Uncorrected Page Proof. Bentley Publishers welcomes your comments on this or any of our other publications. Email us at [email protected], fax us at 1-617-528-4065 or call us at 1-800-423-4595. 1 Birth of a Menace assing the time of night of 24 January 1942 with some of his confi- dants Adolf Hitler remarked, “In former times I used to read regu- Plarly the publications devoted to the motorcar, but I no longer have the time.” (1) He assured them that he nevertheless continued to keep up with new developments in the automotive field. Hitler was forty-four years old in the spring of 1933 when he put in mo- tion the rumbling wheels of the benighted regime that would bring disaster to Germany — and bring the Volkswagen to life. Born virtually with the au- tomobile, Hitler was infatuated with it, and with other forms of technology that he associated with his youth, throughout his life. One easily pictures the leader of the National Socialists leafing through the Allgemeine Automobil-Zeitung, Motor und Sport, and even Motor Kritik, whose enthusiastic and knowledgeable engineer-editor Josef Ganz argued at length toward the end of the 1920s in favor of a small, affordable, and eco- nomic Volksauto — a car for the people. For the Hungarian-born Ganz the cars that came closest to his ideal were the air-cooled Czech Tatras with their backbone frames and independent rear suspension. Hitler too was a fan of the Tatras and their designer Hans Ledwinka. He would meet Ledwinka, a fellow Austrian, early in the thirties and be person- ally and privately briefed by him about the latest Tatra models at the Berlin Auto Shows. But in the early 1920s it was all Hitler could do to become mo- bile. When he couldn’t be located, his aides quickly realized, he "would be discovered somewhere looking at second-hand motor-cars.”(2) “Cars were an obsession with him,” said his foreign press attaché Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl. Hitler wanted to give his embryonic storm troopers the capacity to dodge and outwit the police who were trying to break up their brown-shirted demonstrations. 1 2 BATTLE FOR THE BEETLE Although Adolf Hitler often rode in Mercedes-Benz cars, as here at the opening of a new section of Autobahn, he was enthusiastic about cars in general and particularly liked the advanced autos made by Tatra. But first he needed a car for himself to get round to meetings more quickly. He picked up one vehicle which looked like a dismantled horse-cab without a top, but soon exchanged this for a Selve car, with funds he had drummed up in a mysterious way from someone. It was a rattling monster and each end looked as if it was going different ways, but he seemed to think it conferred additional dig- nity on him and from that time on I do not think I ever saw him take a tram or bus again. By the time Hitler made his first abortive grab for power, the “beer hall putsch” of November 1923, he was riding in a bright-red Benz. Riding is the operative word. In the more than million and a half miles Hitler was said to have covered on the road as politician and dictator he was driven by his chauffeur Emil Maurice, who was succeeded by Julius Schreck and then Erich Kempka. In April 1945, Kempka would bring to the Chancellery gar- den the forty gallons of gasoline that hastened the incineration of the corps- es of Hitler and his wife.(3) ADOLF HITLER WAS PERSUADED that enhanced motorization should be a major goal of the administration that began with his appointment as Germany’s chancellor on Monday, 30 January 1933.(4) Only a few days later in his speech at the opening of the Berlin Auto Show on Saturday, 11 February, “he set out the guidelines of a mass mobilization of Germany: tax abatements for car buyers, the building of the Autobahns, repeal of obligatory driving school, and encouragement of motorsport.”