History of The Volkswagen!

Secret History of The Volkswagen!
04/02/2018, 22)16
Aus Liebe zum Automobil

For Love of the Car
Adolf Hitler, the future leader of Germany, sketched the drawing you see
above in the summer of 1932, while enjoying a hot lunch in a Munich
restaurant. The former artist, while contemplating ways to set Germany
on a modern course, was inspired by his admiration for American auto-
maker (and anti-Semite) Henry Ford to formulate an ingenious plan: To
reduce unemployment, a massive program of public works would build
the worlds first super-highway, the Autobahn, providing the Reich with a
modern infrastructure. To stimulate German industry, it was necessary to
develop a car the average German could actually afford to own. Hitler
would eventually give his drawing to the head of Daimler-Benz, Jakob
Werlin, telling him: "Take it with you and speak with people who
understand more about it than I do. But don't forget it. I want to hear
from you soon about the technical details."
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Secret History of The Volkswagen! 04/02/2018, 22)16
There was only one motorcar for every fifty Germans, compared to one
for every five in America, as most workmen used a bicycle or public
transportation. Hitler was hardly the first to conceptualize super-
highways and affordable cars, but when he took over the leadership of
Germany in 1933, he sought out Ferdinand Porsche, who had been
working the problem through on his own. Erwin Komenda, the chief
designer of AUTO UNION, was working on the development of a car body
with the aid of a wind tunnel, the first such effort. He turned his energies
to the KDF project and developed the first body prototype, which would
eventually become the most built car body of the last century. A small
team of engineers would begin initial development in 1934. It would be
Hitler's job to sell the idea to the German people. -Walther Johann von
Löpp (2015)
February 15 1936: The German Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler, utilizes a German

industry exhibition to propagandize to a still skeptical Volk on the
wisdom of a People's Car in every Aryan driveway:
The intensive development of our most

modern sector of the transport
industry depends on the complete
freedom of a People to make use of it,

and I mean by this the absence of legal
and psychological restrictions. It is no
more asocial to buy a car than it once
was to use a sheet of glass in a
window instead of the traditional piece
of oilskin. In the beginning only a few
people use an invention of this kind;
then it attracts more and more people
until it gradually includes everyone...
It was bad enough that the leaders of
the People and the State, obsessed by
ideas of this kind, had no
understanding of the development of
motorization. It was just as bad,
however, that German industry, even if
perhaps not consciously, thought along
the same lines. Hence it had no clear
awareness that unless the automobile
becomes something everyone uses, its
dormant potentialities will not be
realized.
Either the automobile is an expensive

luxury item for a few people, and
hence in the long run not very
important for the economy as a whole,

or it is destined to have the enormous
impact on the economy which by its
very nature it can have. Then,
however, it must be transformed from
a luxury item for the few to something
that everyone uses. And I fear that
even today the German automobile
industry has not realized that the
overall development of German
automobile production cannot really
succeed, unless prices match the
income level of the purchasers it
targets. The question as to the number
of cars which Germany can absorb is
very easily answered. a) The desire to
own a car is at least as strong in our
People as in any other. Indeed I am
inclined to say that the desire for a car
is particularly strong because it is
something our People are denied. You
see the most obvious proof of this,
Gentlemen, in the enormous and
unprecedented number of people who
are attending this exhibition. They
prove most conclusively how wrong
those people were, who only a few
years ago thought that these
exhibitions were unimportant and
uninteresting and hence quite
unnecessary.
The German People have precisely the

same desire to use a car as, for
example, the American People. It is
superficial to think that a figure of 23
or 24 million cars is natural and
understandable for America, and
500,000 or 600,000 for Germany,
when in terms of numbers the German
People are equal to more than half of
the population of the United States of
America. No, the prerequisite in terms
of population exists in Germany, too.
b) The prerequisite for the fulfillment
of this desire cannot, however, be any

different to that in the rest of the
world. The price of the individual car
must match the income of the potential
purchaser. This means that there will
be people who are in the position to
part with 20,000 German Marks or
more for a car, because their income is
large enough, but their number will not
be very large. Reducing the price to
10,000 German Marks already creates
a much larger number of potential
purchasers. And the reduction of the
price to 5000 German Marks will again
mobilize a larger group of suitable
wage earners. In other words: If I
hope to increase the number of cars in
Germany to three or four million, the
price and the maintenance costs of
these cars must be compatible with the
income of the three or four million
potential buyers.
I suggest that with this in mind the

