KdF car

Porsche Type 60 from 1936 - prototype V3 of the KdF car. Reconstruction in the ZeitHaus of the Autostadt Wolfsburg .

“Recreation on the banks of the river” around 1939 - family with KdF car and portable tube receiver in front of the steamship Fürst O. Bismarck

KdF car on the Autobahn near Lehnin, January 1943

The KdF-Wagen planned as Volkswagen in the literal sense of the word  - according to the spelling at the time: KdF.-Wagen  - was one of the most important projects of the Nazi organization “ Kraft durch Freude ” (KdF). The automobile should be affordable for everyone at 990  Reichsmarks . Ferdinand Porsche is considered to be the originator of the VW Beetle forerunner . Its design was largely based on the drafts of the Tatra V 570 designed by Hans Ledwinka and the Austrian car designer Béla Barényi .

Project planning

As part of a widespread advertising campaign by the Nazi organization KdF, the purchase of the Volkswagen was propagated: "You have to save five marks a week - you want to drive in your own car." Hundreds of thousands had already signed a savings contract before the foundation stone for the KdF- Plant was laid. At the time, Germany was underpowered by European standards. In 1930 there were only about half a million registered motor vehicles. The empire ranked well behind France or Great Britain, where more than 1.5 million cars were already rolling on the streets. In the USA, mass motorization had long since started with a good 26 million vehicles. Shortly after taking power , Hitler announced the ambitious goal: top speed 100 km / h, space for four people, cheap to buy and economical in consumption - this is how the “Volkswagen” should be made. Although he did not have a driver's license himself, he knew about the fascination of the car and used it for his propaganda purposes. The Nazi mass organization KdF was in charge of this large-scale project: it was supposed to organize and monitor the leisure time of the German “Volksgenossen” and to win it over to the regime with seemingly harmless amusements. She organized vacation trips and hiking trips, held bowling tournaments and sewing courses. In 1938 Robert Ley proclaimed: “In 10 years every working German will have a Volkswagen!” However, at the end of the 1930s, gasoline prices in Germany were twice as high as in the USA at 39 pfennigs per liter due to high taxation. In the Nazi regime, petrol was the fuel for the military, not for masses of private drivers. A real will for private automobility is questionable. The Nazi leadership saw a propaganda benefit for their system; Previously, driving a car was largely the privilege of the upper class and this mostly in connection with a chauffeur , but now dreams of mobile pleasure also seemed to come true for many Germans of the lower classes. What particularly impressed Hitler about the mass-produced car was the fact that it could easily be converted from a civilian to a military one.

Savings system (Volkswagen savings)

On August 1, 1938, Robert Ley , Reichsleiter of the NSDAP and head of the Unified Association of the German Labor Front , announced a savings system in Leverkusen that was supposed to enable the purchase of the "KdF-Wagens" solely through this product pre-financing. The car in the "deep gray-blue" color was to cost 990 Reichsmarks; a convertible sedan ("inner handlebar with folding roof") was offered for an extra charge of RM 60.

The prospective buyer had to purchase savings stamps worth at least five Reichsmarks every week from a DAF or KdF office, the Bank der Deutsche Arbeit or the Commerzbank . Savings cards were issued which were initially yellow (with red stamps) and from the end of 1941 blue (with green stamps). The “KdF savers” also received a prospectus. After saving RM 750.00 (corresponding to three savings cards), the saver was assigned an order number which should determine the order of delivery. The weekly minimum savings payments (if necessary after delivery as an installment) had to be continued: In addition to the remaining amount, 60 RM transport costs and 200 RM for two-year liability and partially comprehensive insurance had to be paid. Production was to start after the plant was completed in August 1940.

A withdrawal from the contract or a transfer was not planned - except in the event of inheritance. This provision was later relaxed, but upon termination “a fee of 20% was withheld from the contributions paid”. "For reasons of further technical development and the cheaper KdF. = Car, there was no interest on the savings amounts".

Savers and savings

The following table shows key data on savers and the accumulated credit (excluding interest), which should have reached a level of 289 million RM for December 1945 . The bank of Deutsche Arbeit earned 3% interest on the balance. By December 31, 1944, nearly RM 23 million in interest had accrued.

time	Number of savers	Credit
December 1938	169,741	022 million RM
December 1939	272.397	136 million RM
December 1940	273.713	170 million RM
December 1941	305,000	201 million RM
December 1942	325,444	234 million RM
1943	(August =) 331,628	258 million RM (Dec.)
1944	(October =) 336,638	268 million RM (Dec.)

