Forbidden History - What Drove Porsche: The Man Behind the Machines

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

The designer of one of the most popular car brands in history, Ferdinand Porsche, would not have seen his success without the support of Adolf Hitler. In this episode of the Forbidden History podcast we take a look at the life of the man behind the brand... Cast List: Shalina Patel: Historian Karl Ludvigsen: Author ‘Professor Porsche’s Wars’ Frank Jung: Head of Porsche Historic Archives Richard Hausmann: Volkswagen Beetle Collector Nigel Jones: Author & Historian  Guy Walters: Author & Historian  Karina Urbach: Author, ‘Go-Betweens for Hitler’ Magnus Brechtken: Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History John Bailie: Author, ‘Donington Park: The Pioneers’ Dieter Landenberger: Head of Heritage, Volkswagen  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains mature adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. The Second World War began when Adolf Hitler tried to redefine what it meant to be German. Hitler has this whole idea that everyone is going to have in the New Germany, after the war is over, everyone's going to have a house, and they're going to have a place to park their park. The man to help him realize the new Aryan dream was an unemployed engineer looking for a second chance.

Dr. Ferdinand Portia. And as a teenager, you know, you find the young Ferdinand fitting his family home with electric lighting. He certainly had something creative about him. From my mind, he was the most productive engineer in both world wars. Porsche's directive was to restore Germany's national pride and imagine the future of the victorious third right. But to do it, he'd have to betray the man who believed in him when no one else would. What they have in common is this passion for cars, but Rosenberg was now an embarrassment to Porsche. The idea was that it would be a modern technological state with a happy,

army of Germans running things with a cowed slave population of lesser races. That would have been the vision. By 1930, Germany's social fabric was starting to fray. In the unemployment lines, white-collar workers joined blue. Most producing nothing, doing nothing. These people have been through the First World War. They've been through the absolute humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles. Six million people were unemployed as a result of the Wall Street crash.

Among them was a car designer in Stuttgart, Dr. Ferdinand Porsche. Ferdinand Porsche was the Henry Ford of Middle Europe. In other words, he was the leading automobile car entrepreneur. Porsche was not someone to shrink from the more challenging aspects of the car world. world. He would say if he wants it, we can do it. That was his philosophy. By age 50, Porsche had cultivated a reputation as one of the greatest minds in the automobile industry. But now he was unemployed. As a final roll of the dice in 1931, he started a business with two men. Anton Peek was a lawyer by trade and a Nazi sympathizer. He was also

Porsche's son-in-law. The other partner was a Jewish man called Adolf Rosenberger. Adolf Rosenberger was from a Jewish assimilated family. He was a designer, a racing driver, and a terribly creative man. But the new firm was failing to weather the recession. Rosenberger left the firm, instead working on a freelance basis, selling Porsche patents abroad. On the very same day, another man came to power, promising to reverse Germany's ill fortune. Hitler is talking about the fact that we're going to create a Volkskermineshaft, a people's community. He's talking about Ein Volk. He's talking about one people, one nation. That is a huge reason why people voted for the Nazis in droves, because they've promised people two things.

They promised people Arbite, work, and they promised them breads. This was the start of Adolf Hitler's country. crusade to reimagine what it meant to be a citizen of Germany, a job for every man, a home for every family, and national pride for every worthy German. He called it his glorious third Reich. Germans didn't wait long to be told how their lives were going to change for the better. On Hitler's 12th day in office, at the opening of the Berlin Motor Show, he laid out his plan. Just as the horse and cart once burned their trails and the railroad built its required track network,

so must motorized traffic be supplied with the requisite roads. These are momentous tasks, which are also part of the program for the reconstruction of the German economy. The speech was a hit with Germany's automobile manufacturers, who themselves were equally crippled by the recession. Porsche is listening to this and thinking this is music to his ears. This is an opportunity to jumpstart that career

and maybe get that recognition that he so desperately wants. Ferdinand Portia wasted no time. Apparently undeterred by the party's fascism, he sent a telegram to Hitler. As the creator of many renowned constructions in the field of German and Austrian motor and aviation, and as a co-fighter for more than 30 years for today's success, I congratulate Your Excellency on the profound opening speech.

Portia attached a copy of his resume and expressed hope that he would gain Hitler's attention. Three months later, he was granted an audience. The meeting was to take place at the Reich Chancellery. It was Portia's chance to kiss the ring of the new Chancellor. Hitler and Portia had similarities in that they both, Both came from a very similar part of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. They spoke a similar dialect. Porsche knew that Hitler had given 500,000 Reichmarks to Mercedes to build a new race car.

