March Madness - Cars

1931-1945 Volkswagen Beetle

The 1931-1945 Volkswagen Beetle represented the first generation of the enduring little car whose history is rife with irony, intrigue, and surprise.



Interrupted by World War II, the 1931-1945 Volkswagen Beetle designs never saw high-volume commercial production. But they did lead directly to the reliable, low-cost cars that one day would ply roads the world over. This article tells the story of the 1931-1945 Volkswagen Beetle.

The Model T Ford was the first "people's car," but a brilliant engineer named Ferdinand Porsche dreamed of one for the German people. So did Adolf Hitler, who saw a Volkswagen as a way to secure himself as Germany's absolute ruler.



With Der Fuhrer's patronage, Porsche designed a simple yet sophisticated machine with a distinctive beetle-like shape. Porsche's design was heavily influenced by other European designs of small cars. But just as production got rolling, Hitler began World War II and the little car's future was very much in doubt.


Of the many ironies surrounding the Volkswagen Beetle, perhaps the greatest is that such a friendly little car of near universal appeal should be born during Germany's hideous Third Reich. The embryonic version of the car, the 1931-1933 Volkswagen Beetle, sprang as much from the fearsome 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 elected German chancellor in 1933. With the vast majority of his countrymen still demoralized by World War I and suffering anew in the Great Depression, Hitler and his National Socialist Party viewed a revived economy and increased consumerism as ways to win support for the military adventurism and rank genocide they had long sought. So it was that Hitler began to champion a small, affordable "people's car" -- a Volkswagen.
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