Our site logs show that a number of events receive substantially higher levels of hits (visits) than many events. Two of the most popular events appear to be the ISDT 1964 held in East Germany in which the legendary Steve McQueen competed in the American team on Triumphs. The other event being the ISDT 1939 which took place in the closing days of the shaky inter-war peace time and took place in what had been Austria until the Germans under the leadership of Adolf Hitler had annexed what had been his own homeland. The event ended with the British teams being evacuated to escape back to England by a variety of means including British Service teams who the Germans had pledged safe passage to return to a port from which they could reach England.

The event sat over a disputed corner of Europe. In the opening prelude to the War the Third Reich had already walked in, unchallenged, into Czechoslovakia to annex the Sudetenland an area subject to cultural changes since medieval times and increased German nationalism led the German Reich to consider it was taking back its own. Day 1 entered this disputed territory and most days the event took place either side of the Austrian German border. We have recently started mapping the course of the event which can be found on the blog ‘Mapping the 1939 ISDT‘

Our Euro reporter ‘STB’ acquired a rare copy of the Motorrad magazine article and report on the ISDT from 1939 and it is indeed quite amazing considering the amount of damage of the war this copy survived and I am grateful for another forum reader from German reader Andreas Holthaus who we are most indebted for translating the article for our use in this site. It is therefore a great pleasure for me to finally re-publish after nearly 75 years the German side of the story of the ISDT 1939

ISDT 1939 – Report from ‘Das Motorrad‘: The 1^st Day

report by Von Gustav Mueller

Photo – Dusty fume and stony boulder give a clear image of the arduousness of this six days trial. The moves of the people reflect the stress, which the riders have all day long.
The two with #239 led by F Weber BMW 593 from the Kraftfahrtschule der Luftwaffe [Air Force motoring school], in the foreground of the picture, have won some time [in advance of the schedule], which they now use for some smaller work. ISDT 1939 (das Motorrad)

With about 475 kilometres to acclimatise riders seemed to be to be quite much. In exchange, the riders had to face only little off-road, with the course mainly on surfaced roads. However, it should not be forgotten, that the Ostmark[1] roads are not of a Autobahn nature yet. There are some big main roads with formidable tar paving, and with bends! So, boys, one would really like to be born here, only to ride these bends every day and all day long. This is such a riding pleasure, that you always have to slow down yourself in order to be able to see the landscape, too. By the way, I do not advise anyone to watch the landscape in slowly rolling mode, if not just riding a mofa[2] or a 100 cc, but to ride shorter distances in a sportive way and then to stop [for watching]. On these narrow roads and with the heavy traffic these roads have to bear, you can’t look about, and watch the traffic around carefully at the same time. There are a lot of large buses around here, and they are quite wide. If you are not at the very edge of the road, the experience will often include the smell of burning rubber.

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