Thinking Small: The Long, Strange Trip of the Volkswagen Beetle

by Andrea Hiott

  Ned Doyle had once worked with Maxwell Dane at Look magazine. Dane was a bit of a bore in some people’s eyes—George Lois would describe him as “the agency bean counter”3—but his sober business sense and disciplined ideas about work and money would prove essential to any success the agency might have. Dane knew something about media and mass communication: he’d been the retail promotion manager at the New York Evening Post and he’d help to arrange the first “top of the hour” news bulletins during the war. Not too long before Bill sent his memo, Dane had opened up his own advertising agency, a small office in an attic room off Madison Avenue. But while Dane had the business sense, he didn’t seem to have the creativity or the drive to make his agency a success. Doyle knew Dane was looking for some help, and he called him up and talked with him about Bill. Soon, Dane was ready to go in as a partner too. He even offered the use of his office space—so long as they didn’t mind that it was a floor and a half up from the last elevator stop! Bill was lucky to have found Doyle and Dane, and he knew it. In a later interview, he would admit one of his biggest advantages was “having with me partners who did what I didn’t do well,”4 going on to say DDB would’ve been “a bankrupt agency” if he’d been running it himself. But the success was yet to come; in 1947 they were still looking for their first account, and Bill had an idea. Maybe, just maybe, he could get Ohrbach to go with them.

  The founders of DDB: Maxwell Dane, Bill Bernbach, and Ned Doyle. (photo credit 31.1)

  Bill hadn’t seen his father in years. His brothers and sisters had tried to bring the two back together again, but his mother simply refused to acknowledge her youngest son, and his father—so independent in all other areas of his life—found it too hard to go against his wife’s wishes when it came to this. It was no doubt a crushing situation for them all. As a child, Bill had loved his mother immensely. She’d filled the house with music and books, memories he still carried with him. He’d been an exceptional piano student when he was young—his mother had never ceased to brag about him—and though he rarely played the piano anymore, he was always quick to quote Beethoven or Thelonius Monk. True to their estrangement, though, Bill never uttered a word about his parents or his personal past. It was one subject that would draw only a blank and icy stare, even from his own sons.

  Nathan Ohrbach probably reminded Bill a little bit of his father. Ohrbach was a first-generation American, a Jewish businessman whose presence filled a room both literally and figuratively. He was a self-made success story, the owner of a flourishing clothing store in New York that he’d opened in 1923 under his own name. He was used to getting what he wanted, and he’d learned how to play it hard and smart. But he was also, like so many in Bill’s life, a man who was not afraid to take a well-thought-out chance. Especially on someone he liked.

  Ohrbach was a client at Grey, and he’d already worked with Robert Gage and Bill. The Ohrbach’s campaign had originally been in the hands of Bill and Paul Rand at Weintraub. Ohrbach liked the way Bill was ready and willing to listen and learn. But part of the reason he said he’d go with DDB was probably because he liked the idea of being their most important customer. For Bill, this was an essential account, the only way to pay the first month’s rent, and Ohrbach knew it. So he went with them. As the years passed, Bill’s relationship with him would come to mean as much as any other in his professional life. In fact, one piece of advice that sprang from Ohrbach’s lips was to become the keystone to DDB’s approach: At one meeting, as the men were discussing the “angle” from which to develop their next ad, Ohrbach quieted the room: I’ve got a great gimmick, he said. Let’s tell the truth.

  On paper, Bill knew starting his own advertising agency did not look like the best move, but he felt he had to trust his intuition. “Only true intuition, jumping from knowledge to an idea, is yours and yours alone,” he’d later say. Bill had an idea, and he was ready to take responsibility for it. Come what may, he was ready to follow through. Perhaps he remembered something Rand had once told him, about there being no exception to the impulse of creation. Or maybe it was something he’d heard Einstein say about how the only real and valuable asset we have is our intuition. But then again, maybe Bill simply recalled that advice Grover Whalen had given him all those years ago when Bill and Evelyn had first fallen in love: Follow your heart. It hadn’t been easy, but so far he had no regrets.

  In 1947, the “democracy versus communism” question was beginning to burn. In a speech by Harry Truman, given around the same time Bill sent his memo out at Grey, the American president compared these two worldviews: “One way of life is based upon the will of the majority,1 and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression. The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.” The debate raged around politics and economics, but both those things were inherently dependent on another aspect that went less noticed at the time: education. Not necessarily education in schools or universities—though that too—but rather education as access to ideas and fostering the conditions whereby people can learn. In practice, a very real difference in the Red Army–style Communism and the American-style democracy was the freedom of access to new information and new ideas, i.e., the freedom to be curious. Stalin’s method of Communism wanted to squelch curiosity and ideas—seeing them as threats—while American-style democracy wanted to embrace them as assets. The American administration had the understanding that in the long run a country is only as strong as its ideas, and ideas only flourish with freedom. The administration might not always live up to that bar, but at least the bar had been set.

  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.2

  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 whe
n 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.3 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.1 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.

  A road ends abruptly in Wolfsburg, late 1940s, around the time of Nardhoff’s arrival. (photo credit 33.1)

  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 s
imply 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.

  Needless to say, Nordhoff’s experience with the VW had not been love at first sight. He’d had trouble with Hitler over the project; he’d been one of the RDA members criticizing both the car and Porsche’s design, and the one time he’d ridden in one, he’d found it a bit like riding inside a noisy egg. So when that first call came from the Volkswagen factory, Heinrich had hesitated: Not only was he still hoping the Americans would change their minds and let him work at GM, he also wondered if trying to rehabilitate the Volkswagen factory was not something of a lost cause. Still, he did miss working with a large group of people and being in a position of authority where he could learn and be challenged, where he could make use of his experience and skills. But the Volkswagen? It didn’t sit well with him. And how would he possibly explain it to Charlotte and the girls? Moving again! And this time to a town that barely even has a working traffic light!