@Novaload: Where Ford's angle seemed to be outright bigotry, Porsche seemed to be a naive engineer caught up in a system he neither cared for nor was particularly disgusted by. For example, he is known to have complained about working conditions in the VW wartime factory, of which he was the head for a time, but we don't know whether this was out of compassion or out of concerns for productivity.
And there was also a nasty question about whether the some children of the forced laborers at this factory were deliberately killed. He may have been too busy testing Kubelwagens and designing tank engines to notice.
He did pay for his efforts with some time in a cozy French lockup, but deft finagling by family and friends sprung him out before the ultimate vengeance could take root.
I will say this about ole Ferdinand, it is my understanding that he never did join the Nazi party, and that is quite an accomplishment when you consider the day. We like to say that we would have left Germany if faced with such a thing as the Nazi party, but remember it was a matter of incrementalism. In other words it was a situation that took years to devolve into what occurred under Hitler that I would argue started not in 1933, when he came to power, but probably started many years before. By the time Germany became a nightmare, it was nearly too late for anyone to stand a say, "this is wrong". A very few did and died, most just kept there mouths shut, for they thought it was too late, or were involved intimately with the horrible machine.
Here is good article about an everyday man named Franz Jagerstatter. He was abandoned by all except his wife, but he stood his ground and was executed by guillotine.
A majority of the population when faced with someone like Hitler will give in to save his life, rather than take a chance and be destroyed. My question to you is this, what would you do?
@Flathead Smith: I see creeping elements of this mentality in our political system here in the U.S.S.A. While some may scoff and sneer at my paranoia, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
I like to keep them in the refrigerator. Keeps the powder dry and the action quicker.
@Flathead Smith: Ferdinand may or may not have belonged to the Nazi party (I've read accounts that have him joining in 1937) but there's no doubt that he worked closely and often with Hitler personally on civilian and military designs, and went along with the use of slave labor in his industrial plants. The guy was no saint-not by any stretch of the imagination, whether or not he officially belonged to the party or not. Others in Germany (including non-Jews) saw the upcoming rise of the military dictatorship and fought against it-Porsche was very much not one of those people, and isn't really to be congratulated for anything from a humanitarian, or courage in the face of adversity, basis.
@powermatic: This is true, and by working closely with Hitler he helped to further the Nazi party more than many. I’m sure if you asked him why he did, his excuse would not have been much different than the general population. In fact, some of the original concept drawings of the VW Beetle came from ole Adolph himself, which he probably copied, see my next posting.
Something kind of interesting about the Volkswagen is that there is good evidence that the idea of the car, and even the Volkswagen name, probably came from a man named Josef Ganz, a Jew. This car was first shown at a car show in 1933, at which Hitler was present. Ganz was arrested within the year and charged with blackmail, by the Gestapo, for attempting to protect his patent rights.
Wonder if there is to be a second book by Ludvigsen covering Porsche's later career? If so, let's hope it's honest about his relationships with the Nazis. If there is no second book, then there are too many questions left unanswered.
In 1932, Porsche visited the USSR and the Soviets offered him a high ministry position with extremely generous perks and basically a blank check for vehicle development. Porsche turned it down, but what if it was Stalin rather than Hitler who sponsored and pushed the Volkswagen?
@tonyola: Bereft of their bugs and microbuses, what would hippies and impoverished university types have driven? Though slow to recognize a market, with markedly less competition and more incentive before the Malaise, the American auto industry might have taken a very different path. And without the 911, what target would every other manufacturer gun for while simultaneously deriding its layout? What car would we long for while mocking its demographic? There are many that fit the mold, but none with the longevity. The NSX still would have happened, British Leyland would have died regardless, leaving, in my mind, only Alfa Romeo with the potential to bridge the MGs and the Maseratis.
@skitter: The USSR was never really big on personal transportation for its citizens - don't want the masses scooting around all over the place unsupervised, you know. A People's Car for the Soviet people probably wouldn't have gotten very far. For export, however, it might have been a completely different story. The USSR was always looking for a way to get hard western currency, and flooding Europe with cheap People's Cars subsidized by the State might have been an effective means to get that currency. The USSR was still seemingly relatively benign to many people in the west until the late 1930s, and even afterwards, forced to choose between supporting the Nazis and the Soviets, many would have gone with the latter. In addition, Porsche's talent would have greatly benefited the Soviet war machine during WWII.
@tonyola: Very true, but the US markets still would have been fundamentally altered. American beliefs were not so much free market or capitalist, but anti-USSR. Trading with 'the communists' was out of the question.
It does seem weird that they would leave out the Nazi years, not because of the "zomg he worked for the Nazis" thing (since, as I understand, what he did for them was no different than what Chevy, Ford, et al did for the US war effort), but because it's another -- and very different -- phase of engineering for a very gifted engineer. Maybe he had things to say about the Fuhrer, but what about technical feats he might have pulled off for the war machine?
