Date:         Thu, 11 Apr 1996 13:24:04 -0700
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         dlytle@as.arizona.edu (Dyer Lytle)
Subject:      strength-through-joy car


As many of you no doubt already know this, please forgive me for
repeating the obvious but I found it interesting.

I'm reading the book "Small Wonder", a history of the Volkswagen written
in the '60s.  I found it interesting that when Adolf Hitler layed the
cornerstone of the factory at (what would later be called) Wolfsberg
in ~1938, he pronounced that the new volksauto that had been designed
by Porsche would be called the KdF-wagen.  KdF is an acronym for a
german group at the time whose name translated as "strength-through-joy".
This group was supposed to keep the German people happy through various
forms of entertainment including, in Hitler's mind, the chance to own
a personal automobile.

Of course, a lot of people, including Porsche, didn't like the name and
people continued to just call it Volkswagen, but the official name at
the beginning was the strength-through-joy car instead of people's car.

I recommend this book, "Small Wonder", to anyone interested in VWs and
history.  I found it at a used book store last week for $1.  Sorry, I don't
have the book with me and can't remember the name of the author.  I'm sure
a number of people on this mailing-list can supply the author and ISBN #.

(I haven't gotten to the parts about Ben Pon and the transporter yet...)

Cheers,

 -Dyer


------------------------
Dyer Lytle              
dlytle@as.arizona.edu   
HST NICMOS Project      
Steward Observatory     
University of Arizona   
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