Thinking Small: The Long, Strange Trip of the Volkswagen Beetle

by Andrea Hiott

  The Volkswagen, a car Americans would later nickname the “The Beetle,” seemed to represent the opposite of such a desire. Though it had been trying to enter the market ever since that first transatlantic trip in 1949, its overall sales compared to the numbers coming out of Detroit were laughable, barely a blip on America’s automotive map. Some at DDB couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps Bill wasn’t wasting his time with Volkswagen’s little car. Foreign companies just weren’t a market that big advertising agencies in the United States were courting in those days, and, lack of monetary gain aside, a Jewish advertising agency representing a German car just wasn’t the most likely combination. Nevertheless, Bill wanted Volkswagen’s business: He had a thing or two he wanted to say about the concept of bigness he saw many American corporations and advertising firms touting, and he had no qualms about flying overseas to Wolfsburg and visiting a German car factory in order to have that chance. He soon found out, however, that few others at DDB felt the same way. More than ten years had passed since the end of the war, but some wounds had not healed and the anger it had fostered still simmered. Feelings had been held in, papered over. After all, this was the car that The New York Times had referred to as the “Baby Hitler”4 in 1938, and while it’s been said that no baby is ugly, this one certainly had a unique face.

  Trekking to a country that Americans had once hated about as much as anyone could hate a place, meeting with former enemies who had fought on the side of the Nazis during the Second World War, having to find the good points about a car that, when people were being generous, was described as “a motorized tortoise” or a “pregnant roller skate”—needless to say, it wasn’t the most attractive account that Bill could have offered his staff. Nevertheless, the men Bill eventually convinced to work on the account—a beatnik Jewish boy (Julian Koenig), a loudmouthed Greek who always seemed to be getting himself into hot water (George Lois), and a German American who had very unresolved feelings about his parents’ German past (Helmut Krone)—would come together and, in a moment of seemingly fated timing, set a fire under Madison Avenue, and the entire nation beyond.

  Adolf Hitler’s eyes were reportedly “bright blue—bordering on the violet.”1 In the psychological reports done on him in the 1940s by the OSS (a precursor to the CIA), there is mention of his “hypnotic glance” and the ability of his eyes to “bore through people.” One policeman describes Hitler’s gaze as “fatal,” with an “irresistible glare.” But by other accounts, his eyes are “dead” and “lacking in brilliance and the sparkle of genuine animation.” Perhaps all of these descriptions are true. When I look at his portrait today, however, I have to admit that I don’t see an incomprehensible monster: I see a man who sensed the power available to us all, and then violently abused it, brutalizing and destroying millions of lives, including his own. It’s hard to imagine living in a city that was founded by such a man, but every citizen in Wolfsburg lives with that legacy. Without Adolf Hitler, their town would never have been born.

  The town’s original name wasn’t even Wolfsburg. At the time of its official creation, the town was being made to house the factory for a car, and the entire project was being funded by a division of the Nazi German Labor Front (the DAF) called Strength through Joy.2 Thus, in May of 1938, Adolf Hitler christened Wolfsburg “The Town of the Strength through Joy Car,” the town of the Volkswagen. Volkswagen was a generic term being used in technical and automotive circles at the time to mean a car for the common man, something still thought impractical and impossible in Germany by most. The idea of a Volkswagen carried a lot of power: To speak of motorizing the population was to speak of giving people more control over their lives, an idea that evoked both awe and desire. As one German automotive writer named Wilfried Bade proclaimed in 1938: “Until now the automobile has conquered the world. Now begins the true possession of the automobile by the people.”3 The dream of the car, and the dream of the city being built for it, went hand in hand. Each spoke to the masses, each served as a symbol of unification, and each was directly linked to strengthening the nation through industry—all major aspects of the Nazi conception of power that was taking hold of the country then.

