VOLKSWAGEN.

The Volkswagen, or "People's Car," was conceived by the German dictator Adolf Hitler as the key to the mass-motorization of Germany in the 1930s. Germany lagged behind other developed economies in car production and ownership, but Hitler, much impressed by Henry Ford, wanted to speed up the process by producing a car that could be bought by German workers for a modest sum. The project was postponed by World War II, which broke out in September 1939, but the business revived after the war, and in the 1950s and 1960s the original Volkswagen design was sold worldwide and became one of the symbols of the new age of mass-motoring.

The Volkswagen was first commissioned by Hitler in September 1933 when he met the Austrian car designer Ferdinand Porsche, who had already sketched out ideas for a small family car while designing racing cars in the 1920s. He was told to design a car for the ordinary man and produced a revolutionary four-seat, two-door car with an air-cooled engine at the rear and a sloping car body rather like a large helmet. The whole design broke with the conventions of the 1930s, and the German car industry was reluctant to produce it. In 1937 the project was taken over by the German Labor Front (DAF), the party-led general trade union, under the auspices of the so-called Kraft durch Freude (Strength through Joy) organization. In 1937 a formal savings scheme was set up for German workers that would enable them to buy the cars when they were finally produced, and 336,668 subscribed to it. The new car was known as the KdF car, and the site for a KdF "car city" was found at Wolfsburg in Brunswick. Hitler laid the foundation stone on 26 May 1938 for a factory planned to produce in the end 1.5 million cars per year. The factory was to be the largest and most automated in Europe. By the time war broke out only a handful of prototypes had been produced, and the plant was turned over to the army and air force to produce jeeps and aircraft parts, using a large quantity of forced and prisoner labor.

With the defeat of Germany the Volkswagen, as the car had become popularly known, was tested by a team of British engineers working for the occupation authorities, but it was rejected as commercially unviable. A German manager and engineer, Heinz Nordhoff, was installed on 2 January 1948 by the British, and in 1949 the plant was returned to German state control with the creation of the Federal Republic (West Germany). By that stage fifty thousand Volkswagens had been produced, and the revived plant became the core of the German motor industry in the 1950s. By the 1960s, thanks to its low price and easy maintenance, more than fifteen million of the model had been sold worldwide, making it the world's single most successful car model. Production declined from the late 1960s, as the Volkswagen works diversified into a range of different car, van, and truck models. The firm was privatized in the early 1960s and became one of the largest motor companies in the world. After the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in 1990 Volkswagen played an important part in establishing motor industries and contractors in the newly independent states.

The Volkswagen, despite its origins and its National Socialist name, became one of the symbols of the age of mass consumption worldwide. Seven million Volkswagens were exported despite early prejudice against what U.S. newspapers dubbed "Hitler's car" and the technical and design novelty of the model. Large-scale exports began in the United States in 1954, and by the 1960s, despite fierce competition from U.S. companies, Volkswagen sold more than 400,000 cars a year there. The original car was nicknamed the "Beetle." The success of its image resulted in a series of Walt Disney films about a Volkswagen called "Herbie." The car successfully shed its association with the Third Reich, where plans had been laid for the production of a "People's Tractor" to speed up rural motorization, alongside the People's Car. This project, to be based around designs by Porsche and his son, was also the victim of the onset of war. The Volkswagen was an important example of technical innovation in the Third Reich, demonstrating the strong elements of modernity in Hitler's nationalist vision and anticipating by twenty years the development and diffusion of small-car technology and mass-motoring.

See alsoAutomobiles; Consumption; Hitler, Adolf.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hopfinger, K. B. Beyond Expectation: The Volkswagen Story. London, 1954.

Kluke, Paul. "Hitler und das Volkswagenprojekt." Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte 8 (1960): 339–362.

Mommsen, Hans, and Manfred Grieger. Das Volkswagenwerk und seine Arbeiter im Dritten Reich. Düsseldorf, Germany, 1997. The definitive history of the origins of the Volkswagen.

Nelson, Walter H. Small Wonder: The Amazing Story of the Volkswagen. London, 1967. The best short introduction to the project's history.

Reich, Simon. The Fruits of Fascism: Postwar Prosperity in Historical Perspective. London, 1990. Discusses the Volkswagen project in postwar Germany.

Richard Overy