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

by Andrea Hiott

  Reading back over the notes and bulletins from these meetings, one finds the issues discussed were of a wide variety; there are pages on the development of “silent engine techniques” and those discussing “anti-boom compound” that could take away the original Volkswagen’s classic air-cooled engine noise (it didn’t work). Paint problems were also a big concern: There was no good place to store the cars after they were painted, and thick layers of dust that still swarmed through the plant would settle on the cars as they dried. To deal with such problems, an inspection department was initiated and put into full force. In 1947, more than 200 vehicles were singled out as “inadequate for the customer” and had to be resprayed.

  Ivan Hirst was a real stickler about these types of concerns. He could often be found driving cars off the assembly line in order to check them as thoroughly as possible. Under Hirst’s watch, the car’s Solex carburetors were modified in such a way that a faultless idling and transition to acceleration was achieved. A host of other changes took place: A “noise monitoring apparatus” was set up to give readouts on the volume of noise emitted when the car shifted gears or accelerated. Deflectors and new felt-element air filters helped the engine not to overheat. A change in the amount of alloy used on the cylinders gave them longer life. The crankshaft production line was modified for greater efficiency. The loosening of the camshaft wheel was eliminated by improved riveting. Frequently occurring running noises from the crown wheel and bevel gear disappeared thanks to a new device that allowed more exact adjustment. The dimensional precision and surface quality of the gears, running parts, and bearings were improved so that the rattling of the front axle disappeared and the jar of the steering lessened considerably. When they’d first restarted making the car, its doors often wouldn’t close properly, and the front hood would not stay shut. By 1947, the car design was much more durable thanks in large part to Hirst and his constant rallying cries for improvement. The workers called him “Major” and liked seeing him around. On his birthday—March 1, 1946—they gave him a birthday card that read: “For our energetic British officer Major Hirst, the rebuilder of the Volkswagen factory.”

  The other British officials there were also doing a lot for Wolfsburg as a city, not just the car and the factory. They set up a makeshift cinema inside the factory and showed whatever films they could find, sometimes as many as two a week. At Christmas, they threw a party for the workers and their children, and all the kids got tiny aluminum Beetles as gifts. Everyone was provided with an evening meal: mashed potatoes and goulash, with jelly for dessert. It was exceptionally generous at the time, as the scarcity of food was foremost on everyone’s mind.

  But relations were not always smooth between the British and the German staff. Denazification was a big concern for the Allies, and for many Germans as well, and not one Hirst wanted to deal with for very long: He felt he needed every man he could get at the time, so he didn’t ask them about their pasts. Those senior to him, including many Germans, found his don’t-ask policy too lax and took the matter into their own hands. In June 1946, authorities notified 179 people of their dismissal, including the main factory director, the technical manager, a divisional manager, and four department heads. A second wave of denazification later sent the total up to 226 dismissed workers.

  Many of the main staff Hirst had been working with were gone in an instant. These stringent measures created a strong feeling of unrest around the plant; some claimed the “real Nazis” had been allowed to stay, while those who were innocent had been forced out. It was a touchy subject, to be sure, and the tension was felt on a daily basis. Sometimes when machines broke down, for example, it was due not to technical difficulties but to workers venting their frustration about certain decisions that had been made.

  The Nazi issue was a potent one in the city at large as well. Because shelter, food, and clothing were in such short supply, the desire for a portion of these resources played a part in people’s attitudes. Campaigns were waged to remove former NSDAP members from their homes, and from the town. Similar campaigns were waged against Displaced Persons and refugees, a drastic push to clear the town so that there would be more space. At the same time, the factory was still in desperate need of every worker it could get. The more people they sent away, the fewer people they had to work at the plant. But the more people who came to work, the harder it was to feed them or provide housing. Every day felt like an emergency situation, and nearly every problem felt like an impossible one.