  Hitler’s Town of the Strength through Joy Car was originally created to be a “model German workers’ city,”4 an urban and residential center that incorporated the Third Reich’s emphasis on unified work. Just as the People’s Car was supposed to be a car that all Germans would drive, Hitler wanted its city to be a model on which all industrial towns could be built. It was to be a place of common purpose, where men and women worked together toward the realization of a singular goal, the ultimate point being the strengthening of Germany. Industry, alongside loyalty and labor, would structure the nation, make the Fatherland strong.

  The hope for a People’s Car had been rising in Europe for over twenty years. It was a kind of leitmotif, in fact, recurring regularly though never resolved; automobiles were driven only by the rich and elite. Hitler was the first person to come to power in Europe who saw the mass production of automobiles as an essential industrial and national aim. He envisioned a great motorized nation, a nation that could expand and expand and expand. Germany needed more Lebensraum, more living space, he told the citizens. The motor car was a natural part of that plan.

  Hitler came to power in 1933 with cars on his mind and his agenda, but the process was full of twists and turns and it was only five years later, in the spring of 1938, that it began to look as if his goal might be achieved. The first steps toward Volksmotorisierung, motorizing the people, were being made, and the erection of the new auto city was proof. Land for the enormous car factory had been found, and Albert Speer, the Inspector General for Building in Berlin at that time, had approved the location. Plans had been drawn up, an engineer had been hard at work on prototypes of the car. It was time for the cornerstone of the factory to be laid, time to celebrate the coming wave of vehicles with pride, and on May 26, 1938, the Nazis planned an elaborate fête in The Town of the Strength through Joy Car.

  The German Labor Front sent invitations to over 50,000 people, though they were not invited so much as ordered to attend. Trumpets blared. Long bloodred banners were unfurled. Twenty-eight special Town of the Strength through Joy Car–bound trains left from all parts of the country and carried the citizens to the grounds where they were promised the new industrial town was soon to rise. This place, the propaganda promised, would be better than any American city, and Germany’s new car factory would be better than anything yet built by America’s automotive hero Henry Ford. Members of the Hitler Youth and the SS marched. The workers were on show: Bricklayers were given pristine white outfits and black top hats to wear; carpenters were decked out in black velvet and corduroy. Everyone raised his arm as Hitler appeared, arriving in the front seat of one of the prototypes of his Strength through Joy Car. People pointed at the new automobile, and discussed it; perhaps they imagined owning one, too. For those who couldn’t make it to the opening ceremony, a radio show was broadcast, one of the first of its kind, detailing Hitler’s every move. It was supposed to be a day of triumph, but spectators who were there would later report there was a strange tension in the air, a kind of growing apprehension.

  The ceremony to inaugurate the new factory in The Town of the Strength through Joy Car. Adolf Hitler prepares to speak. (photo credit 2.1)

  Perhaps it was the chancellor’s aloofness that sent such an impression reverberating through the crowd. He certainly wasn’t himself5 that day. In previous automotive events, Hitler had always been fervent, even joyful, as he talked passionately about this project’s potential. On the day of the ceremony, however, the car was no longer at the forefront, or even close to the forefront of Hitler’s mind: By the spring of 1938, a new reality was setting in and other parts of his grand scheme were now in motion as well. Hitler’s focus was not on the People’s Car that day because he was preoccupied with the war that he knew was imminent. His desired moment had arrived. Already Austria had been anne
xed, had come too willingly, some would say. And the pogrom of the Crystal Night (Kristallnacht) was only six months away—that horrific and incendiary evening in which hundreds of synagogues were set on fire, Jewish shops and homes were destroyed and plundered, the shattered glass of their windows littering the streets, and around 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps or killed. The political air in Germany was toxic, but few were aware of the noxious fumes that surrounded them. The celebration for the car was in many ways a perfect metaphor for the mood of the country: lush decoration slathered onto a deepening sense of unrest. People looked at the spectacle and tried not to notice the anxiety swelling underneath.

