Demonstration of the first model of the "People's Car" (German: Volkswagen) to Adolf Hitler.
The vehicle, the first of the "beetle" models, was presented to Hitler on April 20, 1938
[Photo source]
Kristor Lawson, who writes at the Orthosphere, sent me the video below which, in six short minutes, shows us the process of buyers entering the factory and exiting with their choice Volkswagen. The site deserves a better name than a factory: it is a modern museum of technology, where performance, production and exhibition merge.
The Volkswagen factory in southern Germany, in Dresden, is a formidable place. It is like a small town of mechanical parts, ejecting a perfect car every few seconds. As the narrator describes the place: "Paul and Briggitte...have come to the most innovative factories in the world...The only factory in the world where you can peer through glass walls and see cars being made right befor of your eyes."
The video ends at the Brandenburg Gate, with an original WW2 Beetle
Volkswagen Factory in Dresden
Picture taken in 1938 shows the first Beetles of the pre-production
series VW 38 in front of Berlin's Brandenburg Gate. [Photo source: HO/AFP]
This is the same Gate dedicated to Christian Ludwig, for whom Bach wrote the Bradenburg Concertos. Hitler runs amidst great company.
Christian Ludwig (14 March 1677 – 3 September 1734) was a Margrave [military commander] of Brandenburg and a military officer of Brandenburg-Prussia's Hohenzollern dynasty. The title "Margrave of Brandenburg" was given to princes of the Prussian Royal House and did not express a territorial or allodial status. He is best known as the recipient of Johann Sebastian Bach's Brandenburg concertos. [Source]
Bradenburg Concerto No. 3 - Allegro moderato
Volkswagen was just that, before it became a quasi-luxury car in this century - a people's car. And only twenty years ago, the beetle was a cute car that filled many a street throughout the world.
But it has a macabre history. Hitler commissioned it as his volks car, for the ordinary German:
The Volkswagen was a centerpiece of Nazism’s claims to benefit ordinary Germans. Hitler proposed to build a cheap car that almost anyone could afford. He gave it the name “KdF Wagen,” which we know as the Volkswagen. KdF was the abbreviation for “Kraft durch Freude" (Strength through Joy), a subsidiary of the Deutsche Arbeitsfront (German Labor Front), headed by Robert Ley. This chapter on the beginnings of the Volkswagen is taken from a book celebrating the achievements of “Kraft durch Freude.” As it turned out, not many people got their cars until after the war. As the chapter notes, the first deliveries were planned for early 1940, at which point the factory had been turned over to war production.The car was also formed in the shape of a helmet.
Still, no Hitler can dampen the German mind, and this little car is now fast becoming a technological masterpiece. It may even provide an avant-garde to battle off cheap (cheaper) Japanese cars, who have been very clever so far at using German and American technology to produce cars that they sell right back to the Germans and Americans.
2013 Volkswagen Beetle TDI Diesel [Review here]