My TT

“In 1939 a group of German riders came on mass to be a part of the Isle of Man TT races. Everyone was told they were just motorcycle racers, not Nazis. With the 70th anniversary of that incredible event I decided to find out if that was true or not.

“I uncovered a lot of information that you just couldn’t make up. 1939 at the TT was a complete Nazi propaganda operation organised on paramilitary lines. All three teams were involved in it- BMW, NSU and DKW. 

“The whole thing was run by a leading Nazi party official on the Isle of Man who was masquerading as the representative of the German equivalent of the Auto- Cycle Union, which was actually just an adjunct to a paramilitary organisation called the National Socialist Motorized Transport Corps- a Nazi party run organisation.

“This meant that all international motorcycle sporting events which the Germans participated in were run as propaganda operations and it culminated here at the TT in 1939. It’s amazing to think that only 3 months before the beginning of the war the Isle of Man was hosting a group of German Nazis. Everybody knew we were going to war so the atmosphere must have been incredibly strange, made even stranger when the German’s won. At the time the TT was regarded as the premier motorcycle event in the world so to win was a big feather in Hitler’s cap.

“Some of those riders had been to the Island before and one of them, a leading Nazi activist, had won the Light Weight TT in 1938. His name was Ewald Kluge and he went to prison after the war because of his Nazi connections. He was in jail until 1949.

Book Cover for 'The Nazi TT'

“None of the competitors wore uniforms at the TT but when they raced in Germany they wore full military uniforms. The only sign of the Nazi associations at the TT was the swastika insignia on the leathers of the riders.

“In the book I tried to follow what happened to all the individuals through the war and then what happened to the after the war. Some of the German riders raced again and of course some of them didn’t survive the war.

“Britain went to war on September 3rd, 3 months after that TT event. The atmosphere at the races would have been really weird especially when the winning German riders performed the Nazi salute on the podium.”

The Nazi TT by Roger Willis is available in all good bookshops.