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Did Hitler Really Design Beetle?
Yes, and this is what a Dutch journalist and historian, Paul Schilperoord has alleged in his new book: Het Ware Verhaal van de Kever ("The True Story of the Beetle") that Ferdinand Porsche's iconic Beetle, which was officially commissioned by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, could have been copied from a design by a Jewish engineer identified as Josef Ganz.
The writer cum historian Schilperoord in 2004 found an old edition of a magazine Automobile Quarterly, that contained an article that claimed that Hitler was not the original designer instead it was designed by a Jew.
The article intrigued the historical writer in Schilperoord so much that the journalist spend five years researching, which today has become a book that unearthed the Beetle's true history - that could now challenge the Nazi version of the matter.
In this Nazi version, Hitler was honoured with the idea of a People's Car costing less than 1,000 Reichsmark and simultaneously carry up to five people across the country at speeds of up to 100 kilometers per hour.
However Schilperoord , contradicts this view and says that Ganz had outlined the Beetle concept a decade before Hitler claimed to have conjured up the idea of the then-revolutionary automobile.
"In 1929, Josef Ganz started contacting German motorcycle manufacturers for collaboration to build a
Volkswagen prototype. This resulted in a first prototype built at Ardie in 1930 and a second one completed at Adler in May 1931, which was nicknamed the Maikäfer (May-Beetle)," says Schilperoord.
Although Porsche and Hitler made no mention of Ganz's contribution, Schilperoord claims that "Hitler's Beetle, which came into production 10 years later, could only have been derived from Ganz's work, who lacked financial backing to bring the project into action.
Later Ganz was appointed editor-in-chief of a car magazine, Klein-Motor-Sport, and simultaneously took up positions as a technical consultant to both Daimler-Benz and BMW, where he "developed his first cars featuring independent suspension with them," Schilperoord.
He also claims that there are too many of Ganz's hallmarks to be in any doubt that the Beetle that was eventually mass-produced in the 1930s was derived from his original design. "Even the name Volkswagen was originally Ganz's," noted Schilperoord.
Ganz spent most of his life fighting to reclaim proprietary rights over the Volkswagen, but failed.
He escaped two assassination attempts in the 1930s and finally opted to stay in Switzerland. He died in 1967.
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