The People's Car

German Cars & the Autobahn

Course 1 · Chapter 6 · The People's Car

Volkswagen means "people's car", and the company's story begins as a Nazi project to put ordinary Germans on the road. It ends, after 1945, as one of the most successful car makers in the world, with a small rounded car, the Beetle, that became a cultural icon far beyond Germany. Between the two lies a history that includes a savings scheme that never delivered a car, a factory town built for the purpose, forced labour in wartime, and a revival under British military control. This chapter tells that history factually and with sources. Names, dates and figures are from general knowledge and flagged "check".

The Idea and the Design

The demand

A cheap small car for ordinary families was a long-standing idea (Chapter 3). In 1933 Hitler called for a "people's car" priced within reach of workers, and he is credited with specifying a car costing around 1,000 Reichsmarks (check the details and the sequence of events).

Ferdinand Porsche

The Austrian-born engineer Ferdinand Porsche (1875 to 1951), who had designed cars for Austro-Daimler and Mercedes, was commissioned in 1934 to design it, and his team built prototypes in the mid-1930s (check). He is the name usually attached to the design.

Who else contributed?

Earlier designers had proposed rear-engined small cars with rounded bodies, among them Hans Ledwinka of the Czech firm Tatra and Josef Ganz, a Jewish engineer who was persecuted after 1933 (check). Tatra brought a legal case over similarities, and the dispute was settled after the war (check the details).

Whose design was the Beetle? The popular answer is "Porsche". Historians describe a design that grew from several sources: Porsche's own earlier work, the ideas of Ganz and others, the influence of Tatra's rear-engined cars, and the contributions of Porsche's employees (check each). It is accurate to say that Porsche led the team that produced the KdF-Wagen, and less accurate to credit him alone. Recognition of Ganz has grown in recent years (check the sources).

The KdF Savings Scheme

Point (check each)	Note
The organisation	The car was sold through the "Strength through Joy" (Kraft durch Freude, KdF) organisation, which belonged to the German Labour Front, so it was called the KdF-Wagen.
The scheme	Buyers paid weekly instalments, reported as five Reichsmarks a week, into a savings book, and would receive a car when the full price was saved.
The numbers	Hundreds of thousands of people took part (check the figure).
The result	No private buyer received a car before the war. Production was turned over to military vehicles, and the savings were not returned in full, which led to legal claims after the war (check the details).

The Factory Town

The site. A foundation stone was laid in 1938 near Fallersleben, in Lower Saxony, for a large new factory and a planned town named the "Town of the KdF-Wagen" (check). It was later renamed Wolfsburg after a nearby castle.
War production. During the war the factory made military vehicles, including the Kübelwagen, a light utility vehicle based on the KdF chassis, and an amphibious version (check).
Forced labour. The plant used thousands of forced labourers, including concentration camp prisoners, prisoners of war and civilians brought from occupied countries, working in harsh conditions (check the numbers, which are given as around 20,000 in many accounts). The company has commissioned and published historical studies of this period and has contributed to compensation funds since the late 1990s (check the details).
Why it matters. The factory's early history cannot be told without this chapter of forced labour, and responsible accounts include it.

1945: The British Revival

A ruined plant

The factory was damaged by bombing but not destroyed, and in 1945 it came under British military control (check the extent of damage).

Major Ivan Hirst

A British Army officer, Major Ivan Hirst, is credited with restarting production, first to supply vehicles for the occupation forces (check his role and rank). The cars were the same basic design that had been planned in the 1930s.

A car nobody wanted?

A story says that British and American motor industry figures inspected the plant and judged the car not worth taking on (check; the remarks attributed to named executives vary and are not reliably sourced). The works was passed to German management, and Heinrich Nordhoff became its head in 1948.

Growth. The Beetle became a mainstay of West German recovery and a major export, especially to the United States, where a famous advertising campaign of 1959 presented it as the small, honest car (check).
Records. Total production passed that of the Ford Model T in the early 1970s and eventually reached over 21 million cars, with production ending in Mexico in 2003 (check).
Image. A car with a Nazi origin turned into a symbol of the 1960s counterculture and of cheap, reliable motoring, an unusual change of meaning (check).

A British comparison The British role is unusual: a British army officer helped to revive the factory, and British makers had the chance to take over the works and declined (check). The Mini of 1959 is the British equivalent of a cheap small car that became an icon, designed by Alec Issigonis for a very different purpose.

Check the details Dates, figures and attributions in this chapter are from general knowledge and differ between sources. The company's early history has been studied by independent historians and by researchers commissioned by Volkswagen, so check both and use named studies for the numbers on forced labour and on the savings scheme.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Explain why "Ferdinand Porsche designed the Beetle" is accurate in part and incomplete, naming at least two other contributors.

→ Solution

Exercise 2

Describe the KdF savings scheme and say what happened to the people who paid into it.

→ Solution

Exercise 3

Describe the revival of Volkswagen in 1945 and 1948, and explain how you would check the story that other manufacturers turned it down.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

Design: Porsche's team; contributions from Ledwinka, Ganz and others (check)
Scheme: KdF savings, no private buyer served before the war (check)
Factory: Wolfsburg, forced labour in wartime (check)
1945: British control, Major Ivan Hirst; Nordhoff from 1948 (check)
The caution: single-designer and "nobody wanted it" stories need sources