In college in the 70s I went on a study abroad program to Germany. One night, as a few of us students gathered in the local pub for a beer and bratwurst the owner came to the table. She started chatting about her town and wondered what our impressions of it were. In the midst of this convivial conversation she blurted, at least in my memory, out of the blue, “you have to remember Hitler gave us the Volkswagen.” I don’t remember what any of us answered and I doubt we even really responded to what she said but the statement stuck with me; I wondered why she said it? What was she trying to say? Her remark was the impetus for me to become a German historian and almost fifty years after that chance conversation I continue to try and make sense of it.
What she was telling us, I am now certain, was that, in her view, or at least in her rationalization some thirty years after the end of the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust, she, like many Germans were not rabid militarist, racist Anti-Semites. That the country’s support for Hitler was about the economy and, for her, the Volkswagen, a simple car that the Nazi party promised to make available for all Germans, a car that would then give ordinary citizens a chance to live the good life that had been taken from them by the Depression was now possible.
I recalled this story recently as I was reading tweets and quotes about presidential candidate Donald Trump’s comments on Hitler. Specifically, in a recent interview with CNN his former chief of staff John Kelly said: “He [Trump] said, ‘Well, but Hitler did some good things.’ I said, ‘Well, what?’ And he said, ‘Well, [Hitler] rebuilt the economy.’”
United States Presidential elections are often about the economy. As President Clinton’s campaign advisor, James Carville famously said during the 1992 campaign “it’s the economy stupid.” In light of this reality, it is worthwhile to interrogate the story of the Volkswagen and what it tells us about the true nature of the Nazi regime and to consider its lessons as we ponder our own political choices in 2024.
Hitler was appointed to the position of Chancellor in Germany in January 1933. Germany, like the United States and many other countries, was ravaged by the Depression. Millions were out of work. Millions more were terrified that their pink slip would be coming next. Voters desperately sought solutions to the chaos that was enveloping their lives. The moderate liberal and conservative parties that dominated the parliament did not seem to provide the answers. Like Nero fiddling away while Rome burned, German politicians seemed more intent to attack each other than to attack the massive problems of unemployment. For those Germans who were looking for reasons for their misery, the Nazis had a clear message- their misery was caused by foreigners- by international banks and companies that were exploiting German workers; by Leftists and Communists who were undermining Germany to the benefit of the Soviet Union and by Jews who were key parts of both groups. The Nazis promised to ‘take care’ of those who were destroying Germany and in so doing pave the way for a better future.
Once in the government Hitler and the Nazis immediately began to fulfill their promise. Leftist parties were declared illegal and eliminated. Unions were shut down and workers were required to join the state-controlled German Labor Front; military training more than workers’ rights became the focus of this organization. Jews in government positions were fired so that their jobs could be filled by ‘Germans’ and over time they were increasingly isolated, persecuted and ultimately murdered by the state.
To bring ‘the good life’ back to Germany the Nazi started major public works programs, mostly famously the building of the autobahns, the freeway system. They promised to put Germans to work and in so doing create an economy that would allow Germans to travel and vacation again. In November 1933 they launched The Strength Through Joy Program (Kraft durch Freude of KdF). It was promoted as state-sponsored initiative that would bring these benefits of travel and community to ordinary Germans. Through trips to Baltic Sea resorts or the Bavarian mountains average Germans could enjoy the good, healthy life of fresh air and exercise often denied to them in their taxing work and urban living conditions.
The Volkswagen, originally called the ‘KdF car’ or ‘the People’s Car,’ was another part of this Strength Through Joy program. Symbolically, it was intended to convey that the Party was making the good life, in this case cars, affordable and available to all. At the German auto show of 1934 Nazi leaders proudly proclaimed that they would begin building this simple, efficient automobile. It was priced at less than $400.00 US (in 1938 dollars); no more than the cost of a small motorcycle. With their cars the government promised that Germans could then travel throughout the country on the beautiful autobahns. In a country still locked in the depths of economic depression this dream, along with vacations offered by the program, was taken as a clear demonstration that the Nazi state was making life better for ordinary Germans. It was what, that German pub owner was trying to tell me was the reason that ordinary Germans supported the regime.