Germany had lagged behind other nations on the circuit. Mercedes promised that they could reverse that fortune. But Porsche had a design of his own. He called it the P-Voggin. With a new 16-cylinder engine, the P-Voggin was designed to outpace Europe's greatest racing cars. Porsche had taken the unprecedented step of putting the engine behind the driver. It made the rear heavier, giving better traction. The P-Voggin was exactly the kind of showstopper that Hitler was looking for.

He was very interested in showing us. showing Germany as a shop window to the world. This is the new Germany. We're the leaders. We're at the top of our game. We're at the cutting edge of modern technology. We are the best. Porsche bet his reputation

that he was the man to make Germany world champions. Hitler split the money. 250,000 for Mercedes, 250,000 for Porsche. It would keep his Stuttgart company afloat a little longer. longer. For the aging engineer, the future was looking bright. Hitler's regeneration program was plunging the country further into debt. So the New Germany was presented to the people in shiny wrapping paper, with the commissioning of a new bureau in charge of raising national

morale. KDF stood for Strength Through Joy. The KDF is essentially its social policy as propaganda. So the idea is that it's almost like a reward system for workers. Workers can get subsidies on holidays. So for example, they could get a 75% discount on train tickets. They could get a 50% discount on hotels. But we're also talking about really big things like going on cruises. Everything's underpinned by propaganda. So if you are lucky enough to go on a KDF cruise,

you are going to hear Hitler's speeches on the tannoy. You are going to have to attend political lectures as well as going sightseeing. The KDF delivered a taste of a distinctly Aryan American dream. Hitler decreed that every man would have a job with purpose, his family would have a vacation hotspot to enjoy, and one day they would have their own motor car to get them there. Dr. Porsche saw himself as the man to help realize Hitler's vision. Frank Jung is head of the historic archive at the Porsche Museum in Stutche.

inside its collection are 50,000 original documents from the history of Porsche. But one item is perhaps more historically significant than any other. Yeah, this is something very special we have here at the Porsche Corporate Archive. This is the first proposal, the pitch Ferdinand Porsche wrote to the political leaders, mainly to Adolf Hitler. The proposal contained a detailed plan for a Volkswagen, a car for the people. The people's car, or small-scale car, was always in his mind. When he was opening together with his son-in-law and with Adolf Rosenberger, when they were opening the construction office in 1931,

they had a Volkswagen in their mind. Hitler had seen proposals for people's cars before, If he was going to put money into a project, it had to meet certain specifications. It needed seats for four people. The engine must be cooled by the air. It had to be fueled by Germany's plentiful diesel. And it could be converted for military purposes. Porsche has a conclusion his idea of a Volkswagen.

It should be able to drive at least 100 kilometers per hour. It should be able to climb hill. to climb hills with a percentage of 30%. It should be a closed body to carry at least four people. And it should be quite cheap. Most important to Hitler, the people's car had to be affordable to the average German worker. It would have to cost no more than 1,000 Reichmarks.

This document is actually the start of the Volkswagen because within this document the basic ideas are mentioned, and with this document he was able to convince the political leaders and Adolf Hitler, so that he later on got the contract to build the Volkswagen, to develop the Volkswagen. Hitler granted the funds to build a prototype. 200,000 Reichmarks paid in monthly installments.

Porsche stood to win the contract to build 1 million vehicles for the people of Germany. of Germany. For Porsche, this is the project he's been dreaming of. It's a chance to use his genius to make a mark in the world, and it's got the blessing of the German leader. If Porsche played his cars right, he's going to finally see his name in lights.

While the Porsche company had much to celebrate, its Jewish co-founder, Rosenberger, got some disturbing news. Rosenberger works freelance for Porsche, because he works for him abroad in France and in Britain and gets customers in contracts. But it is becoming more and more evident that Porsche finds him embarrassing because of his Jewish background.

His 10% share in the company was being bought off him. He was one of the first victims of Arianization. Arianization is a Nazi word, and that's why many historians don't want to use it. One can also say it was organized theft. The Nazis got the word Aryan from a theoretical advanced ancient civilization. They believed Germans were Aryan. People who were Jewish, Roma or Black were not.

