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HITLER’S GRAND PRIX IN ENGLAND HITLER’S GRAND PRIX IN ENGLAND Donington 1937 and 1938 Christopher Hilton FOREWORD BY TOM WHEATCROFT Haynes Publishing Contents Introduction and acknowledgements 6 Foreword by Tom Wheatcroft 9 1. From a distance 11 2. Friends - and enemies 30 3. The master’s last win 36 4. Life - and death 72 5. Each dangerous day 90 6. Crisis 121 7. High noon 137 8. The day before yesterday 166 Notes 175 Images 191 Introduction and acknowledgements POLITICS AND SPORT are by definition incompatible, and they're combustible when mixed. The 1930s proved that: the Winter Olympics in Germany in 1936, when the President of the International Olympic Committee threatened to cancel the Games unless the anti-semitic posters were all taken down now, whatever Adolf Hitler decrees; the 1936 Summer Games in Berlin and Hitler's look of utter disgust when Jesse Owens, a negro, won the 100 metres; the World Heavyweight title fight in 1938 between Joe Louis, a negro, and Germany's Max Schmeling which carried racial undertones and overtones. The fight lasted 2 minutes 4 seconds, and in that time Louis knocked Schmeling down four times. They say that some of Schmeling's teeth were found embedded in Louis's glove... Motor racing, a dangerous but genteel activity in the 1920s and early 1930s, was touched by this, too, and touched hard. The combustible mixture produced two Grand Prix races at Donington Park, in 1937 and 1938, which were just as dramatic, just as sinister and just as full of foreboding. This is the full story of those races. The origins of the book rest with Maurice Hamilton, a distinguished writer about Formula One, who, in researching his own books Grand Prix British Winners (Guinness) and particularly British Grand Prix (Crowood), discovered that far more information was available than he could possibly use about these two races. More, he felt they should be set in their proper political context: Britain and Germany tramping inevitably into the great darkness of the Second World War as the races were happening: two mighty German racing teams -and their drivers, who still linger in deed and mythology - echoing round a track laid in the grounds of a genteel English stately home with war likely not just today but now. Into this flowed sub plots: a love story, a seam of blind nationalism and a portrait of two cultures. Just this once, stereotypes are true. Nazi Germany asserted its naked and gathering strength while INTRODUCTION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 7 British amateurs bumbled along wonderfully. The two races and the events surrounding them reflected this with what we can now see was haunting precision. Swastikas would fly at Donington and a German motorsport chief gave the Nazi salute to the Duke of Kent, who expressed his disgust impeccably. A sub- plot flowed through that, too, because Donington had been used as a prison for captured German soldiers in the First World War. By coincidence I was into a political study of the history of Berlin so I could (hopefully) cope with the political context easily enough but, that aside, I pay my dues to those who have helped so much: Tom Wheatcroft, Murray Walker, Donald Hamilton-James, Rob Walker, Anthony Powys-Lybbe, Tich Allen, Arthur Tyler, Derek and Billy Wing, Phil Heath, John Dugdale; Liz Raciti, Jaguar Public Relations, New York; Louis Klemantaski, David Tremayne, Don Woodward; Stan Peschel of the Mercedes-Benz Museum, Stuttgart; Mike Evans of Rolls-Royce; Karen Behr of the Library of Foreign Affairs, Bonn; Joan Williamson, librarian at the RAC Club, London; Dave Fern, Press Officer of the Donington racing circuit; Birgit Kubisch in Berlin, Inga and Barbel in England for translations; Chas Rushton of Lookers, Burton-on-Trent; Michael Passmore, Archives, the Automobile Association; Lothar Franz of Auto-Union; Sergio of British Movietone News; John Gillies Shields for hospitality, memories and lending a wealth of printed material; David Hay hoe, co-compiler of the Grand Prix Data Book; John Surtees; Rob Widdows, Press Officer of the Goodwood Festival of Speed; Kate Scott of the BRDC; Ian Connell, Wilkie Wilkinson and the late Charlie Martin for broaching their racing memories. Nigel Roebuck, another distinguished Formula One writer, was a constant source of information, feeding me books, video tapes and his own guidance. He also provided the memories of Rene Dreyfus, who drove in the 1938 race. Eoin Young telephoned with a list of people worth contacting. Colin Warrington of Christie's was instrumental in uniting me with original source material. I owe very particular gratitude to Alan Preston for finding and putting me in touch with people who were at the two