  Even so, by the end of 1946, Hirst and the VW staff had managed to pull together a total of 10,000 People’s Cars. It was only a fraction of what had been originally planned, but it was a large accomplishment for Wolfsburg, and a truly extraordinary feat for the time. Two of the surviving photos from that day attest to this contradictory situation. One photo shows the tall, regal, smiling Ivan Hirst, flanked by the workers and their 10,000th car. The second photo, one taken by workers without the eyes of management, shows that same car; but beside it there is a handwritten sign, a “list of wants,” including a hot meal, a beer, and an existence of less unbearable stress. Another handwritten sign on the car says “Ten thousand cars, and an empty stomach.5 How can we endure?”

  Such desperation might be hard for us to imagine now, but at the time hunger was literally a matter of life and death in many parts of Europe. Allied-enforced price controls, a continuation from wartime, had made nourishment so hard to find that often people did not come to work simply because they had to go out and forage for food. In Mainsprings of the German Revival, Henry Wallich, an economist at Yale University, writes that “hungry people traveled sometimes hundreds of miles at a snail’s pace to where they hoped to find something to eat. They took their wares—personal effects, old clothes, sticks of furniture, whatever bombed-out remnants they had—and came back with grain or potatoes for a week or two.” At the time, this was the natural condition for the majority of the population.

  The black market often seemed the only market. In such an environment, cigarettes glowed like hundred-dollar bills. As Hermann Abs, chairman of the German Reconstruction Bank in 1947, said: “There was one genuine currency6 … American cigarettes. Even wage was expressed in cigarettes because that was something of value.” By some estimates, half of all business going on in the U.S. and British zones in 1946 and 1947 was done through this kind of barter. With their signs in the photograph, the VW workers were asking the crucial question of the time: What good was industry if those laboring could not be properly fed? Still, the Volkswagen cars proved beneficial. Money itself was practically worthless, but one People’s Car could be bartered for 150 tons of cement or 200,000 bricks. Lightbulbs, steel, shoes, clothing, food—all of these at one time or another were paid for in Volkswagens.

  From all this, one thing became very clear: The German economy was broken and its industrial aims had hit a wall. The factory system—the mass amount of people needed, the assembly lines, the large consumer base—was not possible unless basic social and economic conditions were met first. Supplies were there—there was plenty of coal and steel in Germany, to be sure—but those supplies were kept under lock and key, and there was tremendous dissonance about how to move and manage them, or who should be allowed access to them at all. Just securing basic necessities took a lot of time and work. Every month, for example, Ivan Hirst had to take “iron tickets” and travel to headquarters to get the coal needed to run the factory and town. Wolfsburg had the advantage of having its own power station—the factory—but coal was necessary for it to run, and when the coal was held back, or the transportation of the coal broke down, things could get very grim very fast. For many who experienced it, for example, the winter of 1946–1947 would stand out forever as the harshest of their lives. This was one moment when the factory could not get adequate supplies. Europe was literally frozen; in some of the factory halls the temperature got as low as minus 7˚ Celsius (about 19˚ Fahrenheit). It wasn’t possible to expect anyone to work. Machines broke down
from the cold. Because the shipments of coal had not arrived, there was no heat. People cut down trees and made constant fires to stay warm.

  In 1947, industry in Germany was a third of the size that it had been before the country went to war, and that number was descending. Food production was at 51 percent of what it had been in 1938, making malnutrition worse than it had ever been during the war. At the factory, it was not unusual to see men faint or curl up on the floor in exhaustion. One cold evening, Hirst heard an argument outside his door. A man was trying to steal another man’s potatoes. The first man killed the second with his garden tools. The situation was so bad that stealing one vegetable could get you murdered. Living in such conditions, it’s no wonder there was little enthusiasm for building cars. For the majority of Germans, buying a car was the last thing on their minds.