The Aryanization of Germany began first by boycotting Jewish businesses. They do not see that Jewish people are part of what their future is. You know, they want the Aryan race, as they say, to lead on this new German empire, and they don't see that Jewish people are part of that. For companies, it meant removing the non-Aryans from their boards. Portia made a decision to protect the firm and his blossoming friendship with the Fuhrer by severing ties with the company's co-founder. But the rules of aryanization were designed to be cruel.

Part of this voluntary alienization is that when these businesses are bought, out, that they are bought out to essentially screw over the business owners as much as possible. Rosenberger was given 3,000 Reichmarks for his shares, only a fraction of their true value. The terms of Aryanization would become enshrined in law. Germany is a very bureaucratic country, and we do have contracts for everything. So they give it a sort of air of respectability. You sign contracts, and you get stuck. on your contracts and so it looks legal, but of course it was daylight robbery. Back in Stuttgart, Porsche wrestled with designing a car fit for the new master race,

with a curved body for carving through the air, low to the ground, and small enough to fit anywhere, and finished in black. Porsche created, in car form, the example for new German living. Uniform Aryan design for the Uniform Aryan family. The Third Reich is absolutely underpinned by propaganda. And really the people's car is its social policy as propaganda. Richard Hausmann is a collector of historic people's cars. The idea of the car when it was started to be developed was

to motorize Germany not only the rich people, but about the whole population. This was quite a challenging task. To satisfy Hitler's vision, it had to have space for the average Aryan nuclear family. The core is designed for five people, five adults. If you have a family with two adults and four kids, I think it would also work.

It's super comfortable. Of course, no seat belts, no headrests. That's all not necessarily at that time. But Porsche's real achievement didn't lay in any one single design choice. Hitler said you can charge anything you like for this car, Air Porsche, but it must be less than a thousand Reichmarks. And a thousand Reichmarks was about what it cost to buy a fairly decent motorcycle at the time, let alone a car.

Porsche set very high standards for his creations, which meant that his designs were often very elaborate and excessive. expensive and far more so than his bosses wanted. Porsche had to reinvent his method of making cars. No longer could he use an unlimited budget to achieve perfection. A lot of people look for the engine in the front nowadays, but this car has the engine in the back. And that was one of the design principles of this car.

And this engine fascinates me always the most. The whole goal of the car was also that it shouldn't be weight so much. be weight so much because the more it waits, the more expensive the production costs. From that point of view, it's a very compact, very cost-optimized, but also very, very reliable engine. The design was inspired by the tent poles of the Third Reich, power, prosperity, and image. Porsche's people's car was like nothing he'd built before. Adolf Hitler, now impatient to see where his money had gone.

demanded a demonstration. The demonstration took place in 1936, 15 months late. Portia had already asked for an extra 1.5 million Reichs marks just to finish the project. For the aging engineer, there were no more second chances. The presentation would be made at Hitler's mountain retreat. All the Nazi bigwigs, all the entourage is there, including Gering. A demonstration was made of the fact that you could take the body off, the civilian body, and put on a military body. The generals saw potential, but not all of Hitler's demands were met. Porsche had failed to deliver the desired diesel engine.

Instead, it ran on more volatile gasoline. But Hitler recognized that the boundaries of engineering economics had been pushed to their limits and gleefully signed off on the prototype. Hitler actually reminisced to a journalist about that day, and he said, the way these Volkswagens whizzed up the Oebel Salzburg buzzing around and overtaking big Mercedes cars, they were like bumblebees. The people's car was to be the way the Nazi citizens would travel on Germany's new sprawling autobons.

Soon the folk would learn the good news. But not everyone was invited to the new Aryan utopia. Portia's former business partner, Adolf Rosenberger, had been arrested while walking the streets of Stuttgart. He was held on the charge of race defilement. He was a bit of a ladies' man. He had an Aryan girlfriend, and they accused him of, you know, sleeping with an Aryan woman,

which, of course, was against law, the Nernberg laws from 35 onwards. In September 1935, the Nuremberg laws were enacted. They removed Jewish people's right to vote from holding office, even from flying the German flag. This essentially takes away citizenship from Jewish people and it considers them to be subjects rather than citizens. That detail means that they are not protected by the law anymore. Part of those laws is this idea of racial defilement.

