by Mark Felton
One of the enduring images of Nazism is Hitler standing in the front of a large Mercedes-Benz limousine saluting as he is driven through dense throngs of adoring Germans. Hitler loved cars, took an interest in motor racing and enthusiastically supported the 1936 International Motor Show in Berlin. Hitler was the first world leader to use specially modified and armoured cars. The trend had begun in Prohibition America where gangsters like Al Capone paid huge sums to have their cars armoured and bullet-proofed. As with everything to do with Hitler, security considerations revolutionised VIP transport, resulting in some truly monstrous machines.
The giant limousines were often Hitler’s first line of defence against lunatics and against more well-organised assassination plots. Throughout the 1920s and early 1930s Hitler was repeatedly shot at whilst he was on the move, and providing properly armoured vehicles became paramount once Hitler became chancellor in 1933.
The year before, while Hitler’s small convoy of cars was negotiating a hairpin bend on the road near Stralsund in northern Germany, Hitler’s car was ambushed by a group of unidentified armed men who opened a fusillade of shots at the vehicle narrowly missing the Führer. A year later another group of unknown assassins opened fire on Hitler’s car on the road between Rosenheim and the Obersalzburg in Bavaria.
The Führer required serious cars, and German carmaker Mercedes-Benz was more than happy to accommodate his wishes, particularly his interest in personal security. Hitler had first owned a red Benz in 1923 – it was this car that he had used to drive to the Burgerbraukeller in Munich shortly before launching his abortive putsch. During these tumultuous years Hitler was even involved in a car accident. ‘Rudolf Hess once told me that just before the seizure of power [in 1933], Hitler, Hess, Heinrich Hoffmann and Julius Schaub were all nearly killed in Hitler’s Mercedes due to an error made by a lorry driver,’ related Hitler’s valet, Heinz Linge. ‘Hitler was injured in the face and shoulder but with great composure calmed his co-passengers, still paralysed with shock, with the observation that Providence would not allow him to be killed since he still had a great mission to fulfill.’4
Hitler stated in 1934 that he ‘did not tolerate a car manufactured by other companies in his escort and entourage,’ a ringing endorsement of what was now called Mercedes-Benz (though not something they like to highlight today). Between 1929 and 1942 Mercedes-Benz delivered a total of forty-four cars to the Reich Chancellery, the majority during the Nazi period.
Before 1935 Hitler used ordinary tourers and unarmoured limousines but his vulnerability to assassination caused a change in vehicle type. One incident in particular forced a change. After attending the marriage of Generalfeldmarschall Werner von Blomberg, Hitler drove to Kaiser Wilhelm II’s former mansion and hunting range on the Schorfheide to be with Göring. ‘Himmler drove ahead of us,’ recalled Hitler’s valet Linge. ‘Suddenly shots cracked out from the forest undergrowth. Himmler’s car stopped after being hit. Himmler, deeply shocked and pale, told Hitler that he had been shot at. Driving on after the incident, Hitler said: ‘That was certainly intended for me because Himmler does not usually drive ahead. It is also well known that I always sit at the side of the driver. The hits on Himmler’s car are in that area.’5 Following this incident, Hitler took delivery of three specially modified Mercedes-Benz 540KW24 limousines, known with good reason as the ‘Swabian Colossus’.
Introduced at the 1936 Paris Motor Show, the 540K was one of the largest cars produced at the time. A total of twelve specially lengthened wheelbase cars were manufactured for use by the German government, huge six-seater convertible saloons. Hitler’s three personal 540K Paradewagens were kept in service until 1943. The Führer had had the vehicles ‘panzered’ or armoured with 4mm steel body armour, a 25mm thick bulletproof windscreen and side windows and bulletproof tires. They weighed close to 4 tons each, reducing their top speed from 177 kph to 140 kph. They could withstand pistol and rifle fire and probably a bomb or grenade blast at close range. It was these cars that Hitler used to visit the Nuremberg rallies and one was even used to drive British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain up to the Berghof in 1938 during crisis meetings over the future of Czechoslovakia. Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler also utilised 540Ks, and many were kept at the New Reich Chancellery motor pool for the use of visiting VIPs and government ministers.
