by Donatella Cacciola

Volkswagen, Volksempfänger, Volksgemeinschaft. “Volksprodukte” im Dritten Reich: Vom Scheitern einer nationalsozialistischen Konsumgesellschaft Wolfgang König Paderborn, Schöningh 2004 (pp. 310, 21 illustrazioni b/n, € 36,00)

How do the German people exorcise the ghost of National Socialism? Sixty years after the end of World War II, Germany is today living a very distinctive moment. The most obvious aspect of its Zeitgeist is the “Vergangenheitsbewältigung”, the particular term indicating the confrontation with the past (and only with that past). However, this does not imply immediate side taking and a realisation free from taboo or circumspection towards the history of the Third Reich.

This was demonstrated by last year’s film Der Untergang (“The fall”), which made less of a sensation for the plot (the reconstruction of the last days of Adolf Hitler, played by Bruno Ganz in his first role as the bad guy) than for finally bringing this subject onto the scene. It is instead the access to many state and company historical archives that has provided a scientific foundation for this confrontation with the past. In Germany free access to official documents is granted after thirty years, but for private ones it takes a lot of good fortune. Numerous discoveries and reconstructions have thus only recently been possible.

The reconstruction of events surrounding domestic appliance manufacturers between 1933-1945 is a recent phenomenon. One thinks of Graetz in Berlin: “A very German story”, as Peter Süß put it when writing the volume in 2003. But who does not remember the Graetz-Pagino radios that were also popular in Italy until the 1960s? On the other hand, Wolfgang König (1949), teacher at the Technische Universität in Berlin, had already been dedicated for some time, from the point of view of economic and social history, to the so-called “Volksprodukte”, or “people’s products” with meagre consequence outside Germany. This book summarises many of his other publications on the subject. Its structure is based on the classic essay. König introduces a group of problems relating to the definition and role of these products in a consumer society (the term is convenient, p. 10) ahead of its time. This is developed by the analysis in the second part of the book, after several chapters in the first part have each dealt with the history of one of these “people’s products”.

Most of the small number of images (largely window bills and few, but nonetheless mendacious photographs) are found in the chapters dedicated to the two standard-bearer products: the “Volksempfänger” radio and the “Volkswagen”. The longest chapter focuses on the square, Bakelite radio, as this is the only people’s product that was truly produced and sold unwillingly by every company in the sector. Even though a conventional form created by a now forgotten engineer, this apparently anonymous object was loaded with symbology. In the name VE 301, for example, the number stands for January 30th, the date Hitler “won” the elections in 1933. It was even a metaphor of the little man who came from nothing like the “Führer”.

From the radio we move to people’s houses, to the television, the refrigerator and even the holiday camp. König presents these objects for the first time as a system of status symbols. In a double meaning they were the symbols of a National Socialist state where the people’s character had gone beyond being an end to become a brand or trademark, an illusory measure of propagandistic diktat. The state did not appropriate structures to collectivise them, as had happened in Russia, but created desires and needs aimed at a superior quality of life worthy of the “Nordic race”. These products were in turn at the centre of proper publicity campaigns, but like all brand products they were not accessible for everyone’s pocket. Otherwise, as in the case of planning for the people’s holiday camps, they were forecast for the post-war period.

Additionally illustrated simply and logically here for the first time is the reason for the failure of the Nazi consumer society’s dream. Although the benefit that a totalitarian state tries to draw from propaganda can never be quantified economically (and furthermore Hitler placed no importance on money), the absence of a financial plan in Germany allowed neither channelling autarchy towards profit nor limiting investments in war and propaganda initiatives (the immense sums of money required to develop the Volkswagen are well known). This not only prevented the realisation of products (and for this reason the history of design ignores the episode, which started where the Bauhaus stopped, and was diametrically opposite to it from a product development point of view), but also the creation of the vast customer base that the regime had expected.

The book is written in a direct and eloquent manner, which is rare when it comes to academic German. But equally rare is a university professor who, as the author admits, researches for himself instead of referring the work to his entourage. Is this perhaps a form of individual confrontation with the past for König? This “story” assembles a great deal of bibliographic and documentary material (for example from archives such as AEG, Philips, DaimlerChrysler, Robert Bosch as well as various federal archives), detailing it in a discerning and engaging manner. The brief quotations are complimentary to every step in the narration, lending a concise and rapid tone.

At the same time one does not come across the steps often met in the immense literature on the myths of National Socialism. A few words from the author or sources are enough to outline a new thematic structure, possibly one little dealt with like the controversial approach to the United States society in the 1930s, which was either imitated (p. 223) or detested in the same way as the Bolsheviks (p. 131), and certainly not ignored by Adolf Hitler. The people’s products recall the motto “Community, Identity, Stability” in force in the state created by Aldous Huxley in the novel Brave New World (1932), although the archives do not provide any certainty on further ties in this direction. Hence, there are many reasons to take a closer look, even from outside German borders, at the history of the “people’s products”.

They are described here along with the failure of the ideological programme underlying their diffusion, which is postulated in the book’s title. Italy familiarised with the Volkswagen Beetle, but in Germany this means of transport maintained its name and paradoxically became the symbol of the German economic miracle in the post-war period. With the desire for reconstruction and maybe without the Vergangenheitsbewältigung as a priority, it almost became a symbol of the positive aspects (sic, p. 308) of the National Socialist regime that had sold it the dream. This compact and complete account, looked at as a novel, holds back in conclusion with a summary reminiscent of its “diligent” character.

It possibly lacks one thing: a reference to the parallel between the propaganda of people’s products and other levels of National Socialist propaganda. For example, the interpretation of the Volkswagen as a popular version of the aerodynamic racing cars that elusively streaked around Nürburgring or Monza in those years. But that’s another story.

Donatella Cacciola, Museum assistant in Bonn, Germany