So it's the idea that now if Jewish people have marriages or relations with non-Jewish people, that is punishable by imprisonment. At a time when Jewish people were disappearing, never to be seen again, Rosenberger made a desperate plea to the only person with enough influence to get him a pardon. He appealed to Portia. The response was silence. certainly distances himself entirely from Rosenberger at this point. We know that Porsche has got deep connections to the highest powers in the regime,

but he does not use those connections to do anything to help Rosenberger. After 22 days in incarceration, Rosenberger was suddenly released. An employee at the Porsche company, Rosenberger's successor, made an appeal on his behalf. It's not known if Ferdinand himself, was involved. By 1937, Hitler had transformed society within Germany, but he was about to grab the attention of the wider world. In October of 1937, Porsche's racing car came to Britain. Motor racing had been going on worldwide since the early 1900s, but it was only because of circuits like Donington that motorsport became so popular. John Bailey

has chronicled what happened when the Germans came to Donington Park Raceway. Well, 1937, the Donington Grand Prix were a completely different spectacle for the British motorsporting audience. Sixty thousand people attended at Donington Park that day. Porsche's car formed one half of the German team. Joining forces with Mercedes, they became known as the Silver Arrows. The German teams brought not only a different spectacle in racing terms, but the whole way in which they presented themselves, the way the cars were prepared, the engineering expertise that went into them, was another dimension altogether. For the past three years, the silver arrows have been dominating racing all over Germany and Italy and France.

But if you could win in Britain, then you were talking. The sound of those cars was something that the British public had never heard before. It was like a rocket ship. The Silver Arrows reached speeds that no other car could match. The cars at this point would be accelerating rapidly as they approach the apex of this, what is almost a tarmac wall. This is about a one-in-eight incline. At the top, the speeding silver arrows left the ground.

making for an iconic photograph. Germany was thought to be this nation of people who had lost the war, suffering terribly from depression and this go-stepping maniac in charge. But hang on a minute, here they are, showing the rest of the world what real engineering looked like. The silver arrows took first, second, third, fourth and fifth places. The top spot belonged to Porsche. Together, Portia and Hitler demonstrated that the Third Reich's engineers were a force to be reckoned with.

They sent a message to the rest of the world. The Germans were coming. Hitler's popularity was getting stronger by the day, and the Third Reich was getting larger. Hitler's armies rolled into Austria on roads strewn with flowers as crowds celebrated unification with Germany. Hitler was very, very popular at this stage because millions of Germans at this stage in 1938 thought that Hitler had achieved in five and a half years what the democratic governments of the Vimer Republic did not receive in 14 years at all. And in spring, 1938, the time had come to unveil the people's car to the German folk.

Porsche had achieved a lot within the automobile industry, but his name was still only known to industry insiders. What Porsche wanted was to do something great and to be recognized for it. Porsche really wanted his name immortalized. In a place just outside the town of Falaasleben, 50,000 spectators came to witness the Fuhrer, lay the foundation stone for the new people's car megafactory. At the grand ceremony, Hitler praised the Reich's engineering prowess in a speech to the crowd. What is possible in other countries is also possible in Germany. The automobile must become the means of transportation for the folk.

The job of motorizing the German people had been handed to the same bureau in charge of worker happiness. The KDF group did unbelievably reasonably price. holidays, but the key to the operation of the holidays was that people paid in advance. They had books of stamps, when they had enough stickers in the booklet, they could go on their holiday. The people's car would be sold in the same manner. Hence I believe there is only one name that can be given to this car, a name I shall give to it on this very evening. The name shall be KDF Vargan. Now apparently Ferdinand Porsche was absolutely horrified at that statement.

He didn't like KDF Vargan at all. He didn't think it's going to sell internationally with a name like that. And he had rather hoped, you know, egoist that he was, that the car might be named after him. It seemed like all this excitement, all this opportunity, after all that, his name isn't going to go down in history. Hitler left the ceremony, waving to the crowds from the passenger seat of the KDF wagon.

Portia sat in the back. A week after the ceremony, a letter was sent to Rosenberger's apartment in Paris. Due to certain aggravation in the internal situation and on higher authority, Portia was cutting all ties with Rosenberger, including his freelance work. Rosenberger packed his bags and sought to start a new life in the United States. It proved a timely escape. When Hitler marched his armies into Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany. All industry in the Third Reich turned to war production,

including the now completed KDF Vagen factory. Dieter Landenberger is the head of heritage at the modern, Volkswagen company. When the war started, this became a production site for all kind of military goods. Mainly they were producing parts for airplanes. The Juncker's factory was not very far away. So 50% of the production were airplane parts. Like in so many factories in wartime Germany,