Hitler also used the 520G4W31 and 131 models. These equally huge vehicles had three axles and were used for cross-country driving and for military parades. Protection included a 30mm thick windscreen, 20mm thick roll-up windows, rear side windows armoured to 30mm and the back of the rear seat was reinforced by 8mm of steel plate. But the security features on the cars were only as good as the security protocols that governed the cars’ use. Hitler consistently toured around in armoured limousines with the top down. Although the side windows were rolled up, he was vulnerable to either a rifleman shooting from higher up (as in the case of John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1963) or from a tossed grenade or bomb.
In 1942, following Reinhard Heydrich’s assassination in Prague, when British-trained Czech agents ambushed the Reich Protector, one throwing a grenade which exploded against the open-topped vehicle, the German government ordered another twenty 540Ks for the exclusive use of Nazi ministers and other leaders. Hitler’s protection, and that of his ministers and inner circle, became increasingly stringent as the war turned against Germany. Battlefield reverses left all of the Nazi leaders feeling increasingly vulnerable to assassination. In 1944 a final order for seventeen 540Ks was placed with Mercedes. The most famous 540K was probably ‘Blue Goose’, the car owned by Hermann Göring. Blue was the Reichsmarschall’s favourite colour and his personal 540K had Göring’s family crest emblazoned on both rear doors.
From 1938 Hitler upgraded his collection of 540Ks with the addition of the Mercedes-Benz 770K150. Seven of these enormous vehicles were often used during the war years as Hitler’s personal transports. The chassis was twenty feet long and loaded down with 900kg of armour plating and bulletproof glass. With fuel, oil and radiator fluid each 770K weighed almost 4.5 tonnes. Side and floor armour consisted of 18mm of steel. The windows consisted of 40mm of armoured glass. Hitler allegedly tested the glass himself by firing a Luger pistol at it.
The 770K ‘Grosser Mercedes’ was powered by a 230hp straight 8 with dual carburettors and dual ignition; superchargers would cut in automatically if the driver floored the accelerator. The armour reduced the vehicle’s top speed to about 160 kph. Although fitted with 230-litre fuel tanks, Hitler’s 770Ks made barely 1km per litre, giving a range of only 230km. There was a compartment in the front dashboard and two more in the rear seats to hold pistols and an armoured plate could be raised behind the rear passenger seat. Hitler’s 770Ks were all painted midnight blue.
A typical example of Hitler’s pre-war use of automobiles was his March 1938 visit to Austria in the few days following the Anschluss.On this occasion Hitler had decided to drive over the border into his homeland and visit his birthplace in Braunau am Inn as well as Linz and the Austrian capital Vienna.
Security for the trip was provided by two agencies: SS-Standartenführer Johann Rattenhuber’s RSD and SS-Sturmbannführer Bruno Gesche’s SS-Begleitkommando. Rattenhuber was in overall command while Gesche acted as his deputy. In total, thirty-one bodyguards accompanied Hitler’s cavalcade of vehicles as it progressed into Austria, with ten acting as drivers under Hitler’s personal driver, Erich Kempka. Members of both units wore identical grey SS uniforms to confound assassins.6
Gesche, one of the original eight founding members of the SSBegleitkommando, would suffer from several ignominious falls from grace during his career. A favourite of Hitler’s, whom he had been protecting since 1932, Gesche had made a very powerful enemy during the early years of Nazism.
In October 1932 Gesche, then second-in-command of the SS-Begleitkommando, had made some very disparaging remarks about a second SS unit sent by Heinrich Himmler to help guard the Führer during his election campa
ign. When Himmler heard what Gesche had said he took it as a personal affront and requested that Gesche should be demoted and removed from the Führer protection detail. Hitler would only agree to a mild reprimand. Hitler often joked that he was not comfortable with Gesche, who was slightly cross-eyed, sitting behind him in his armoured Mercedes, fearing that he would shoot him by accident rather than any potential assassin. But Hitler was loyal to those subordinates that he liked, and Gesche, though now the dread enemy of Heinrich Himmler, later the most powerful man in Germany after the Führer, was protected.
Himmler had to content himself with destroying Gesche’s superior and commander of the SS-Begleitkommando, Kurt Gildisch, who was dismissed from his position and in 1936 actually thrown out of the SS for being a drunkard. Himmler’s removal of Gildisch actually proved a boon to Gesche, who was promoted to be the unit’s new commander in 1934.
In 1935, Himmler, a notoriously fastidious man, attempted to exercise control over the various security apparatuses of the early Nazi state, and he ordered that salaries due to the SS-Begleitkommando be withheld. Gesche responded by enlisting the help of another of the Führer’s favourites, Sepp Dietrich, the commander of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, who managed to get the order reversed.