(5) Uncorrected Page Proof. Bentley Publishers welcomes your comments on this or any of our other publications. Email us at [email protected], fax us at 1-617-528-4065 or call us at 1-800-423-4595. CHAPTER ONE: BIRTH OF A MENACE 3 With considerable experi- ence after working on many types of vehicles for Lohner, Austro-Daimler, Daimler, and Daimler- Benz, Ferdinand Porsche was well qualified to open an independent auto de- sign office at the end of 1930 in Stuttgart. The idea of a people’s car was hotly discussed in the press at the time of the 1933 Berlin Show and Hitler was not one to overlook the potential of a people-pleasing idea. Discussions on the way such a car might be built began at once between the Reich Ministry of Transport, headed by its minister-di- rector Dr. Ing. e. h. Brandenburg, and the association of German automak- ers, the Reichsverband der deutschen Automobilindustrie (RDA), and its president Robert Allmers. The RDA’s initial notions were either to stage a prize competition for the design of a new small car or to engage an “outstanding designer” to evaluate their existing models to see whether production costs could be re- duced. No particular designer was mentioned, but one name came to ev- eryone’s mind. Only one independent automotive engineer of real standing had his own design studio in Germany in 1933. Ferdinand Porsche, born in Bohe- mia, had joined Daimler Motor Company in 1923 as its engineering director. The company merged with Benz & Cie in 1926 and three years later Porsche, at age fifty-three, left Daimler-Benz, Germany’s flagship producer, following disagreements with the new management over confused planning and deci- sion-making. Uncorrected Page Proof. Bentley Publishers welcomes your comments on this or any of our other publications. Email us at [email protected], fax us at 1-617-528-4065 or call us at 1-800-423-4595. 4 BATTLE FOR THE BEETLE A prototype of Porsche’s Type 12, a small car designed for Zündapp in 1931, powered by a radial five-cylinder engine in the rear; pictured in front of the Porsche villa in Stuttgart-Feuerbach. Although their differences were publicly smoothed over in the emollient German style, Porsche’s exit from the Stuttgart-Untertürkheim design offic- es of Daimler-Benz was anything but amiable. Daimler-Benz had decided not to renew his contract after problems cropped up with some of the small cars and commercial vehicles that had come from his team’s drafting boards. Porsche had celebrated his arrival in Stuttgart by building a handsome villa in the city’s Feuerbach hills with a generous four-car garage and adjoining workshop/storeroom. Now, with his son-in-law Anton Piëch, he sued Daim- ler-Benz over his contract; the case was settled out of court in 1930.(6) Porsche did not contract again to design vehicles for a single produc- er.(7) The new Auto-Union AG, maker of DKW, Audi, Wanderer, and Horch cars, would have been delighted to have him; it became his first and one of his best customers. Porsche explained to his son Ferry, “It makes no sense for me to keep going from one company after another.” The always practical Fer- ry put it differently. “My father found that when he signed a contract with a firm, they could live another ten years on his designs, but he couldn’t!”(8) FROM THE MOMENT FERDINAND PORSCHE and his team of eleven men and women opened their doors at the end of 1930 they were immersed in small-car design projects. In 1931 and ’32 three prototypes — Porsche always built them in threes — of a rear-engined small car were designed and built under contract to Zündapp of Nürnberg, a motorcycle firm which insisted on the use of a 1,200 cc five-cylinder radial engine. Numbered Type 12 in the Porsche project list, it never went into production. Uncorrected Page Proof. Bentley Publishers welcomes your comments on this or any of our other publications. Email us at [email protected], fax us at 1-617-528-4065 or call us at 1-800-423-4595. CHAPTER ONE: BIRTH OF A MENACE 5 Porsche’s small-car prototype for NSU, the Type 32 designed in 1933 foreshadowed the main features of the Volkswagen with its torsion-bar springs and air-cooled flat- four engine. Its body shape would become familiar as well. Neither did Porsche’s next small car, the Type 32 designed for the NSU Works in Neckarsulm, another motorcycle maker with big ideas. But its three prototypes, also rear-engined, showed design features that were des- tined to become familiar. Porsche’s new torsion-bar springs were used, with parallel trailing arms in front and swing axles in the rear. The engine was an air-cooled flat-four of 1,470 cc developing its twenty-six horsepower at the unusually low engine speed of 2,600 rpm. Under construction in 1933 for NSU, the Type 32 prototypes were completed and tested in 1934. But when Fiat reminded the German firm that the two companies had mutual accords in the four-wheeled field, NSU had to abandon the project. For the second time in as many years, Porsche had trimmed his development contracts to the bone to solicit much-need- ed business only to come up empty. There would be no royalties generated by cars that didn’t enter production.