this one would be manned by captured slaves of the Third Reich. Between 1940 and 45, more than 20,000 people had to work here against burial. Most of these people came from Eastern Europe, from Poland, many prisoners of war from the Soviet Union. Portia used prisoner labor in the First World War, and he was accustomed to that, and he made sure that they were adequately fed and housed because otherwise, they wouldn't be productive people. And in the Second World War, he did have forced labor, for sure. This factory would be run by his son-in-law, Anton Pich,

who had been a Nazi member since 1933. Anton Pich was the first one who asked Himmler for slave labor, for concentration camp inmates to work for Volkswagen, for EU's concentration camp, inmates from all over the world, all over the world from France, from the Netherlands. He just exploited and worked everyone to death. The KDF wagon was successfully converted to military purposes, becoming the Kuberwagon, a vehicle capable of transporting

up to four people over rough terrain. Two years into the war, Hitler appointed the 66-year-old Porsche to be head of the Tank Commission. His first task was to develop new tanks to traversed the muddy plains between Berlin and Moscow. This was the first such commission that had been established, and he put it Porsche in charge. And in a way, that was a sensible idea,

because Porsche was not at that time very active himself in tanks, but he had some tank experience. Porschea worked on several tank designs, including a 190-ton giant called Mouse, but none passed the testing. stage. Portia's engineering successes now seemed a long time ago. They did several approaches and developments on the tanks, but none of them were produced in mass production. Some of them were slightly too big and too expensive.

As the Germans started retreating, Porsche became less important to the ailing furor, and Ferdinand began planning his own endgame. By May 1944, the dream of a victorious Third Reich was over. Germany's tanks sank in the Soviet mud. Germans, once destined to find strength through joy, were now dying for a failed state. As German cities were turned to rubble by Allied bombing, Portia had fled Stuttgart and carried out his final duties from his Austrian retreat, with his family by his side. When Hitler shot himself in his bunker, Ferdinand Porsche was again out of work,

now 69 years old. But opportunity came knocking once more. In November 1945, you have this French army lieutenant knocking on the door, if you like, of the Porsche Piac Estate in Austria, and he issues this invitation. Please come to France and build us a people's car. So, a month later, Porsche and Piek, you know, go along to another meeting, and rather than talking about cars, they're actually arrested for war crimes.

The French authorities held Ferdinand and Anton Piz in captivity in Dijon. Porsche's assets were frozen. Bale set at $8,400, a sum he couldn't pay. Ferdinand spent 15 months under arrest. In desperation, he turned to an old colleague who'd made a new life for himself in America. For Rosenberger, it is very, very tough to start a new career to start all over again in America, even though he's still young.

But he does survive, and he builds a bit of a career again in Los Angeles. Porsche, when he is in prison, he suddenly remembers Rosenberger and suddenly ask him for money. Rosenberger helped pay Porsche's bail. In the following years, lawyers hashed out a settlement between the two former colleagues. Rosenberger continued to work in motorsports in the U.S. Ferdinand Porsche enjoyed three years of freedom before he died after a stroke in 1951. The Porsche company would go on to make luxury sports cars.

But Porsche's humble Volkswagen design survived the war and became an unlikely icon for a new subculture. When I first went to Germany as a student, all the Germans, all my contemporaries, young Germans, they all, almost without exception, drove around in VW Beatles. The beetle became an icon for the Volkswagen brand between 1945 and 2003, more than 21.5 million units were built. It became one of the most successful cars, and not only in numbers, it also became a cultural icon.

Ferdinand Porsche spent a career pushing at the boundaries of engineering. On an invitation from Adolf Hitler, he was able to glimpse at how engineering would transform the next century. To get there, he made decisions. that would forever tarnish his record. And he didn't survive to witness his name, finally up in lights. Unexplored catacombs buried beneath the city. A crumbling castle perched on a mountain peak. A top secret government bunker.

A cursed mansion cloaked in legend. I'm Sasha Auerbach. Join me in Tom Ward every Wednesday and Sunday as we reveal the mysteries and histories behind these abandoned places and ask, where did everyone go? We'll hear from Sasha, who knows the history the best. In fact, there's a very famous book by a chap named Marcus Rediker called The Many Headed Hydra, and he talks about pirate ships as an experiment in radical democracy.

And me, who knows nothing, aeronautical scientists can't quite explain it. They say, we don't actually know how it gets up there. How it stays up? You're just not good at a science. No, there are explanations? There are explanations. It's just plain physics. Brought to you by Like a Shot, makers of forbidden history.

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