Faster: How a Jewish Driver, an American Heiress, and a Legendary Car Beat Hitler’s Best by Neal Bascom, is the story of an unlikely crew that put a team together that defeated Nazi Germany’s world-class racing team.
After last week’s essay on the pandemic, I’m back to reviewing a book that I actually read. Faster is similar toThe Boys in the Boat (2013) that recounted the story of the University of Washington’s eight-oared crew team that won a gold medal at the 1936 Olympics that was held in Germany. Adolph Hitler, who used the Olympics as a forum to show off the power of Nazism to the world, was not happy with losing to a bunch of college kids. In the mid-1930s the Germans were building up their military, the infrastructure (including greatly expanding the major highways, the Autobahn) and subsidizing sports ventures so that the Nazis could prove their superiority by winning international contests.
Faster focuses on the development of car racing in the mid-1930s when it became a wildly popular activity in Europe. Unlike other countries, Germany subsidized its major auto manufacturers, including Mercedes, to develop the fastest cars in the world for the best drivers. One of the points driven home (PUN!) in the book is the incredible technological and manufacturing expertise of the Germans; they were really good. For most of the 1930s, Nazis dominated the racing world. Bascom focuses on major races in 1937 and 1938, culminating in the 1938 Grand Prix that featured an intense competition between Rudi Caracciola of Germany and Rene Dreyfus of France.
Elite drivers from different nations formed a special fraternity that was idolized by the public. Rene Dreyfus was a slight young man who drove for whatever country and company would have him. Rudi Caracciola was the foremost German champion. They met in 1932 and hung around together with other drivers and enjoyed the raucous German night life as celebrities. They went out drinking together but would end up facing off in one of the most important auto races of the period.
Rene Dreyfus came from a family of merchants. From an early age, he was crazy about cars. Despite often winning races, Dreyfuss had to hustle to get a car manufacturer to sponsor him. He worked for Bugatti (a French company), Maserati (Italian), and several others. The fact that Rene was Jewish worked against him and eliminated any chance of driving for Mercedes or any German team.
Rudi Caracciola also was fixated on cars from an early age. As a multi-generation German with good connections to the government, he had an easier time finding paid racing work. He did have to scramble a bit early in the Depression to keep racing, but things worked out. He won a race with his own Mercedes and impressed the Nazis so much that he was selected to deliver a new Mercedes to Hitler. While the dictator wasn't interested in cars, he was impressed with Rudi and his enthusiasm for racing. Hitler came to see that supporting auto racing was another way to positively brand Nazism to the world.
Lucy Schell was an American heiress (construction and real estate) who lived in France. She was definitely a spoiled rich kid, but she was a nurse in a military hospital in Paris during WW 1. During the Roaring Twenties, she roared, hanging around Paris with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and Cole Porter. By the early 1930s, she was one of the top female car racers in Europe.
She and her husband, Laury, entered car races and split the driving chores. They liked rallies, longer races where they shared driving hours. Lucy was actually a better driver than her husband, Laury. One of their races went for 2300 miles all over Europe. The book describes one rally, held in the winter that featured a blizzard as a driving companion.
Lucy and Laury (it sounds like the title of a TV sitcom) raced in the 1936 Monte Carlo Rally, 2,400 miles. They did well but barely lost. Their next two races were worse. Lucy was beginning to think that, at age 40, it might be better to manage a team rather than be a driver. She decided to focus on winning the 1938 French Grand Prix.
Lucy knew that in order to win races you needed the best car. In the 1920s, there were 350 car manufacturers in France. Ten years later because of the Depression, there were only a few dozen left. Even the Big Three - Peugeot, Citroen, and Renault - were on the ropes. Because of their financial distress, these companies were not spending money to support a racing team. Lucy Schell had enough money to build a team so she looked around for a suitable company and found Delahaye, a small outfit that built specialty cars, not the mass-produced ones like Ford’s Model T. Delahaye was known for its solid but boring cars that accountants liked. After the founder retired, the new president of the company, Charles Weifenbach, decided to add another type of car to the inventory - small, fast ones. The company soon produced machines that could compete in races. The Delahaye 138 broke all sorts of records in winning the World 48 Hours Record race.