Many of Hitler’s bodyguards were heavy drinkers and Gesche was no exception. Alcohol eventually led to his downfall. In 1937 Himmler enforced regulations forbidding SS men from drinking to excess. After gathering evidence against him, Himmler forced Gesche to sign a statement in September 1938 promising to abstain from all alcohol for a period of three years or face dismissal from the SS. Gesche signed but the ban was lifted when Hitler once more interceded on Gesche’s behalf. It would be fair to say that Himmler was more determined than ever to destroy Gesche – it had taken on something of the character of a personal vendetta and Himmler was both petty and patient, a deadly combination. We will read more of Gesche and Himmler’s feud during the war years.
Erich Kempka would remain as Hitler’s personal driver until the end of the war. The son of a Ruhr Polish coal miner, Kempka had been one of the eight founding members of the SS-Begleitkommando in 1932. He was chauffeur to SA-Obergruppenführer Josef Terboven, Gauleiter of Essen, until 1932 when he was recommended to become Hitler’s reserve driver. In 1936 Kempka replaced Julius Schreck on his death as Hitler’s primary driver and chief of the car pool. He would rise to the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer and was awarded the SS Honor Sword by Himmler, a straight sabre given for special merit and worn when in full dress uniform. When Hitler was being driven he always, unless he was travelling with some important guest, sat in the front passenger seat next to Kempka. His valet, Heinz Linge, would sit in the back. Hitler did not drive himself, but particularly enjoyed being driven at high speed, and Kempka was both skilled and reliable.
The bodyguards were divided into three details under Gesche, SSObersturmführer Högl (RSD Deputy Commander) and SS-Hauptsturmführer Scha¨dle of SS-Begleitkommando. In all, there were twelve large Mercedes in the convoy. Five cars were required just to carry the bodyguards, weapons and luggage, plus more cars for Hitler and his entourage, a group that included his valet Heinz Linge, adjutants Schaub and Brückner, Press Chief Dr Otto Dietrich, the ever-present Martin Bormann, Hitler’s personal physician Dr Karl Brandt, Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler’s ‘court’ photographer, and Generaloberst Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the OKW.
The bodyguard detachment on the visit to Hitler’s birthplace was well armed. Between them they carried fourteen MP38 machine pistols and every man also carried two automatic pistols. Hitler’s personal adjutant, SS-Sturmbannführer Wernicke, was given two extra machine pistols with two full magazines each, just to be safe.7
The party drove from Munich after flying in from Berlin on 12 March 1938 aboard nine Junkers Ju-52s of the Führer’s personal squadron. After boarding their cars, the first stop was Mühldorf, headquarters of Generaloberst Fedor von Bock’s VIII Army. Army and Waffen-SS troops sealed off the HQ from prying eyes. At Braunau am Inn, the small border town where Hitler was born in 1889, he was met, as he was everywhere in Austria, by huge and enthusiastic crowds of admirers who showered his car with flowers while he stood and gave them his trademark ‘German greeting’ from the passenger seat or reached down to shake upstretched hands. It was at moments like these that Hitler was most vulnerable to assassination, a fact that the RSD and SS-Begleitkommando were more than apprehensive about. But it proved extremely difficult to keep the adoring crowds back from Hitler’s person, particularly when moving in a vehicle convoy where it was often impossible to cordon off roads. After passing through Lambach and Wels, the party arrived at the city of Linz, where Hitler’s father had once been employed as a customs officer. There the Führer and his entourage spent the night.
On 13 March Hitler resumed his triumphal progress towards Vienna. As the caravan of vehicles passed a petrol station one man stood beside his car, his eyes narrowed with barely concealed loathing. Colonel Noel Mason-MacFarlane was the British Military Attaché in Vienna. He would later volunteer to assassinate Hitler once he was transferred to Berlin just before the German invasion of Poland, proposing to a horrified Foreign Office in London to shoot Hitler with a high velocity rifle from a window in the British Embassy when he was reviewing an annual military parade.8 Mason-MacFarlane watched as two large Mercedes ‘filled with SS bristling with tommy-guns and other lethal weapons, came by; they were closely followed by half-a-dozen super-cars containing Hitler and his entourage and bodyguard.’9 The day ended with a large military parade in Vienna.
Regardless of how many bodyguards that he had with him, Hitler still remained vulnerable when travelling by car. The best way to protect him when he was on the move, whether by plane, train or automobile, was to maintain secrecy about the route he would take, denying his enemies the vital time needed to plan an effective ambush.
