“TWO world wars and one world cup – England, England, two world wars and one world cup, England all the way.”
“Right son, we‘re gonna blow them away!”
Great advert during the soccer world championship in South Africa for a mobile phone company here in Cyprus. I loved it.
For all those who didn’t have the pleasure to see it, just a short description: an English father and his son are on their way to a football match against Germany. They are showing their British pride with the usual white and red colour in their faces, singing the old anti-German song: “Two world wars and one world cup …..
They stop at an elevator. The sliding door opens – and the elevator is filled with German hooligans. The English father and his son move in and the son starts to sing again: “Two world wars……” End of the advert.
Let us look back. At the beginning of World War Two the German army was superior to all other armies due to its ‘mailed fist’, the German tank divisions. Those had above all a technological advantage created by a genius of an engineer named Ferdinand Porsche.
We know the end of the story. The Russians developed quickly an even more reliable tank, the famous T 34 and, scarifying 27 million people, the East broke the backbone of the German army.
Thank God for that!
After World War Two Ferdinand Porsche started to build cars. He invented ‘the Beatle’ and specialised quickly in sports cars with engines to move a tank.
The German engineer who is nicely related to the death of 27 million Slavic people gave his name to quite a famous sports car, preferred by men who want to show their power.
But that’s not the end of the story. Another pack of German tank engineers moved up the Neckar-valley and created the Mercedes car. The distance between the Porsche- and the Mercedes headquarters is less than three miles.
Mercedes is a Spanish girl’s name. Our ‘Mercedes’ was the daughter of a French salesman who worked for Daimler-Benz Company. His good looking wife was Spanish. Gotthilf Daimler, the inventor of the automobile, loved both, the mother and above all the little girl and he decided to have her name for his cars.
The post-war Mercedes cars were surely the tank version of an automobile. Remember the old ‘180’, the most reliable car ever. It had a huge engine and proper steel everywhere. With those cars you could put up to 500,000 kilometres on the clock. That’s what you need during a ‘Great War’.
And think about the separated heating system. Mercedes had it from the very beginning. The driver could choose his temperature level independently from the officer next to him. Some like it hot, some don’t. Surely enough all that has been created by people with the experience: “Once Moscow – and then the whole way back.”
Anyhow, the Germans lost the war but they had their economic miracle and already in the early fifties a successful German butcher could drive his Mercedes tank down to Italy or over to France with the message: “Look, we didn’t lose; we just postponed the final victory – I am the king of the road.”
That’s still the basic message of most Mercedes drivers. The French call it “the German butcher attitude”.
But today these German tank cars are nicely streamlined. It’s an Italian design. Yes, Mercedes gets its modern design from little companies round Milano. That’s one of the well hidden secrets of Daimler-Benz Company, although it’s not a problem for a proper German. During the war the Italians were on our side, at least for some time.
For sure, it’s a nice design today and they are still reliable cars and everybody wants to have them. Above all: There are too many losers. “Two world wars and one world cup…….”
Gerhard Pross, Nicosia
PS: The author is German and drives a Mercedes car.
