't be enough.
With this new car specification in mind, Mercedes set to work building its next racing machine, which it would call the Mercedes-Benz W125.
To craft this car, Mercedes-Benz set up a new racing department that would do nothing but focus on the design of its new challenger. Rudolf Uhlenhaut was chosen to lead the design team — an interesting choice, because he'd never designed a race car before and was just 30 years old. However, he had logged hundreds of hours on the Nurburgring testing Daimler's road cars, so he knew quite intuitively how to build a car that could handle high-speed conditions at one of the most dangerous circuits in all of motorsport history.
In his new role, he had a chance to test the old W25, and he quickly pinpointed one critical problem: the suspension was too stiff. It was almost impossible to make the car's wheels follow the curves of the road, and the chassis would flex in response. That formed the basis of the W125's design brief: A stiffer chassis, and softer suspension.
That kicked off a revolution. Within six months, Uhlenhaut and his crew of 300 engineers, technicians, and mechanics completely transformed the team's previous challenger. First and foremost, the entire chassis was replaced with a stronger, oval tubular frame made of nickel, chrome, and molybdenum steel alloy — which, when combined, would reduce chassis flexion immensely.
Uhlenhaut lengthened the wheelbase for better stability, improved the brakes, and paid particular attention to that problematic rear suspension by bolstering its hydraulic shock absorbers.
As for the engine, this new car — this W125 — was fitted with a 5.66-liter straight-eight supercharged engine that Uhlenhaut had improved with a better crankshaft. And to stay under the weight limit, much of the car was constructed of light-alloy steels.
But just how revolutionary was this machine? How powerful? Well, in early tests at the Untertürkheim plant, the engine developed 589 horsepower — far more than the W25 had made at its most powerful and efficient spec. Just for comparison, your average road car was making well under 50 horsepower at this time. No racing car would be fitted with a more powerful engine until the Can-Am Series challengers in the 1960s, and it wasn't until the 1980s that Grand Prix cars returned to this level of capability.
On the road, it was a dream. Rudi Caracciola joined the Mercedes crew for several weeks to run the W125 through its paces, and he found the performance astonishing. In first gear, the car reached 88 miles per hour. In fourth, the top gear, he hit 199. It was an astonishing amount of power, an astonishing amount of speed. If the W125 could hold together on the track — and testing seemed to imply that it would — then Caracciola would once again have a car capable of fighting the Auto Unions.
But yet again, the Mercedes machine had early teething problems. At AVUS in late May — a race that didn't count for the championship — Caracciola suffered engine failures. At the first official Grand Prix of the year, in Spa, an Auto Union took victory. And it was Bernd Rosemeyer who took a much-lauded win at the Vanderbilt Cup, an American race in Long Island noted for its handsome cash prizes. Adding insult to injury was the fact that the Silver Arrows crews were greeted at the docks in New York by angry crowds that justified the team hiring Pinkerton agents to protect them… all while the American press hailed the beloved Rosemeyer.
In late July, Mercedes turned the year around. The Nürburgring — the testbed of the W125 — was packed with almost a half-million fans desperate to see their home-grown drivers battle for the lead. While Rosemeyer had dazzled the crowd by landing his own personal plane on the front stretch, it was Caracciola who dazzled on race day, launching into a lead right from his start on th second row of the grid — one that he held until the checkered flag.
To celebrate his win, Caracciola and his teammate Manfred von Brauchitsch were flown to Adolf Hitler's home in Bayreuth by Hitler's private pilot Hans Bauer. Joseph Goebbels served as the welcoming party, leading both drivers into the home for handshakes and photographs with the German chancellor.
It was there that Caracciola's loyalty to Germany was quietly called into question. Bauer pulled the driver aside to let him know that many higher-ups in the government were concerned about his choice to live in Switzerland. Rumors swirled that Caracciola had traded his German citizenship for a Swiss one. Those concerns seemed to be initially dispelled when Caracciola displayed his German passport, but it was likely an unsettling moment for a driver who expected celebration.
The remainder of the five-race Championship season was a Mercedes wash-out. Von Brauchitsch won the next race in Monaco, with Caracciola taking victory at both Bremgarten and Livorno to win his championship.
That title cemented Mercedes’ role as the pride of Germany's automotive might. While the average road car had very little in common with the mighty W125, the car's utter dominance and refined engineering made it the envy of the world. Exports were rising in tandem with the manufacturer's output, and naturally that also meant increased profits.