The later so-called Volkswagensparen, like the Iron Savings or the Bausparen during the National Socialist era, can serve as an indication of the population's fluctuating confidence in victory. A more precise breakdown of the numbers suggests that confidence in the leadership or confidence in a victorious end to the war collapsed by more than 75 percent in the first year of the war and did not recover after moving into Paris. From the beginning of the war the potential buyers were therefore increasingly less willing to give the National Socialist leadership a material leap of faith.

The savings system is seen as a "cheap and effective financing instrument" for the sale of future production, which also served currency and price stability by absorbing superfluous purchasing power. Hans Mommsen attaches less importance to the point of view of the absorption of purchasing power. Rather, the original motive of the savings system is the need to pre-finance production without risk. In fact, the credit as well as the interest remained in trust with the Central Financial Office of the DAF and was not used to build a plant or to reduce the credits for armaments production.

The KdF-Wagen-Saving had been propagated under the motto of enabling the workers to buy a Volkswagen. This turned out to be fiction. The great majority of savers as potential buyers came from the middle class and had monthly incomes of 300 to 360 RM, while the average wage of an industrial worker was only a little more than a third of that. Mommsen comes to the conclusion that the continuous financing of production should have collapsed after a start-up period because it operated at prices that were below the prime costs. Even the set price is unaffordable for the broad masses because of the operating and maintenance costs. Only a substantial improvement in real incomes would have avoided a fiasco; it was dubbed as a result of the production change in World War II.

production

The foundation stone of the Volkswagen factory was laid near Fallersleben on May 26, 1938, and shortly afterwards, on July 1, 1938, a new town called Stadt des KdF-Wagen bei Fallersleben - later Wolfsburg - was founded.

At the beginning of the Second World War , the production of the KdF car as a civilian car was replaced by armaments such as the " Kübelwagen " type 82 , the "Kommandeurwagen" type 87 with all-wheel drive or the "Schwimmwagen" type 166 , all of which are based on the KdF car based, deferred. Only four copies of the commander's car were produced in 1940. It had a four - cylinder boxer engine with a displacement of 1131 cc and 24.5 hp. With a width of 1620 mm, it was 100 mm wider than the normal VW. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was on the road in Africa in one of these cars . One example is in the Porsche Museum Helmut Pfeifhofer in Gmünd in Carinthia .

From August 1941 until the end of the war, around 51,000 Kübelwagen and 14,000 floating cars left the plant. In addition, it manufactured parts for aircraft and the " retribution weapon " V1 . None of the “KdF savers” received a private vehicle for their saved credit; the 630 civilian cars built were handed over to the German Africa Corps , the Air Force and civil services, or after the end of the war they were drafted by the British occupying forces.

On July 15, 1945, the town of the KdF-Wagen near Fallersleben was renamed Wolfsburg and the Volkswagen factory began (initially under the direction of the British occupying forces) with the series production of the KdF-Wagen, now known as Volkswagen , later the VW Beetle .

Compensation for savers

After the war, the rights certificates worth over 280 million Reichsmarks , which had been acquired by around 340,000 people, lost their value.

From 1948 onwards, some savers tried to enforce their claims by legal means. On October 7, 1948, on the initiative of Karl Stolz, the “Aid Association of Former Volkswagen Savers” was founded in Niedermarsberg . The association, based in Erlinghausen , had 40,000 members.

However, since the Volkswagenwerk never got hold of the funds that were posted to a blocked account at the Bank of Deutsche Arbeit, the processes ended in 1961 with the exclusion of any legal claim with the Volkswagenwerk AG's offer to the "KdF savers" a discount of up to 600  DM (equivalent to 1,360 EUR today  ) when buying a vehicle, which was just under a sixth of the new price. Anyone who did not want to or could not buy a new car received up to 100 DM. By the end of 1970, the claims of a total of 120,573 applicants had been settled: a cash compensation for 67,164 savers with a total volume of 6,276,175 DM as well as a purchase price discount, which 63,409 Volkswagen savers took advantage of.

Picture gallery

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  The “Type 87” commander's car with all-wheel drive for the Wehrmacht, manufactured from 1942 onwards, was based on the KdF car.

