Racing The Silver Arrows Mercedes Benz Versus Auto Union 1934-1939 - Signed by Chris Nixon

Please note this example is signed by the author and dedicated by him to the previous owner.

Racing The Silver Arrows is the story of how the silver racing cars of Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union - funded, in part, by the Nazis dominated the Grand Prix scene during the latter half of the 1930s. In order to tell this fascinating tale in a manner never attempted before, author Chris Nixon has done a magnificent job of research, which meant interviewing that remarkable era's principal survivors to obtain a highly readable and personal insight into the period. He also borrowed photographs from their albums, enabling him to illustrate this book with much previously unpublished material. The men and machines of Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union provided such stirring racing in the 1930s that the period has become recognised as The Golden Age of Grand Prix racing. This is the first book to chronicle fully the battle between the two companies on the circuits, autobahnen and mountain climbs of Europe in the years leading up to World War II. Each year, from 1934 through to 1939, is dealt with separately and contains memoirs from people closely connected with that particular racing season - people such as Rudolf Uhlenhaut, Elly Beinhorn Rosemeyer, Dr Ferry Porsche, Erica Seaman and Hermann Lang (the 1939 European Champion), who also wrote the foreword. Then there are in-depth profiles of the principal personalities of the period including Rudolf Caracciola, Tazio Nuvolari, Alfred Neubauer, Bernd Rosemeyer, Achille Varzi, Dick Seaman, Ghislaine Kaes, Ernst Henne, Hans Stuck, Luigi Fagioli, Paul Pietsch, Hanns Geier, Manfred Von Brauchitsch, Bernd Rosemeyer, Gunther Molter, Robert Eberan-Eberhorst, Erica Seaman, and Schorsch Meier. There are also intriguing sidelights on some of the wives and girlfriends - women who played a very important (and in one case disastrous) role in the life and career of their menfolk. Each year is concluded with a report of one of the season's most important Grand Prix from either The Autocar or The Motor, a review of the year in pictures and a description of some of the circuits then in use. There is a chapter entitled Racing and the Nazis. This examines in detail - and for the first time - the way in which the Nazi Party used Grand Prix racing and record-breaking for propaganda purposes, once Adolf Hitler had set things in motion in 1933, with the offer of a financial subsidy (albeit a pretty small one) to any German car manufacturer which would go motor racing. As Hitler expected, the investment paid off handsomely, and from 1935 German cars dominated the Grand Prix scene almost completely, Chris Nixon's writing, the personal reminiscences, contemporary race reports and a wealth of remarkable photographs (many from the Daimler-Benz Archive) combine to make this more than a mere motoring book. Instead, Racing The Silver Arrows describes the people and their period in history all too often ignored because of the tragic events that followed, and fills a gap in motor racing literature.