Tucked amidst those factories churning out road cars were factories churning out military equipment, with Daimler-Benz salesman extraordinaire Jakob Werlin negotiating massive military contracts on the company's behalf. This was a blatant violation of the Treaty of Versailles, but the Nazi party had long since learned that, for as harsh as the Treaty's terms were, no one was particularly willing to enforce them. It was as if the world looked the other way.
Building up into 1938, Mercedes had once again begun designing its next iteration of the W125. Rudolf Uhlenhaut was once again in charge, but this year, Mercedes had also managed to convince Auto Union's Ferdinand Porsche to consult on new designs. The new machine would have a blown V12 engine, with the driveshaft moved slightly off center to allow the driver to nestle closer to the ground. The team employed wind tunnel testing to improve aerodynamics, sparing no expense to retain its title as Hitler's favorite automaker. The racing program alone cost Daimler-Benz 4.4 million Reichsmarks that year — an absurd amount of money for anyone, let alone for a company that had been miffed at the government's decision to split a solitary million-mark grant between itself and another company.
And, just for some additional context, France had arranged for a million-franc prize to go to the automaker who could run the fastest average time over a certain number of laps at Montlhéry ahead of 1938. That sum was not only much less than what the German marques were spending, but it was money that had to be earned, not merely provided — and companies like Bugatti and Delahaye were inevitably spending a lot of money in order to develop cars capable of earning that prize — which meant that instead of developing competent Grand Prix cars for future racing, they were re-fitting their current cars to accomplish this single task. It was two entirely different approaches to motorsport, and Mercedes had good reason to think its W154 was going to be the class of the field in 1938.
However, Grand Prix racing wasn't the only thing on Mercedes’ mind. The outfit had also been hard at work modifying a W125 to compete for many of the world's speed records. Here, too, a fierce fight had kicked up between Auto Union and the Daimler-Benz firm, with the ruler-straight Autobahn serving as the battlefield during an annual event called the Reich Rekordwoche — or, Reich Record Week. The 1937 edition had seen Bernd Rosemeyer of Auto Union dominate, as the modified W125 displayed a frightening tendency to drift toward the edges of the road at high speed. A disappointment, yes — but in January of 1938, they would have a chance to try again. Hitler had organized another set of record attempts to take place in tandem with the Berlin Motor Show, and despite Caracciola's warning that “We cannot go on this way… One of us will die,” both Mercedes and Auto Union showed up ready to fight.
Bad weather delayed the first running on January 27, but the following day, in the stillness of the morning, Caracciola made his run up and down the autobahn. His average speed was 268.5 mph — breaking the record previously set by Rosemeyer by a whopping 20 mph. Unable to speak after experiencing that level of power, Caracciola determined that he'd done his duty and returned to his hotel.
But Auto Union was keen to respond as quickly as possible — ideally before the next newspaper edition went out to the masses. Bernd Rosemeyer rushed to the track, and, ignoring the wind that had begun to pick up, made a record attempt.
He failed to usurp Caracciola's record on the first run. They closed off the air intake ports for the radiator and topped up the fuel. Just before noon — as the wind gusted ever harder — Rosemeyer went out again.
He never returned.
In a flash, the rivalry between Caracciola and Rosemeyer had come to an end. The former was left to represent the greatest Germany had to offer in the racing department at the Berlin Motor Show, while Nazi officials hailed Rosemeyer's crash as an honorable, noble death — one dictated by fate as he pursued glory for the Reich.
A robust testing program for the upcoming Mercedes W154 kicked off at Monza, tucked away in Milan as the Hitler began to alert the world to his intention to take over Europe.
The first major race of the 1938 season was at Pau on April 10, and Germany was gearing up to secure a victory that seemed almost guaranteed. Daimler-Benz churned out press releases praising its drivers and engineers in the build-up to the event, while Wilhelm Kissel was hoping a victory at the French track would lead more Germans to vote ‘ja’ on a referendum being held the same day. That referendum consisted of exactly one question: Do you approve of the Nazi list of parliamentary candidates and the greater Reich's first conquest?
