The 1931 - 1945 Volkswagen Beetle be the first generation of the put up small car whose history is prevalent with caustic remark , fascinate , and surprise .
Interrupted by World War II , the 1931 - 1945 Volkswagen Beetle designs never get wind high-pitched - mass commercial-grade production . But they did conduct directly to the dependable , low - cost cars that one day would ply roadstead the world over . This clause tell the story of the 1931 - 1945 Volkswagen Beetle .
The Model T Ford was the first " people ’s machine , " but a splendid technologist mention Ferdinand Porsche dreamed of one for the German mass . So did Adolf Hitler , who saw aVolkswagenas a way to batten himself as Germany ’s absolute ruler .
WithDer Fuhrer ’s patronage , Porsche designed a simple yet sophisticated automobile with a distinctive mallet - like anatomy . Porsche ’s design washeavily influencedby other European designs of modest cars . But just as production got rolling , Hitler began World War II and the small car ’s future was very much in dubiety .
1931-1933 Volkswagen Beetle
Of the many ironies surrounding the Volkswagen Beetle , perhaps the great is that such a friendly little railway car of penny-pinching universal appeal should be born during Germany ’s hideous Third Reich . The embryonic version of the machine , the 1931 - 1933 Volkswagen Beetle , sprang as much from the dire will of a nationalistic dictator as the fertile mind of a respected engineer .
The dictator , of course , was Adolf Hitler , the failed artist and former army corporal who got himself elect German chancellor in 1933 . With the immense majority of his countrymen still demoralized by World War I and suffering afresh in the Great Depression , Hitler and his National Socialist Party viewed a revivify economy and increased consumerism as ways to win livelihood for the military adventurism and rank racial extermination they had long assay . So it was that Hitler commence to champion a small , affordable " people ’s car " – aVolkswagen .
Just two age before , the headstrong but eminently gifted Ferdinand Porsche began pursuing this very thing with colleague Karl Rabe . Since 1898 , Porsche had worked – and chafed – in the employment of automaker like Steyr and Austro - Daimler , so in 1930 , at eld 55 , he established aKonstruktionsburo , an independent design consultancy , in Stuttgart .
Besides Rabe as chief interior designer , his employees included air - cool down - locomotive engine wizard Josef Kales , physical structure designer and aerodynamicist Erwin Komenda , and attorney Dr. Anton Piech . All would establish integral to creating and manage Porsche undertaking through the years .
TheVolkswagenthat Porsche would finally create was ever qualify by a rear - mount , air - cooled four - cylinderenginein " pugilist " formatting ( horizontally opposed cylinders ) ; fully independentsuspensionwith rearward vacillation axle and front transverse torque bars ; a stalwart platform chassis with reinforcing central " backbone " ; and an aerodynamic beetle - mould two - threshold saloon body in present-day " streamlined " style .
While none of these mind were new even in the other 1930s , Porsche ’s great achievement was to put so much mundaneness into one comparatively simple railroad car .
Earlier experience had shown the way . For representative , German car maker Wanderer had engaged the Porsche Bureau to design a modest sedan that entered production in 1932 . Shortly afterwards , Wanderer combine with Audi , DKW , and Horch to shape Auto - Union , which conduct to a swing - axle rear - suspension layout .
In addition , the Porsche firm acquire and patented a refreshing sovereign front hanging with transverse torque - bar springs . More advances come when Porsche was commissioned to design prototypes of small , cheap railroad car formotorcyclemakers Zündapp and NSU , who were then cogitate of entering the auto market .
Both projects provided valuable example with engine room elements that would later on define the Beetle , especially the NSU Type 32 and its air - cool four - cylinder " pugilist " engine . Even so , neither car occur to fruition .
1934-1936 Volkswagen Beetle
Development of the 1934 - 1936 Volkswagen Beetle prototypes centered on Adolf Hitler ’s specific requirements for the " mass ’s motorcar . "
In the early 1930s , Germany ’s newFührerwas touting a national superhighway system – theAutobahnen– and the need for affordable cars to track them . A politically associate Mercedes - Benz executive , Jakob Werlin , set for Porsche to meet with Adolf Hitler in 1934 .
First , though , Porsche sent a memorandum ( dated January 17 ) detailing point with which Hitler was likely to harmonize . The Volkswagen would be durable and space - effective ; it would cruise at its maximum hurrying of 100 kilometre per 60 minutes ( 62 mph ) and average about 40 geographical mile per congius of gas ; it would easy mount hills ; it should have an easily repairable atmosphere - cooledengine(service station were sparse , and German winters can be rough ) ; it must be declamatory enough for two adult and three children ( the ideal Nazi family ) plus their baggage ; and its platform must be adaptable to a smorgasbord of uses . Chillingly , the last included military program .
Hitler was no less a " elevator car orchis " than Porsche , and he was all smiles when the two met in May . Then he dropped a thunderbolt : Any Volkswagen must sell for no more than 1000 Reichsmarks – only about $ 360 .
Yet even Hitler realized that was faintly idiotic , so he ordered theReichsverband der Deutsche Automobilindustrie(RDA , German Automobile Manufacturers Association ) to assist with develop the Type 60 , an phylogenesis of the Type 32 recently begun atPorsche Konstruktionsburo .
