by Andrea Hiott
Road building was undeniably an important project to the power the Nazis wanted to acquire. Not only was it a way to give unemployed Germans a sense of work and purpose again, thus inspiring political loyalty to the man who had provided that work, but the new network of roads also gave the country a sense of literal unity, connecting areas of Germany that had never been physically connected before, bringing Germans from opposite parts of the country together to work on a common project, and providing a kind of metaphorical image for the population, to give them the sense of being one. The spirit it created was a hopeful one. And while the workers themselves would in truth have no direct control over what was to come from their government, for the moment, they would be made to feel as if they did. Working on Nazi programs such as this, the people could think of themselves as part of a grand project, doing what was best for Germany, acting not for individual gain, but for the greater cause.
Perhaps the strongest immediate benefit of the new road construction project was that it provided jobs for citizens in dire need of work. As many as a million new jobs came from motorization policies like this, and alongside the parallel project of rearmament, it helped the Third Reich bring the country out of its economic misery very fast. Before Hitler became chancellor, more than a third of Germans were unemployed. By 1938, the country would be working at full employment again. Automobile production tripled in Hitler’s very first year: Private car production would rise 74 percent between 1934 and 1939, and truck production would increase by 263 percent. These were extraordinary numbers, and at the time, much of the world thought Hitler was doing something right. As early as 1935, the British magazine Motor wrote: “German car makers have made8 great progress during the past few years and have shown marked initiative in design. The encouragement which they receive from the German government, both directly and in respect of the national road-building program, is in sharp contrast with the anti-motoring policy of most British politicians.”
People liked the idea of mobility, and Hitler was certainly taking advantage of the element of fantasy within it, but one had to ask: Who was expected to travel on all those new roads? If one had looked long and hard, it might have become obvious that the first likely advantage of such roads would be a military one. With less than one percent of the country motorized in those early years, the roads being built were nearly always completely empty and only the rich were buying more cars. In that sense, the project to build a People’s Car was necessary in order to get the common people to believe in the idea of mobility Hitler wanted to present. One in which the focus was not on “war” but rather on “Lebensraum” and a higher quality of life. The fact that this mobility would require war was, at least in Hitler’s mind, beyond question. But that did not diminish the importance of the automobile, or the goal of Volksmotorisierung.
Still, at first, most car companies dismissed Hitler’s call for a Volkswagen as political rhetoric meant to get “the little man’s” vote. But after Hitler followed through on tax relief, new automobile laws, and street construction, the big auto companies began to realize that he might be serious about the Volkswagen too. Of all Hitler’s automotive moves, this one would be the most controversial. The other actions he’d taken were of clear benefit to the elite auto industry, but building a Volkswagen was an idea that they feared. Auto companies liked the thought of building a cheap car for the masses, something along the lines of a three-wheeled motorcycle perhaps, but they did not like the idea of building a car that was just as good as an expensive model, but could be sold at half the price. Not only were they feeling sure that such a thing was technologically impossible, they were also worried about having the government so involved in stipulating what kind of car should or should not be sold. In terms of the long-term health of the market, dictation of that sort was a threat.
But Hitler knew all along that he was leading the country into war, and all the momentum of reviving industry through road construction and rearmament was to be channeled into exactly that. Without war, all the money the Nazis were spending on such projects would have eventually resulted in a crash much like the one in 1929, and some economists of the time already knew it. In some sense, the Nazis knew it too: To avoid a looming economic crisis in 1936, they instated something called “The Four Year Plan.” It was a plan to be fully prepared for war within four years, essentially creating a wartime economy in the midst of peace. This plan put nearly all of the country’s industry into the hands of the NSDAP, making Goering, in effect, every German company’s boss. Normal Germans considered The Four Year Plan a defensive measure, thinking the idea was not to go to war but rather to move into a position equal to the other countries in Europe that were already sufficiently armed. But Hitler’s wartime economy would eventually require a literal battle or it would collapse.