German transport industry undertake a
survey of the income of the four or five
million better-off Germans. You will
then understand why I was utterly
determined to initiate the preparatory
work on the production of the German
Volkswagen, and why I want to see
this work completed, and, Gentlemen,
successfully completed!
I have no doubt that the genius of the

man [Ferdinand Porsche] who has
been entrusted with the design and
construction of this vehicle, together
with those who will later produce it,
coupled with the sound economic good
sense of all who will be involved, will
succeed in keeping the purchase price,
as well as the operating and
maintenance costs of this vehicle in
line with the income of the broad mass
of our People, as in America, where we
have seen a brilliant example of how
this problem can be solved. It is an
unfortunate error to think that a
development of this kind will persuade
the purchasers of the better and more
expensive cars to lower their
expectations and to purchase a
Volkswagen. No, Gentlemen, this car
will result in the mobilization of
millions of new purchasers, from
whom will come those who, consistent
with the progressive improvement in
our standard of living, will all the more
easily be able to purchase a better and
nicer-looking car.
The Ford did not replace the better and

more expensive American cars; on the
contrary, it was the car which first
attracted and mobilized the enormous
masses of American buyers who later
also purchased the more expensive
makes. If we find two or three million
purchasers for the new German
Volkswagen, there will naturally be
some who in the course of their lives
will purchase a more expensive and
thus better car. A large proportion will,
however, never be in the position to
buy a more expensive car. Not,
however, because they are unwilling to
do the manufacturer of this or that car
a favor, but because they are
prevented from doing so by their
limited income.
To deprive these millions of potential

purchasers of the pleasure of owning a
modern vehicle of this kind, simply in
order to avoid the risk that a few of the
200,000 or 300,000 who are better-off
might buy the less expensive car,
would not only be improper in human
terms but make no economic sense.
For this would mean artificially halting
the most powerful economic
development of our People and our
country for reasons which are as
selfish as they are shortsighted. I
know that I am confronting German
industry with a major challenge, but I
am also aware that a German is no less
capable than anyone else in the world.
And problems which have been solved
in one part of the world, must also be
capable of a solution in Germany.
May 6, 1937: The "Society for the Preparation of the German

Volkswagen" is founded. Hitler had decreed that a car should be built for
only 900 marks—$396 at the official rate of exchange. Since private
industry could not turn out an automobile for $396, Hitler ordered the
State to build it and placed the Labor Front in charge of the project. Dr.
Ley (who would commit suicide just prior to going on trial at
Nuremberg), Porsche, Jakob Werlin, and Reichsamtsleiter Lafferentz
(Kraft durch Freude), direct the new organization. Ley's German Labor
Front advances fifty million marks in capital.
From I Paid Hitler, by Fritz Thyssen:
In order to allay discontent, Hitler

conceived of a new idea. Every German
shall own his car. He asked industry to

devise a popular car model to be built at
such a low price that millions could buy it.
The Volkswagen (People's Car) has been
talked of for the past five years and has
never been seen on the market. "These
cars will be built for the new highways,"
said the party propagandists; "an entire
family will be able to ride in one of them at
100 kilometers (60 miles) an hour." The
party leaders say that the highways were
built for the People's Car. But the People's
Car is one of the most bizarre ideas the
Nazis ever had. Germany is not the United
states. Wages are low. Gasoline is
expensive. German workers never dreamed
of buying a car. They cannot afford the
upkeep; to them it is a luxury.
Dr. Robert Ley, the stammering drunkard

who is the chief of the German Labor Front.
He controls the four to five hundred million
marks paid in every year by the German
workers as dues to the Labor Front. I do
not say that he puts all this money into his
own pocket. But the figure has certainly
turned his head. [Note: Ley will commit
suicide while awaiting trail in Nuremberg in
1945. -W]
May 26, 1938: The German Führer lays the cornerstone of Volkswagen
City (KdF-Stadt), with a new factory on 10,000 acres of land near an
intersection of the Autobahn on the Mittelland Canal; in Fallersleben,
near Braunschweig. 70,000 people celebrate the opening of 'the biggest
automobile factory in the world,' with a capacity for turning out a million
and a half cars a year. By the end of 1938, 150,000 people had already
ordered the car and were awaiting delivery; 336,000 Germans would
eventually fill their stamp-books.
Fünf Mark die Woche musst Du sparen, willst Du im eigenen

Wagen fahren
(Save five Marks a week, if you want to drive your own car)
The idea behind the Volkswagen was to stimulate the German economy
into the modern era by putting as many Germans as possible behind the
wheels of automobiles on the new Autobahn, something the US didn't
get around to until the 1950's. The Volkswagen, originally known as the
KDF car (Kraft-Durch-Freude or Strength Through Joy), was designed to
be affordable to the average consumer, and so was the financing. In the
US the average cost of a car was affordable, around $600, so most
drivers could purchase a car without the financial advice of a bankruptcy
lawyer Los Angeles.
Based on a payroll deduction plan, subscribers were issued stamps which

