Dan Snow's History Hit - Fighting Nazism at the Grand Prix

Episode Date: May 31, 2020

Neal Bascomb joined me on the podcast to tell a remarkable story of the fight against Hitler - on the Grand Prix racetrack. We delved into the high-speed world of the American heiress Lucy Schell, a motorsport obsessive and the top American driver in the Monte Carlo Rally. With the help of Rene Dreyfus, a brilliant racing driver who was banned from competing due to his Jewish heritage, Schell became the first woman to own and run a Grand Prix team. She brought Delahaye automobiles back from the brink of bankruptcy to take on Hitler’s Silver Arrow Grand Prix racers. We also discussed how motoring was integral to Hitler's grand plans for a militarised Germany, and how the success of individuals like Schell and Dreyfus was such a thorn in the side of Nazi doctrine. Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan's Knows History. I was really lucky in this podcast to catch up with the New York Times best-selling author, multiple best-selling author, Neil Bascom. He's a total legend. We talked about his latest book, in which he took me into the high-speed world of Grand Prix racing and the pre-war competition with the Nazis. It's just such a great story. There's an heiress called Lucy Schell, who was herself a race driver, and she went on to run a team. And she employed René Dreyfus, a brilliant driver who'd been banned because of his Jewish heritage. And she became the first woman to own a Grand Prix team.

And it became a kind of critical front in the soft war, the war for influence and sporting accolades against Nazi Germany in the mid-1930s. It is a fantastic story this and neil bascom has brought his customary flair to it so enjoy this you can check out all the back episodes of this podcast without any ads if you don't want to hear the ads then you can do so at history hit tv it's the best way of supporting everything we're trying to do here so thank you to all of those subscribers thousands and thousands of you who've done that we're incredibly grateful you just go to historyhit.tv you sign up using the code pod one pod one you get a month for free and you get your

second month which is one pound euro dollar whatever you're paying it so that's super cheap two months i'll hopefully take you through the rest of this lockdown i keep saying that how long is it going on for thank you for supporting us we are producing more content all the time we just finished making a titanic film which is going to be good fun. And so we are putting that money to good use. And thank you very much for supporting us. In the meantime, everyone, here's Neil Bascom. Enjoy. Neil, thank you very much for coming on the show. How are you doing over there? Wonderful. Thanks for having me. Tell me about Lucy Schell.

She was born in Paris. Her father was an American industrialist. She could have lived this easy life in cushion and comfort, but she decided she was just with an absolute dynamo. So during World War I, she was actually a nurse working in the Paris hospitals, attending to soldiers. And then she ended up marrying an American diplomat son named Laurie Schell. And he was an avid motorsport fan, and he got Lucy involved in that. And she just became one of the top early speed queens. She was tough as nails. She would drive often with broken arms and

broken legs. She became one of the top Monte Carlo drivers in the 1930s. And then when her sort of racing career came to almost an end, she decided to launch a Grand Prix team to take on the German Silver Arrows right at the cusp of World War II. And they were beloved of Adolf Hitler, weren't they? So it was just a political statement she was making. It was absolutely a political statement. I mean, she had from her memories of World War I and what the Germans had done to the soldiers there. She just carried this animosity with her and with the rise of Nazi Germany and the dominance of the Silver Arrows and the propaganda involved in all that. She just wanted to sort of strike a blow, a symbolic blow against them. And so the Silver Arrows were Hitler's darlings in many ways. And motorsport

was something that Hitler wanted to be the best in. And to strike a blow against them was what she wanted to do. Let's talk about her career as a driver first. I mean, how unusual. There are lots of female aviators and drivers in this period, or are there? Was she unusual at the time? There were a few dozen racing, you know, what were called speed queens at the time. And she was one of the top ranked ones. They were nowhere near as many as the men, of course, and they were looked down upon by the men drivers. Often they were laughed at at races where they would be in their overalls at one moment and then the photographers wanted

