Bernd Rosemeyer is the driver most associated with the Silver Arrows, and it would lead him to a tragic end. Rosemeyer was born in Lingen, Germany on October 14, 1909. His father had owned a car and motorcycle garage where Rosemeyer learned how to work on both, and started racing motorcycles. Rosemeyer joined Auto Union with hardly any experience in racing cars typical of the era, which was considered a good thing seeing how hard the mid-engined Auto Union was to drive. He won his first grand prix at the Brno-Masaryk Circuit in Czechoslovakia in 1935 and shot to super stardom in Germany and around the world. It was at this race that he was to meet German flying ace Elly Beinhorn which was a match made in Nazi Party heaven. Elly was already a star in Germany, having flown herself all over the world. To the Nazi’s they were the perfect Aryan couple and became the toast of Berlin.
All German drivers were required to be a part of the “Nationalsozialistisches Kraftfaher Korps” basically the racing drivers wing of the Nazi Party which was headed by Korpsfuhrer Adolf Huhnlein who reported directly to Hitler. But Rosemeyer, due to his international stardom and his marriage to Elly Beinhorn, another German hero, he was given the “honor” of membership in the SS. Despite his fairly well-known dislike of the Nazi Party Rosemeyer knew that was something he could not refuse, though he did manage never to be seen in the uniform. Evidence of this dislike was apparent at the 1937 German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring. Korpsfuhrer Huhnlein, who was a humorless man was looked upon as nothing more then a Nazi bureaucrat asked all drivers that they not kiss their girlfriends before the race, stating it was not Aryan behavior. Before the race began all the Silver Arrows drivers made a point to kiss their significant others. Rosemeyer would finish third behind winner Caracciola. Korpsfuhrer Huhnlein was there to congratulate them and awarded the winners trophy depicting the Goddess of Speed to Caracciola. Rosemeyer placed a lit cigarette between the statues lips while Huhnlein had his back turned, when alerted by the crowd Rosemeyer feigned innocence.
In November of 1937 Bernd and Elly Rosemeyer had a son, Bernd Jr, ten weeks after that Bernd was to take to the autobahn to try and take the land speed record away from German rivals Mercedes-Benz. This was not the first time that the German companies took to the autobahn for record runs. Speeds were ever increasing and reaching the limit of human reaction and all drivers hated the runs. Some people even say that Rosemeyers involvement was a punishment for his disapproval of the Nazi regime. Rosemeyer had already collapsed once after a run in October of 1937 and had to be lifted out of his Auto Union. But he was back at it on the morning of January 28, 1938. Mercedes Director Alfred Neubauer had seen a weather report that stated the day would be ideal but winds would increase after 9am. At 8am Rudolf Caracciola set off first in his Mercedes on the autobahn between Frankfurt and Darmstadt, he set a record of 268 miles per hour and a flying mile time of 13.38 seconds, and the record belonged to Mercedes. The Auto Union had been completely rebuilt by Professor Eberan-Eberhorst, manager of Research and Development at the company, after several wind tunnel tests. Still a black art to this day Eberhorst had created the first ever aerodynamic “ground effects” car, highly sensitive to wind changes. At 11am Rosemeyer took off on his first run; making a fairly slow first attempt. On his second run he crossed the one kilometer line at over 270 miles per hour when a strong gust of wind caught his car and pushed it into the grass. The car slid and rolled over and disintegrated after a series of somersaults. The Mercedes team stood there “unmoving like statues” according to Caracciola, the record runs were over. Rosemeyer was found over 100 meters away from his car, with his heart still beating, but he was soon pronounced dead by a doctor. The open road speed record still belongs to Rudolf Caracciola at 268 miles per hour. Rosemeyer was buried in Germany with full military honors with Hitler consoling a grief stricken nation with the words “May the thought that he fell fighting for Germany’s reputation lessen your grief.” Despite these words his widow Elly demanded that the funeral for her husband be conducted by a priest with no political stance taken or attempts to justify the record attempts that Bernd died taking part in.
