Cars don’t earn money Bad reputation just because their owners were shitty, but as humans we can’t help but assign meaning to objects through their owners. Take this very short ad for a 1940 Mercedes-Benz Grosser 770 Open Touring Car. It’s an incredible piece of history, but given its Nazi roots, it may be better suited to a museum than a private collector.
user Richard Bartrop pointed out Hemmings In a recent Question of the Day we listed most of them controversial cars you can buy today. And boy, did Richard have a valid argument here. The only image of the vehicle is the dark one you see above, and the listing in its entirety is very short but also very insightful:
- Specially armored version, tailor-made by the Mercedes-Benz “Special Vehicle Construction” department
- One of only 46 examples built and only five cars still in existence today
- Former government vehicle
- Very original with “matching numbers” engine, original interior and partly original paint
- Commission sheet and report from Mercedes Benz Classic available
- Extensively restored and technically overhauled
- The most expensive German car of the late 1930s
- Excellent driving characteristics
- Rare and sought-after collector’s car
A German armored car used by the government in the 1940s from a salesman in Hamburg? Man, that sounds… like it’s just a Nazi car. Although not all Mercedes-Benz 770s were owned by Nazis (other World War II heavyweights such as Emperor Hirohito and Pope Pius XI owned 770s, and Hitler even supplied 770s to other fascists across Europe, including Benito Mussolini and Francisco Franco), it seems This car definitely seems to be a Nazi car.
But even if this 770 belonged to the Pope, it can be argued that everything the company produced between 1933 and 1945 was the product of this evil and murderous regime. A review of one of the first books to adequately address the topic states: New York Times wrote:
“Senior managers at Daimler-Benz provided valuable assistance to the Nazis before Hitler became Chancellor in 1933,” writes Bellon. “The company even claimed that it was responsible for ‘contributing to the motorization of the movement.'” “One way the company supported Hitler’s party was by placing large advertisements in the Nazi newspaper Völkischer Observer as early as 1931, which was known for its vicious propaganda and anti-Semitic tirades. The author believes that the advertisements may have been part of a quid pro quo agreement in which Daimler-Benz cars were given or loaned to Hitler and his party’s officials.
According to the evidence in the book, the three-pointed Mercedes emblem and the Nazi swastika were a couple in the eyes of the German people. “The company itself was a personal favorite of the leader, who, like the rest of his entourage, generally drove in Mercedes cars,” says Mr. Bellon. Jakob Werlin, the company’s deputy director, was a personal friend of Hitler, whose ties to the Führer stretched back to the 1923 putsch. When Hitler left Landsberg prison in 1924, Werlin picked him up at the prison gate, according to the author. According to American intelligence documents obtained by Mr. Bellon under the Freedom of Information Act, Hitler owned a portfolio of Daimler-Benz shares that Werlin personally managed for him.
Based on the fate of the unions in the Daimler-Benz factories, the book traces how the company’s fortunes and state affairs were linked. When the Nazis came to power, they destroyed the unions and related institutions—including factory councils and arbitration committees—that had shaped the industrial order since the First World War. A new order was introduced by law, establishing a work system based on fear, reward and discipline.
The top management of Daimler-Benz welcomed the military buildup under National Socialism; The company became the leading arms manufacturer in Nazi Germany. The Third Reich’s war machine produced aircraft engines and spare parts, tanks and armored vehicles, heavy trucks and even much of the V-2 rocket. As the war progressed, loot was trafficked to Germany by companies such as French car manufacturer Peugeot.
“On a large 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 German Air Force,” writes Bellon. Daimler-Benz used Jewish women from the Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen concentration camps as slave labor. A group of female prisoners who worked at Daimler-Benz were brought back to Sachsenhausen in the final weeks of the war, apparently to be gassed. They survived and told the story when the camp’s gas chamber stopped working.
I reached out to Hemmings to hopefully speak to the owner and find out more about this vehicle as it is a very rare example regardless of its provenance. Only a few are privately owned, which is probably a good thing. If ever a car belonged in a museum with a dozen or so posters explaining the context, this is it.