they used to fill up their stamp book; five marks a week, or if a worker
thought he could afford it, ten or fifteen marks a week. As soon as 200
stamps were collected, they could be redeemed for a car...theoretically.
Production was due to begin in September of 1938, but only 54 cars
actually rolled off the assembly line before Hitler's war necessitated
production be converted to wartime needs.
Only Hitler (as a gift for his 49th birthday), Emperor Hirohito of Japan,
and a few Nazi bigwigs actually received one of those 54 cars.
July 5, 1941: "'The beauty of the Crimea,' he (Hitler) rhapsodized late

at night...would be made accessible to Germans through a motorway. It
would be their version of the Italian or French Riviera. Every German,
after the war, he remarked, had to have the chance with his 'Peoples Car'
(Volkswagen) personally to see the conquered territories, since he would
have 'to be ready if need be to fight for them.' The mistake of the pre-
war era of limiting the colonial idea to the property of a few capitalists or
companies could not be repeated. Roads would be more important in the
future than the railways for passenger transport. Only through travel by
road could a country be known, he asserted." [Ian Kershaw,
paraphrasing Hitler in 'Hitler 1936-1945 Nemesis.']
From The Germans: The Pivotal Nation, by David Marsh:
Hitler's furthest reaching economic

achievement was his plan for the 'People's
Car.' Conceived as part of a grand strategy
of bringing cheap motor vehicles within
reach of ordinary people, the plan to build a
car named after the Nazi slogan 'Kraft
durch Freude' (Strength through Joy) was
never consummated. The program
nonetheless ended up by making an
important contribution to the war effort.
After the war, the clumsily named KdF-Auto
attained world fame as the famous 'beetle'
and the company producing it,
Volkswagenwerk (VW), became West
Germany' best-known industrial concern.
The 'Peoples Car' was designed from 1934

onwards by Ferdinand Porsche, the veteran
vehicle engineer and founder of the
Stuttgart car company which bears his
name today. Born in northern Bohemia,
Porsche made his name in the fledging
Austrian vehicle industry and served as
technical director and board member at
Daimler between 1923 and 1929. He
became a member not only of the Nazi
Party but also of the SS. The car designer
advised Hitler on tank building during the
war, but results were not always
satisfactory, straining Porsche's relations
with Armaments Minister Speer on more
than one occasion. The first prototype of
the 'People's Car' was produced in 1935,
and the VW company was established in
1938 to build the cars at a massive new

factory near the small town of Fallersleben
between Hanover and Magdenburg.
Spelling out the objectives of the 'People's

Car' at the VW factory's foundation
ceremony at Fallersleben in May 1938,
Hitler declared: 'It's for the great mass of
the people that this car has been designed.
Its purpose is to answer their needs in
transport, and it is intended to give them
joy.' Unfinished when the war started, the
plant was swiftly adapted to military
production, building 51,000 army 'bucket
cars' as well as 15,000 amphibious
vehicles, tank parts, bomb cases and
mines. From 1943 onwards Volkswagen
also produced the V-1 flying bomb - the
pilot-less aircraft which caused havoc in
London towards the end of the war. The
'People's' Volkswagen went into mass
production only after the war when 20
million cars were eventually built, both at
Wolfsburg and in VW works in Latin
America."
Twitter: @3rdReichStudies
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Austria: The Other Germany
The Last Days of the Third Reich
Adolf Hitler: The First Super-Villian
Third Reich History: What Happened Today?
Countdown to Infamy: Timeline to Pearl Harbor
Biographical Timeline: of the Infamous Adolf Hitler
Countdown To WW2: August 22 - September 1, 1939
The Nuremberg Nazis: Detailed, Documented Biographies
Wunderwaffen: Hitler's Deception and the History of Rocketry
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Secret History of The Volkswagen!

Aus Liebe zum Automobil

February 15 1936: The German Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler, utilizes a German

The intensive development of our most

freedom of a People to make use of it,

Either the automobile is an expensive

important for the economy as a whole,

The German People have precisely the

of this desire cannot, however, be any

I suggest that with this in mind the

I have no doubt that the genius of the

The Ford did not replace the better and

To deprive these millions of potential

May 6, 1937: The "Society for the Preparation of the German

From I Paid Hitler, by Fritz Thyssen:

In order to allay discontent, Hitler

shall own his car. He asked industry to

Dr. Robert Ley, the stammering drunkard

Fünf Mark die Woche musst Du sparen, willst Du im eigenen

Based on a payroll deduction plan, subscribers were issued stamps which

July 5, 1941: "'The beauty of the Crimea,' he (Hitler) rhapsodized late

From The Germans: The Pivotal Nation, by David Marsh:

Hitler's furthest reaching economic

The 'Peoples Car' was designed from 1934

1938 to build the cars at a massive new

Spelling out the objectives of the 'People's

If you liked this page, check out: The Fuehrer's Mercedes!

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