Hitler's Formula 1

We are in the middle of the weekend of the Formula 1 Grand Prix of Italy, which for exactly a century - with a few rare exceptions - has been raced on the Monza circuit, near Milan. It was, in fact, 1922 when for the first time racing cars that today appear to us antediluvians - but which flew at more than two hundred kilometers per hour! - they challenged each other on the asphalt of the Lombard circuit. Today, as then, the Grand Prix is an event that attracts the attention of millions of fans around the world and that moves millions of euros, including various sponsors. At the same time, Formula 1 races remain a great technological challenge, today played on the terrain of aerodynamics, electronics, the search for the most futuristic solutions. The car manufacturer that dominates on the track often also wins in sales.

In short, races have always had a value that goes beyond the mere sporting event and the driver versus driver challenge. A book that "forces" us - but at the end of the reading we are happy with the constraint - tells us about it in a masterly and engaging way - to take a step back in time to the automotive challenges of the 1930s. The volume in question, embellished with numerous vintage photos, is titled “The Führer's Formula 1” (Minerva, 2022, pp. 350) and is signed by Maurizio Ravaglia , a journalist who has been involved in competitive motoring for decades.

But what was Hitler's Formula 1? They were a series of extremely innovative racing cars produced by Auto Union (the ancestor of Audi) and Mercedes between 1934 and 1939, racing cars that allowed the Third Reich to dominate the racing world. It was a season full of charm and great risks dominated precisely by the epic of the Silberpfeil, the silver arrows, as the magnificent single-seaters produced by Mercedes and Auto Union were called for their exceptional performance and the color of the bodies. Financially supported by the Third Reich, which immediately transformed them into a propaganda tool, designed by engineers who imagined the future such as Ferdinand Porsche (later founder of the eponymous brand), made invincible by the avant-garde technologies of the Germanic industry and led by legendary champions. , Adolf Hitler's Formula 1 cars went from victory to victory, bending the ambitions of Alfa Romeo, Bugatti and Maserati at every latitude.

However, the book is not a simple roundup of cars, however extraordinary they may be, and of drivers who were real risk riders. It aspires and manages to become an enjoyable historical essay , capable of recounting the intertwining between sport and politics in the tumultuous years that preceded the tragedy of the Second World War. It recalls the ambitions and passions, the successes and the defeats of extraordinarily talented champions such as Caracciola, Nuvolari, Rosemeyer, Varzi, Lang, Stuck, Von Brauchitsch, Fagioli. Bold men who charmed the crowds by daring to look down upon death on insane circuits. However, he does not forget to describe the inexorable inclination on which Europe began to slide in the 1930s, driven by the ambitions of Nazi Germany. At the end of that inclined plane, the Europeans found the abyss of the Second World War, which they were not prepared for and which they did not believe until the end, despite Hitler's many tests of strength.

After all, they could sadly recognize themselves in the words of the strongest French driver of the period René Dreyfus : “Everything was changing in a catastrophic way, but it seemed that we were pretending that it was not so. In racing circles we were aware of the political situation in Europe. During the trips to Germany we saw the swastikas and heard the Nazi songs, we were neither blind nor deaf, we noticed the movements of troops and perceived how powerful the German army had become. But as drivers we were simply French, German, Italian and British, and we were all friends ”. Friends ready to compete on the track and then forced to face each other, together with millions of other individuals, on the battlefields.