them to put on heels and dresses in the next. And it was something, a game that she played because she knew she had to, but she wanted to be a driver and she was just as tough as the men. And I would say probably tougher when it came to endurance races like the Monte Carlo Rally. Did she have to put up with sexism, misogyny, or was it because it's a kind of a new sport with their new rules and practices? It was blatant misogyny, both by the fans, by the organizers, by the other drivers. They just had to face it. In some circumstances, they had their own races where it was only women driving in them. But many of them, it was mixed company. And Lucy wasn't allowed to really drive in any Grand Prix events,

which is why she chose to start, launch and fund her own Grand Prix team, which involved building her own Grand Prix race car. That's an extraordinary story. I mean, was she lucky in terms of the funds that she had available? Or was it a real David and Goliath story when it comes to money as well? Well, she had money and she spent almost all of it on her race cars, on developing this team. And she chose as the automobile manufacturer, this French maker called Delahaye, which was largely a defunct, almost bankrupt French automobile company. They were better known for building trucks. Critics would say that their cars were best driven on funeral processions. That's just they were clunky, they were boxy, they weren't very good to look at. But they had a very good young engineer named

Jean-Francois. And he had never built a Grand Prix car. But Lucy gave him all the funds that he needed. And over the course of roughly 18 months, he built this very nimble B12 engine race car called the Delahaye 145. And I should say, I mean, did they have much success? You can tell us. Yes, absolutely. So what happens is, is that Lucy Shell needs a driver. She needs a very good driver.

Top Grand Prix race drivers, they were driving for Alfa Romeo. They were driving for Maserati, Mercedes, Auto Union, except for this one driver named Rene Dreyfus. And Rene was, you probably were tipped off, the Dreyfus name, he was one of the famous Jewish name. And he was banned from most of the best teams in Europe because of his heritage. And so in 1936, Rene, who before the rise of nationalism in Italy and Germany, was driving from everyone from the Italians, the Germans to the French. But nationalism broke that apart and Grand Prix racing became something about individual countries. And Rene was banned from the very best teams and the very best cars. And so when Lucy was looking for a driver, Rene was really the only one out there who was available.

And so she hired Rene. And over the course of a year, they trained together. Rene had had a terrible accident in the early 30s, which he had kind of lost his nerve. And Lucy had him racing and everything from the Monte Carlo Rally to Le Mans to the Mille Miglia, all these sort of tough endurance races, which were very different than Grand Prix events, to sort of bolster

Rene's ability and his sort of will to win. So ultimately, in 1938, at the new Formula, it was Delahaye against Mercedes and Auto Union at the opening of the Grand Prix at Pau, which is in the French Pyrenees. And the Delahaye race car with Rene just absolutely cleaned up. It was almost no contest. I mean, they just were the best on that course. And it was just tremendous victory. It became a sort of French national pride, international news for weeks. And he became a hero. And what's interesting about all this is the sort of misogyny reared its head again, because Lucie Shell was given no credit for any of the victory, no matter Rene speaking her up. I mean, they had a very good relationship, but the people only wanted to focus on Rene and not Luc Lucy, which is why if you ask any sort of Grand Prix F1 fan

or historian, probably very few of them actually have ever heard her name, although she was the first woman to ever own and start her own Grand Prix team. It's an astonishing story, a little bit like the Berlin Olympics. I mean, was this something that left the bounds of sport and was remarked upon and talked about as a sort of political event when this Jewish driver stunned the world? No, it was because the Grand Prix sport was really about individuals and manufacturers from the 20s to the early 30s. And then with Mussolini and Hitler, it became this propaganda machine. And so victory became a national victory. And the French were just terribly behind. They didn't have the

