 | Hitler inspecting a Volkswagen, the future “Beetle,” in 1938
(Photo: Getty Images)
It’s no secret that Volkswagen, one of the best-known German car brands, had its inception in Nazi Germany. In fact, the very name, “People’s Car,” belies its origins as a politically motivated project to demonstrate German industrial might by supplying the population with an affordable automobile. Ironically, the people never got their car, at least during Hitler’s reign, as the company turned to war production. This article is about the rise and World War II role of Volkswagen.
When Hitler came to power (Becoming Führer), Germany had far fewer cars than more advanced nations like France, Britain or the United States. The rapid motorization of the country was at a major part of the Nazi economic plan: more roads (the autobahn highway system) and more car factories meant more jobs, which helped pull the country out of recession. Motorization also had obvious military advantages, and the monumental autobahn system stood as a propaganda testament to the industrial might of the Third Reich. |
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 | Ferdinand Porsche showing Hitler a concept model of the Volkswagen in 1934
(Photo: Heinrich Hoffmann) |
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Highways, however, are useless if there isn’t anyone to drive on them, and only one German out of 50 had a car. Hitler was keen on creating a cheap, simple, mass-produced “people’s car,” literally “Volkswagen” in German – but it should be noted that the idea had already been around well before the rise of Nazism. In 1934, Hitler awarded engineer Ferdinand Porsche, better known for high-end cars, a contract for what eventually became the iconic “Beetle.” Hitler wanted a car that could accommodate two adults and three children, used not more than seven liters of fuel per 100 km (33.6 miles per gallon), and had an air-cooled engine – the latter was important to Hitler, as not every country doctor had a garage. |
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 | Two KDF-wagen cars on the autobahn
(Photo: Bundesarchiv) |
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Porsche claimed to have already come up with the basic design in 1930, but in fact he reached back to the work of other designers. Hungarian engineer Béla Barényi, considered the father of passive safety in cars, already had a car design that contained the basics of the future Beetle in 1925, but he did not protect the concept sufficiently with patents. Austro-Hungarian designer Josef Ganz was also working on something similar, but his Jewish ancestry got him in trouble: he was arrested by the Gestapo on false blackmail charges in 1933, and fled Germany the next year. Austrian designer Hans Ledwinka was working at the Czechoslovakian Tatra car company, and he and Porsche often discussed their project, with both copying elements of the other’s work. Tatra actually filed copyright infringement charges against Volkswagen, but the Munich Crisis and the German annexation of Czechoslovakia in 1938 mooted the issue. |
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 | Hungarian engineer Béla Barényi already working on a car design very similar to the Volkswagen before Porsche
(Photo: unknown photographer) |
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The People’s Car project was run under the aegis of Kraft durch Freude, “Strength Through Joy,” a Nazi organization that centralized leisure activities, including travel. Therefore, the car was originally called KDF-wagen, “KDF-car.”
Hitler ceremonially laid the foundation of the factory that was going to produce the KDF-wagen in May 1938. An entire city, Stadt des KdF-Wagens bei Fallersleben (“City of the Strength Through Joy Car at Fallersleben”) was built to house the workers. (The city was renamed Wolfsburg, after a nearby castle, after the war. It still hosts Volkwagen’s headquarters and factory, which was the largest car plant in the world until 2022.) |
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 | Community hall in the city built to support the Volkswagen plant
(Photo: wolfsburg.de) |
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The factory was expected to produce 1.5 million cars annually. Some 336,000 Germans had signed up for a monthly savings plan to buy a car, but they ended up empty-handed. Only a small number of Volkswagens were built before the outbreak of World War II. Some ended up with the Nazi Party elite, others were used for ads and publicity stunts, and Hitler was given a cabriolet version for his 50th birthday in 1939, but the factory was quickly converted to wartime production. |
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 | Ferdinand Porsche (left, wearing black) presenting Hitler with a Volkswagen for his birthday
(Photo: Getty Images) |
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The most common vehicle built during the war was the Kübelwagen (“bucket car”). The name was a contraction of the full Kübelsitzwagen, “bucket-seat car,” referring to the type of seat. Bucket seats, contoured so it’s hard to fall out of them (seatbelts had not been adopted yet), were popular in German pre-war offroad and military cars that often didn’t have doors. Some of the Porsche test vehicles the car was built on were similarly doorless and equipped with bucket seats, and the name stuck with the finished product, even though that had doors and falling out was no longer a real danger. |
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 | An early version with no doors, necessitating bucket seats for safety
(Photo: war-book.ru) |
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50,435 Kübelwagen were built during the war, and saw extensive use as light utility vehicles. A two-wheel drive car with a mere 23.5 or 24.7 horsepower engine (depending on version) might not sound like an ideal military offroad vehicle, but the Kübelwagen worked surprisingly well. With an empty weight of 1,600 lb (725 kg), the four men riding in it could pull it out of sand or mud without much difficulty, and its smooth, flat bottom allowed it to slide along on sand, mud or snow even if it the wheels sank, a bit like a motor sled. (For comparison, the American Willys MB jeep (The Jeep) had 54 horse powers and weighed 2453 pounds (1,113 kg)). It had a top speed of 50 mph (80 km/h); it was durable, reliable, and its self-locking differential (which prevented the two wheels on the same axle from turning at different speeds on a surface with uneven traction) largely made up for the four-wheel drive and the lack of raw power. |
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 | A Kübelwagen (right) with its American counterpart, and early version Willy MB jeep
(Photo: unknown photographer) |
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The Type 62 version of the Kübelwagen participated in field trials during the invasion of Poland, and the army’s experience provided useful feedback. The minimum speed of the revised Type 82 was lowered from 5 mph (8 km/h) to half that so it could keep pace with marching soldiers. The addition of new axles with gear reduction hubs both increased torque and raised ground clearance, further improving off-road performance. The car’s one major downside was its virtually complete lack of protection against enemy fire. The Kübelwagen came in several dozen versions, including a radio car that only seated three men, a tropicalized version, modifications to the engine, and a late war coal-powered version. |
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 | A German military policeman in his Kübelwagen on the Eastern Front
(Photo: Bundesarchiv) |
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The Kommandeurswagen (“Commander’s car”), of which 564 were built, was a four-wheel drive version of the Volkswagen, built specifically for officers. The numerous small improvements included larger, better off-road tires; running boards to aid entry, a sunroof as default equipment; and an infrared light replacing the standard one inside to make the car harder to spot by enemy planes at night. |
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 | A Kommandeurswagen in a museum
(Photo: Karl-Heinz Jansen / Wikipedia) |
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The second most numerous Volkswagen product of the war was the amphibious Schwimmwagen (“swimming car”). With 15,584 made, this remains the most produced amphibious car to this day. The Schwimmwagen used a four-wheel drive system that was originally considered for the Kübelwagen, rejected, and later also adopted for the Kommandeurswagen.