  Heinrich Nordhoff had a front row seat for the last year of the war. The Opel truck factory he managed had suffered heavy bombings. Berlin, the city where Heinrich and Charlotte were raising their family, was no longer a safe place to live. In 1944, Charlotte and the girls left and found shelter at a friend’s house in the Harz Mountains. Heinrich was alone in Brandenburg, working many more hours than he slept. As the bombs worsened, he rarely left the factory grounds, spending his nights in the damp air-raid shelters beneath the plant, nights that were long, full of unexpressed questions and concern for his colleagues, his family, and the future of his country. The lack of sleep and the intensity of stress weighed heavily on him, and eventually Nordhoff fell ill with pneumonia. In 1945, when it got to the point where he could barely stand up anymore, he was ordered to go to the mountains so he could be nursed back to health by Charlotte. As spring brought a whisper of warmth to the cool mountain air, Heinrich, Charlotte, and their two girls lived together in a single room, surrounded by the rolling hills and fir trees of the Harz. The area was still quiet, but there was no telling how much longer that would remain true. The Allied forces were on the move.

  Even in the mountains, Heinrich had trouble sleeping. He felt guilty for leaving his colleagues. He had been in charge of hundreds of men, and now he was alone with his girls, removed from the noise and relatively safe. The moment he was almost fully recovered from his sickness, he told Charlotte that he wanted to go back to work. Charlotte thought the risk too great; the bombs were everywhere now, and much of Germany was already occupied by the various Allied troops. Falling into the hands of the Soviets meant sure death, if one judged by the stories being heard, and the Soviets could be in Berlin. She pleaded with him to stay. He said he’d sleep on it one more night, but he felt he had a responsibility to his men he couldn’t avoid, even though he of course also felt a responsibility to his wife and his girls.

  The next day was clear and crisp, and Charlotte and Heinrich decided to go for a walk along the ridge of the mountain and talk. As they left the house, Nordhoff grabbed a pair of bird-watching binoculars and hung them around his neck. Once they were out in the trees, they were startled by the sound of gunfire. They found their way to a place where they had a view into the valley, and Heinrich took out the binoculars to gaze below before passing them to Charlotte so she could look. American troops had arrived, and German soldiers were putting up a futile fight. Heinrich and Charlotte watched the battle in silence, conflicted emotions pounding away in their chests.

  Some hours later, American jeeps pulled up to the little house where they were staying. Because of all his studies and trips to the States, Heinrich spoke very good English, and the soldiers found that a relief. The troops eventually moved into the house and set up a post in its living room area, and Heinrich and his family found themselves living alongside American soldiers for a time. One of Nordhoff’s daughters had fallen ill by then—perhaps with the same pneumonia her father had recently recovered from—and an American soldier, who also happened to be the army doctor, took care of her, often sitting with her by her bed and telling her stories to raise her spirits and teaching her English too. Heinrich tried to stay out of the way, but the Americans liked him and invited him to come and sit with them and talk. They had a large map spread out on the table and they showed him what areas had been taken by the Allies. The Soviets were entering Berlin, he was told, and that meant nearby Brandenburg and the Opel factory were probably in their control. The question was settled: Nordhoff couldn’t go back. In fact, as he’d later discover, he had left the plant only days before the Soviets arrived there. They had confiscated its machinery and started disassembling the plant. Nearly all of his coworkers were arrested and deported to Russia, most of them never to be seen again. Heinrich had barely escaped the same fate.

  In the Harz Mountains, however, Heinrich still didn’t know these details and he was concerned for his colleagues. He decided to travel to the main Opel plant, the one a good 200 miles outside of Berlin, in Rüsselsheim, an American-occupied area. He found a truck that could run on charcoal. He took his youngest daughter with him, while the eldest stayed back with Charlotte; Heinrich managed to return for them in a few weeks, and once they were in Rüsselsheim he was able to rent a hotel room where they could all live.