Richard Seaman is perhaps the most intriguing of any driver of the 1930’s; he was the only Englishman to ever driver the Silver Arrows. The only other non-German drivers to race for the Silver Arrows were from Axis power countries. Seaman was born to wealthy parents on February 4, 1913. He always had a love of cars throughout elementary school and eventually enrolled in Cambridge University. But in 1934, to the dismay of his parents he returned from school and announced that he was not going back, he had bought a racing car and set off for mainland Europe and in August of that year he won his first race. After Seaman’s father died in 1935 he convinced his mother to buy him a works ERA. It was a poor car, but he asked his mother for more money and set up a shop at his home with another ERA racing car. Seaman went on to win a trio of races on mainland Europe in 1935 and the RAC International Light Car Race on the Isle of Man in 1936 and had fully caught the attention of Mercedes Director Alfred Neubauer. After Dick’s victory at the 1936 Grand Prix at Donington Neubauer knew that Seaman was someone his team needed. Neubauer sent Seaman a telegram, which his mother initially tried to hide, and Seaman was off to a Mercedes trial at Monza, a track outside of Milan. The main concern of Dick’s mother was the political implications of her son racing for a German team, but most of his friends said that he could just resign if things got worse. In 1937 Adolf Hitler gave approval to Mercedes-Benz to sign Seaman to a contract.
At a party held in Munich Dick Seaman met a young Erica Popp, who was the daughter of president and co-founder of BMW. At first Lillian, Dick’s mother was entranced by Erica, partly due to her family roots. On June 15, 1938 Dick was to have the highpoint of his career. He flung his Mercedes 154 to a victory in the German Grand Prix, beating more established Silver Arrows drivers Caracciola, and Brauchitsch. Germany had Dick Seaman in its grasp, with Seaman writing “Hitler stands no nonsense…Consequently he has remade and reorganized the country, and that is why they believe and rally around him…It’s about time that Hitler took over Austria too.” Lillian, Dick’s mother, had also briefly forgotten her reservations about her son’s choice of career. She was amazed by newsreels of her son’s victory in Germany, receiving the winner’s laurels and having portraits taken with Hitler and King George VI. But things changed when Lillian learned that Dick had proposed to eighteen year old Erica. She had begun to realize that Hitler meant war, how could her son marry a German she thought? What would her neighbors say when they learned that she would have German grandchildren? Despite her objections the couple got married on December 7 1938 and Dick was to never see his mother again. Dick did not see the political implications of his actions; he was a career obsessed man who had no difficulty treading on the toes of anyone who would stand in the way of the goals he had set for himself, including his own mother. The most talented drivers of the era found themselves drawn to Germany because they simply had the best equipment. No grand prix machinery in England could even come close to the Mercedes-Benz that Dick would drive in Germany; Dick had hoped that the success of the Germans might even spur the English to form a challenge, saying “England is becoming a pretty good joke…especially in the Fascist countries.” As time went on Dick finally came to grips with the political atmosphere in Europe, writing to his friend Lord Howe to see if he should return to Britain. Howe’s response was that Dick was doing everyone a favor by keeping a friendly relationship with Germany. Dick even joked to wife Erica that at the Berlin Motor Show in 1939 that he was going to kill Hitler and that she needed to tell the Home Office to send a million pounds to Erica. Dick Seaman’s career and life was cut altogether short when he crashed at La Source hairpin at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit on June 25, 1939. Two Belgian police officers pulled him out of the burning car alive, but he was later to succumb to his burns telling Erica “I’m afraid you must go to the cinema alone after all.” Seaman was the only driver of the Silver Arrows to die at the wheel of his car, and to show their affection for Dick all Mercedes showroom displays were taken down and replaced with a memorial for Dick Seaman. A devastated Erica fled Germany before the war and would die in 1990 an American citizen. Being the only Englishmen to compete in grand prix racing in the 1930’s with the swastika behind his head will forever cloud Dick Seaman’s legacy, he was a flawed individual who put his career aspirations in front of all else.
