Thinking Small (70 page)

24.3
.
Indiscriminate bombing
: The Japanese bombed Shanghai civilians in 1937, before Hitler began ordering bombs dropped on civilian targets.

24.4
. “The German people celebrate the Führer’s birthday”: Goebbels speech on Hitler’s birthday, 1943.

24.5
. ——— “Confidence is”

25.1
. “If the war is lost, the nation will also perish”: Hitler to Speer, Hartrich, 31.

25.2
. ——— “all industrial plants, all important electrical facilities, waterworks, gasworks, all stocks of food and clothing, all bridges, all railways and communications installations.” 31.

26.1
.
Images of destroyed Germany
: from Spiegel documentary films and archival footage, especially
Die Stunde Null.

26.2
. “England would be chained”: Rasmussen, 88.

26.3
. “a certain American aircraft company”: Walker,
Harper’s,
1946.

26.4
. “with a few modifications”: Turner, 165.

27.1
.
Hirst
: The thoughts I give to Hirst here are taken from his own recollections that can be read in full in the Volkswagen publication
Ivan Hirst.

27.2
. “constructive pragmatism”: This term is borrowed from
Changing Lanes,
a publication from the archive of VW that they have made available in English as well as German.

27.3
.
The Works Council
: An important part of German history, and of the Volkswagen factory. In Germany, trade unions have a partner or counterpart called the Works Council. A Works Council, or
Betriebsrat,
is made of elected workers from a company and functions as a representative body for the workforce and meets with trade unions as well as with the executives of
the company to negotiate and discuss whatever issues (economic or social) might arise. They are elected for four-year terms, and they can come from any trade union affiliation or political party, and no outside labor group affiliations are necessary for them to be elected. Works Councils were first legally recognized in Germany after the First World War in 1918. With the Works
Councils Act of 1920, the name became official as a law was passed requiring all
business enterprises with more than 20 employees to set up a Works Council. 1n 1930, Germany had more than 150,000 different Works Councils registered. In 1933, when Hitler became Chancellor, all those Works Councils were thought to give too much control to the workers, a threat to the greater authority, and all of them were subordinated to a new arm of the Nazi Party called the German Labor Front, or DAF. The German workers were not happy about this, and some of the Works Councils
continued “under the table” and at their own risk. Works Councils resumed again after the war.

27.4
.
It was all the workers could do
: According to Volkswagen records, 938 cars were created in February and 1,052 in May.
The British and Their Works,
24.

27.5
. ——— “Ten thousand cars and an empty stomach”: The original reads: Mehr und schmackhafteres Essen, sonst können wir vieles nicht vegessen! 10,000 Wagen, nichts im Magen, wer kann das vertragen?”

27.6
. “There was one genuine currency”: from documentary
George Marshall and the American Century.

28.1
. “almost no free exchange of commodities, persons and ideas”: Hartrich, 110.

28.2
. “Here was a situation that was not ever going to”:
George Marshall and the American Century.

28.3
. ——— “We needed everything”

28.4
.
Dictators of democracy
: Hartrich explains it like this: “ Demokratur, a postwar addition to the German language, expressed the cynical reaction of the Germans to the political contradiction they perceived between what the Americans preached and what they practiced. Formed from Demokratie and Diktatur, it focused on America’s dilemma of
‘dictatorship by democracy’ ”: 95–96.

28.5
. “unless we exterminate or move twenty-five million”: Loewenstein, 168.

28.6
. “The American people want to help”: U.S. Embassy: online at
http://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/burtstutt5688e.htm
.

28.7
. “did not coincide with what the German encountered in his daily existence under Allied military-government rule”: Hartrich, 91.

28.8
. ——— “democracy will only be acceptable to the Germans when”: 98.

28.9
. ——— “Napoleon sought to impose democracy”: 98.

29.1
.
Motivational Research
: Ernest Dichter and the Institute for Motivational Research started inviting the customers to something like group therapy sessions where they talked about the products and said what they liked and disliked. This was the first “focus group.” It was a mix of “mining the unconscious” and also “active consumer
input.” Dichter, a prominent student of psychoanalysis who emigrated to the United States in 1937, began to connect the dots between basic drives in the human psyche to wider behavioral trends and decisions of the market as a whole. Universities such as Columbia in NYC and the University of Michigan developed their Social Research departments around this time too. Men like Rensis Likert, Robert Merton, and Paul Lazarsfeld studied ways of understanding sociological issues
through things like focus groups and questionnaires. In 1941, the National Opinion Research Center was established, a social research organization that would go on to conduct national polls in everything from economics to mental health. And by the time Bill was writing his letter at Grey in 1947, the American Association of Public Opinion Research would have been created too.

29.2
. “Our agency is getting big”: All following quotes from Bill in this chapter are from Bill Bernbach’s letter to Grey. 15 May 1947.

30.1
.
It’s better if they can
: The words of Porsche and Ferry in this chapter come from stories told by Ferry himself in
We at Porsche
as well as from stories told in other books from the 1950s and 1960s such as
Small Wonder
and
The Amazing Volkswagen Story,
and also from other conversations and archival digging. These stories often get
repeated, and the paraphrasing changes. I’ve tried to present the cumulative effect of these differing stories.

31.1
. Phyllis Robinson would later write Clairol’s famous “It lets me be me” ad. She was also the first woman copy chief on Madison Avenue.

31.2
. “a nice little guy, very creative”: Willens quoting Ned Doyle, 19.

31.3
. “agency bean counter”: interview with Lois, Hiott.

31.4
. “having with me partners who do what I don’t do well”: Bill interview,
DDB News.