  The crowd gathered in The Town of Strength through Joy Car for the cornerstone-laying ceremony. Three prototypes of the People’s Car face them, guarded by the Nazi authorities. (photo credit 2.2)

  Watching the black-and-white footage from the ceremony, I notice Hitler is sitting up front with the driver when his car enters the grounds. It was well known that Hitler’s preferred place in any car6 was next to the driver. (On long trips, he liked to wear a leather driving cap and study the road atlas, planning the route.) But in the footage of him leaving the celebration that day, the führer is sitting in the backseat of the open-roofed car and looks much happier than he did while giving his speech. That old automotive joy flashes in his face again, perhaps because he is no longer alone: An older man in an oversized tweed coat, his belly a bit large, his face creased from age and perpetual squinting, has joined him. Hitler is obviously content to be in this man’s company. He is turned toward him, conversing in a casual sort of way as the crowds lining either side of the road wave and cheer when the little Volkswagen chugs past. It’s a striking moment, I realize, for in that brief instant the car is carrying both its fathers, two men whose legacies will follow it forever, for better and for worse. Cushioned in its backseat is Adolf Hitler, and in that same backseat is the Bug’s engineer and designer, Ferdinand Porsche.

  It’s no wonder Adolf Hitler was so concerned with the idea of motorizing Germany, or that the high rollers on Madison Avenue have historically received some of their biggest accounts from automobile firms. Mobility, as both a word and an idea, cuts to the heart of the connection between creativity and change, and it is through that connection that humans have found a way of satisfying certain primary desires: the desires for freedom and prosperity, and the desires to join together and commune. To put it another way, the history of our progress as humans, both socially and politically, is inextricably linked to the ways we’ve found to move. For better or worse, humans have always been curious about what lies beyond the horizon, about what else is out there to be experienced and seen, and in order to explore those new worlds, we’ve had to find new ways of getting there. Whether it is by horseback, carriage, bicycle, motorcycle, ship, car, plane, spacecraft—or through more virtual means such as reading a book, listening to music, or going online—we have put a great deal of time, energy, and money into finding ways to transcend ever greater distances at ever greater speeds. But just as no political or economic revolution has come easily, so no revolution in transportation has come without resistance to change.

  Take the introduction of passenger trains, for example. Today, the idea of being transported has a somewhat mystical connotation. But when passenger trains were first being introduced, the word transport roused disdain, if not outright anger, when it was applied to people. Transport was a word for the movement of animals, objects, and food. Mass transportation of people felt sacrilegious, as though humans were being turned into a commodity. “Freedom has been sacrificed to speed,”1 wrote one German journalist in 1902. “The train ticket is purchased not only with money but also with forfeiture of one’s right of self-determination.…”

  Like all technological advances, however, convenience and curiosity eventually won out and the train was accepted and embraced. First-class cabins and onboard dining made those with money feel as though they were something more than eggs or lumber or livestock. People developed a taste for travel, for seeing new parts of the world, and for the rush of movement. And, once motor cars appeared on the scene, those who could afford the new vehicles found them liberating; they were able to achieve the effects of train travel, but individually, without restriction. It’s one underlying reason why motor cars in Europe—and in the United States, before Henry Ford—came into the world as items of luxury. Automobiles were symbols of prestige from their very inception; it is only the details signifying that prestige that have changed.

  There have always been different needs and different levels of liberation involved in travel, and because of this wide spectrum, rarely do the old methods disappear with the introduction of the new. Today, for example, there are ways in which trains continue to be the most convenient means of travel. Stepping onto a train requires little stress; there are no long lines, security checks, or traffic-clogged streets to endure. Yet the lure of driving remains clear. The rush of having a physical connection to one’s speed and direction—pressing the pedal, turning the wheel—is surely more exciting than simply stepping aboard and taking a seat.

  One thing Adolf Hitler understood well in his call for a People’s Car was the desire everyone experiences at some point for two things: power and control. Automobiles, like most technologies, are tools we use to extend our natural capabilities and increase what we can accomplish. They allow humans to go faster and farther; they give us more speed and a wider reach than we could ever have with our bodies alone. And the automobile is an easy metaphor for class mobility; it’s less about where we’re coming from, and more about where we want to go.