This got Lucy and her husband’s attention, so they barged into president Weifenbach’s office. Out of curiosity, he met with them. Lucy explained that she liked the new Delahaye but it would have to be modified to have a chance at winning a race. She carried the day by saying, “I’ll pay whatever’s necessary.”
Racing Crashes were a normal part of the job and many drivers lost their lives in races. The risk was one reason why drivers were such a tight fraternity even though they constantly competed against each other.
In 1932 Rene was driving for Bugatti and got wiped out in a bad accident that laid him up for a few weeks. He got back behind the wheel and won enough races to make him the fifth-best Grand Prix driver in the world. He continued to drive for Bugatti where he was encouraged to work on the engineering of the cars to make them faster and more responsive. He kept winning or placing in races.
Lucy also raced, although there was a lot of anti-female driver feeling on the tracks. She also worked with Delahaye to make better cars.
The Nazis and racing In 1933 Hitler had assumed power and presided over the Berlin Motor Show. He then got busy purging his enemies and persecuting Jews and “others” that weren’t Aryan enough for the super race. Adolph saw auto manufacturing and racing as keys to strengthening Germany. He established the National Socialist Motor Corps to train men in high-end motor skills, the foundation of the mechanized army to come a few years later. Daimler-Benz (Mercedes) cozied up to him and became the Nazi’s favorite car company. That meant that the government would buy vehicles from Mercedes as well as support their racing efforts.
During the mid-1930s, Germany and Mercedes dominated the race circuit. The machines were superior to anything else on the track. In July of 1934. Hitler presided at the German Grand Prix, where 150,000 fans looked on as thousands of motorized troops led the opening ceremony, complete with swastika flags. A German driver won easily.
Meanwhile, Rudi, Rene’s future rival, had his own crash that was really serious. He destroyed his hip, and it never quite recovered. Doctors told him that his racing days were over but they weren’t. He put in many hours of painful physical therapy and eventually got back behind the wheel. Along the way he joined the Nazi party, a requirement to race for the country.
As 1934 ended, Rudi was back driving, although not winning. Rene was also driving but not winning. What was more troubling to him was that in Europe, racing and nationalism were becoming intertwined. It wasn't just about the cars and drivers now. It was about the politics and ideologies of countries.
By 1935, Hitler was openly rearming and building up the navy and air corps. Rudi and the rest of the German teams knew that the Nazis were committing atrocities, but they looked the other way so that they could keep racing. Rudi finally won a race, the Tripoli Grand Prix, as Germany continued to dominate motorsports. Rudi won more races as the year unfolded and ended up the number one racer in the world. He was back.
Rene, now driving for Ferrari, was fifth-best again. At the end of the year, Mussolini decided that all race drivers in Italy must be Italian, which meant that Rene, who was French, was out of a job. Rene was passed up for the German team that signed up drivers with worse winning records rather than put a Jew on the team, even a talented one. France didn’t really have a racing team. Things were so bad that the 1936 French Grand Prix set up new rules that essentially excluded German cars. French racing was truly in the pits (another pun).
Rene had found work with the Talbot-Lago auto company in Paris. It could have been better. Their cars were speedy, and Rene was usually leading races, but the autos always broke down. Soon Talbot decided that having a presence on the racing circuit was good for sales; winning races wasn’t that important.
Lucy knew that Rene, one of the best drivers in Europe, was not happy at Talbot. In early 1936 she met with him and offered him everything he could want - a good salary; great cars; solid support; and a chance to really show the world what he could do on the track. A deal was struck.
Rene worked at Delahaye to build the right car, but things were moving along more slowly than he wanted. One problem was that the technicians were really thinking outside of the box on engineering and design elements. Innovation takes time.
