LexFather

We all know the story of the Volkswagen Beetle: In his vision to motorize Germany, Adolf Hitler wanted a "People's Car" of sound design and quality to transport the subjects of his Third Reich around an expanding empire. The Beetle became that car. It made automotive and world history, two of Germany's biggest automakers and Ferdinand Porsche's career. But was it really his design as history recorded? New evidence suggests otherwise.

According to Dutch author and historian Paul Schilperoord in his new book Het Ware Verhaal van de Kever ("The True Story of the Beetle"), Porsche may have taken the credit for a design from a Jewish engineer named Josef Ganz (pictured right). The Hungarian-born engineer and automotive journalist had a revolutionary idea for a new type of car which he called the Maikäfer (May Beetle), characterized by an engine mounted behind the cabin, an independent suspension and a smaller, more streamlined shape than the bloated cars that existed at the time.

The design was credited by many as the precursor to the Volkswagen Beetle, but without the financial backing to build his car, Ganz began publishing articles calling for a revolution in car design. According to Schilperoord, Antisemitic laws in **** Germany made him an easy target for the established automakers who viewed him as a threat, eventually leading to his arrest by the Gestapo on trumped-up blackmail charges. Ganz was eventually released and tried in vain to build his car in Switzerland, only for the Swiss government to try and steal his design themselves. Enamored of its originality, Hitler allegedly charged Porsche with building the car instead, giving no credit to its Jewish parentage.

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Och

iTrader: (3)

Well, like with most big inventions, almost always someone else other than the original inventor takes the credit. Telephone, TV, FM radio, you name it. It was often that people and corporations with money and power stole ideas from small inventors and claimed them as their own.

But in Ferdinand Porsche's case, claiming credit for the VW Beetle is probably the least of his problems. He was a ****, war criminal, and Hitlers right hand.

DustinV

Where's the evidence that suggests that this man was "****", a "war criminal" and Hitler's "right hand man"?

Och

iTrader: (3)

Just google it. He worked closely with Hitler, during WW2 his VW factory built tanks and other military vehicles for the **** forces, and used slave labor from concentration camps to do so. After war he was lucky to be thrown into French prison where he spent almost two years. Had he ended up in a Soviet prison, his fate there would be much more compliant with what he deserved.

Furthermore, the design of his Beetle was ripped of a car made by Tatra, I can't remember its name, but google it and you will find it. He violated several Tatras patents, and when Germany occupied Chechoslovakia, Hitler ordered Tatra to stop building the car. Tatra won their case in the 60ies against VW, and VW had to pay them a substantial amount of money.

Och

iTrader: (3)

Here, read this up, straight from Tatra's website

http://www.tatra.demon.nl/cars_history_T97.htm

mmarshall

The real father of the VW Beetle (indirectly, as the inspiration for it, if nothing else), was Henry Ford and the Model T. You have to look into Hitler's mind to see why. Henry Ford had done such a superb job of perfecting the modern automotive assembly line, paying his factory workers a good wage (by early-20th century standards) even without a union, producing a simple, easy-to-build car, and getting the per-unit cost down to where millions of Americans could afford it, that Hitler because jealous of Ford and of the fact that, even in the Depression, America had become a nation on wheels. He wanted Germany to have a small, easy-to-build and maintain car for the German masses that would more or less approximate what Ford had done here at home. (Volks-Wagen, of course, meant "Peoples' Car" in German). By then, similiar projects were getting under way, in France and Italy, by Renault, Fiat, and Citroen, for small, afforable, mass-produced cars as well, so, of course, Germany had to get in on the action. Hitler, of course, being dictator, didn't need to ASK anybody in Germany anything, so he ordered Ferdinand Porsche to head up the project. Hitler was also looking at the design, in derivitives, for possible military use...and, of course, that was verified in WWII by a number of army scout and transport vehicles utilizing the basic Beetle platform.

