Pebble Beach And The Third Reich

As an outsider to the culture that permeates the high-class shows and venues of Pebble Beach, the Concours D’Elegance frequently vexes me. My friends and I frequently are more at home at the Concours D’Lemons with our well-loved oddities of car culture, where the number of zeros in the bill of sale becomes a low-score contest and odometers that roll over are a point of pride. So when the 1938 Mercedes Benz 540K that won this year’s Best in Show became a topic for its less-than-savory heritage, I thought perhaps I had overstepped by even having an opinion on it. This show is from such a different facet of car culture it might as well be an entirely different hobby from the one I partake in. Why, now, did I feel so strongly to speak about a car that won an event I’ve never attended?

Photo: Pebble Beach Concours 

Some backstory on the car that sparked my existential pondering: It is a one-of-six 1938 Mercedes Benz 540K, specifically the teardrop-shaped, high-powered Autobahn Kurier trim. It has a 180 HP inline-eight engine that promised a 115 MPH top speed, no small feat for a pre-war machine, and it has been painstakingly restored down to the last bolt and refinished in all of its brand-new glory. It is, in short, a beautiful pre-war car, hand-built by artisans for a hand-selected VIP who could rip down the newly built Autobahn in as much comfort and speed as was physically possible in the late 30s.

For a history lesson: late 30s Germany was when the groundwork was plainly laid for the horrors that were to come. The Third Reich was picking up force rapidly; in September of the same year the Kurier was built, Germany had coerced Neville Chamberlain into signing the Munich Agreement, which allowed the Nazis to annex a portion of Czechoslovakia for the homeland, and from there, their empire only expanded until hostilities broke out. In Germany itself, the unrestrained evil of Hitler’s regime had already made itself manifestly apparent - the first book-burnings and murders of the few publically open homosexuals and transgender people had happened in 1933, at the Hirschfeld Institute. In 1935, the Nuremberg laws were passed, stripping citizenship from German Jews; by 1938, as the 540K purred down German freeways at 100 MPH, Kristallnacht and the rounding up of Jewish men and the filling of concentration camps had begun.

The Nazi regime rose to power and maintained an iron grip on it as they committed atrocities through a variety of channels and techniques, but there were two that I found relevant to the Pebble Beach winner that undoubtedly helped. One was Hitler’s obsession with proving the worth of his Aryan dream race via engineering and technical accomplishments. He did this with projects such as the Autobahn, which he enthusiastically committed to building (with conscripted labor) as a way to showcase the superiority of Nazi Germany’s totalitarian culture. To help with his ambitious engineering plans for the country, he enlisted the help of “patriotic” German companies, who responded with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Mercedes themselves were supporters of him and his party since at least the Beer Hall Putsch in the 20s, so no coercion was needed. Hitler was picked up from prison, reportedly, by the Munich representative of Mercedes with a Benz he custom-ordered while imprisoned.

From that point forward, the car manufacturer and the political party continued to blur lines as they became further dependent on each other. By 1931, Mercedes and the Nazis had entered a lucrative quid-pro-quo, where the company would help finance the anti-semitic Nazi mouthpiece paper, the Volkischer Beobachter, in exchange for the up-and-coming political star Hitler riding around prominently in their cars. When the Nazis seized power and abolished labor unions, Mercedes welcomed the opportunity for absurd profit margins. They felt the same when Hitler bestowed them with conscripted slave labor and lucrative military contracts. Mercedes-Benz themselves have admitted they became extremely intertwined with the Nazi state as the 30s wore on. By 1938, Mercedes Benz was a de facto arm of the state, and their cars were official vehicles for nearly all state officials. Hermann Goering, the founder of the Gestapo, even had his own custom 540K built for him and emblazoned with his family crest. The 540K became a status symbol of not just wealth, but of Nazi pride; it was the three-pointed star’s crown jewel custom-made to drive the finest highways that the Third Reich could build.

The second way that the Pebble victor is deeply intertwined with Nazi beliefs was an emphasis on aesthetics as a pathway to legitimacy. Art was deeply important to Hitler; a significant amount of public works projects through the pre-war Third Reich revolved around the creation of “comprehensible”, classically-styled art for the Aryan man to enjoy, as opposed to the indecipherable “degenerate” art of the more liberally-minded Weimar Republic that preceded it. The SS uniforms were famously designed by Hugo Boss. Buildings were demanded that were physically imposing and art deco or classical in style. Literature and cinema that emphasized heroic Germans triumphing over evil (usually portrayed with anti-Semitic caricatures and “degenerate” cultures) were officially supported by the state. Sculptures of ideal Aryans, “flawless” in every physical aspect, were commissioned as fast as they could be created. And of course, art-deco streamlined cars capable of 100 miles an hour, handbuilt by the finest artisans in the entire Reich for a selected few, were a significant part of this push for aesthetic supremacy.

The point of this obsession was twofold: One was a conservative desire to return to tradition, a fascist impulse that we still grapple with today, as any scroll through a classical-art posting page with a variety of traditionalist-aesthetic fascist commenters will show. The other purpose was to illustrate to other cultures that fascism was beautiful and superior, with an enlightened grasp of art that proved it was indeed a better society. The understood implication of this was that “degenerate” art needed to be destroyed, and it was, as paintings, books, films, and anything deemed “Un-German” was systematically destroyed, and only the culturally vacant Nazi works remained for public enjoyment.

And so the 540K Autobahn Kurier, viewed through these two phenomena - along with the interesting tidbit that the original owner may have been gifted the car by Hitler himself, or at the very least, one of his ministers - becomes much more deeply sinister to me. It is not a Volkswagen Beetle, originally dreamt up by Hitler and later transformed postwar into an egalitarian mode of transport owned and enjoyed by all well beyond his Aryan vision, nor is it a Mercedes W06 White Elephant, built before the full horrors of the Reich were set into motion. This car was built with the express purpose of declaring Aryan supremacy. And as Nazi Germany began systemically murdering innocents, art and engineering projects like the 540K Autobahn Kurier whitewashed their genocide with beauty and power.

So for the car to win an award - for this specific piece of meaningless history, a luxury car owned by an eye doctor who was friends with Hitler, to be deemed worthy of the most prestigious classic car award in existence, simply because it is beautiful - strikes the wrong chord with me. So much history - queer, Jewish, Roma, Slavic - was erased in the name of making “superior” art, and this car was a cornerstone of that. For it to be preserved, and then given an award for the very aesthetic beauty it sought, in an era where we once again grapple with the rise of fascism and Nazi ideology, feels like a slap in the face.