It came as a shock, then, that the German machines were helpless in the face of René Dreyfus’ Delahaye, fielded by American heiress Lucy O’Reilly Schell. Though Dreyfus was born to a Catholic and Jewish family that practiced neither religion, his surname alone was so intertwined with continental conceptions of Jewishness that his win was a slap in the face to an increasingly anti-Semitic Germany. Daimler-Benz press representatives, stewing from the loss, framed the race as a “dress rehearsal.” It was, after all, a non-championship event.
Of the four championship-eligible Grands Prix in 1938, Mercedes won three. Manfred von Brauchitsch took victory at Reims. British racer Dick Seaman nabbed a shocking victory at the Nurburgring. Caracciola was triumphant at Bremgarten. The only event won by another team — Auto Union — was a home victory for Tazio Nuvolari at Monza in September. Thanks to the fact that he finished on the podium in every event, Caracciola was once again crowned European champion.
It would be the last full season of motorsport in Europe before World War II erupted in September of 1939. Mercedes again was dominant in three of the four events hosted that season, with Hermann Lang winning both the Belgian and Swiss Grands Prix, and Caracciola winning at the Nurburgring.
Trouble, though, was brewing in the Mercedes ranks. Caracciola felt that the entire team, “starting with Herr Sailer, through Neubauer, down to the mechanics” boasted “an obsession with Lang.”
In a letter to Wilhelm Kissel, Caracciola continued, “Herr Neubauer admitted frankly to Herr von Brauchitsch that he was standing by the man who has good luck, and whom the sun shines on ... I really enjoy racing and want to go on driving for a long time. However, this presupposes that I fight with the same weapons as my stablemates. Yet this will be hardly possible in the future, as almost all the mechanics and engine specialists in the racing division are on Lang's side.”
Ultimately, it wouldn't matter. After Germany invaded Poland, something as frivolous as motorsport would never last long. Its purpose — motivating German citizens in a sporting battle against foreign nations and co-opting racing tech for military uses — had been served.
While the AIACR never officially selected a champion that year, the National Socialist Motor Corps decided that the true victor should be Hermann Lang of Mercedes, even though Auto Union's Hermann Paul Müller had a much stronger claim to the title.
When the war officially got underway, Caracciola and his wife tucked themselves away in their home in Switzerland.
Mercedes-Benz, which had been steadily rearming the Nazi military through production of its LG 3000 trucks and its DB 600 and DB 601 aircraft engine, continued production throughout the war. Passenger car manufacturing came to a halt in 1942 when it became clear that the war would not be a quick one, and that Mercedes would need to increase output of trucks and spare parts. To do so as increasing numbers of men were drafted into war, Mercedes hired women and bolstered its ranks with forced labor from prisoners of war, detainees from concentration camps, and abducted civilians. Those forced laborers paved the way for Germany's smooth transition back to economic production in the 1950s by bolstering Germany's economy during the war. It wasn't until 1986 that Daimler-Benz began to acknowledge its role in supplying the Nazi military with weapons of war, and in 1988, it paid out millions of dollars in reparations to those former forced laborers.
Over 60 million people were killed in World War II, with at least 11 million executed by the Nazi regime in historic acts of cruelty. Daimler-Benz and its motorsport program played a significant role in facilitating the most devastating war of all time.
FALLOUT
With the onset of World War II kicking off, Grand Prix racing ground to a sudden halt. Exactly one major event took place after Germany invaded Poland — the 1939 Belgrade Grand Prix — because Yugoslavia felt that canceling the event could have provoked retaliation from the Germans.
But the Grand Prix didn't exactly attract a stunning array of the world's best talent. The entire field was made up of German cars, with one exception: A local driver entered his own Bugatti. Italians had been barred from travel. The British government warned its drivers that attending the race could leave them prone to hostility. The French, by this point, knew they had nothing left to give. War was here.
For the purposes of this episode, though, I'm going to leave you on something of a cliffhanger. I want to thank you immensely for tuning into Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys — and in the next episode, we're going to keep digging into how Nazi participation in motorsport transformed both Grand Prix racing and the art of war itself. Next time, our focus will rest on Auto Union, Mercedes’ primary rival, and we'll also wrap up the impact both of these automakers had on the actual construction of military equipment, and what happened to them after the war.
Bibliography
Faster: How a Jewish Driver, an American Heiress, and a Legendary Car Beat Hitler's Best by Neal Bascomb
A Race with Love and Death: The Story of Britain's First Great Grand Prix Driver, Richard Seaman by Richard Williams
Grand Prix Driver by Hermann Lang