Volkswagen Is Founded in Germany

On May 28, 1937, Germany’s labour organisation, the Deutsche Arbeitsfront (DAF), established a company in Berlin with an unwieldy name: Gesellschaft zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen Volkswagens — roughly, the “Corporation to Prepare the German People’s Car.” Its mission was singular: build an inexpensive automobile ordinary German families could actually afford.

The project was political as much as industrial. Adolf Hitler had publicly demanded a cheap, mass-produced car, and engineer Ferdinand Porsche was tasked with designing it. The result was the rounded, air-cooled, rear-engined prototype that would later become the Beetle. In September 1938 the firm was renamed Volkswagenwerk GmbH.

The name itself was the promise: Volkswagen literally means “people’s car.”

Mass production never materialised before the war. The new factory at Wolfsburg was diverted to military output, relying heavily on forced labour. Only after 1945, under British Army officer Ivan Hirst, did the Beetle finally roll off civilian lines — the start of one of the world’s largest carmakers.