Hitler had two dreams. One, to take over the world. Two, to create the ‘people’s car’. Thankfully, the first failed, but the second lived on to escape its Nazi enslavement. Jonathan Glancey looks back on the social history of the Volkswagen Beetle
When in January 1945 Adolf Hitler returned to Berlin from the Wolf’s Lair – his command post in eastern Poland – he was driven from airfield to Fhrerbunker beneath the Reich Chancellory in Voss Strasse not, according to his rank, in a powerful, glossy, black, supercharged Mercedes-Benz, but in a humble, steely-grey Volkswagen.
This was the “peoples’ car” the world knows today as the Beetle. And this was Hitler’s final journey. It was also, by chance, his first ride in a VW saloon.
The fhrer had, it’s true, been driven around the vast Volkswagen factory at Wolfsburg, 25km from Brunswick, when he laid the foundation stone there on May 26 1938. But that car was a cabriolet – later to become the soft-top Beetle beloved by generations of surf-crazy Californians.
On his 50th birthday, April 30 1939, the factory presented the fhrer with a cabriolet of his own, yet the chance to enjoy a spin in the famous, bug-like saloon – still in production today in Brazil and Mexico – eluded the man who breathed air-cooled life into it to the very last moment.
That last winter journey through a bomb-battered Berlin might seem, from this distance, a small trip for a fhrer destined to see his dream of world mastery shattered before summer, yet it also marked a giant leap for the Beetle as it was transformed from an instrument of Nazi social policy into the best-selling car of all time.
The Beetle is still in production today, in the guise of two slightly different variants, and nearly 22-million have been made. This is seven million more than Henry Ford’s famous Model-T (in production from 1908 to 1927), which ranks second to Hitler’s “Bug”.
In the Americas – North, Central and South – the hardy Volkswagen Beetle still lives up to its name.
And now, under pressure from United States dealers and consumer lobby groups, Volkswagen has designed and built a brand-new Beetle. The new Beetle is bigger and plusher than its legendary predecessor (it is based on a VW Golf floorplan), and is destined to be more of a plaything for the world’s well-off than a basic means of getting from Acapulco to Buena Vista for the exploited masses.
The new car – the Concept 1 car designed in VW’s Californian styling studio in the mid-Nineties – promises to be a lot of fun and have bags more up-and-go than its slow but sure antecedent.
Volkswagen’s German high command was unsure about building the new car – it had been meant as a playful styling exercise and nothing more – yet, like the 60-year-old original, it has already captured the imagination of a generation for whom cars such as the current, podgy VW Golf are as dull as they are steady and reliable. As the car becomes more and more a toy for those living in affluent countries, it might as well look like one and be fun to look at and play with.
Hitler’s car, meanwhile, will live on, perhaps the only tangible and respected legacy of his Thousand Year Reich. Hitler’s Reich fell short of its target by 988 years; but the Volkswagen – a coal-scuttle helmeted SS guardsman in the guise of a car – beetles on into a new millennium.
What is the secret of its appeal? The zoomorphic shape, of course. Its endearing idiosyncrasy. The funny noise its engines makes. The fact that, unlike the fhrer himself, they go on for ever. All these things, plus their intriguing engineering and, above all, their riveting history.
The Beetle, despite being the best-selling car of all time, is still a thing of controversy. What role did Hitler really play in its birth? Did Ferdinand Porsche, the inventive Austrian engineer whom we associate 100% with the design of the Beetle, really crib some of his ideas from other, forgotten motor engineers? How on earth did the car escape its Nazi roots?
There had been attempts before the Beetle (it wasn’t called this until after World War II) to create a “people’s car”.
Henry Ford led the way with his $800 Model-T in 1908. Andre Citron’s 5CV and Herbert Austin’s “Baby” 7 of 1922 were brave attempts at cheap- and-cheerful cars.
The Morris Minor of 1931 and Ford Y (the first all-British Ford) of 1933 were both offered for sale at 100. Yet, compared with the Volkswagen, these cars were decidedly old-fashioned.
The Volkswagen was an entirely different proposition. It was radical, modern and unlike just about any car yet seen on the roads. It was designed from the outset to cruise flat-out on Germany’s new autobahnen. It was ordered by state decree.
European designers had been working on small car projects before Hitler’s accession to power in 1933. Two of the most distinguished Austrian engineers – Ferdinand Porsche (1875 to 1932) and Hans Ledwinka (1878 to 1967) – were at work on ideas for a sophisticated “people’s car” at the beginning of the Thirties.
That Porsche looked over Ledwinka’s shoulder (and, to a lesser degree, Ledwinka over Porsche’s) at the time is now well established.