  But there has always been another side to automobiles as well, a less political or Darwinian one, a side closer to the heart. Automobiles conjure feelings of freedom and possibility, of fantasy and escape. To some extent, all new technologies are as much about this poetic side of life as they are about anything practical or productive. It’s the spirit of adventure that motivates inventors: Their innovations require a great deal of risk and courage to be brought to life. Innovators test limits, dealing with tools that have the potential of bringing great good to the world, or great destruction. Think of the men who were out on the cliffs of North Carolina experimenting with the first human flight, or of those who worked on splitting the atom during the Second World War. And, more recently, there are those curious groups of people dreaming up new ways of connecting the world via a vast, virtual web.

  Technology is about broadening our ideas of what is possible. And often the men and women who find or discover the scientific principles that change our world are men and women who are moved—in the same way any writer or artist is moved—by a deep curiosity about the unknown. They are not only intellectually but also emotionally stirred by the work they produce. People like Albert Einstein or the Wright brothers, Jane Goodall or Mary Walton, Michael Faraday or Steve Jobs, are often instinctively drawn to their occupations. The engineer Ferdinand Porsche was like that as well, so much so that his lifelong obsession hardly seems to have sprung from a conscious choice.

  It started when he was just a boy. There were people in his village, people in his own family in fact, who whispered about him and wondered if he might be possessed. They found it hard to explain the boy’s knowledge and understanding of something as incomprehensible as electricity still was back then. How does he even know it is there? Born in a small Bohemian village called Maffersdorf in 1875, Porsche entered a world where familiarity with an electric spark went about as far as rubbing amber against a cat’s fur, then standing back to watch the ensuing flash of light.

  Things were changing rapidly, however, and by the time Porsche was thirteen years old, there was one building in a neighboring town that did indeed have electric light: the local carpet factory. One day, while running an errand for his father, who was the area’s best tinsmith, Porsche happened upon the factory and could not drag himself away. He was fascinated, awed, and fearlessly began inspecting
the gadgets and burning bulbs. The owner of the factory noticed the big-eyed boy and, rather than running him off, brought him in and explained the way the system worked. Porsche began taking mental notes about the batteries and chemicals and charges he saw. He wanted to build an electrical system for himself.

  But Ferdinand’s father, Anton, had other plans for his son. Having already lost one of his boys in an accident (a loss that cast an unacknowledged shadow over their home), he now looked to Ferdinand to learn and inherit the business from him. Ferdinand could feel the importance and weight of his father’s wishes, but there was something about electricity that just simply would not leave him alone. Often, even after working all day for his father in the tinsmith shop, he would stay up half the night to experiment with the batteries and other tools and chemicals he’d managed to acquire. His father found such preoccupations unhealthy and distracting and eventually forbade Ferdinand from tinkering with what did not relate directly to the tinsmith trade, fearing that his son’s hobby was getting out of hand. Ferdinand’s adolescent struggles eventually grew into serious quarrels. He tried to explain his passion to his father, but the unfamiliar words and terms he used only frustrated Anton further. He didn’t want to hear about it. He just wanted it to end.

  Ferdinand appealed to his mother. He couldn’t stop; perhaps he could just set up a place in the attic, out of the way, which his father would never see. He’d only work up there when his father wasn’t at home, and he’d keep up with all his tinsmith work. Thus, his mother, sensitive to her son’s talent, turned a blind eye to the little laboratory Ferdinand established in the topmost room of the house. Because Anton was such a gifted tinsmith, and also a politically involved man, he was often traveling or away overnight, and Ferdinand found ample time to continue his experiments. But there was one night when he misjudged his father’s time of return. Anton, in search of his son, discovered Ferdinand’s secret laboratory and flew into a rage. His orders had clearly been disobeyed. He was stunned and angered by the recalcitrance and oddity in what his son was doing, and not understanding the acids that went into the batteries and chemicals Ferdinand had assembled, his father began stomping on them with his large, heavy work boots, pushing Ferdinand away when he tried to intervene. The acids ate through the soles of Anton’s shoes, burning his skin as it splashed up from the floor. It took Ferdinand’s mother’s interference to calm him down again. Ferdinand watched in a sad daze, but he didn’t apologize for what he had done.