How a Jewish Driver, an American Heiress, and a Legendary Car Beat Hitler's Best
January 6, 2020
Historian Bascomb (The Escape Artists) dramatizes the Golden Era of Grand Prix racing and the showdown between French-Jewish driver René Dreyfus and German champion Rudi Caracciola at the 1938 Pau Grand Prix in this exuberant chronicle. Bascomb sketches the early history of motor racing, including the 1903 Paris to Madrid race that killed more than a dozen people, and charts the precipitous rise of German drivers and their Mercedes-Benz “Silver Arrows” after car enthusiast Adolf Hitler (who kept a life-sized portrait of Henry Ford behind his desk) came to power. As the narrative around Grand Prix racing shifted from driver vs. driver to nation vs. nation, England, France, and Italy fell behind Germany. American heiress and race car driver Lucy Schell helped to change that dynamic, however, by funding French automaker Delahaye’s efforts to build a car fast enough to compete with Hitler’s “mechanized army” of drivers. With Dreyfus—whose Jewish heritage excluded him from the sport’s best teams—behind the wheel, the Delahaye 145 went head-to-head with Mercedes-Benz on a treacherous racetrack in the French village of Pau and won. Bascomb packs the book with colorful details and expertly captures the thrill and terror of early-20th-century auto racing. This rousing popular history fires on all cylinders.
January 1, 2020
Auto racing takes on the von Clausewitz-ian guise of war by other means. Early on in his reign, Hitler decided that it would be a key point of national pride to win the Grand Prix, with the Nazi propaganda machine obliging by developing the slogan, "a Mercedes-Benz victory is a German victory." Hitler's regime cultivated two drivers in particular, Bernd Rosemeyer and Rudi Caracciola, showering them with favors. France would have none of it, fielding a car, the Delahaye 145, that had an unlikely source, for the small firm that built it specialized in heavy trucks rather than fast cars. It had an unlikely patron, too: an American woman who loved to race and who selected as her driver a young man, René Dreyfus, who had been excluded from many races "because of his Jewish heritage." When he was allowed to race, he soared. Bascomb (The Escape Artists: A Band of Daredevil Pilots and the Greatest Prison Break of the Great War, 2018, etc.) recounts an early race in which Dreyfus piloted a fresh-from-the-factory Maserati, his pit crew none other than the car's namesake. Those early cars were dangerous: In a race from Paris to Madrid, more than a dozen drivers and onlookers were killed, and "there were too many injured to determine a casualty count with any accuracy." Bascomb writes vigorously of the race at the heart of the book, with heart-pounding set pieces: "In the twelfth lap, Rudi crept up to René's side, and the two almost locked together as they zigzagged around the course, neck and neck, neither giving way to the other." René won, and Hitler was furious. René, now in the army, was sent to the Indy 500 to represent France in 1940 but was stranded in America when Germany invaded his homeland. One of the first acts of the invaders was to sweep up every bit of archival material related to his victory, hoping to rewrite the past. A luminous book of sports history that explores a forgotten corner of the history of the Third Reich as well.
COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
January 24, 2020
Bascomb (Hunting Eichmann) offers an astonishing account of a singular victory at the 1938 Pau Grand Prix in Pau, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France, executed by an unlikely team of challengers over Adolf Hitler's dominating Silver Arrows during the heyday of international automobile racing. It begins with socialite Dame Lucy Schell, who broke with convention to become a competitive Monte Carlo Rally contestant, subsequently forming her own Grand Prix team--the first and only woman to do so--then financing a brand-new racer. Selecting the financially strapped auto manufacturer Delahaye to build her a car, Schell then chose René Dreyfus as its pilot. The author describes how a near-fatal accident early in Dreyfus's career damaged his confidence as a driver, and how, as a Jew, he found himself excluded from competing with teams in a burgeoning fascist Europe. Among Bascomb's central themes is Dreyfus's finding a personal reason for reentering a sport he loved but had reservations about. The epilog traces the multifaceted postwar careers of various racers, especially that of Dreyfus, who went on to become a celebrated Manhattan restaurateur.