The two most prominent French drivers of the era were greatly effected by the influence of the Nazi Party in grand prix racing and their eventually build up to war. Louis Chiron was born of French parents in the principality of Monaco in August of 1899, and would go on to hold dual citizenship. He sign up for the French military before his eighteenth birthday and served as an artilleryman during World War I. After Chiron left the military he started his racing career in and around France. At the insistence of Rudolf Caracciola Chiron was added to the Mercedes-Benz team for the 1936 season, the year that belonged to the Auto Union team with their driver, Bernd Rosemeyer taking the title. Later that year he was to crash during the race at the Nurburgring and his career would never fully recover; Mercedes released him from his contract. Before the outbreak of war he was given some tests with the Auto Union team but that came to naught and he witnessed his girlfriend go on to marry his friend Rudolf Caracciola. With the outbreak of World War II throughout Europe Chiron entered active duty again. When France surrendered to Germany he escaped to the free Vichy France…when that too was overrun he escaped to Switzerland. While in Switzerland he helped smuggle a downed Allied airman out of Switzerland, into occupied France, across the Pyrenees to Spain and then eventually back to England.
Rene Dreyfus was born in Nice France in 1895. His brother Maurice owned a paper company, and he eventually took a job as a salesman. He had convinced his mother that he would be able to see more customers if she was to get him a Bugatti, and that his how Rene got his first race car. In 1931 Dreyfus found himself at the second running of the Grand Prix of Monaco, in his privately entered Bugatti. The favorites for the race were native Monegasque Louis Chiron and the winner of the first running who is recorded simply as “Williams.” Dreyfus had convinced his team to fit an extra fuel tank on his car, though they thought he would need to stop due to exhaustion. At the start of the race Chiron shot into the lead and Dreyfus was seventh. On lap fifteen Dreyfus was third, and by lap forty he was second behind Dreyfus. By this time Chiron needed to pit, though he still came out in front Dreyfus who was right on his tail. Shortly after the pitstop Dreyfus had passed and went on to win the second running of the Grand Prix of Monaco by twenty-two seconds.
By the mid-30’s France, the birthplace of motor racing now saw itself behind the Italians and Germans in the grand prix world. In an attempt to reverse this the French government created the Prix du Million to encourage French manufacturers to build new cars. The prize of a million French francs would be awarded to the driver and car that won a race against the clock at the Montilhery Circuit with an average speed of 146kmh over a two hundred kilometer distance. Despite some stiff competition from Bugatti Dreyfus and Delahaye won the day and the prize money. Despite the prize the fortunes of the French grand prix teams did not change, except for a stellar victory by Dreyfus in his Delahaye at the Pau circuit in 1938 where he beat the best the German teams had to offer. A Frenchman of Jewish descent beating the Mercedes of Caracciola in France caused a world sensation. But it was his Jewish last name that would prevent him from ever having a chance to drive either the Mercedes-Benz or the Auto Union, and Dreyfus knew this. He is quoted saying “Things were changing cataclysmically, but it seemed as if we were trying to pretend they weren’t…Certainly we saw the swastikas, we heard the fascist songs, we were neither blind nor deaf. And during the last year past we were often on the road to events in Germany, we could see the movement of troops and we could sense the military buildup. But as drivers we were simply French, Germans, Italians, and British, and we were all friends…Still it was apparent to me that I was being treated preferentially, by German drivers, by the officials, by everyone at the Nurburgring. A Frenchman with a Jewish name on German soil. I was perhaps a reminder, an omen of what lay ahead. Maybe we all wanted to postpone thinking about it. I was given every courtesy.” In his pocket Dreyfus held documents ordering him to report to the military after the race. With the start of World War II Dreyfus was in the French Army, but they had arranged for him to race in the Indianapolis 500 in 1940, but with little preparation the race went poorly for Dreyfus and while he was in the U.S. word got back that Paris was conquered by the Nazi’s. Dreyfus stayed in the U.S. and when they entered the war he joined the U.S. military and was sent overseas where he was reunited with his brother and sister. When the war was over he returned to the U.S. and opened the famous restaurant “Le Chanteclair” in New York, which would go on to serve many of Rene’s racing contemporaries such as Varzi and Caracciola.