In 1936, a German driver named Bernd Rosemeyer came to dominate the circuit. He was out of central casting for Aryan superman - blond and Nordic, as was his wife, who also raced and piloted a plane. Rudi was being eclipsed on the track.
France finally realized that opting out of racing wasn't an option during the 1930s when Germany and Italy were using races as vehicles (PUN) to boost their nationalistic brand. The French government set up two competitions, one for 400,000 francs and one for 1,000,000 francs, to the French manufacturer whose car won the competitions. The first race’s specifications essentially rigged it for Bugatti, a government favorite, but the second one was wide open.
Rene and Laury continued to race. They came in fifth at the 1937 Monte Carlo Rally, a decent finish. They finished third in another rally, not bad. On his off days, Rene would enter smaller, local races and do well.
Finally, the new race car was ready for testing. It had a totally different look than previous models. Some called it a “winged beetle.” Rene drove it and suggested changes to make it faster and better handling. Rene drove it in the French Grand Prix where it broke down. A few weeks later, a tire blew in another race, causing Rene to rail against the Goodrich tire representative at the track. Despite these setbacks, Rene Dreyfus sensed that the car was special.
The Germans continued to win the big races. Rudi did well, but Rosemeyer ruled. Mercedes produced a new race car and also made trucks and other stuff for the Nazi war machine.
In the summer of 1937, Rene, Lucy and the engineers went off to a private track to improve the Delahaye 145. After a few weeks of tinkering, they were ready for the 1,000,000-franc competition.
The car was unpainted, decked out in its metallic silver color. They were so busy getting the car to run better, there was no time to paint it. Rene had practiced incessantly along the Montlhery course where the competition would take place, and he knew each twist and turn. This was not a multi-car race; it was a speed contest run individually by each car and driver. Most of the other competitors had finished the course by the time Dreyfus drove it.
Bascomb’s writing puts you in the driver's seat with Rene: "A hard left. Then a straight. Then a stomach-plummeting descent into the hairpin. No mercy on the brakes. Cut the next corner sharp – gain inches. Another straight. Left. Then a long, seemingly endless right bend. After coming around the sharp Epingle du Faye, Rene whipped into the autodrome. His field of vision down the hood tilted on its side as he drove up the bank. Sky to his left. Concrete to his right. Orientation became difficult, and he had the sensation of being a fly clinging to a wall. There was no rail or fence to stop him from soaring over the top and every depression in the concrete made his car bounce. He stuck tight and then flung down into the straight."
The book, as seen in this passage, makes it pretty clear that high-end auto racing is a very difficult and physically demanding sport.
Dreyfus did that for 20 laps and had the best time. There was one more car set to race the next day: Bugatti. Even though Rene was in first place, he took no chances. He went out on the track after Bugatti started and essentially raced their car. As it turned out, he didn't have to do a better time; Bugatti ran into problems and was never in the race. Lucy and Rene had won the 1,000,000-franc competition.
As the author writes: "France had a new national hero. To those who knew of the Dreyfus Affair, it must have seemed odd to see that name in the headlines and to realize that a race car driver of the same name had brought the country together."
(FYI: The Dreyfus Affair of the late 1800s wrongfully convicted a French army captain, who was Jewish, of espionage. Even when the real criminal was identified, the government dragged its feet on setting things straight. It was classic anti-Semitism.)
Meanwhile the Germans were gearing up for the 1938 Grand Prix season. Rudi and Rosemeyer took turns setting new speed records, up to 312 miles an hour, which was amazing in the 1930s. Rosemeyer wanted to go faster and set out on another run. At 250 MPH his car went off the track and flipped over, throwing him 80 feet in yet another fatal racing accident. Not willing to waste a tragedy, Hitler took advantage of the death to praise Rosemeyer for “dying as a soldier in the exercise of his duty” to the Fatherland. Rudi was the Number One German driver now.
