Guy thinks Porsche was a Nazi...

[Tspringer]

A guy who posts on another board I frequent has been posting on the history of Porsche. He clearly HATES Porsche cars, and even goes so far as to paint Ferdinand Porsche and his sons as fanatical Nazi's who are guilty of war crimes.

Read the post here:

http://www.ferrarichat.com/discus/messages/21/266046.html?1055301380

Anyone who has the time..... feel free to set this moron straight on the history.

Terry

[turbo dave]

well, its a kinda gray area- he did design tanks for Hitler, although what I've read about the subject suggests he was pretty non-political. Patriotic German is what I would call it, even if he did spend time in prison after the war. I don't think you can hate the guy for supporting his country during a war- most of us do.

[masraum]

Besides, I looked at the thread, seems like there are some good guys and then an instigator or two. It's not worth it to give those guys the time of day.

[Jack Olsen]

My knowledge of this might be shaky. I hope someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

The good. He considered himself apolitical. He wouldn't wear a Nazi uniform, or refer to Hitler as the Fuhrer.

The bad. He was an acquaintance of Hitler, who was involved in the Volkswagon project with him. He was loyal to Germany during the war, when others fled rather than support Hitler. He designed the Panzer tank, and the company built aramaments. Slave labor was used at the factory during the war.

The impression I get is that he didn't disagree with the Nazis enough to leave Germany or his business behind, and that he didn't agree with them enough to become even as much as a right-wing idealogue as Henry Ford.

Again, I hope guys who know history better than me will chime in.

[Adam]

Ferdinand was a Nazi? I doubt it, but then I guess you could then call Enzo a fascist! He was pretty cosy with Il Duce, wasn't he?

I think it was a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't type situation.

[Doug Zielke]

Jack,
That is what was written (more or less) in the R. von Frankenberg book, Porsche, The Man and his Cars.

[jazzbass]

I've thought a lot about the whole Porsche-Nazi thing. I think most of the books go a little easy on Porsche with the whole "he was just a simple engineer who just wanted to build cars" angle. C'mon - he was a wealthy, well know car designer at the time who did work for the government. While he may not have been an active participant, he didn't exactly go the extra mile to get out of the county or stop what was happening.

The interesting part about this, and so many discussions like them, is that they are by and large BS. Here we sit, 60 years after the fact, and try to put meaning to actions in a time we don't understand using facts we don't have. A lot like the Thomas Jefferson/Sally Hemmings debate - some want a version of history where nothing happened, others portray him as a rapist who's image should be eradicated from everything in the US. The reality is somehwere in between. The problem is we tend to deify these people for certain actions and then take it personally when someone reveals their flaws.

If Porsche was a Nazi criminal, why wasn't he tried at Nuremburg? He was jailed by the French on BS charges in hopes of getting the VW designs for Renault. As for me, what Dr Porsche did or did not do doesn't really mean a lot to me. After all, it was his son who started the company and brought us the cars we all love, and I don't really care much about his politics, either. My car was built in 1985 - 40 years after the war. Hell - Henry Ford was a bigger Hitler supporter than Porsche.

[47silver]

i like his cars.

[Stuttgart951]

Does anyone know *exactly* what tank Dr. P designed? "Panzer" covers a broad range of German tanks. I didnt know he did this - curious.

[Jack Olsen]

Click here, or on the tank for more info:



Also check out this link, and this one.

Here's a picture of Porsche (in the hat) next to one of his tanks.



Apparently, Porsche was a pretty poor tank designer. Most of his designs didn't make it past the prototype stage, and all of them were plagued with mechanical problems -- and they were far heavier than most of their competition (?!).

Although the two- and three-man tank models they built concurrently with the 964 (between 1989 and 1992) were a lot lighter and more successful.

[speeder]

When people say that Porsche "designed the VW for Hitler", the statement is technically true but misleading, IMO. Makes it sound like they were best friends and doing each other favors. The way I've heard it was that there was a massive design contest for the new "people's car", all of the large and small German auto companies were involved, (Germany had a thriving auto industry in the first part of the 20th century), and Porsche won the contract w/ his design. Very impressive considering the competition.