With plans like the road construction project and rearmament, Hitler was rallying the country in one direction, and the nation’s businesses were being trained to work in unison toward a common goal. Because Germany had been disarmed and much of its industry dramatically scaled down by the Treaty of Versailles, by (openly but illegally) restarting armament, Hitler was able to have a wartime economy for years before he had to actually have a war. All that energy and industrial activity was a way of catching up to other countries, making up for the time Germany had lost after the First World War. Soon, the internal lack of competition and the growing centralization would have proven detrimental—even Nazi economists tried at times to warn Hitler of such—but because of the strange situation Germany was in, he was able to keep the economic subservient to the political even while companies were still legally “private” ones.
The Volkswagen, however, was not merely a political ploy. Certainly Hitler knew the propagandist power in the idea, but he was also serious about providing Germans with cars: He could see no Germania that was not a motorized one. In fact, he and his Daimler dealer friend Jakob Werlin had been meeting and discussing the idea of a Volkswagen for years. Werlin often told the story of driving along with Hitler one day in the rain and seeing a man on a motorbike drenched and struggling along the road. In this story, Hitler invites the young man into his own elegant car for a ride (who knows what they did with the man’s motorcycle!) while turning to Werlin and saying that one day he intends to give every such man a proper car. The story is most likely pure propaganda, or exaggerated at the very least. But Hitler went to great lengths to try to inspire enthusiasm for the project. He even targeted the young: Under his rule, toy stores abounded with tiny car figurines, including a black limousine modeled after the one that carried Hitler around Berlin, a toy complete with little working headlamps and an action figure of the führer sitting alongside the driver.
Automobiles were a passion for Hitler, and it was a passion he wanted others to share in, but he was a snob when it came to taking automotive advice. He considered himself an automotive expert, and he believed he knew how a People’s Car would have to be designed. According to another oft-repeated story, upon discussing the Volkswagen, Hitler reportedly told Werlin: “It should look like a beetle.9 You only have to observe nature to learn how best to achieve streamlining.” In truth, Hitler probably did make a similar remark at some point, but it is likely that he was merely repeating, and co-opting, ideas he’d read about in elite automotive magazines of the time. Hitler was not shy about taking popular ideas and claiming them as his own, and that was true when it came to all his passions, especially art, architecture, and the automobile. He had not had much formal education, and he tried to make up for that by reading, or skimming, as many books as he could get, and quoting from them extensively (and without attribution to the person being quoted). He also took measures to try to silence and extinguish the very sources from which he was likely getting those same views, especially if those were Jewish voices.
Heinrich Nordhoff’s influential professor at the Technical University in Berlin, Georg Schlesinger, was accused of being “a spy for the enemy,” for instance, a
nd had to leave the country and teach in exile. And the popular Jewish automotive writer and early Volkswagen advocate, Josef Ganz, a man who designed cars that had the look of a beetle, and who it is hard to imagine Hitler had not read, was banished as well. On that note, it is necessary to point out that when designing a car for the people, Hitler believed it was his own authority that could determine who those people were. All Jews in Germany, for instance, were forced to give up their driver’s licenses and were banned from driving cars. Hitler’s Volkswagen project did not escape the ugliness of his racist thoughts. Nor would the country that had elected him.
As the leaves were turning colors on the trees outside the Porsche home in Stuttgart and autumn pushed 1933 into its final months, Ferdinand was in his office sweating over designs for a new race car he was building. He was so caught up in the work that he’d lost track of time and missed lunch. When Karl Rabe, often referred to as Porsche’s gentler “second self,” came in to tell him there was a visitor, perhaps Porsche was just about to reach into his pocket for last night’s dinner roll: He had a habit of stashing them there in the mornings before he left and eating them throughout the day, and I imagine Aloisia had long ago gotten used to dumping the crumbs from the pockets of his well-worn pants and coats.