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  Rear view prototype

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  Commander's car VW Type 87 all-wheel drive

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  DAF exhibition Healthy Living, Happy Work , Berlin 1938

literature

• The KDF-car A to Z . A manual from the KdF car. 1st edition, reprint of the original edition Breidenstein, Frankfurt am Main 1941, Delius Klasing, Bielefeld 2006, ISBN 978-3-7688-1831-5 .
• Paul Schilperoord: The True Story of the VW Beetle . How the Nazis Josef Ganz stole the VW patents (original title (Dutch): Het ware verhaal van de Kever, 2009, Veen Magazines), Orell Füssli , Zurich 2011, ISBN 978-3-7193-1565-8 .
• Horst Mönnich: THE AUTOSTADT. Volkswagen novel . Completely revised new edition, Mercurius-Verlag, Munich 2011. ISBN 978-3-939569-05-3 .
• Hans Mommsen, Manfred Grieger: The Volkswagen factory and its workers in the Third Reich. 3rd edition Düsseldorf 1997, ISBN 3-430-16785-X , pp. 177-202.
• Hartmut Tschersich: The savings system for the KdF car and the Volkswagen savings process. (Master's thesis) Hamburg 1987.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Probably a propaganda recording before the start of the war in 1939, as the vehicle does not have a "red triangle" on the Stuttgart license plate (driving license during the war)
2. ↑ Béla Barényi was the spiritual father of the VW Beetle. In: Handelsblatt , March 1, 2007.
3. ↑ Died - Béla Barényi, 90 . In: Der Spiegel . No. 24 , 1997 ( online - June 9, 1997 ). - In the course of an application in 1932, Barényi proposed a deformable safety steering column, but a rigid tube was implemented.
4. ↑ Automobile: Großer Bestohlener spiegel.de, September 5, 1994, accessed January 29, 2020. - "In 1925, the 18-year-old young designer [Béla Barényi] drew his first plans for automobiles in Vienna, including an" upcoming Volkswagen "with an air-cooled four-cylinder Boxer engine in the rear and the gearbox in front of the rear axle. " In 1932 he applied to Porsche with the plans.
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Malte Krebs: 1938: The Nazis build a car factory. The foundation of the Volkswagen factory In: ndr.de , May 24, 2013, accessed on December 12, 2017.
6. ↑ Michael Wildt: "Volksgemeinschaft" In: bpb.de , May 24, 2012, accessed on December 12, 2017.
7. ↑ Leaflet on the application for a “KdF.” = Wagen-Sparkarte, item 7
8. ↑ Leaflet on the application for issuing a "KdF." = Wagen-Sparkarte, item 2
9. ↑ KdF-Wagen savings cards
10. ↑ Leaflet on the application for a “KdF.” = Wagen-Sparkarte, item 8
11. ↑ Figures according to Hartmut Tschersich: The savings system for the KdF car and the Volkswagen savings process. (Master's thesis) Hamburg 1987, pp. 60/62
12. ↑ so the verdict with Philipp Kratz: Saving for the little luck. In: Götz Aly: People's Voice - Skepticism and Confidence in Leaders in National Socialism. Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 978-3-596-16881-1 , p. 72.
13. ↑ Hartmut Tschersich: The savings system for the KdF car and the Volkswagen savings process. Hamburg 1987, p. 58.
14. ↑ ^{a b} Hans Mommsen, Manfred Grieger: The Volkswagen factory and its workers in the Third Reich. 3rd edition Düsseldorf 1997, ISBN 3-430-16785-X , p. 198.
15. ↑ Hans Mommsen, Manfred Grieger: The Volkswagen factory and its workers in the Third Reich. 3rd edition Düsseldorf 1997, ISBN 3-430-16785-X , p. 202.
16. ↑ Walter Krämer, Götz Trenkler and Denis Krämer: The new Lexicon of popular errors , Frankfurt am Main, Eichborn, 1998, p. 365.
17. ^ City of Wolfsburg - City Chronicle In: wolfsburg.de , accessed on December 12, 2017.
18. ↑ Hans Mommsen , Manfred Grieger : The Volkswagen factory and its workers in the Third Reich. ECON, Düsseldorf 1996, ISBN 3-430-16785-X , p. 1032, table 11.
19. ↑ https://www.marsberger-geschichten.de/vw-sparer-erhalten-unterstuetzung-aus-erlinghausen-marsbergs-fundstueck-des-monats-mai-2014-sind-die-unterlagen-eines-40-000-lösungen -strong-club /
20. ↑ VW-SAVERS: Not without pride . In: Der Spiegel . No. 25 , 1963 ( online ).
21. ↑ Hartmut Tschersich: The savings system for the KdF car and the Volkswagen savings process. (Master's thesis) Hamburg 1987, p. 100.
22. ^ Rüdiger Strempel: Beetle lawsuits: Small savers against VW - a litigation marathon. In: Spiegel Online . May 1, 2018, accessed June 9, 2018 .