  For months after the end of the war, Nordhoff would put on his suit, comb his hair down, and go to the main Opel offices. But he felt out of place. There was no real position for him there, and a lack of work left him depressed. It seemed people were only humoring him, letting him hang around because they knew his own job was gone. His future looked more uncertain every day. According to the American policies of the time, his former position as head of the truck factory meant he’d collaborated with the Nazi government, and under their rules of denazification, it looked as if Nordhoff would not be allowed to work in any position of management again. In the autumn of 1945, Nordhoff’s employment eligibility at Opel was suspended indefinitely: The Americans needed time to deliberate his case. Nordhoff saw such measures as understandable, as necessary, and yet he held out hope: He’d never joined the NSDAP, all those who knew him knew he’d never liked or supported the Nazi Party. He imagined the Americans would eventually see this and allow him to continue his work with GM. It was an idealistic thought perhaps, but it kept him going.

  After 1942, once General Motors had lost control of the Opel plant and declared it a tax loss, Alfred P. Sloan found (for the moment) he had no further desire to try to build an American presence in Germany; thus, once the war came to an end, he and the others at GM were very slow in resuming operations there. It was not until more than three years after the war, in November 1948, that GM made the decision to resume official control. In the interim, the Opel plant was in a strange state of flux, officially in the hands of the American military government, still unclaimed by its owners. Many former employees hoped that once GM took control, the job situation would be sorted out. But until then, their fate was in the hands of the American occupying government. Time passed at a grueling pace, and Nordhoff soon found himself in desperate need of work. And work did come, just not in the way he’d hoped. In the winter of 1946, an unexpected message arrived from Hamburg, a port city about three hours northwest of Berlin. An old friend of his, Herr Praesent, had died, and the message asked if Heinrich could come to Hamburg; the man’s wife, Lisa, who was also a friend, needed someone to manage Dello & Co., the small Opel garage that her husband had left. Nordhoff took the job, packing a few bags, and moving to Hamburg.

  Heinrich and his family had lost their home and possessions in the bombings of Berlin, and Berlin itself was little more than a pile of rubble now, but still, the city of Hamburg had suffered even more damage than any other city Nordhoff had seen yet. The Allies had considered Hamburg a “war center” of Nazi Germany and thus its industries and ports had been bombed extensively. The time Nordhoff spent there would be a straining time for his marriage, as Charlotte and the girls stayed in Rüsselsheim in the company of family and friends. And it would be straining on his confidence as well: By taking a garage management position, Heinrich found himself at the bottom of a ladder
he’d spent most of his adult life trying to climb. It didn’t look like he would ever be in charge of an automotive factory again, at least not in the American sector as he wished. Many of his friends and colleagues wrote to the Americans and testified on Nordhoff’s behalf, but month after month passed and still Nordhoff did not receive any definitive word on his former job.

  Heinrich’s situation was only too common at the time. No one knew what kind of rules, or what kind of government, would eventually rise in Germany. Opinions and plans changed by the hour, as the complication of so many occupying forces in one area began to take its toll. For decades, the very countries now joined together in occupation of Germany had been arguing about what kinds of policies were best when it came to international trade, and now they found themselves packed together in one place, in a situation that required an even more intimate kind of exchange. The biggest problem they faced had existed long before the First World War: In an increasingly connected world, how could different countries put their products into an unrestricted international market, and buy products from foreign countries, without weakening themselves or feeling threatened? If America bought coal from England, did that mean the United States was the weaker country? If Russia traded with France, did that mean they were bowing to the capitalist principles they were so against?

  Germany now became a heated microcosm of this question and conflict. In the agreements set out at the Potsdam Conference, the various zones were supposed to exchange Germany’s resources among themselves. Each zone contained its own precious raw materials. Exchange was necessary to keep everyone supplied. It soon became clear, however, that the Soviets were not going to comply. They didn’t keep their word or send the supplies as stipulated, and in retaliation, other zones stopped sending their supplies to the Soviets. And that was only the most flagrant of the disagreements; this kind of behavior meant Germany was desperate for just about every resource and raw material it had. It was part of the reason why the winter of 1946 and 1947 was so unforgettably painful and cold: The veins of the country were no longer operating; nothing could flow.