Porsche was never happy to be interrupted in the midst of work, and it was no different when Jakob Werlin stopped by for a chat that day. Porsche and Werlin had known each other for quite a while, having both worked together for a time at Daimler, and thus Porsche’s first thought upon seeing Werlin was that he had come to spy, sent over from Daimler-Benz to get a look at his designs for the new race car. That might have been true to some extent, though if Jakob Werlin were spying, it was probably not for Daimler, but rather for Hitler himself.
Karl Rabe, often referred to as Porsche’s “gentler, second self.” Rabe was Porsche’s best friend. He even kept a photograph of Porsche on his desk. (photo credit 15.1)
At the 1933 Berlin Auto Show, Hitler had promised to fund new efforts in racing and to make Germany into a strong force in the international racing world. He wanted a strong German marquee and he announced that the state would sponsor motor racing with a 500,000-RM annual stipend. The money was to be awarded to one of Germany’s foremost car companies and to be used to build a top-of-the-line racing car. Everyone expected the money to be given to Daimler-Benz toward building a Mercedes,1 as the Mercedes was Hitler’s favorite car. But a company called Auto Union2—a new firm that had formed when four small car companies merged to survive the Depression—wanted a shot at building such a car too, and they wanted to do it with a design by Ferdinand Porsche.
Just about anyone you’d asked at the time would have said Auto Union’s chances of getting any of the Nazi race-car funds were close to zero: Auto Union was a new company and did not have the history or the prestige attached to it that Hitler sought. Ferdinand Porsche, however, was a name that did have that history and prestige, and it was a name Adolf Hitler knew well. He’d kept track of Porsche’s cars and designs, and he’d read about him in the papers in Vienna all those years before. During a race of one of Porsche’s cars in the early 1920s, long before Hitler had any real power, the two men had been introduced at Hitler’s behest. Porsche never remembered that introduction, but Hitler did. It may have even been one reason Auto Union was able to get a meeting with the German chancellor: Porsche, alongside a famous race-car driver named Hans Stuck, agreed to go with the Auto Union executives on May 10, 1933, to try to convince Hitler to allocate them some of the new race-car funds.
Upon receiving the group, however, none of Hitler’s admiration for Porsche was apparent. Hitler was distant at first, even going so far as to call the men rude for attempting to ask for money, shocked that such a “no-name” company would dare to ask for Nazi funds. But once Porsche began to speak, the vibe of the room changed. As Porsche poured out a monologue that lasted for more than half an hour, talking exclusively about his design for a new race car, brimming with the energy he always felt when talking about new automotive ideas, Hitler was rapt. The chancellor’s secretaries would later say that it was the first time they’d ever seen Hitler listen to a man for so long without interrupting him. Porsche’s passion for his cars filled the room, and by the end of the meeting, the impossible occurred: Hitler took a third of the money away from his beloved Daimler-Benz and promised it to Porsche to build an Auto Union racing car.
It was about a year later when Werlin unexpectedly dropped by to visit Porsche at his workshop, and it was that very Auto Union design that Porsche and his team were working on. Before they got the race-car commission, his guys at Porsche had been living hand to mouth. Being awarded the government funds was a big relief, but Porsche was less excited about the money and more excited about getting to build the race car. Werlin’s visit, however, was for another reason entirely: He’d heard about Porsche’s attempts at building a People’s Car. Thus, in Porsche’s office that day, sometime in late Autumn of 1933, it was the Volkswagen project that he and Werlin discussed. Hitler was interested in seeing a car produced for the people, Werlin said. Eager to discuss this, Porsche told Werlin about the designs for a small car he’d created on the projects with Zuendapp and NSU, and showed him some of the notes and figures he’d been compiling toward the construction of a whole new kind of car.
Werlin must have gone back to Berlin and told Hitler about Porsche’s ideas because a few weeks later, Porsche received a call from Werlin asking him to leave Stuttgart as soon as possible and come to Berlin. They had some important things to discuss, he said, but it wasn’t safe to talk about it over the phone; could Porsche come to the Kaiserhof Hotel3 the next day? Porsche was not one to arbitrarily change his schedule, but this time he obliged. He would leave for Berlin the very next day. He knew very well what this meeting could mean.
