Cars are not worth it raps are bad just because their owners are bad, but as humans, we cannot help but assign meaning to objects through their owners. Check out this very brief commercial for the 1940 Mercedes-Benz Grosser 770 extended touring car. It’s an incredible piece of history, but given its Nazi origins, it might be fitting for a museum rather than a private collector.
User Richard Bartrop Only this one Hemmings listed for us in a recent Question of the Day about most Controversial cars you can buy today. And boy, Richard has a solid argument here. The only image of the car is the dark image you see at the top, and the entire listing is very brief but also very clear:
- Special armored version, customized by Mercedes Benz’s “special vehicle manufacturing” department
- One of only 46 built and only 5 cars known to exist today
- Old government vehicle
- Very original with “live” engine, original interior and part of the original paint
- Commissions and expertise from Mercedes Benz Classic are available
- Completely restored and technologically overhauled
- The most expensive German car of the late 1930s
- Excellent driving characteristics
- Rare and desirable collector car
An armored car used by the German government in the 1940s from a seller in Hamburg? Oh, that sounds…like it was just a Nazi car. Although not all Mercedes-Benz 770s were owned by the Nazis (other World War II heavyweights such as Emperor Hirohito and Pope Pius XI owned 770s, and Hitler even owned supplied 770s to fascists across Europe, including Benito Mussolini and Francisco Franco), but this car sure looks like a Nazi car. .
But even if this 770 belonged to the Pope, anything produced by the company between before 1933 and 1945 could be said to be a product of that brutal and murderous regime. In reviewing one of the first books to fully address the subject, New York Times Written:
“Daimler-Benz’s top managers provided valuable support to the National Socialists before Hitler became Chancellor in 1933,” Mr. Bellon wrote. ”The corporation even claims that it is responsible for ‘helping mechanize the movement.’ ”One way the company supported Hitler’s party was by placing large advertisements as early as 1931 in the Nazi newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter, which was famous for its virulent propaganda and anti-Semitic tendencies. The author believes that the advertisements may have been part of a quid pro quo arrangement under which Daimler-Benz cars were given to or loaned to Hitler and his party officials.
According to evidence in the book, the three-pointed Mercedes symbol and the Nazi swastika were paired in the eyes of the German Volk. “The company itself was a favorite of the Führer, who often drove Mercedes cars, as well as the rest of his entourage,” Mr. Bellon said. Jakob Werlin, the company’s deputy director, was a close friend of Hitler, whose relationship with the Fuhrer dated back to the 1923 coup. The author notes that when Hitler left Landsberg prison in 1924, Werlin picked him up in prison gate. According to US intelligence documents obtained by Mr. Bellon under the Freedom of Information Act, Hitler held a portfolio of Daimler-Benz shares that Werlin personally managed for him.
By examining the fate of unions in Daimler-Benz factories, the book finds connections between the company’s fortunes and national affairs. When the Nazis came to power, they destroyed the unions and related organizations – including factory councils and arbitration committees – that had shaped the industrial order since World War I. The newly introduced order, by law, established a system of work based on fear, reward and discipline.
Senior management at Daimler-Benz welcomed the military build-up under National Socialism; the company became the leading arms manufacturer in Nazi Germany. Airplane engines and parts, tanks and armored vehicles, heavy trucks, and even a major part of a V-2 rocket were all produced for the Third Reich’s war machine. As the war continued, spoils from companies such as Peugeot, the French car manufacturer, were brought to Germany.
“On a grand scale, Daimler-Benz threw tens of thousands of men and women, including foreign workers and concentration camp prisoners, into the fight to produce engines for the air force,” Mr. Bellon wrote. German army”. Daimler-Benz used Jewish women from the concentration camps in Ravensbruck and Sachsenhausen as slave workers. A group of female prisoners working at Daimler-Benz were transferred back to Sachsenhausen in the final weeks of the war, apparently to inhale poison gas. They lived to tell the tale when the camp’s gas chambers failed.
I contacted Hemmings hoping to speak to the owner and learn more about this car because regardless of their origin, they are very rare. Only a few are in private hands, which is probably a good thing. If any car ever made it into a museum with a dozen or so posters putting it into context, it’s this one.