However, in the race to get the Volkswagen into production, Porsche was actively encouraged by Hitler to borrow many of what turned out to be Ledwinka’s design patents.
The German government, Hitler promised, would ensure there was no comeback and, to be sure, when Hitler annexed the Sudetenland in 1938, he drew a line around the Tatra motor factory at Koprivnice in eastern Bohemia – Ledwinka’s empire – and annexed this seat of engineering excellence too. This meant that many of the details that went into the design of the Volkswagen were now owned by the Third Reich.
If this was unfair, then post-war German lawyers were to agree: in 1960, Volkswagen was privatised, and Tatra – and its former chief designer, Ledwinka – sued the company for infringements of design patents and, shortly before Ledwinka’s death in 1967, Volkswagen settled, paying Tatra, owned since 1946 by the Czechoslovakian government, DM3-million.
It was a lot of money, recognising the degree to which the Beetle was inspired by Ledwinka, but Ledwinka received none of it and died in near poverty.
None of this should be surprising. Early in 1930, Ledwinka was at work with his chief assistant, Erich Ubelacker (1899 to 1977), on the design of a revolutionary, air-cooled, two-cylinder engine to be mounted at the rear of small car.
A basic prototype was made the next year but, in 1933, Tatra unveiled its V570 prototype, a small, semi-streamlined, bug-like car powered by an 854cc, horizontally-opposed, air-cooled engine using much the same suspension and chassis design as Porsche was to incorporate into the Volkswagen. Was this, in effect, not so much the forerunner of a new breed of Tatra, but of Hitler’s “people’s car”?
Yes and no. In 1932, Porsche had shown a rather crude small car prototype: the Porsche Type 12 made for Dr Fritz Neumeyer, head of Zundapp, the motorcycle manufacturer. The following year, the Porsche Type 32 for NSU (another motorcycle manufacturer) was getting close to the VW concept.
Hitler, meanwhile, had been driven around Germany in his electioneering days in a Tatra 11. First produced in 1921, the T11 was was another attempt, by Ledwinka, at a “people’s car”. Rugged and reliable in all weathers, the little, front-engined Tatra turned Hitler on to the principle of air-cooling.
“Das ist der Wagen fr meine Strassen [This is the Wagen for my street]!” he was heard to say.
From then on, Hitler engineered meetings with the shy and retiring head of Tatra engineering. At the Berlin motor shows of 1933 and 1934, Hitler made a point of inspecting the Tatra stands and talking long into the night with Ledwinka. No wonder that, in his table talk, Hitler proved so knowledgeable about the latest developments in automotive engineering.
Ledwinka had also been working on the design of a streamlined express for the new autobahnen.
His sensational T77 of 1934 and T87 of 1937 were magnificent, fin-tailed, streamlined machines powered by rear-mounted, air-cooled, lightweight V8 engines and capable, ultimately, of cruising at very nearly 160kph.
A favourite of Wehrmacht officers, the T87 was the only European car to be manufactured throughout World War II. Yet, while Tatra was allowed to produce this autobahn-eater, this was only because Dr Fritz Todt, the engineer who designed and built Hitler’s motorways, kicked up a fuss about it.
In truth, the German high command was jealous of Tatra’s success.
After the Nazi takeover of the Tatra works in 1938, Hermann Goering ordered production of all cars to cease. Why? Because Ledwinka’s new small Autobahn cruiser, the T97, would have embarrassed the design and performance of the up-and-coming Volkswagen. Tatra was a victim of political machinations at the highest level.
Back in Germany, Porsche was trying to get the Volkswagen up and running while battling against bureaucratic odds. Not everyone was as keen as Hitler. In fact, the German motor industry was troubled by the project.
Here was a state-funded car designed to be sold at a paltry 990 Reichsmarks, which threatened to undermine the sale of existing small cars. More than this, there was a innate snobbery among German car manufacturers: as one industrialist said at the time at a meeting with Porsche, “But, Herr Porsche, why does each worker need his own car? The people’s car is a bus.”
Hitler didn’t agree. In a speech given at the 1934 Berlin Motor Show, he said: “It is a bitter thought that millions of good and industrious people are excluded from the use of a means of transport that, especially on Sundays and holidays, could become for them a source of unknown joy.”
He went on to say: “Germany has one automobile for each 100 inhabitants. France has one for each 28 and the US one for each six. This disparity must change.”
Not for nothing during his time in Landsberg prison after the unsuccessful Munich putsch of 1923 had Hitler read Ford’s My Life And Work.
Porsche and Hitler took tea together at Berlin’s Kaiserhof hotel one afternoon in May 1934. Hitler outlined the people’s car he wanted to see – five seats, air-cooled rear engine, a cruising speed of 100kph and priced at less than RM1 000.
