Thinking Small (38 page)

The automobile was very much tied to revolutions in thought. In fact, it had been a revolution in education that had allowed the first cars to be created: Karl Benz and Gottfried Daimler, the men who got the first patents for the modern automobile and who later created some of the world’s first auto companies, were part of the “revolution of thought” in the mid-1800s. At that time, before there was a united Germany, people experienced a new way of
approaching education and the first Open University was created. It was a school open to all classes and all people, not just the elite, and it was where Daimler got his technical education, the education that led him toward the innovations he brought to the motor car. Porsche also learned much from his small technical college, but even more from Ginzkey and from auto magazines, and from the bubbling environment of fin-de-siècle Vienna. Learning was the essential ingredient
for innovation, and it required curiosity, the feeling that comes from being free to have questions and seek out answers. Learning could come from many places, but however it came, it always required access. And access—whether to books or radios, schools or debates—was something Stalin wanted to deny the majority of his people.
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If learning requires being open to new perspectives, then perhaps being free is, at heart, a matter of learning how to think and learning to both question and respect what others have thought before you. Stalin did not want that kind of learning in his country. In his own oft-repeated words: “Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.” In another famous quote, he spoke of his people, saying: “We
don’t let them have guns. Why would we let them have ideas?” He knew very well that with learning comes questioning, and with questioning comes the threat that people will demand a change. Learning also meant people taking responsibility for their own lives, rather than letting their lives be dictated
by an authority outside themselves. Access, openness, experimentation, reflective thought: These are the things that lead to sustained innovation, and
it is perhaps why countries with healthy democracies flourish economically.

It was this access to learning—to curiosity and creativity—that the Americans were really offering the Germans when they changed their policy toward the country: They were asking Germans to come to the foreground and create a new society for themselves. It was a matter of national security now, President Truman said in July 1947, as the administration rescinded the punitive JCS 1067 and replaced it with JCS 1779. Under this new law, the United States took
a nearly opposite approach to the one that had come before. For Europe to prosper, this policy created by Washington’s Joint Chiefs stated it was necessary that a “stable and productive Germany” supplement the Continent’s economy. Germany’s industrial base would have to remain intact—oil, rubber, coal, steel—and these goods would have to flow freely again. Germans could once again create their own products, and they would be trusted to
buy and sell those products in the free market.

Naturally, all of this had direct consequences on the Volkswagen plant. The factory was tied to the British pocketbook, thus when the British and American zones merged, the VW factory received a nice push. By the beginning of 1947, Ivan Hirst was able to assure workers that the factory would not be shut down. For years, those workers had lived with the constant anxiety that their jobs could end at any time, and naturally it affected their work. Now the Allies were
telling the workers that it was time for them to become participants in their own country again. Slowly, the factory began to see itself through new eyes.

British officials who were representing the VW plant in London had continued pushing hard to get permission for exports during all these changes.
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Those requests had all been denied, but as the Soviet threat began to grow, the option was reconsidered. Now the VW factory looked like a potential way of bringing
money in and easing the British
expenses. In March 1947, the VW factory’s quotas were raised: It would be allowed to produce more cars; it would be allowed to sell those cars to Germans; and it was decided that Wolfsburg would be allowed to export Volkswagens to the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. The first official export happened in August 1947 when a jolly man named Ben Pon took five Volkswagens home to the Netherlands. It was only five cars, and the whole process was a difficult one, but it was a
monumental shift: Selling “Hitler’s car” to countries Hitler had just tried to conquer seemed absurd, but it wasn’t Hitler’s car anymore. The tide was turning.

In May 1947, about a year and a half after the end of the war, the Bizone powers set up a quasi-German parliament and focused on putting recovery of the country, at least in their shared zone, back into German hands. At the end of 1946, in anticipation of the merger of their zones, they had set up the Joint Export-Import Agency as a means of trying to revive the flow of goods in and out of Germany. There were so many areas in such dire need of so many items that it
became clear that getting those goods to the people, no matter what country they were from, should be the priority. This same organization was in charge of Volkswagen export and import, and thus with the new Bizone, the factory found itself with much more room for growth in both production and sales. In August 1947, an all-German administration was set up at Volkswagen to work with the new national German authorities. It was hoped that someday the Board of Control (still British and
still in ultimate command at VW) would be turned over to Germans too. Figuring out who really had the most authority at the plant became a bit difficult; the British military government was still in control, but the German managers were supposed to have an independent influence, and this caused some tension.

