"The People's Car"

 

In April 1934, Adolf Hitler gave the order to Ferdinand Porsche to develop a Volkswagen (literally, "people's car" in German,The epithet Volks- literally, "people's-" had been applied to other Nazi-sponsored consumer goods such as the Volksempfänger ("people's radio").

In May 1934, at a meeting at Berlin’s Kaiserhof Hotel, Chancellor Hitler insisted on a basic vehicle that could transport two adults and three children at 100 km/h (62 mph) while not using more than 7 litres of fuel per 100 km (32 mpg US/39 mpg UK). The engine had to be powerful for sustained cruising on Germany’s new Autobahnen. Everything had to be designed to ensure parts could be quickly and inexpensively exchanged. The engine had to be air-cooled because, as Hitler explained, not every country doctor had his own garage (ethylene glycol antifreeze was only just beginning to be used in high-performance liquid-cooled aircraft engines. In general, radiators filled with water would freeze unless the vehicle was kept in a heated building overnight or drained and refilled each morning).

The "People's Car" would be available to citizens of Nazi Germany through a savings scheme.

On 26 May 1938, Hitler laid the cornerstone for the Volkswagen factory in Fallersleben He gave a speech, in which he named the car Kraft-durch-Freude-Wagen ("Strength Through Joy Car", The name refers to Kraft durch Freude ('Strength Through Joy'), the official leisure organization of Nazi Germany. The model village of Stadt des KdF-Wagens was created near Fallersleben in Lower Saxony in 1938 for the benefit of the workers at the newly built factory.

The factory had only produced a handful of cars by the start of the war in 1939; the first volume-produced versions of the car's chassis were military vehicles, the Type 82 Kübelwagen (approximately 52,000 built) and the amphibious Type 166 Schwimmwagen (about 14,000 built).

The first Beetles were produced on a small scale in 1941

Text from Wikipedia.