This was thought all but impossible, and the agency Porsche was teamed up with, the RDA (German Automobile Industry Association), had little or no intention of helping him. Porsche was offered a downpayment of RM233 000 and the RDA gave him just 10 months to come up with three prototypes. Small wonder he felt the need to look, for more than a moment, over Ledwinka’s shoulder.
He did, however, have Hitler firmly on his side. When, during the 1937 Berlin Motor Show, Wilhelm von Opel, boss of the US-backed Opel car company, invited Hitler on to his stand to show him what he had the cheek to call his own “volkswagen” (the RM1 450 Model P4),
Hitler was enraged. Suspecting some international plot, he had the government take immediate control over iron and steel supplies (thus stopping Opel in its tracks) and handed the “volkswagen” project over to Robert Ley’s populist Kraft durch Freude (KdF, or “strength through joy”) organisation, an arm of the DAF (German Labour Front).
He also increased income tax by 1,5% specifically to finance the new car. Despite a long wage freeze, this was not a particularly unpopular measure: the volk were keen to get behind the wheel of “their” car.
KdF set up a new company to build the car, Gessellschaft zur Vorbereitung des Volkswagens, capitalised to the tune of RM500 000. Porsche built 30 cars (VW30) and these were driven into the ground over 2,4-million kilometres by 120 SS men.
The cars were a great success. Now, Porsche’s head of styling, Erwin Komenda, gave the car its famous shape and, on May 26 1938, Hitler laid the foundation stone of the new “volkswagen” factory at what became known as Wolfsburg after World War II but was dedicated “KdF-Stadt” at the time.
“This car,” said the fhrer, “is being built for the broad masses. It meets their needs and should bring them joy. This car can have only one name, which I will give it today.
“It should have the name of the organisation that has worked the hardest for the broad mass of our people with strength and joy. It will be called the Kraft-durch-Freude-Wagen.”
And it was to be mass-produced at a planned rate of a million cars a year in this new model workers’ town, designed by the architect Peter Koller.
By autumn 1939, the factory was ready. About 210 KdF-Wagens were made before Hitler invaded Poland on September 1.
Using slave labour from Poland and Russia, the factory produced various highly successful military versions of the KdF-Wagen – as well as V1 rocket-bombs – during the war.
It was well financed by the 336 638 German workers who had paid RM267-million into a savings scheme by which they bought RM5 stamps that, one day, would add up to the cost of their very own KdF-Wagen.
They never got one, although, in 1960, Volkswagen paid compensation to 80 000 one-time savers who refused to let go of their dream of a cheap car.
Badly damaged during huge Allied bombing raids in 1944, the KdF factory struggled on and, just 2,5km from what was to become the border between East and West Germany, was taken over by the British military. The slave labourers had been liberated a few days before by soldiers of the 102nd US Infantry.
The rest, as they say, is history. Ford came over for a look and was unimpressed by Porsche’s Meisterwerk. Not for the good old American public. No siree.
Sir William Rootes led a British team, which sniffed at the mechanical bug. “The Volkswagen,” he said, “does not meet the fundamental technical requirements of a motor car.”
Marcel Paul, the French minister for industry, tried to take the VW production line back to France, but was savaged by his peers.
Major Ivan Hirst, a 29-year-old tank engineer, took command of the factory, got it up and running, drove the 1 000th post-war Beetle off the production line in March 1946 and handed the factory over to the care of Heinrich Nordhoff on January 1 1948. Nordhoff took the Beetle from strength to strength.
Meanwhile, in East Germany, the former Auto Union and Horch factory at Zwickau in the new administrative area of Karl-Marx-Stadt (now, once more, known as Chemnitz) set about making an altogether less impressive, if ingenious and ultimately famous “people’s car” – the VEB Trabant (“Satellite”), launched the year Sputnik shot into orbit (1957).
It was the sight of smoky Trabants pouring through the Brandenburg Gate in 1990 that caught for posterity the moment when Germany was re-united, 45 years after Hitler’s stupendous failure had caused it to split.
The Trabant was no match for the new generation Volkswagens, and the last was made (with an engine from a VW Polo) in 1991. Nor the Tatra: production of the latest model, the T700, is said to have stopped, although no one seems to know for sure.
Hitler’s KdF-Wagen, meanwhile, beetles on into the 21st century, testimony to the superb and original engineering talents of the famous Ferdinand Porsche and the forgotten Hans Ledwinka. Neither had political any ambitions. Both were brought into Hitler’s fatal circle. Both of them served prison sentences after Hitler’s fall. Both are still very much alive every time you see and hear a Beetle burble by.
And their spirit lives on in the name and shape of the new car that marks the passing of the original people’s car concept, which ensured them the most bizarre of all roles in the history of the automobile.