32.1
. “One way of life is based upon the will of the majority”: Truman speech, 1947.

32.2
. These quotes are often attributed to Stalin and have been for many years. I have no idea how to trace them back to where or when he said them.

32.3
.
The argument for export
: Another line of reasoning that was made at the time was that exporting Volkswagens, if only for a limited time, would help prevent the market from being overtaken by American models. The claim was made that people needed cars, and giving Volkswagen a two-year window, under British control, to export cars to Switzerland and Sweden, could
ultimately be a good thing for the British motor industry as well, as it would give them time to evaluate the needs of the European market and to adjust their own production ability.

33.1
.
Nordhoff’s first day
: The contract is dated for January 1st, but the 5th was officially his first day after the Christmas break.

33.2
. “Hold on a minute now”: VW:
Ivan Hirst,
89.

33.3
. “warmth of contact” and “close but cold”:
Ivan Hirst,
90.

34.1
. Nuremberg Trials and the role of Henry L. Stimson: One very strong voice in opposing the Morgenthau Plan was lawyer and statesman Henry L. Stimson. In opposition to the punitive measures of the Morgenthau Plan, Stimson fought hard for proper judicial proceedings. His plans for how to hold German war criminals accountable eventually led to the Nuremberg Trials.

34.2
. “Who else is to be held responsible”: Speer, ITR, 516.

35.1
. “industrial feudalism”: Mommsen and Grieger, Volkswagenwerk, 976; minutes of discussion concerning employment of the Director of Human Resources of 18 December 1947 (VWCA 98, no. 11); quoted in
The British and Their Works.

35.2
. “cradle to grave paternalism”: London’s
The Times.

35.3
. “work comrades”: Edelmann, 161.

35.4
. “I am firmly convinced”: Notes from company meeting on October 1, 1949;
The British and their Works,
51.

36.1
. These quotes by Bill are in many of his speeches in various forms, and also have simply been passed down by word of mouth in advertising for decades. A list of the most popular of them can be found here on DDB Worldwide’s website as a pdf:
http://www.ddb.com/pdf/bernbach.pdf

36.2
. “There was a spirit of high adventure”: Willens, 13.

36.3
. “We did it to see Bill’s eyes light up”: Willens, 28.

36.4
. “Two people who respect each other”: Fox, 253.

37.1
.
The Cisitalia
: This car became so expensive to create that it was not finished until the 1950s, and only after a long, complicated journey. It was never raced.

37.2
. “If I’d created it myself”: according to Ferry Porsche.

38.1
.
Social Market Economy
: This form of economics was often called Ordoliberalism because the first ideas of it were published in the journal
Ordo,
the economic journal associated with the Freiburg School.

38.2
. “like economic heresy”: Hartrich, 141.

39.1
. “competition for the soul of Germany”:
Economist
quoted by Hartrich, 117.

39.2
. “The truth of the matter”: George Marshall’s speech, 5 June 1947.

39.3
.
Possible buyout of VW plant
: The company was still up for bids, in a sense. The British did not want to own it; they wanted it to go to Germany again, they did not want it to be broken up and used for its designs and parts. For that reason, when France expressed interest in owning the factory, the British resisted and deferred. The Australians were an option, but as
the Cold War progressed, they realized it would be too distant and too much of a gamble for them. The Russians and the Americans were both taking serious looks. The Cold War was already coming to life, and thus going to the Russians was avoided too. The most serious negotiations were with Ford. B.I.O.S. Final Report No. 768.

39.4
. “What we’re being offered here”: Brinkley, 545.

40.1
. Oberst and Erhard dialogue: Hartrich, 4.

40.2
. “It doesn’t go; it flies”: Nordhoff speech, from audio CD Der Kaefer in Wunderland.

41.1
. “transformed the German scene from one day to the next”: Hartrich,132.

41.2
. ———
Where were those eggs
: “The reaction of the public was mixed: pleasure at being able to once again find something to buy, and anger at those who had withheld their food from the market places. One hapless farmer’s wife sampled the accumulated wrath of the hungry city dwellers when she arrived in the Frankfurt main station with
two baskets of fresh eggs on the second day of currency reform. She was immediately surrounded by a crowd of hostile women … pelted by eggs”: 132.

41.3
. “was to instill pyschologically”: Vernon Walters,
George Marshall and the American Century
.

41.4
.
VW Bus
: At the time in Germany, there had been growing need of a delivery-type vehicle, one that could carry large loads. With all the reconstruction and hauling of people and parts in Europe, it was an obvious need, but not one that had been attempted in such a version before. Ben Pon himself had come up with a plan for such a vehicle, a truck based on designs of the
Volkswagen that could carry a load of up to 750 kg. Pon’s ideas were just sketches, but he had presented them to Colonel Radclyffe in 1947 and the idea had been buzzing around the factory since then. Detailed designs and sketches for such a vehicle came into existence once Nordhoff was at the helm. The same ideas of streamlining that Porsche had used with the original Volkswagen were incorporated into these new designs. The scooped-out nose gave the vehicle a low drag
coefficient (0.44 compared to the Volkswagen’s 0.39, which was quite good for the larger design) while at the same time providing more room for the driver and the passenger. Such a Beetle-based streamlined design also meant the car would need less fuel and have twice the acceleration value of any similar-sized truck. The first models of Type 2, the transporter or VW Bus as it’s now known, were ready and unveiled in November of 1949.

41.5
. “brocaded felt slippers”: Nelson, 269.

41.6
. “nonfunctioning blinkers”: VW archive,
Changing Lanes.

41.7
. ——— “I would like to request with all possible urgency”