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This is a bit of an understatement: "The Nazi leader’s interest in the vehicle was such that he even contributed his own sketch of what he felt the vehicle sho
by sgt 9y ago
This is a bit of an understatement:
"The Nazi leader’s interest in the vehicle was such that he even contributed his own sketch of what he felt the vehicle should look like, although it only has a passing resemblance to the final designs."
I think they should go back to Hitler's original sketch and look again. In my opinion, Hitler came up with the fundamental look of the Beetle. This goes beyond "only a passing resemblance" to what we know as the Beetle today.
Reference: http://www.brandpowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/small-volkswagen00.jpg http://www.brandpowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/small-...
- elsurudo 9y agoWow, yeah. That is quite close. The front especially, but the entire shape of the car is similar as well.
- AmVess 9y agoHitler was influenced by Tatra, a Czech automobile company. If you look at that sketch, it is solidly Tatra. Porsche himself was deeply influenced by that company. Many of the basic ideas of the Beetle had been done before by Tatra, including the rear engine layout. The bones of the first Porsches have as much Czech in them as Austrian. None of this is speculation, but history.
- johnnyfaehell 9y agoIsn't it rumoured that Hitler stole the Beatle design from a Jewish engineer? By Paul Schilperoord in The Extraordinary Life of Josef Ganz.
- AmVess 9y agoNot outright. Porsche took inspiration from a few sources. Notably Tatra as I had already mentioned, but it's not a long shot to figure that Ganz's ideas made it into the mix in a fairly hearty fashion. The Beetle itself is an original Porsche design. While it can be argued that Porsche's original ideas might not be all that original, his application of those concepts to cheap and durable mass production is perhaps his greatest strength. Porsche also designed a few tanks for Germany. One was poorly received and never made it into series production, and another that went into very limited (less than 100) and was prone to malfunction and lack of suitability to the purpose.
- dingaling 9y agoThere is a general and unspoken resistance amongst casual historians in assigning any merit to any of Adolf Hitler's ideas or concepts. It's as if he has to be kept firmly bounded in the 'Crazy Genocidal Idiot' box in case any grudging recognition of merit would immediately flip him into public acceptance. But I don't think it's a healthy approach - it's not how history works. Oddly Josef Stalin doesn't seem to get boxed-in like that.
- bolololo1 9y agoIn my opinion Hitler needs to be kept in that box on the basis on how he killed millions of people. That's how we should remember him and the German Nazis forever. On the other hand Stalin should join him as he killed even more people - see Ukrainian Great Famine, Gulags, etc!
- kaybe 9y agoThe thing is, he was only human. One of the important lessons of that time is that it does not need a special breed of fanatical homicidal maniacs for what happened, it just needs humans. We're not fundamentally different.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ahartmetz 9y agoI don't know how commonly known that is, but Hitler was a bohemian and failed artist before World War 1. While his paintings were quite bland and uninspired, he could draw and paint. There are occasional jokes that art academies shouldn't be too strict in who they accept - if the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna had accepted him, it would have saved the world a lot of trouble...
- rat87 9y agoThere's an Israeli skit related to that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f66h1hk5yco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f66h1hk5yco
- rasz 9y agoit was a clone of Tatra http://www.porscheprototype.com/adolf-hitlers-manager-ferdinand-porsche.html http://www.porscheprototype.com/adolf-hitlers-manager-ferdin... Third Reich did the same to Czech tanks after invasion.