The Devil's Mercedes

January 1, 2017
The shadowy provenance of a wartime German limousine and the dizzying succession of owners over decades afterward.Historian Klara (The Hidden White House: Harry Truman and the Reconstruction of America's Most Famous Residence, 2013, etc.) first became entranced by the story of the massive Mercedes Benz Grosser 770K limousine, which had made its way to America after World War II, as a young boy in the 1970s when "Hitler's touring car" was displayed in a county fair in upstate New York. The author does an admirable sleuthing job in debunking some of the myths surrounding this legendary car; it was part of a fleet of similar Grosser armored limousines custom made in the late 1930s and early '40s for the Nazi leadership. Two cars, in particular, have traceable genealogies. One, purchased by a Chicago exporter, Christopher Janus, from a Swedish company to settle a debt in June 1948, was touted as Hitler's private car and arrived shortly thereafter by ship to New York City, followed by enormous public curiosity. Janus planned to drum up some money for charity by touring with the car, banking on the public's fascination with its original owner. What Janus chose to ignore was that his car was actually a gift given by Hitler to the Finnish president, Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, for allowing the Nazis to stage the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 from Finnish soil. The other limousine of note became a war trophy of U.S. Sgt. Joe Azara, an amateur mechanic who managed to steal away with the massive limousine at Berchtesgaden until it was "borrowed" by a superior and became the "Goring Special," a kind of party car that was displayed and then warehoused in the U.S. for years before finding its way to the Canadian War Museum. Myths surrounding the cars escalated, and at an auction in 1973, "Hitler's car" was sold for a whopping world record $153,000. An entertaining story of the irresistible cult of a creepy car.

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Starred review from January 1, 2017
Klara (The Hidden White House, 2013) knows better than to ask the salacious, silly question: Can an object be cursed? Yet readers will be hard-pressed not to wonder after reading this endlessly riveting account of the various automobiles purported to have belonged to Adolf Hitler. The vehicle in question is a sinister, blue-black, bulletproof, secret compartmentfilled, 20-foot-long 1941 Grosser Mercedes 770K W150 Offener Tourenwagen touring sedan, straight out of Nazi Germany. Two of them, actually, are Klara's focus. The first is revealed to have only been a gift from Hitler to Finland's Field Marshal Mannerheim in 1942not that this stopped decades of promoters from claiming otherwise. The other eventually becomes known as the Goring Special, the personal car of Reichsmarschall Hermann Goringand that doesn't end up true, either. Truth, however, is Klara's secondary concern. What the Mercedes represents to an America looking for tangible evidence of triumph, reducing Hitler to a sideshow freak, is primary here, as is how the cara juggernaut of dark energy tends to backfire, if not ruin, its would-be boosters. The Goring Special finally lands in a museum that can't seem to get rid of it, leading to a final act in which a cranky librarian makes a jaw-dropping discovery. A thoroughly uncomfortable study of the high hopes, smashed dreams, and undying nightmares inherent in any troubling historical relic.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)