The distinctive bulbous shape hid float chambers, and a screw propeller could be lowered from the rear cover for water crossings. The primary method of controlling the vehicle in the water was by steering the front wheels, which worked like rudders. The car carried a pair of paddles as part of its standard equipment loadout, which could be used for tight turns that were otherwise impossible, or for reversing (which the propeller couldn’t do). |
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 | A Schwimmwagen in France, 1944
(Photo: Bundesarchiv) |
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The Schwimmwagen proved a popular vehicle, and Rommel (The Accomplishments and Legacy of the Desert Fox) requested large numbers of them to be sent to Africa – not so much for their amphibious capability, but for their general off-road performance. The Desert Fox, however, had to do largely without the vehicles, as they were sent to the Eastern Front instead, where their ability to traverse boggy terrain and river networks made the invaluable in the push toward Moscow. The Allies were also fans of the car, and Allied soldiers took captured Schwimmwagens for a ride whenever it was possible. |
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 | A Schwimmwagen demonstrating not only its amphibious capability, but also its ability to climb steep slopes
(Photo: keymilitary.com) |
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Like many other branches of German industry, the Volkswagen plant made heavy use of forced labor during the war. Regular employees worked together with Soviet prisoners of war, Jews from concentration camps, and Soviet and Polish civilian forced laborers. By May 1944, over 4,800 “Eastern workers” labored in the factory, half of them women.
Some women arrived pregnant, others fell pregnant during their time at the plant (men and women worked together inevitably providing some opportunities). So-called “nursery facilities” were built where women could give birth, and where the babies might ostensibly receive care. In reality, these facilities were death factories, where the vast majority of babies died due to starvation, neglect and lack of medical care. |
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 | Construction of a Kübelwagen
(Photo: Volkswagen Group) |
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After the war, the heavily damaged Volkswagen factory ended up inside the British Occupation Zone, under the control of Military Governor Major Ivan Hirst from the Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. The future of the plant, and the Volkswagen brand, was at risk. At first, the British wanted to either use the plant for the maintenance of their own cars, or dismantle it and take the machinery to Britain as war reparations. Hirst, however, believed the factory could be used to build new cars for the occupation forces. He had a surviving KDF-wagen painted green and presented to the British Army headquarters for a demonstration. The British were suffering from a shortage of light transport vehicles at the time, and the army placed an order for 20,000 Volkswagen. |
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 | Major Ivan Hirst (right of the car, in hat) next to a Volkswagen
(Photo: Heritage Parts Centre) |
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Production was difficult under post-war circumstances. The factory roof was still damaged, and work had to be stopped whenever it rained. There was also a serious shortage of steel; rather than buying, the plant had to barter for it with finished cars. There were no carburetors available and the German producers where the Soviet zone, so Hirst had to use his own engineering knowledge to arrange for the production of more. The first post-war Volkswagen cars went to the British Army and the postal service, and some soldiers were eventually allowed to take one back to Britain on demobilization.
The plant was offered to American, British, French and Australian companies for purchase, but they all rejected it, considering the Beetle “quite unattractive to the average motorcar buyer, […] too ugly and too noisy.” It was even offered to Ford for free, but the company rejected it.
From a German perspective, this might have been for the best. It fell to Heinz Northoff, Hirst’s German assistant during the occupation years, to take control and rebuild the facility. Under German ownership, Volkswagen became a symbol of the “Miracle on the Rhine,” the rapid reconstruction and development of West Germany and Austria in the late 40s and 50s. And the rest, as they say, is automobile history.
If you want to see some of the vehicles mentioned in this article or other innovative vehicles that were used by the Allies (The cutest military utility vehicle) or the Germans (The Kettenkrad) during the war, join us on our tours such as the Band of Brothers Tours or the Third Reich Tour. |
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 | The one millionth Volkswagen Beetle ever produced, a special one-off version
(Photo: Mewtu / Wikipedia) |
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