Along a quiet stretch of the A5 Motorway south of Frankfurt, a footpath leads into the roadside forest. If you venture down that footpath, you will come across a simple memorial stone set in a quiet clearing. It marks the spot where one of the greatest racers ever to strap himself into a grand prix car was killed in 1938. Bernd Rosemeyer's story reads like the pages of a Boys' Own Annual. Dashing, daring with a beautiful celebrity wife, Rosemeyer was a star of the sport in an era when Germany's two biggest car companies, Mercedes and Auto Union, engaged in all-out war on the track. At stake was the claim of being 'the fastest in the world', and its foot soldiers, the men who risked their lives to go faster than ever before, were national heroes. And above them all, if only briefly stood Rosemeyer.
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