Hans Stuck, the driver credited with getting Nazi Germany to split their subsidy of German auto racing between two teams was born sometime around the year 1900 in Poland. Stuck was a part of an artillery regiment on the western front during WWI. He began racing locally in 1923 and by chance would come to meet Adolf Hitler on a hunting trip in 1925. In 1932 Hans married a Jewish woman, Paula von Reznicek, something that would come to affect his career later in the decade. With the help of 250,000 reichmarks from the Nazi Party Auto Union set forth on creating their first ever car, which was built at the Horch factory in Zwickau. Stuck first tested the Auto Union on March 6, 1934. The year was to be his best ever, having won the German, Swiss, and Czech Grands Prix. If there had been an organized championship that year, he would have won. Hans Stuck cut his racing teeth doing hillclimbs throughout Germany and he continued to participate in them. At a hillclimb in 1935 he was harassed by the Gestapo and had to drive through a valley of anti-Stuck banners lining the track. Though accounts differ it seems that depending on who gave the orders Stuck was either protected or attacked by the Nazi’s, all for marrying a Jewish woman. With the entrance of Bernd Rosemeyer into the team in 1936 Stuck saw his star begin to fade. He was fired at the end of 1937, some say because he disclosed the terms of his contract to Rosemeyer, while others say it was due to the lingering affects of his marriage. Only several months later Stuck was rehired by Auto Union, partly due to the death of Rosemeyer and also to some of his friends within the Nazi Party interceding on his behalf. But that still did not stop him from being harassed, and he worked tirelessly to defend his wife, though it did little to stop her being discriminated against. Stuck’s last major auto racing victory before the war was winning a third European Mountain Championship in 1938. After the war the German’s were banned from auto racing until 1950, so Stuck acquired Austrian citizenship and took to the hillclimb circuit again. He switched to BMW in 1957 and at the age of sixty he became German Hillclimb champion for the final time. Stuck divorced his wife Paula in 1948 and married Christa Thielmann, who at one point was engaged to Paula’s youngest brother. In 1951 they had a son, Hans-Joachim Stuck who would go on to become a Formula One driver and a world renowned sports car driver in the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s.
Throughout the period of racing before the war many other drivers of note would race for and against the Silver Arrows. Rudolf Caracciola, along with countryman Bernd Rosemeyer would split the racing championships between them. He would win the drivers title in 1935, 1937, and 1938 racing for the Mercedes-Benz team. He spent WWII in exile in Lugano Switzerland and then tried to make a return to racing after the war, with little success. He crashed while practicing for the 1940 Indianapolis 500 and a fourth place finish in the Mille Miglia was to be his last major auto race. He still holds the record for the fastest speed ever recorded on a public road. Caracciola died at the age of 59 of bone disease.
Luigi Fagioli came to the attention of the Mercedes-Benz team and director Alfred Neubauer while driving Alfa Romeo’s for Enzo Ferrari. He was signed by the team in 1934 but the relationship never really saw its full potential due to the fiery temper of Fagioli. The Italian once pulled his car into the pits and walked away when Neubauer ordered him to stay behind teammate Von Brauchitsch and let him when the race, a physical confrontation with Neubauer was barely avoided. Fagioli went on to win several races in 1935, so his temperament was briefly forgotten about. After a disappointing year in 1936 Fagioli switched to the Auto Union team and fared little better, the low point of the year happened at the Tripoli Grand Prix when he felt that Caracciola was purposely holding him and up and Fagioli went on to attack him with a hammer after the race. His career went on a steep decline after that, he did race for several years after WWII only to be replaced by one Juan Manuel Fangio in the Alfa Romeo team. Fagioli would perish in a sports car accident at Monte Carlo in 1952.