But, the travel program and the Volkswagen also reveal the darker side of the Nazi social and economic agenda. The vacations facilitated the state’s ability to create a monolithic, state structured society in which individual autonomy was subservient to state control as on most trips propaganda sessions were as essential as visits to historic sites or boat rides on a lake. It created a society that deemed only some, who the state identified as part of ‘the community”, could enjoy these perks. In the end, many average Germans rejected the state-controlled vacations in favor of their own solitary getaways. An underground dissident analyzing these programs wrote in 1939 that “People now look for place where there are no KdF visitors ‘Not visited by the KdF’ is now a particular asset for summer vacations.” State control, not the promise of individual autonomy and leisure, now ruled the day.
The Volkswagen also proved to be a false promise, one that further reveals the dark sides of the Nazi state. Though the Volkswagen idealized the economic populism of the Nazi movement few private citizens ever actually got to drive them during the Nazi regime. Workers paid monthly installments out of their hard-earned paychecks and were promised that once that had met their subscription their dream car would be theirs. Some 330,000 Germans began to pay into this plan but they never saw the return on their investment. By the time the first Volkswagen factory was built in 1938 its main use was not to produce cars for the common person but cheap, efficient military transport for war. A 1934 company brochure noted that, the "car must be suitable not only for personal use, but also for transport and particular military purposes." War, not a return to the good life, was part of the plan from the beginning.
More ominously during World War Two ‘the people’s car’ was built by slave labor from the prison and death camps of the Nazi empire. Jews and others who had been deported to the death camps of Auschwitz and Treblinka were sent to concentration camps built for Volkswagen. In 1998 Volkswagen admitted that over 15,000 slave laborers had been forced to work for the company and it finally agreed for reparations for the victims.
In her study of the rise and evolution of Nazism- The Nazi Conscience, Klaudia Koonz demonstrates that Anti-Semitism and racism were not the major themes of the Party’s presidential campaign in 1932. Jobs, bread and butter issues (the Nazi effectively ran soup kitchens and clothing drives across the country), and security from enemies, internal and external, were. Yet even though those were the prominent themes of Hitler’s campaign speeches and the Nazi posters plastered across the cities the use of violence to intimidate the political opposition and cripple democratic institutions, the blaming of foreign banks and business (often code language for Jews) for Germany’s economic woes and his call to ‘Make Germany Great Again’ made it clear to anyone who really cared to listen that if he had a chance to achieve political power his goals were far beyond a “return to the good old days.”
When General Kelly heard his boss claim that Hitler did “some good things,” he responded “But…He turned it against his own people and against the world.” Kelly was right. Hitler’s promises of giving Germany ‘the good life’ of work, leisure and freedom were replaced by a society haunted by state control; a Germany decimated by World War II with vast parts of the country laid waste by the war. It resulted in a country in which half of its former territory was now occupied by the hated enemy of the Communist Soviet Union. It resulted in a people who now had to live with the legacy that their government, that they had supported, had launched a racial war of genocide that would forever haunt and stain them. The proprietor could try to argue that “Hitler gave us the Volkswagen” but the reality is of story of the Volkswagen is a story of the betrayal by the Nazi state of its own people. It is a story of the willful ignorance and
willing support of many Germans for the horrific realities of the Nazi state; a story that that woman was trying to rationalize decades after the fact.
Economic issues will certainly weigh heavily on voters’ decisions in the upcoming United States elections. Inflation, the cost of eggs, groceries and gas remain daily dinner table conversation topics. Concern about jobs are often noted in public opinion polls (even as unemployment declines). These concerns, in turn, fuel, at least part of the debates about immigration. But we should never forget that economic policies are part of broader discussions about our society, our values and the hopes and dreams we have for our future. You cannot just vote for a candidate’s economic policies without accepting their other issues. We should ask ourselves what are the costs of the promises to bring ‘the good life back?’ Are cheap gas or eggs worth the price of freedom and the rule of law? Who are the ‘people’ that benefit and who is excluded from the opportunities that these policies may afford? We should be ready to defend our choices, not just at the ballot box, but to the future generations who will live with the decisions we make.
Dr. Tom Taylor received his PhD from the University of Minnesota where he focused his dissertation research on twentieth-century Germany. His most recent work, Modern Travel in World History was published by Routledge Press in 2022.
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