money, they didn't have the cars, and they had very few drivers. And so they were absolutely ashamed, the French, of what had happened. And it became a sense of national pride to build a team to take on the Silver Arrows. And so once Rene and Lucy beat the Germans, it became, you know, at one point, Rene was called the Babe Ruth, famous American baseball player, the Babe Ruth of France. It was an embarrassment to Hitler, to the Third Reich. And in fact, once the Germans invaded Paris, they went to try to find these four Delahaye Grand Prix race cars that were built to have them destroyed. And Lucy and Delahaye hid them in mines in the north of France, disassembled them, and they were never found. The Germans also went to

the Automobile Club of France, stole all the files there of any Grand Prix victories by the French and destroyed them. They're not to be found anymore. So it was definitely a international story. It was a victory for the French in this kind of very dark time. And it is very much a David and Goliath story. It has sort of echoes of Jesse Owens' victory in the 1936 Olympics and other victories like that. So tell me a little bit more about what happens after this huge win in France, because war is on the way now, right? So how does motorsports and the war and this team how do they all interconnect so basically what happens is the German technology was just overwhelming I mean they had double the horsepower of any of the French cars so you find them winning these other races that are

on longer faster courses but Rene and the Delahaye wins on more nimble courses. The sport largely ends in late 1938, early 1939, and René has to escape France. Lucy gets him out of the country and he goes to the United States, ends up actually joining the U.S. Army and was involved in the landing of American forces in Italy. And motorsport really took a long pause at that point. But what's also sort of important about this story is that motorsport, particularly for the Germans, was important in their military development. And in fact, Hitler's second speech he ever gave once he rose to power was at the Berlin Motor Show, where he made it very clear he wanted to revitalize the German automobile industry, build the Autobahn and dominate motorsport. And by dominating motorsport, he wanted to recruit drivers and mechanics, young drivers, young mechanics to populate the ranks of what would become his motorized infantry. So he started the

National Socialist Motor Corps, the NSKK, which was very much involved and sort of critical to the Blitzkrieg. And so you have this connection between sport and ultimately the military victories that Germany had, particularly in the early years of World War II. Does this remarkable woman go back to motorsport at the end of the war? You know, motorsport largely, after the war is over, it sputters to a start, certainly. And Lucy at that point had lost her husband, Laurie. They had this just lovely romance and she was destroyed by that. And so she stopped racing or being involved

in cars and she ended up dying in 1952. One of her sons, Harry Shell, became a future race car driver and also died on the tracks. And so it's this sort of kind of sad history of Lucy Shell. Rene survived World War II. His family was persecuted in France, but they all survived. They were part of the resistance. And he ended up actually moving back to New York and became a famous French restaurateur in the city. And so he had these two very interesting lives. And he was a lovely man to all accounts. I've got to ask, because while I've got you on the pod, you're famous for writing all these bestselling history books.

You always find these stories. And how do you come across your material? Because you write just these pen portraits of these extraordinary moments and characters from our history. And they all tend to be David and Goliath stories. I'm beginning finally after about 10 books to understand that. I find them from all different places. This story of Faster came from a friend who sent me this press release about this renovated car called the Delahaye, which the Nazis had tried to destroy. And that

little sort of vignette made me look into who Lucy Schell was and Rene Dreyfus and sort of catapulted me into that story. My book Winter Fortress was about stopping the Nazis from obtaining the atomic bomb, about the Norwegian heavy water operations. That came from this huge tome of a book about atomic science by Richard Rhodes. And in there, there's this tiny little story about this Norwegian sabotage. And so they come from all different places. I've written about your Roger Bannister in the Four Minute Mile, and that came from my years of running. So they just come from all kinds of different places. If I would have it anyway, my father suggests a book about every week,

but I haven't taken them up yet on one. That's what dads are for. Dads have got great book ideas. That's for sure. This is an already highly acclaimed and it's going to be another big hit in the tradition of all your previous ones. So thank you very much.

We'll tell everyone what it's called. Faster. How a Jewish driver, an American heiress and an odd little car beat Hitler's best. Nice. As we say in England, faster. Okay, well, good luck to you, buddy. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Take care. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Just before you go, bit of a favour to ask. I totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money. Makes sense.

But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review,

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