races. Preston, incidentally, is working on a history of bike and car racing at Donington before the War and so was perfectly placed to know. I owe a deep debt too, to Paul Parker, motor racing historian and author, for reading the manuscript and making so many invaluable suggestions. I have cast far and wide for material and rather than list all the sources here they appear in the Notes section. I've tried to expand these Notes to give background information, whether strictly relevant or (sometimes) not. Often what the sources say is contradictory but it is all we have and I have tried to rationalise the contradictions. A bibliography appears at the end of the book for further reading, as the saying goes, but I pay more dues. The work of Chris Nixon in researching this period is so broad, deep and important that you can't really begin without his books Racing the Silver Arrows and Rosemeyer! at your elbow. I thank him for permission to quote from them and for help whenever I asked. Doug Nye is a historian of exacting standards and comprehensive knowledge: 8 HITLER’S GRAND PRIX IN ENGLAND you need his work, too and thanks to him for permission to quote as well as providing a lovely anecdote... The specialist magazines - The Autocar, The Light Car, Motor Sport, and The Motor - were invaluable for all the obvious reasons. Copyright rests with Haymarket Magazines Limited and I'm indebted to Simon Taylor, Chairman, and Eric Verdon-Roe, Managing Director, for permission to quote. I owe another debt to Verdon-Roe, because he provided me with the diary entries of his namesake. William Boddy, MBE and Founder Editor of Motor Sport, has very kindly allowed me to use extracts of his vivid reporting. The passages from Berlin Diary by William Shirer are by permission of the William L. Shirer Literary Trust. Equally invaluable were the national and local newspapers, especially The Sporting Life, whose reporter Tommy Wisdom is still remembered with affection. I hope that the quantity of Notes captures my debt to all these sources. A word of thanks to the British Newspaper Library in north London, that magnificent mine of the printed word. Please note that in the 1930s Britain used three units of currency, pounds (£), shillings (s) and pence (d). For those too young to remember, there were 12 pennies to a shilling and 20 shillings to a pound. Random example: £2 17s 4d was two pounds, 17 shillings and fourpence. It confused foreign visitors completely - including the Germans who came to Donington in 1937 and 1938. In the text I have left the money as it was expressed at the time, for authenticity and because translating it into today's equivalent is meaningless. Another random example: a room then in a three-star hotel cost the equivalent of 35p now. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders of each extract quoted in the text - and illustrations - but it has not always been possible to find them. If inadvertently I have transgressed - sorry. Incidentally, a goodly selection of video tapes surrounding the events of 1937 and 1938 - on the track and off it - is available as well as original clips from Movietone News. In videos, the Shell History of Motor Racing Volume 2, covering 1930 to 1939, is particularly evocative - and so is Donington Park: The pre-war Years (Hay Fisher). Overall, however, the videos present a paradox, because they allow you to witness what the reporters at Donington - in a distant hut and without television - could not. A random example: during the 1938 race a spectacular multi-car incident, which happened far out of sight of the Press hut, was wildly mis-reported. I know because I sit here six decades later, my video flicking through the incident frame by frame, and I can see it all so clearly... Foreword I FEEL VERY PRIVILEGED to write this foreword for a book delving deeply into a subject which has so many personal associations for me. I was lucky enough to have been taken - at a young and impressionable age on the back of a motorcycle - to the 1935 Grand Prix at Donington Park. It was only 30 miles from my home and until the outbreak of war I cycled the round trip in all weathers to see every race. In those days, Silkolene Oil sponsored the bridge at Coppice Corner (and I believe the advertising banners from it still exist). If it had not been for the kindness they extended to me - I was almost an 'adopted son'! - I don't believe I would have held the passion for motorsport that I do. My racing car museum is located on the site of the bridge. Those races of 1937 and 1938, with the powerful and dominant Mercedes and Auto Union cars battling it out, were the years when grand prix racing became forever imprinted on my imagination.

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