Hitler’s vulnerability was startlingly clear when he drove into Austria. The Wehrmacht had only secured the towns that he visited a couple of days previously, and although enraptured crowds mostly greeted him in his homeland, there were those who would have liked to have seen him dead. The cordoning off of the streets through which Hitler’s procession would pass was often inadequate and haphazard, the task falling mainly to rear echelon army signals detachments. This meant that people could get very close to Hitler and the party’s vehicles, close enough that on several occasions they almost stopped the procession by sheer weight of numbers requiring RSD bodyguards to walk beside Hitler’s car, three on each side, to try to create a little space between the Führer and his adoring throngs. People would hand Hitler bunches of flowers or baskets of fruit as he stood in the front passenger seat, one hand gripping the windscreen frame and any of these objects could have concealed a bomb. From a security point of view it was a disaster waiting to happen.
The situation got worse once Hitler started annexing countries that outright objected to German occupation. When he swallowed the remaining parts of Czechoslovakia in 1938 he boldly drove through Prague where he was greeted not by saluting, yelling and crying throngs, but by small crowds who stood staring at their new master in ominous, stony silence. Hitler sat for most of the time, only standing to salute German Army units, but his car was still open-topped, an inviting target for any Czech nationalists. In the event, no one attempted to kill him.
Once again, the entire party of Nazi bigwigs travelled in dark open-topped Mercedes, Hitler apparently as adamant as John F. Kennedy twenty-four years later that he should be clearly seen by both his admirers and his enemies. The Führer’s party travelled in two groups. The first group consisted of Hitler’s car followed by two SS-Begleitkommando bodyguard cars, another car full of aides and adjutants, and Generaloberst Keitel and his adjutants. Hitler’s immediate companions were his driver Kempka, adjutant Schaub, Hitler’s chief military aide Oberst Rudolf Schmundt, Hauptmann Nicholaus von Below, his Wehr-macht adjutant, Hauptmann Engel and his valet Linge (who was armed with an MP3
8 machine pistol). The two trailing escort cars had MG34 machine guns mounted.
The second group consisted of the ‘ministers’ cars’. There was one car each for Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, Head of the Reich Chancellery Hans Lammers, Heinrich Himmler and his aides and bodyguard, Dr Dietrich, plus one vehicle reserved for invited guests, an empty reserve car in case of breakdowns, a luggage car, mobile field kitchen and even a petrol tanker to ensure that so many massive gas-guzzling Mercedes didn’t run dry.10
Further protection for the two groups of cars was provided by five motorcycle outriders mounted on BMWs who rode ahead of Hitler’s group with an armed reconnaissance Horch truck followed by Oberst Irwin Rommel, commander of the Führer’s escort, in another car (Column ‘K’ (Kommandant)).
When Germany invaded Poland in early September 1939 Hitler soon drove into the conquered territory behind his advancing armies, keen to conduct a tour of inspection of his troops and the front lines. Expecting serious trouble, the RSD and SS-Begleitkommando took no chances and an enormous effort was made to protect Hitler’s caravan of vehicles. Although it was early days in the evolution of Hitler’s vehicular security, already the essential components were in place and would be instantly familiar to any American president today.
The combination of the Führersonderzug and the fleet of armoured Mercedes meant that for the Polish Campaign Hitler was able to keep moving his military headquarters. Hitler established his first Führer HQ in the East Prussian town of Bad Polzin after Wehrmacht HQ Front Units had been mobilised on 23 August 1939. His personal train was used, arriving at Bad Polzin station on 4 September. HQ troops and a force protection unit were drawn from the elite Grossdeutschland Regiment under the command of Oberst Rommel.
The Grossdeutschland traced its origins back to 1921, during the unsettled period following Germany’s defeat in the First World War. The new Reichswehr was limited to only 100,000 men, and each of its divisions recruited from within a particular state. A guard regiment for the nation’s capital was duly created, Wachregiment Berlin, recruiting men from across all nine Reichswehr divisions, and in the process becoming the only truly ‘German’ unit in the army. Its duties were primarily ceremonial – providing sentries at the Old Reich Chancellery and guards of honour for state occasions and visits. Shortly after formation the unit’s name was changed to Kommando der Wachtruppe (Guard Troop Command) and it was based at Moabit Barracks in central Berlin. When Hitler came to power in 1933 he left the unit intact, though his ceremonial guards were largely from the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler.