GERMAN CARS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 April 1939, Page 11

GERMAN CARS

MOTORISATION OF THE REICH. SPEED BY HERR HITLER. Herr Hitler opened the annual international motor show at Berlin with a speech which emphasised the motorisation of the Reich and the “consciousness of power and strength of the German people.” This year’s show is dominated by the militarisation of the German motor industry, and by the preparations for a powerful drive to capture world markets for German car manufacturers, states the "Daily Mail.” The Fuehrer, who drove to the exhibition hall between the ranks of 20,000 men of the Nazi Motorised Corps, recalled the demands which he had made of the German car industry when he opened the show in 1933. These had been to a great extent fulfilled. Prices had been adjusted to the purchasing power of the people, and motoring roads had been created which “outclassed anything which had existed hitherto.” Colossal strides had been made in rendering the German motor industry independent of foreign sources of raw materials. There had been “revolutionary new discoveries whose value is so great that earlier raw materials would no longer by used, even if they were to be unreservedly at our disposal in future.” A car was no longer a luxury article. It had become an article of daily use. The second part of the Fuehrer’s speech was devoted to a warning to the nation to exercise care and restraint on the roads. “The German nation,” Herr Hitler cried, “is now sacrificing in six years exactly as many dead as were killed during the Franco-Prussian war of 1.870-71. “This is an unbearable situation. Those who rob the nation annually of about 7,000 dead and 30,000 to 40,000 injured are vermin which prey on the people.”The Reich motor roads, Herr Hitler added, were not intended for travelling at super speeds of 75 to 85 miles an' hour, but for the maintenance of an average speed of about 50 miles an hour.