In January, 1938, Rene and Laury participated in the Monte Carlo rally, the big one, but their car broke down and they didn’t finish. In February Rudi went to the Berlin Motor Show, opened by Adolph Hitler, assisted by 20,000 motorized Nazi soldiers and lots of swastikas and over-the-top martial music. Around the same time, the Germans took over Austria and the die was cast for World War 2.
By now, the German racing team, led by Rudi, was a propaganda arm of the Third Reich. At the same time as the Grand Prix race was scheduled in Pau, France, Hitler scheduled an election to allow the people to approve his tenure and territorial acquisitions. The French Grand Prix would pit Rene and France against Rudi and Germany.
The 1938 French Grand Prix By now, Rene and Lucy saw the upcoming French Grand Prix as a chance to fight back against Nazi oppression: “A single victory over the Silver Arrow (Mercedes) at Pau might not change the tides of nations, but it could spark hope in a world darkening at every turn.” Rene was more motivated to win than he had ever been in his life.
Lucy’s French Grand Prix team showed up with two cars, some spare parts, two drivers (Rene and Laury), and a few technicians. The German team came in five large trucks, complete with a mobile machine shop to make parts as needed. They had two race cars, a spare engine, enough parts to build a complete car, three drivers, and dozens of mechanics, engineers, fuel and tire experts, doctors, and “several hack journalists” to crank out the Nazi propaganda.
The race consisted of 100 laps on a tight, curving, 1.7-mile course. The two favorites were Germany and Italy. Tazio Nuvolaio, who drove for Italy, was considered to be the best driver in the world. Unfortunately, his fuel tank exploded during a practice lap, and he was off to the hospital with serious but not life-threatening burns. The Italians realized that the fire was due to a design defect and chose not to race.
In a grand prix race, the driver is behind the wheel for three hours or so, constantly shifting and steering through a challenging track. Below is the course at Pau for the French Grand Prix. To get through it, you need to shift and steer aggressively with perfect timing for 100 laps.
Sixteen cars signed up for the race but, due to a lot of crashes and technical problems in the practice runs, only eight ended up competing. With Italy out, this was a showdown between Germany and France, Mercedes and Delahaye, and – some would say – darkness and light.
The German press pumped up the volume on covering the race, which was seen as a superb opportunity to showcase the Nazi brand to the world while humiliating the French. This looked like a sure thing since the French hadn’t defeated a German Mercedes in a race since 1913.
While watching Rudi’s practice runs, Rene noticed a few things that made Rudi vulnerable. The main problem was that the engine was overpowered for the car, which caused the wheels to slip when stepping on the gas coming out of curves. Another problem was that the Mercedes W154 had a relatively small gas tank to decrease weight. The Delahaye 145, a much lighter car by design, had a much larger gas tank. That meant that Rudi would have to refuel during the trace and Rene would not. That turned out to be a big deal.
You know what happened. Rudi led from the start as his Mercedes roared down the track, but Rene was just seconds behind him, with the rest of the field farther behind. Sure enough, Rudi’s car tended to spin its wheels on the curves and lose a second or two, a big deal over 100 laps. Rudi and Rene exchanged the lead many times, lapping the field early. But by the 31st lap, Rudi was 11 seconds ahead and gaining confidence. Rene did some slick driving and closed the gap a bit but he was still behind when, on the 52nd lap, Rudi had to stop for fuel. Rene passed him as had been his plan.
Then a strange thing happened. Rudi dropped out of the race and gave the car to his back-up, Hermann Lang, who took off after Rene. Rudi did not want to lose to the French, especially to a Jewish driver. He knew that his Nazi backers would not like that. Lang did his best but by now the track was slick with oil from the race cars, and he kept losing time due to slipping wheels. Rene slowed down, not wanting to push the car into breaking down. Lang closed the gap a bit, but Rene hit the finish line first, causing all of Europe, except Germany, to shout with joy as they listened to the race live on the radio.