At the grand Kaiserhof Hotel in Berlin, Porsche met Werlin in the lobby and the two of them were shown into a lush room upstairs where they continued their talk about the People’s Car. Moments later, the door opened and Hitler walked in. In their first meeting about the racing car, Porsche had held the floor, but now it was Hitler’s turn to talk. Porsche listened as Hitler discussed his desire for a four-wheel-drive, 30-bhp car, one with a three-cylinder, air-cooled diesel engine, all ideas Porsche himself had already been working on with the NSU car and that he had shared with Werlin when they met. The car should also be able to hold two adults and three children, Hitler said. Porsche could probably tell that Hitler was regurgitating his own ideas, but he was nevertheless impressed by the depth of Hitler’s knowledge of cars and his ability to converse about them.4
On the surface, sitting there together near the large windows that looked out toward the Brandenburg Gate, Porsche and Hitler must have looked like opposites: Hitler in his perfectly tailored Nazi suit, not a stitch out of place, Porsche wearing his oversized work coat, his pants a bit too short, the edges of his shirt a touch frayed. But on some level, the two men probably recognized each other as well, both having been born in the Austrian countryside, both having come to their positions in untraditional ways, both passionate to the point of obsession. In time, the ease of the relationship between Hitler and Porsche, and their inability to discuss anything aside from automobiles when they were together, would annoy Nazi officials in Hitler’s cabinet: Albert Speer, for instance, would avoid being in the same room with the two of them, finding their conversation frivolous in the face of daily politics and, eventually, of war.
But at the time, Porsche had no idea he would soon become so entwined in Hitler’s government. Standing in the grand hallway of the Kaiserhof after that first official meeting with Hitler, marble arches and ornament stretching high above his balding head, scribbling ideas into his notebook, Porsche, as usual, was focused only on the immediate. Which is not to say he wasn’t skeptical: How many times had he gotten his hopes up about this car, only to be let down at the last moment? Hitler seemed serious, but maybe it was just a lot of po
litical hot air. And what about that price! Just moments ago, Hitler had said very clearly that the Volkswagen he envisioned should not exceed the cost of 1,000 marks. The average German at the time was not capable of saving more than 1000 marks, Hitler said, and so the price must be under that line. The car Porsche had in mind, however, would surely cost at least double that price. Once he was back at the shop, he told all this to Karl Rabe, and Rabe was as surprised by it as Porsche was. It is easy to imagine the two friends laughing about this price or simply shaking their heads in amused disbelief.
Nevertheless, in the following days, Porsche prepared a detailed plan incorporating all he and Hitler had discussed. It would later be known as “the Exposé” and would contain the most precise rendering of Porsche’s thoughts about the car to date. He’d already written pages and pages on the car, but he specified and scaled those down in the Exposé, working on it for hours with his team. Werlin wanted it as soon as possible, but Porsche carried a final draft around in his chest pocket for days, pulling it out to make slight revisions, reading it again and again. In one section of the proposal, Porsche wrote: “In my opinion, a people’s car does5 not have to be a small car with its dimensions, power output, weight and etc. being reduced in the misdirected manner adopted for previous efforts in this area … For me, a people’s car must be a full-scale, practical model that can stand comparison with any other car intended for day-to-day use. [To create] a people’s car, I believe that a fundamentally new approach has to be adopted.”
In sending this document to Werlin at the Transport Ministry, Porsche knew he was submitting an application of sorts, and he knew what it would mean to have that application accepted. He tried desperately to get the price down to under 1000 marks, but he finally had to leave the price at about 500 marks higher than he’d been asked, and even that felt like a stretch. Porsche told Karl Rabe that he’d given Hitler the best price he could without compromising the solidity of his design; it was all he could do for now. He sent two copies of the plan off to the government offices in Berlin—one for Werlin and one for Hitler. It was received on January 17th, 1934. Then there was nothing to do but wait.