@gallahad: Porsche's relationship with the Nazi regime was a bit closer than that of American industry to the FDR administration and the war effort.
To begin with, Porsche worked with Hitler as early as 1934, long before the war, when the engineer took the Nazi leader's commission to design the KDF-Wagen, what became known as the VW Beetle. The KDF program, ostensibly to provide German workers with automobiles, was really a Nazi scam, and few if any workers got the cars they'd paid for with paycheck deductions. I don't know exactly when Dr. Porsche got the idea that the VW platform would make a good utility vehicle for the Wehrmacht, but before many KDFWagens could be built, the factory was changed over to produce the Jeep-like Kubelwagen. During the war, Porsche designed other weapons, including the main battle tanks for the German army.
Yes, Detroit was the arsenal of democracy and Chrysler built tanks, Ford built bombers (and jeeps), and GM ended up building the Saturn V if I'm not mistaken. But Dr. Porsche seemed a bit too eager to work with the Nazis for my tastes. YMMV
Ironically, just as Ludvigsen's book on Dr. Porsche is released, so is Dutch engineer Paul Schilperoord's work Het Ware Verhaal van de Kever: hoe Hitler het ontwerp van een Joods genie confisqueerde, The True Story of the Beetle: how Hitler confiscated the design of a Jewish genius, about Josef Ganz, whose design for the Volkswagen may have been stolen by Hitler and used by Porsche.
I want something better. I want a Singer 1500. When only the best will do.
I love those little thumbnail cartoons in the Vauxhall ad: It has a big nose to better smash unruly boys; contains both a speedometer AND a fuel gauge; the rear window is included, even though they couldn't be bothered to build the middle of the back seat.
But I would totally rock that Daimler, if it didn't have a slushbox. Why, it's practically the practical man's Rolls Royce!
@Van Sarockin, rogue trebuchet: What of contrast of expectations. Think of what US luxury car ads were like in the late '50s - prose consisting of breathless flights of ecstatic fancy, glorious full color, elegant women in gowns and fur, grand scenery or mountains of drapes and chandeliers. Now look at this dull, dry Daimler ad - it gives this admittedly nice car all the sex appeal and charisma of an adding machine.
'It efficiently changes gear, up or down, always at the right time, and always more quickly, more smoothly, than one could do it oneself'.
They were saying that even before my parents were born. Valentino Balboni put it well when he said 'You have to become one piece only.' With a manual transmission, you are an integral piece of the machine, stirring coals deep in the heart of the fire, while computer controls have very little need of you being there, and would eliminate you entirely if they could. Silicon transistors do not require and do not respond to any change of force or delicacy, reason or subtlety; they are creatures of absolutes. And while their absolutes and boundaries have been made smaller, they have become far greater in number, their scope more expansive, their control more complete, your input less relevant. You are placed ever further from the nerve center of the machine, replaced by digital senses. The tide has turned: destroyers of machinery gave Luddites their name, but now it is the machines, electrified and calculating, that destroy the human.
@Murilee Martin: I'm staring at a picture I took of UDmans Corvair that's about to be turned into a stencil. I could draw or paint in a suitable background to create a similar style. I'll get right on it.
Andy Wallwhore- I know, everybody's funny, ...now you kinda funny too. was starred
Andy Wallwhore- I know, everybody's funny, ...now you kinda funny too. was unstarred
@Matt2000 - British Leyland 4WD FTW!: i wonder if they mean hens as lady chickens, or just ladies. The former makes more sense, but the latter might suggest that women like it too, or something to that effect.
@Rockford_Brodie:
This is a British car company, so clearly they're referring to some strange kind of traditional Druid witchcraft alchemy unfamiliar to us Americans.... you know, you bring home some hay today, shape a few handfuls of strands of it into an effigy of a chicken, whisper some incantations under the light of a full moon, burn the straw chicken effigy; then mysteriously, the next morning you have a yardful of chickens.
Forget Corvettes. Porsches, and Ferraris. You're not going to win over the really cultured hot babes unless you drive a 1954 Wolseley. Never mind that it's built on a stretched Morris Minor platform and only might manage 75 mph with a strong tailwind. Sex appeal is more important than these trivial concerns, right?
10/04/09
And speaking of Nazis, and cars, Henry Ford, anyone?
10/05/09
And there was also a nasty question about whether the some children of the forced laborers at this factory were deliberately killed. He may have been too busy testing Kubelwagens and designing tank engines to notice.
He did pay for his efforts with some time in a cozy French lockup, but deft finagling by family and friends sprung him out before the ultimate vengeance could take root.
10/04/09
Here is good article about an everyday man named Franz Jagerstatter. He was abandoned by all except his wife, but he stood his ground and was executed by guillotine.
[en.wikipedia.org]
[www.catholicpeacefellowship.org]
A majority of the population when faced with someone like Hitler will give in to save his life, rather than take a chance and be destroyed. My question to you is this, what would you do?
