THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST MOTOR CORPS
During the 1930s, the nascent Nazi regime created a motoring organisation designed to show off Germany’s engineering achievements, as well as the high-speed skills of its drivers and riders
Motor racing was one of the glamour sports of the 1930s and German drivers were at the forefront of the pinnacle of the sport, the Grand Prix. Rudolf Caracciola won a trio of driver’s championships in 1935, 1937 and 1938 while Bernd Rosemeyer cemented this domination with the 1936 Grand Prix European Championship. One of the reasons for German success was that Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) believed in promoting motoring as a way of modernising the country, along with the clear military benefit of engine and vehicle development.
The first NSDAP motoring organisation itself was called the National Socialist Automobile Corps (Nationalsozialistisches Automobilkorps, or NSAK), which Hitler made an official party organisation on 1 April 1930 while also forcing all other German motoring organisations to amalgamate with it. The Party had, in fact, been using motor transport for years, to move members and propaganda materials around.
The newly formed NSAK was put in charge of the various vehicles that the NSDAP had bought, or had received as donations from supporters and Party members, while Adolf Hühnlein was made Corps Leader (Korpsführer). Hühnlein was 51 and a former soldier who had been working in the car tyre industry.
Unsurprisingly, he was an early convert to the NSDAP cause. The NSAK effectively became a motorized element of the Sturmabteilung (SA), deploying the brown shirts around Germany for rallies and providing protection at Party meetings. However, Hitler had other plans for the organisation. These started a year later, on 1 May 1931, two years before becoming Chancellor, when the NSAK was renamed as the National Socialist Motor Corps (Nationalsozialistisches Kraftfahrkorps, or NSKK) which then adopted its own system of paramilitary ranks, uniforms and regalia, though they were heavily based on the SA.
With all other motoring organisations now banned, and motoring becoming increasingly popular, membership began a rapid, upwards trajectory from a modest 30,000 in April 1933. As an official Party organisation though, German Jews were banned from joining and the applicants had to prove they had no Jewish relatives as well as demonstrate their loyalty to Hitler. Surprisingly, those joining the NSKK didn’t actually ne
