Introduction

The Silver Arrows. The mere mention brings to mind heroic men tossing wildly powerful cars around some of the most storied racing tracks in all of grand prix history. Grand prix racing in the 1930’s is widely accepted as the golden age of the sport. Legendary teams like Auto Union, Mercedes-Benz, and Alfa Romeo fighting it out on the race tracks of Europe and Africa being led by drivers like Rosemeyer, Varzi, Seamon, von Brauchitsch, Chiron, Dreyfus, Caracciola, Nuvolari, Fagioli, and many others. Every person involved in grand prix racing at during the era would forever have their lives altered by the involvment of the Nazi Party in the sport. Grand Prix racing had always been exceptionally nationalistic and has had often suffered because of it. The first organized Grand Prix took place on a course near Le Mans in France, as can be expected the French came to dominate the early years of the sport. Next the Italians, under the guise of Fiat and Isotta-Fraschini took on French and then came the Germans. The depression that swept across Europe and the coming of World War I deeply affected the continent let alone the racing industry. This was apparent when the Americans soundly defeated the French when racing returned to Europe in 1921. But the Europeans quickly learned how to adapt new technology gained during the war to automotive and racing use, with these advances the Europeans quickly regained world racing dominance. History repeated itself after the war; the French were the first to dominant Grand Prix racing after the war, with Bugatti taking the honors under the new “formula libre” rules. Then in 1930 the Italians entered the sport with Alfa Romeo’s run by team boss Enzo Ferrari that would eventually dominate the sport. In 1934 the Association Internationale des Automobile Clubs Reconnus (AIACR) drew up new rules that worked to end Italian dominance caused the rise of the Silver Arrows. But again, after only a few years of peace the political scene in Europe was taking a turn for the worse…with Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy, and Franco in Spain. In January of 1933 Hitler officially took power in Germany. Shortly after this Hitler passed the “enabling act” which simply allowed him to pass laws without approval of the Reichstag. With this, all economic, media, cultural, and political activities were brought under control of the Nazi party. Before taking military action Hitler and the Nazi party wanted to show German and Aryan might though peaceful ventures. Sport was one area that they exploited. The Nazi government had decided that they would subsidize a racing team, that money was to go all to Mercedes-Benz, but Hans Stuck and Ferdinand Porsche convinced the Nazi Party to split that subsidy between Mercedes-Benz and the newly founded conglomeration of four German auto makers that became Auto Union. Hitler was not a great sports fan and had to be convinced by Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda, that sport could be used to advance their cause of the “New Germany” inside and outside of Germany. This was widely evident in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games.