VERDICT Highly recommended for historians and aficionados of pre-World War II motorsport competition and its larger-than-life contestants.--John Carver Edwards, formerly with Univ. of Georgia Libs.
Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
February 1, 2020
If, in the run-up to WWII, Ren� Dreyfus' win at the 1938 Pau (France) Grand Prix did not register with Americans as much as, say, Jesse Owens' four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Games, it certainly wasn't lost on the people of France, or on Jews everywhere. This was the golden age of Grand Prix racing, and Hitler, amassing a war machine to take on the world, was weaponizing a virtually unbeatable stable of Mercedes race cars, operated by top-notch international drivers and crews, to compete in auto races worldwide. Enter Frenchman Dreyfus, a first-class driver shunned by the Germans for his Jewish heritage, who entered the race with a somewhat untested French car, the Delahaye 145. Outclassed in sheer power by the Mercedes cars, Dreyfus and his Delahaye, which was more nimble and outfitted with extra fuel storage space, thus eliminating a critical pit stop, outmaneuvered and outlasted the German team. Popular historian Bascomb delivers an engaging narrative, filled in with generous profiles of the principal drivers, sponsors, and the fraught era in which they operated. Of special interest to racing fans and readers of WWII.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)
January 1, 2020
Auto racing takes on the von Clausewitz-ian guise of war by other means. Early on in his reign, Hitler decided that it would be a key point of national pride to win the Grand Prix, with the Nazi propaganda machine obliging by developing the slogan, "a Mercedes-Benz victory is a German victory." Hitler's regime cultivated two drivers in particular, Bernd Rosemeyer and Rudi Caracciola, showering them with favors. France would have none of it, fielding a car, the Delahaye 145, that had an unlikely source, for the small firm that built it specialized in heavy trucks rather than fast cars. It had an unlikely patron, too: an American woman who loved to race and who selected as her driver a young man, Ren� Dreyfus, who had been excluded from many races "because of his Jewish heritage." When he was allowed to race, he soared. Bascomb (The Escape Artists: A Band of Daredevil Pilots and the Greatest Prison Break of the Great War, 2018, etc.) recounts an early race in which Dreyfus piloted a fresh-from-the-factory Maserati, his pit crew none other than the car's namesake. Those early cars were dangerous: In a race from Paris to Madrid, more than a dozen drivers and onlookers were killed, and "there were too many injured to determine a casualty count with any accuracy." Bascomb writes vigorously of the race at the heart of the book, with heart-pounding set pieces: "In the twelfth lap, Rudi crept up to Ren�'s side, and the two almost locked together as they zigzagged around the course, neck and neck, neither giving way to the other." Ren� won, and Hitler was furious. Ren�, now in the army, was sent to the Indy 500 to represent France in 1940 but was stranded in America when Germany invaded his homeland. One of the first acts of the invaders was to sweep up every bit of archival material related to his victory, hoping to rewrite the past. A luminous book of sports history that explores a forgotten corner of the history of the Third Reich as well.
COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
January 24, 2020
Bascomb (Hunting Eichmann) offers an astonishing account of a singular victory at the 1938 Pau Grand Prix in Pau, Pyr�n�es-Atlantiques, France, executed by an unlikely team of challengers over Adolf Hitler's dominating Silver Arrows during the heyday of international automobile racing. It begins with socialite Dame Lucy Schell, who broke with convention to become a competitive Monte Carlo Rally contestant, subsequently forming her own Grand Prix team--the first and only woman to do so--then financing a brand-new racer. Selecting the financially strapped auto manufacturer Delahaye to build her a car, Schell then chose Ren� Dreyfus as its pilot. The author describes how a near-fatal accident early in Dreyfus's career damaged his confidence as a driver, and how, as a Jew, he found himself excluded from competing with teams in a burgeoning fascist Europe. Among Bascomb's central themes is Dreyfus's finding a personal reason for reentering a sport he loved but had reservations about. The epilog traces the multifaceted postwar careers of various racers, especially that of Dreyfus, who went on to become a celebrated Manhattan restaurateur.
VERDICT Highly recommended for historians and aficionados of pre-World War II motorsport competition and its larger-than-life contestants.--John Carver Edwards, formerly with Univ. of Georgia Libs.
Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.