With a grudgingly little RDA grant , the Porsche team go away to work on the 98.5 - inch - wheelbase design . This produce two , largely hand - built prototypes by 1935 : a sedan called V1 ( " V " forVersuch , or " experimental " ) and a V2convertible(party provision called for both body styles ) .
Further polish produced a trio of V3 models afterwards in the year . Hitler like these so much that at the 1935 Berlin Motor Show he order the V3 be prepare for yield . But when RDA penis quetch loudly about the sub - RM1000 price – a genuine scourge to their business – a pique Hitler made the project a wholly state - run initiative of the Deutsche Arbeitsfront ( DAF ) , the national labor brotherhood .
The motto of one DAF department wasKraft durch Freude , or " Strength through Joy , " and it prompted the prescribed name KdF - Wagen , though the railroad car was still wide touch to as theVolkswagenand even overhang .
For more great articles and pictures on new and classic Volkswagens, see:
1937-1940 Volkswagen Beetle
The development phase cover by the 1937 - 1940 Volkswagen Beetle include a series of protoypes , a new VW factory , and a prepayment plan designed to help prospective vendee .
After the Volkswagen V3 , or KdF - Wagen , was prepared for production , a series of epitome chase after V30 was next . Though closer still to the eventual Beetle , they lacked a rearward windowpane , as had the V3s .
By 1937 , Hitler had decided the KdF would be built at a new works , which would not only remove it from anyReichsverband der Deutsche Automobilindustrie(RDA ) influence but make want local use .
Land was punctually impound near Castle Wolfsburg in northern Germany , about 40 mile east of Hanover , and Hitler himself laid the basis on May 26 , 1938 .
figure as a distinctive Third Reich monument of heroic proportions , the plant rose quickly on the north side of the full of life Mitteland Canal . However , final prototypes , nickname VW39 and all but identical with the future Volkswagen Beetle , did n’t begin testing until July 1939 .
Not that it mattered much . With medium monthly remuneration of only RM300 , most Germans could n’t hope to buy a KdF outright . The Reich ’s solvent ? Pre - pay instalment . Prospective buyer received booklets for the pasting in of stamps cost RM5 each ( about $ 1.75 ) . A full booklet , Berlin prognosticate , could be redeem for one KdF - Wagen .
" The want of theFührer . . . fulfilled ! " shout propaganda of the time . And blackguard there was , Nazi minions boasting of up to a half - million cars a year spewing from the new Ithiel Town ofKdF - Stadt(south of the channel ) , a numeral as unlikely as the final DM990 damage .
But the first civilian cars were n’t build until August 1940 , and then only in a trickle . By that clip , the Hitler War had been raging almost a year , andKDF - Stadtwas ducking Britishbombsafter turning to airplane assembly , engineparts , stoves , V1 rocket – and Beetle - based military vehicles .
The last contain the Type 62Kubelwagen(“bucket car " ) , theWehrmacht ’s Jeep ; the improved Type 82 with engine enlarged from 985 to 1131 cc ; the Type 82E , a KdF saloon dead body on the mellow - ridingKubelchassis ; the case 86Kubelwith four - cycle drive or else of rearward private road ; the Type 87 , a 434 82E ; and most successful of all , the amphibious Type 166Schwimmwagen .
Porsche Bureau was heavily involved in technology all of these ( start as early on as 1937 ) , and the 166 pleased Hitler so much that he made Ferdinand an honorary SS police officer , thus let the postwar French to charge the apolitical Porsche as a collaborator , which he was n’t .
1944-1945 Volkswagen Beetle
The terminal class of World War II had a devastating outcome on the 1944 - 1945 Volkswagen Beetle , but the popular petty car find a mode to persevere .
In late 1944 , the Porsches and their staff evacuated to the family estate at Zell am See , Austria , where son Ferry , Karl Rabe , and Erwin Komenda would forge the first Porsche automobile . The lunar time period of warfare had turned , and more than two - third of the Volkswagen KdF factory lie in ruination .
By spring 1945 , with American troops advancing , some workers , admit many Nazi - sentenced slave manual laborer , begin put down as much as they could of what little was left . In one of account ’s stranger bit , a few English - speak expatriate really attempt out and surrendered to an American column a full four calendar week before V - east Day .
With the sectionalization of Germany , KdF - Stadtwas renamed Wolfsburg and came under Allied protection , though it would have been in the Russian Zone had it been locate just 10 stat mi further east . Because Britain and not the U.S. had charge of the region , the future of the Volkswagen Beetle , its factory , and the town come down to a detachment of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers commanded by Major Ivan Hirst .
Slowly and with great trouble , Hirst and company got thing moving again , providing solid food and tax shelter to war - weary dweller , reconstruct heat and electrical energy , and examine what might be salvaged of Hitler ’s automotive aspiration .
As it hap , a surprising amount of tooling and share had exist Alliedbombs , and they were dusted off to establish a few moreKubelsand even some Volkswagen Beetle sedan for British and Gallic forces in need of light transport . before long , Hirst had military orders for no fewer than 10,000 vehicle , and his workforce quickly raise from just 450 ( versus some 16,000 in wartime ) to over 6,000 .
By the death of 1945 they had build either 1,785 or 2,490 vehicles ( record book vary ) . Somehow , after the most horrific state of war in history , the modestWagen fur das Volkwas still live .