Hermann Lang was an extremely gifted driver with bad timing. Lang began life with the Mercedes team as a racing mechanic for Luigi Fagioli. One day after testing the brakes on the Mercedes he was called into Neubauer’s office, where he was given a chance to drive the car more regularly. The other drivers in the team did not take kindly to one of their mechanics driving their cars. Arguments between Lang and the more seasoned Caracciola were commonplace within the team. These arguments occurred because Lang was an excellent driver, and Caracciola and Von Brauchitsch felt challenged by this relative rookie. Lang fully joined the team as a driver in 1937, with fellow junior driver Dick Seaman. The team would be highly divided between the two junior drivers and Caracciola and Von Brauchitsch. In the coming years Lang would record more and more victories and 1939 was his career year. He won the European Championship along with the German Hillclimb Championship. In his championship year he won five out of the eight races contested, but it was also to be the last year of racing before the outbreak of war. Lang was now at the peak of his driving abilities and unable to race. He continued racing after that war until 1954, the highpoint being a victory at the 24 Hours of Leman in 1952 at the age of 43.
Tazio Nuvolari was born in Italy in 1892, like so many of his contemporaries he began racing on motorcycles when he was 28, after serving in the Italian Army during WWI. At the Monza Grand Prix that year he broke both his legs during practice and they had to be placed in casts. The doctors told him it would be at least a month before he would be able to walk again. The next day Nuvolari was racing tied to his motorcycle; his legend was born when he went on to win the race. In 1924 Nuvolari began racing cars as well as motorcycles, his legend continued to grow with events like the 1930 Mille Miglia. He caught up to Achille Varzi, who was in the lead, without using his headlights. When Nuvolari pulled up to Varzi he flicked on his headlights and swept past Varzi for victory. After Nuvolari won the Targa Florio in Sicily in 1931 and 1932 he dedicated himself to racing cars dominating the grand prix circuit in 1932 with victories at the Monaco, French, and Italian Grands prix. His greatest victory; and perhaps the greatest grand prix victory ever came at the 1935 German Grand Prix in front of over 300,000 people and countless Nazi officials driving an outdated Alfa Romeo. His incredible drive pushed the Mercedes to their breaking point causing them to burst a tire. The Nazi officials in attendance were so furious that they could not find the Italian anthem to play for Nuvolari’s celebration. Tazio happily supplied the German officials with a record of the anthem that he carried with him for good luck. After the death of Rosemeyer in 1938 Auto Union needed a replacement to master the difficult handling mid-engined car. Dr. Porsche himself insisted on Nuvolari who would go on to win the British Grand Prix that year at Donington Park. The coming of WWII would see fit to spoil any further success for Nuvolari in the Auto Union. He participated in some minor races after the war and one more Mille Miglia in 1948. After suffering a massive stroke he past away in 1953, he was buried in his racing overalls as he had wished.
Like so many other drivers from his time Achille Varzi started racing motorcycles as a young man in Italy. Varzi spent the first half of the 1930’s driving various Italian cars, winning 6 grands prix in an Alfa Romeo during the 1934 season. Varzi joined the Auto Union team for the 1935 season, and his life would take a steep downturn. After winning the 1936 Tripoli Grand Prix Varzi found out that the result was organized by the Nazi party as a gift to the Italians, who held a lot of power within Libya. Varzi was furious and began having serious personal problems, including an addiction to morphine. When Bernd Rosemeyer joined the Auto Union team Varzi was quickly overshadowed and by 1938 he had disappeared from the grand prix world. While racing was stopped during the war Varzi overcame his drug addiction and settled down with a new wife. He continued racing after WWII, while practicing for the 1948 Swiss Grand Prix at Bremgarten his car skidded off of a wet track and was crushed by his car. Varzi’s coffin stood for three days at a church in the town of Galliate, over fifteen thousand people attended his funeral with his farewell address noting “and you too, Achille, were destroyed when you sought to cross the frontiers of man-made speed.”