One example of this tension was apparent in the relationship between Ivan Hirst and the man who was the acting German director of the plant, Hermann Münch. Hirst and Münch rarely saw eye to eye. Hirst was a technical man; Münch was not. In
Hirst’s eyes, Münch was a good enough man, but he was a lawyer and someone who’d been chosen out of necessity, not skill. He didn’t know how to interact with the
engineers, and he didn’t understand the industry. Münch was doing the best he could, and in the records, one finds he was indeed a very important voice in those first two years after the war, but it was true that he was not an engineer and that he did not have the industrial background needed to run a plant. Hirst was ready to slowly hand over control, but he was not ready to leave the plant in the hands of people he felt were unqualified. In truth, few at the VW plant
felt very confident that the current German staff would be able to control things properly should the British leave. Those suspicions seemed to have been confirmed around the end of 1946 when Ivan Hirst had been briefly taken off the VW project. Chaos quickly ensued and he was immediately brought back again.

It was clear that if the still-shaky plant were to return to German hands, it would need someone at the helm who had experience running a large factory, who knew the ins and outs of engineering, and who could deal gracefully with the large numbers of men and the problems that came with mass production. As of yet, there was no defining rhythm to the work, no way to mark the pace. The factory needed someone who could give the men direction, confidence, a sense that it
mattered if they showed up each day—and that man needed to be German. Ivan Hirst and Colonel Radclyffe began asking around the automotive circles: Did anyone know of such a man?

For the last time
in his life, Heinrich Nordhoff prepared to move to a new town. It was just after New Year’s; 1947 had come to an end. He’d spent an extended Christmas holiday with Charlotte
and their daughters—going to church, praying, celebrating, opening gifts—and now he was saying his goodbyes, not sure how long it would be until he saw them again. He left late
Sunday, January 4, 1948. A friend drove him through the night so he’d arrive just in time to start his first day.
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Nordhoff had no furniture or luggage to speak of, just his clothes, a fold-up cot, and some books, all things that had been sent on ahead. The town he was arriving in was still incomplete: There was little available housing and no hotel. He would
live in the Volkswagen factory for now. He’d set up his cot behind a cardboard wall.

When they arrived, the roads of Wolfsburg were so bad that his friend dropped him off across from the factory, on the opposing side of the canal. Heinrich walked the passenger bridge alone, stopping halfway across to have a long look. The factory looked about the same as it had at the end of the war. Only the most necessary repairs had been made. On his walk, Nordhoff also noticed that many of the signs around the factory were in English only; very few of the original
German signs were left.

Stepping inside the factory for the first time, tripping through the dust and debris, surely he must have seen those famous wide-eyed headlights watching him and wondered how in the world his life had come to this. If a car could have feelings, perhaps the VW would have felt a bit the same, looking at Nordhoff: The car had been through so much, and here was yet another man coming into the picture. What was next? Nordhoff’s attitude toward the
car could have been only one of business-like tolerance at first, but it wouldn’t be long before that would change.

Over the holidays Nordhoff had thought about calling a meeting with all the workers once he’d arrived. Getting himself rather worked up about the Nazis, he prepared a speech that denounced all they’d done and talked about the importance of finding a new course. When he arrived at the factory, however, he began speaking with a man named Frank Novotny. Novotny had set up the first VW press office, and he told Heinrich that as much as everyone might agree
with him, using such a tone might not set a good opening mood. The denazification process at the plant over the last two years had not been easy, and wounds were still raw. There were also refugees and foreign workers there, and they had their own painful reactions each time the word “Nazi” was uttered. Novotny’s advice struck a chord with Heinrich, and he spent some nights sleeping alone in the factory, rethinking his words. He’d wanted to condemn their
past, but perhaps the best way to move forward was to create a present moment that offered a new direction. How could he give the workers a new sense of communion? How could he motivate them, rouse them enough to move toward a common goal?

When he finally did give that speech, he simply talked from his heart. His tone was precise, studied and calm, but his words were a kind that had never been offered from a German manager to a warehouse full of laborers before. He called the men his “fellow workers” (Meine Arbeitskameraden) and told them the future of the factory depended on them as much as it did on
him: We are all in this equally here, he said, and we have the chance
to create something that could have a positive effect on our country and the greater Western world, but it’s going to take not only our hands but also our hearts and our minds. The workers looked at each other nervously and wondered if maybe this man was a little confused. Did he absolutely know where he was?

And did he? Certainly Heinrich never expected to find himself sleeping in the Volkswagen plant. It had all happened in the blink of an eye. Just months ago, he’d been working in Hamburg, managing the garage, with no signs of change coming anytime soon. There’d been no news about his old job at Opel, but month after month he’d continued to hope for the best, exchanging multiple letters with former colleagues, men trying to persuade the Americans on
his behalf. But nearly two years had passed since the war’s end, and by then, many of Nordhoff’s old friends from Opel were working in the British sector, and their advocacy on his behalf was heard not by the Americans, but by Colonel Radclyffe and Ivan Hirst.