I won't get into how Ferdinand Porsche managed the project, or who he may or may not have hired for the job (1SICKLEX and Och have already covered that well, in their posts), but I just wanted to note that Hitler may not have even thought of the Beetle to start with if Henry Ford had not been his inspration.

Later, of course, after Hitler had had the German Autobahn built to speed the movement of commerce and the German military, the situation was reversed......General Eisenhower, our WWII wartime European commander, was very impressed with what he saw of the Autobahns, and, when he came back home after the war and became President in 1953, one of his biggest projects, in the 1950's, was to get to work on an American system of Interstate Highways (in effect, copying the German Autobahns) that became the backbone of our highway system today.

Och

iTrader: (3)

Well you're probably right that Hitler got his inspiration from the Model T, and he was a big fan of Henry Ford, and awarded him, however, as you said yourself, Henry Ford was able to perfect his assembly line to build affordable cars while paying decent wages to his workers. VW on the other hand once used as much as 80% slave labor.

mmarshall

German factories, including the VW plant at Wolfsburg, generally didn't start using slave labor until well after the war started, when things started going bad for them and much of the regular German population (and labor source) was either away fighting on distant fronts or had been killed at home by Allied planes on bombing raids. Slave labor also turned out to be one of Germany's banes.......the workers became very adept at sabotaging much of what they built, so it wouldn't work properly.

If you ever watched the movie "Schindler's List", it does a good job of re-ceating much of how slaves in the plants would sabotage things as they built them......there were not enough QC inspectors to catch a lot of it.

I8ABMR

Interesting facts. I will still keep Ferdinand Porsche in a good place in my mind. People forget there was no saying no to the **** party. He did what he was told so that he wasn't killed . The beetle will always remain a classic and a piece of auto history regardless of who designed it

DustinV

Your definition here is incredibly vague. Porsche was an engineer first and foremost, not an industrialist. His expertise was needed, not his political views. I also seriously doubt that anyone could have made it far from a business perspective in **** Germany if they didn't join the party. There are countless individuals who joined the party because of the benefits it offered - not because they were convinced ***** or necessarily agreed with the ideals of the party.

Hell, the Soviets used slave labor too. Have you forgotten that? Millions of your people were imprisoned under Stalin's paranoia and forced to work in factories, farms etc. Maybe you missed that in history class...




So ripping off a design makes him a "**** and war criminal"?

You know, during the 1930s many carmakers were experimenting with aerodynamic and "hunchback" designs which were deemed the most promising. The car you're referring to is probably the Tatra T77. There is no evidence that this design was copied by Porsche. Furthermore there were many designs of that period that looked vaguely similar - such a rounded, streamlined and hunchback design was seen and tested as being the most efficient and thus many carmakers pursued it. Citroen, Peugeot, Daimler-Benz and Auto Union come to mind. I visited a German car museum a few months ago and there was an extinct German brand known as "Adler" which had an early 1930s "Chrysler Airflow" design to it. The facts are simple: this design was aerodynamic and the automakers of the day pursued it.


It's interesting how you talk about "ripping off a design". The Soviets were notorious for that.

What's this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-4


The early Soviet jet engines were copies of German Jumo or BMW jet engines found on late-war German aircraft. The Soviet rocket program after World War II also relied on existing German designs and of course captured German scientists. It wasn't any different in the US, but you hopefully get my point.

Och

iTrader: (3)

I'm not quite sure why you are dragging soviets into this thread. It is no secret that a lot of soviet cars/jets/etc were rip offs. It is also no secret that Stalin was a human rights/war criminal. Theres no defending him.

Theres also no defending for someone who worked hand to hand with Hitler and used slave labor. Theres just no justifying it, no matter how you put it. You just cant paint him as an innocent engineer, especially that his engineering legacy falls flat on the face once you find out he stole other people ideas and designs.

And I suggest you read the whole article on that Tatra. They didn't just look similar.

DustinV

And I'm asking you where your evidence is. Where's the evidence that explicitly states that Ferdinand Porsche was a Jew-hating, ****-loving war criminal that couldn't wait to build the next tank in the hopes of crippling Germany's enemies. Where is that evidence?