10/04/09
I like to keep them in the refrigerator. Keeps the powder dry and the action quicker.
10/04/09
10/05/09
@powermatic: This is true, and by working closely with Hitler he helped to further the Nazi party more than many. I’m sure if you asked him why he did, his excuse would not have been much different than the general population. In fact, some of the original concept drawings of the VW Beetle came from ole Adolph himself, which he probably copied, see my next posting.
10/05/09
Something kind of interesting about the Volkswagen is that there is good evidence that the idea of the car, and even the Volkswagen name, probably came from a man named Josef Ganz, a Jew. This car was first shown at a car show in 1933, at which Hitler was present. Ganz was arrested within the year and charged with blackmail, by the Gestapo, for attempting to protect his patent rights.
10/04/09
In 1932, Porsche visited the USSR and the Soviets offered him a high ministry position with extremely generous perks and basically a blank check for vehicle development. Porsche turned it down, but what if it was Stalin rather than Hitler who sponsored and pushed the Volkswagen?
10/04/09
10/04/09
10/04/09
10/04/09
10/04/09
10/04/09
To begin with, Porsche worked with Hitler as early as 1934, long before the war, when the engineer took the Nazi leader's commission to design the KDF-Wagen, what became known as the VW Beetle. The KDF program, ostensibly to provide German workers with automobiles, was really a Nazi scam, and few if any workers got the cars they'd paid for with paycheck deductions. I don't know exactly when Dr. Porsche got the idea that the VW platform would make a good utility vehicle for the Wehrmacht, but before many KDFWagens could be built, the factory was changed over to produce the Jeep-like Kubelwagen. During the war, Porsche designed other weapons, including the main battle tanks for the German army.
Yes, Detroit was the arsenal of democracy and Chrysler built tanks, Ford built bombers (and jeeps), and GM ended up building the Saturn V if I'm not mistaken. But Dr. Porsche seemed a bit too eager to work with the Nazis for my tastes. YMMV
Ironically, just as Ludvigsen's book on Dr. Porsche is released, so is Dutch engineer Paul Schilperoord's work Het Ware Verhaal van de Kever: hoe Hitler het ontwerp van een Joods genie confisqueerde, The True Story of the Beetle: how Hitler confiscated the design of a Jewish genius, about Josef Ganz, whose design for the Volkswagen may have been stolen by Hitler and used by Porsche.
[www.ganz-volkswagen.org]
Here's the 1934 Standard Superior, based on Ganz' design.
10/05/09
08/09/09
I love those little thumbnail cartoons in the Vauxhall ad: It has a big nose to better smash unruly boys; contains both a speedometer AND a fuel gauge; the rear window is included, even though they couldn't be bothered to build the middle of the back seat.
But I would totally rock that Daimler, if it didn't have a slushbox. Why, it's practically the practical man's Rolls Royce!
08/09/09
08/08/09
They were saying that even before my parents were born. Valentino Balboni put it well when he said 'You have to become one piece only.' With a manual transmission, you are an integral piece of the machine, stirring coals deep in the heart of the fire, while computer controls have very little need of you being there, and would eliminate you entirely if they could. Silicon transistors do not require and do not respond to any change of force or delicacy, reason or subtlety; they are creatures of absolutes. And while their absolutes and boundaries have been made smaller, they have become far greater in number, their scope more expansive, their control more complete, your input less relevant. You are placed ever further from the nerve center of the machine, replaced by digital senses. The tide has turned: destroyers of machinery gave Luddites their name, but now it is the machines, electrified and calculating, that destroy the human.
08/08/09
08/08/09
08/08/09
08/09/09
08/08/09
Not sure it's technically post-war, but have to have a Bently
08/08/09
08/08/09
@Murilee Martin: There is one with the guy running from a shiny side up Gremlin, but I agree with your sentiment.
08/08/09
08/08/09
08/08/09
08/08/09
08/08/09
This is a British car company, so clearly they're referring to some strange kind of traditional Druid witchcraft alchemy unfamiliar to us Americans.... you know, you bring home some hay today, shape a few handfuls of strands of it into an effigy of a chicken, whisper some incantations under the light of a full moon, burn the straw chicken effigy; then mysteriously, the next morning you have a yardful of chickens.
08/10/09
08/08/09
Forget Corvettes. Porsches, and Ferraris. You're not going to win over the really cultured hot babes unless you drive a 1954 Wolseley. Never mind that it's built on a stretched Morris Minor platform and only might manage 75 mph with a strong tailwind. Sex appeal is more important than these trivial concerns, right?
07/14/09
Round and round
Round and round
The money at Tesla goes round and round
Some goes in Elon's pocket.
07/14/09
07/14/09
It's just like Hearts--pass your trash.
07/14/09
07/14/09
One or more formulas contain a circular reference and may not calculate correctly.
Opening Help.
07/14/09
@Ash78: Here's the 'circular reference' you're looking for, Ash.
07/14/09