The first V-3s that would attack London began to be built on bunkers in the Pas-de-Calais region of northern France but were rendered unusable by Allied bombing before their completion. Two similar weapons were used to bomb Luxembourg from December 1944 until February 1945. There were other proposals to deploy batteries to bomb London, Paris, Antwerp and other cities, but they were not implemented due to the poor condition of the German rail network and the lack of ammunition. Disassembled gun tubes, spare parts and ammunition that remained after the end of the war were later captured by the US Army and discarded in 1948.
27. Volksempfänger
Volksempfänger (“Receiver of the People”) were some models of radio receiver developed by engineer Otto Griessing, following the request of Nazi Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels. The goal of the Volksempfänger program was to create a method of direct contact between the Nazi government and the people, because Joseph Goebbels realized the radio’s great propaganda potential.
Goebbels’ goal was that every German house could have a Volksempfänger, so the initial challenge was to make a cheap device. As consequence of the low cost, it generally did not have shortwave bands and did not follow the common practice at the time of marking the approximate dial positions of major European stations in line with them. Only German and Austrian stations were marked. Sensitivity was limited to reduce further production costs, as long as the device received the Deutschlandsender and the Reichssender, public national networks of regional radio and television active from 1925 to 1945, used to run Nazi propaganda.
During the war years, listening to foreign stations became a crime in Nazi Germany, while in some occupied territories it was strictly forbidden to listen to any radio station. The penalties ranged from fines and confiscation of radios to, especially at the end of the war, sentencing to a concentration camp or the death penalty. Even with the risk, clandestine transmission and listening was widespread in many Nazi-occupied countries and Germany itself.
The Volksempfänger, like the entire Nazi propaganda strategy, was very effective as a tool for spreading ideas and social mobilization. Hitler’s Armaments and War Production architect and minister, Albert Speer, said in his final speech at the Nuremberg trials:
“Hitler’s dictatorship differed in a fundamental way from all its predecessors in history. This was the first dictatorship in the present period of modern technical development, a dictatorship that made full use of all technical means to dominate its own country. Through technical devices such as the radio and the speaker, 80 million people were deprived of independent thinking. It was thus possible to submit them to the will of a man…”.
28. Volkswagen
Volkswagen (“Car of the People”) is a German carmaker founded as Gesellschaft Zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen Volkswagen, GmbH (“Society for the Production of the German Popular Automobile”) on May 28 th, 1937 by the German Labor Front, a Nazi labor union, based in Wolfsburg.
Volkswagen was created as part of a Nazi government plan to industrialize the country, creating jobs for a devastated Germany after losing World War I. Adolf Hitler was a declared devotee of Henry Ford’s work, and he saw in his automobile production line the key to producing cheaper cars that could be bought by all German families. At that time only 1 in 50 Germans owned a car, which was considered a luxury good. Another point of interest in the creation of Volkswagen was to pass on a modern country image to the world and use the history of industry creation to strengthen Nazi propaganda. To this end, the government has even created a new city to be the headquarters of Volkswagen, initially named Stadt des KdF-Wagen, now Wofsburg.
During the Nazi government Hitler visited the Volkswagen plant several times and was directly active during the development and production of the automaker first model in line, the Volkswagen 1 or KdF, known in the United States as Beetle.
German historians have estimated that 80% of Volkswagen’s workforce in the war years was of slaves, much of it practiced in many Nazi Germany production plants. Many of the slaves would have been killed by exhaustion or as punishment for low production.
Following the defeat of Germany between 1945 and 1948, the control of the automaker went to the hands of British army war officer, Major Ivan Hirst. Hirst, who was also an engineer, believed that the survival of German industry was vital to rebuilding the country and averting a new war. He was fully committed to the recovery of Volkswagen, managing to close contracts with the British government, rebuilding the factory, recreating manufacturing processes and developing new projects. In 1949 Major Hirst left the company - now remodeled as a fund controlled by the West German government and the Lower Saxony State government. Volkswagen now belongs to the German people, which is still a shareholder of the company.
29. Volkswagen 1 or KdF
The Volkswagen 1 or KdF, was the first car produced by the German automaker Volkswagen. Designed by Ferdinand Porsche during the 1930s, it was created to fulfill a direct request from the Führer Adolf Hitler. In the United States, he is known as Beetle.
The story of the creation of the KdF is directly linked to the Volkswagen creation project, as the automaker was created to specifically produce the “German’s car of the people”. Adolf Hitler had the ambitious plan to rapidly industrialize Germany and idealized the design of a popular car as a great opportunity. At the time, less than 1 million cars were driving around the German country, while in the United States, the number of cars circulating was an incredible 25 million units.
The project leader was Ferdinand Porsche, who was well known for creating fast and powerful car models. Porsche, who had already been working on a cheaper car project, received clear and direct instructions from Hitler: the new car should be able to carry two adults and three children, reach 100 km/h (62 mph), be economical and cost-effective, so every German family could have one.
Porsche took some ideas already tested on other models he designed, made some new ones and came to a car with an air-cooled rear engine, torsion bar suspension, rounded front hood for better aerodynamics and a “beetle” shape. During this period, the Nazi government invested public money in the construction of a new factory and sponsored the entire project in order to reduce costs.
The car of the German people was born, the KdF Wagen. KdF is an acronym for Kraft durch Freude (Power for Joy), a policy that preached increase of productivity, patriotism, and spreading the image of a modern German people. With the Nazi government-sponsored advertisements that read “Mark Fünf die Woche musst du sparen, willst du imigen Wagen fahren” (“Five marks a week you should set aside, if you want your own car”), KdF was a success, selling over 300.000 units before it was officially launched, in 1940.