Like I said, in many such regimes you had no choice but to join the party whether you liked it or not. And just because some people agreed with some aspects of the **** party doesn't make them a ****. Hitler and his cronies did have some good ideas like the autobahns or the advancement of technology for instance.

Porsche was a brilliant engineer, not a politician. There is no evidence that he had grand political ambitions - engineering was his first love and this remained so throughout his life. Also, when you're an engineer with the status and reputation of Porsche, you don't turn down the **** party if they ask for you expertise. Turning them down would have meant a ticket straight to a concentration camp or prison and you'd be accused of not aiding the German war effort. It's very simple.

Hitler's right hand man for industry and industrial projects was Albert Speer, not Porsche. Speer actually controlled Porsche and both were subject to following orders from Hitler.

Slave labor? Yes, tragic, but this happens during war. Do you really know enough about Porsche to be able to claim that he personally despised Jews and other minorities and thus didn't care if they perished in his factories? Do you? The fact of the matter is that all able-bodied men were needed for the war effort. Thus, Germany was short of labor and had to rely on women and slave labor. Slave labor was provided by the state and industries that were important to the war effort had to use them to keep the production quota up. True, many firms also saw profits in having expendable and virtually free laborers at their disposal. But was Ferdinand Porsche such a man? Everything I have read about him gave me the impression that he was an engineer, not a politician or anti-Semitic.

Och

iTrader: (3)

Well just the fact that he took advantage of cooperating with **** party and Hitler is enough reason for me to despise him. There were plenty of brilliant engineers and scientists in Germany at those times that chose not to work with the ***** and left Germany. Many of them ended up here, in the United States.

And I don't view him as a brilliant engineer either. Its one thing when you invent and develop something on your own, and then mass produce it and make it successful on your own. Its quite another thing when you steal someone else's designs and have the government supply you with money and slave labor to have it produced.

DustinV

There were many engineers and scientists who were funded by the ***** and these people cooperated because allowed them to realize their dreams. ***** Messerschmitt, the designer of the famous BF-109 fighter plane, was, according to many sources, only a member of the **** party because it allowed him to get funding and eventually orders for his products. Remember Werner von Braun? Another brilliant German rocket scientist who even was a member of the SS (for political reasons only, apparently). If you were a high-ranking member of society or scientist it was basically expected that you joined the party. I cannot stress that enough. This doesn't mean you were a ****.

You accuse the people of being ***** because they had slave labor working in their factories. Tell me, what would YOU do if you ran a factory in **** Germany and disagreed with the way these people were treated. Would you complain about it? Would you do something about it? **** Germany was a police state. People informed on each other to the Gestapo and this was widely known. It was best to shut up and keep your thoughts to yourself in those times. As cruel as it sounds, we think of our own survival first.

Most of the German scientists who left were German-Jewish scientists who were not welcome in Germany. The only reason they could even enter the United States was because they were intelligent intellectuals that might be of use to the government. True, there were many German scientists who also fled **** Germany because they disagreed with the party and thus were expelled or forced to immigrate.



Please show me the evidence that proves that F. Porsche stole a design or technology from Tatra. I'd be interested in seeing this source. Is it a Czech source? How biased is it? These are questions you need to ask yourself when examining historical data.

And by all accounts Porsche was a brilliant engineer and visionary. You should really visit the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart and learn all about this man. Naturally this information is biased towards him, but thankfully I also read about the great man from a number of sources, especially British. When it comes to historical data regarding great names in the automotive business, British sources seem the best: open minded.

pvmike1

DustinV, I see you own a Mercedes. Did you know that MB used swastikas in their advertising back in the day?

I'm not disputing that Porsche was a brilliant man. However, none of us can authoritatively speak on Ferdinand's state of mind during his time with Hitler, but we can all see that he received a personal benefit from the relationship. Where is the Porsche Museum of Tolerance, erected in guilt for their ill gotten gain? Oh yeah, it doesn't exist.