The French press fawned over Rene and Lucy and the world press recognized the magnitude of the win. Back in Germany, fake news abounded. One paper said that the Mercedes really won because it had the fastest lap. Another said that the French Grand Prix was a “regional race.”
The Aftermath
Rene won his next Grand Prix in Cork, Ireland, once again beating the German Mercedes. After that, he did OK but didn’t win. He was drafted into the French army as racing in Europe stopped for the war. Lucy used her influence to have the army send him to race in the Indianapolis 500 in 1940. He finished tenth, driving a Maserati. Since the Nazis had taken over France, Lucy told him to stay in the US which he did.
Rene’s wife in France, Chou Chou, was having an affair and she divorced him because he was Jewish, all you needed to say in Nazi France to dissolve a marriage. He took meager jobs in New York City and eventually opened a restaurant in New Jersey with the help of a rich business partner.
Rene joined the US Army after Pearl Harbor and saw action in the allied invasion of Italy in 1943. After France was liberated in 1944, he went home to find his sister, Suzanne, and brother, Maurice, alive and well. They had been involved in the French resistance but had survived.
After the war, Rene took them to America where they opened a fancy French restaurant in New York City, Le Chanteclair. It became a go-to place for celebrities as well as a venue for racing fans to hang out. It closed in 1979. Rene did a little racing after the war, mostly ceremonial runs, and died in 1994 at age 88.
Rudi was injured in a car crash and spent the war in Switzerland on a disability pension with his wife. Eventually the Germans cut that off, accusing him of disloyalty. After the war, he did some racing but ended up crashing and smashing his legs again. He became an ambassador of sorts for Mercedes, drank a lot, and died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1959. He was given a hero’s funeral by Mercedes, with his complicity with the Nazis conveniently overlooked.
Lucy never received the credit she thought she deserved from the Grand Prix win and left Delahaye to work with other car manufacturers, but not much went right because of the war. She and Laury stayed in France and were badly hurt in a car accident in 1939. Laury died a month later. Lucy went to the US for the duration of the war. She eventually returned to Monaco and died in 1952, never having returned to motorsports.
Bob’s Take Being a semi-gear head, I really enjoyed this book. It starts off a bit slowly, providing lots of background information, but it picks up. The descriptions of driving in the actual races are great, as are the technical explanations of the tricks used by the techies and engineers used to get the most out of cars that they were building. Interesting points:
Automobile technology evolved rapidly Rene Dreyfus won the 1928 Monaco Grand Prix with an average speed of 60 MPH, a record then. Race cars could go 100 MPH on a straightaway, and just ten years later, drivers hit 300 MPH. The rapid improvement in car design was even more impressive because everything had to be recorded by hand.
Racing and sports were proxies for nationalism That is somewhat true today (the Olympics), but nothing like it was back then.
The science behind the increased power of cars (gear ratios; compression characteristics; fuel mix; combustion timing settings; air flow; lots of other stuff) was based on equations calculated by hand. propaganda.
In the 1930s, people were transfixed by big live events, with the winner to be determined. Auto racing was a world-class sport, with millions of people paying attention. The horse, Seabiscuit, grabbed the attention of the USA in the late 1930s and 1940s.
People also were enamored with some personalities. Babe Ruth and The Vagabonds. (Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Harvey Firestone) were larger-than-life celebrities that drew lots of attention and big crowds.
(A lot of what passes for entertainment for people today is on a screen and not in real time. That’s a tad sad.)
Fake news was big then According to the Nazis, Jews/gypsies/homosexuals were the root of all evil. Great Britain and the USA were weak because of internal corruption caused by allowing inferior races into their countries, and I’m not talking about car races.
Where’s the car? The author finishes the book by tracking down the Delahaye 145 that Rene drove. It turns out that there are two Delahaye 145s – owned by collectors – that can be traced to the race. Over the years, parts were interchanged and fabricated, so both cars have a legitimate claim to having been there. Here’s the final sentence of the book: "Both bring to mind a great struggle in which David conquered Goliath, and, for a moment, there were heroes again in the world."