Because of his engineering genius in a culture that reveres engineers, (along w/ artists, but that is another thread), he became a very important and prominent German right before WWII. He was certainly never known to be particularly consientious about Germany's conduct during the war, but like so many other people was unfortunately apolitical when the times called for the opposite, also IMO.

I guess that most older Germans claimed that they were unaware of Hitler's atrocities at the time, kind of hard to proove or disproove. Where is Roland when we need him?

[Sonic dB]

...and I thought Ferrari owners were semi intelligent.

[smarjoram]

Reading his book - 'Cars are my Life' you get the impression that he used his commisions during the war to as a chance to experiment with outrageous designs. Depressingly, war is a time when many great engineering advances are made.

From talking to my Grandfathers - one German, one English I got an interesting perspective on the war. Not everyone has the strength to give up everything, leave family behind and start a new life from scratch in a foreign country and generally people try to make the best of an awful situation by trying to keep their families together and attempting to hang on to the way of life they had before the war broke out - however difficult it gets.

My German grandfather, like many in Germany didn't approve of Hitler or the war but nonetheless was drafted and used it as a chance to ride motorbikes (which he loved) as a despatch rider - this also allowed him to travel (another great love) and to make cheeky detours to visit home. He told me a great story once about turning up to a top secret radar base on the coast and finding the place in disarray - the english had been in the night and stolen it!

My English grandfather also has a love for travel and motoring and recalls with great glee how he stole Mercedes cars and BMW bikes from German bases in Italy so that he and the lads could enjoy themselves a bit on their nights off.

[azasadny]

Tspringer,
You might want to remind "Mr Ferrari" that Italy was an ally of Germany during the war. Mr Henry Ford was an early supporter because he was afraid of the Communists coming to power in Germany and the Nazis seemed to be a better alternative. I also have pictures of the Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia with Nazi flags flying in front because of the same thing, Coke thought the Nazis would let them sell their product in Germany and were afraid of the Communists. Anyway, Iguess my point is, very few countries or companies have their "hands clean" in this regard. I don't hold it against them, but some small-minded folks look for any excuse to hate a country or a company that represents that country. Similar to Fascism if you ask me, but nobody did. Just my .02 worth!

[s_wilwerding]

Originally posted by azasadny
Mr Henry Ford was an early supporter because he was afraid of the Communists coming to power in Germany and the Nazis seemed to be a better alternative.

Mr. Henry Ford was also rabidly anti-Semitic. Some people also forget that Charles Lindbergh was a big Nazi supporter - does that make his achievements any less important?

[Rick Lee]

As for the slave labor thing, remember that many of the able-bodied, working age German men weren't exactly standing around, looking for factory jobs. They were serving in the Wehrmacht and getting killed at a rate of several thousand per day, mostly in Russia. Over a period of 4-6 yrs., this tended to thin the labor pool a bit. I make no defense whatsoever of the Nazis' use of slave labor to further their war machine (nor for any other purpose). But Albert Speer had his orders, they made their way to down to the German industrialists and they did what they had to do to keep the assembly lines moving. I don't think anyone anybody refused their factory orders from the German gov't in those days.

[1fastredsc]

If memory serves from my porsche history books, i don't remember too much about the portion of ferry porsche's life during the war. But i remember that after the war when france charged ferry as a war criminal, his son designed a race car for the french le mans to get his father out of jail. I have to find that book and make sure, but i'm pretty sure that was what happend. Kind of makes you think, seems like whether they liked it or not, the porsches designed things for higher power with the intention of self benefit.

[Paul Franssen]

Smarjoram (hey, it's you again!) I think you got the thing pretty straight! Would you leave your native ..what..Sherwood Forest because some jerk from there decides he wants to rule the world? (of course not, you're not from ...Sherwood Forest!)

JackOlsen, you got the facts kinda the same as I've read them. Old Porsche was from the same (Austrian) region as Adolf, and they got along well, gruss Gott! And when P. didn't find enough men to test-drive the early VW's, Hitler got some SS to drive 'em around in circles for weeks on end to test their durability (the cars', I mean!). It seems clear Mr. P. wanted his machine(s) to succeed, and he did get a brown tongue doing so. Does that make Porsche a nazi? Would you expect a successful engineer to lay off and leave technical progress to the competition? Would you have expected Dr. P. to go to Adroit and build Rumblers??? Not a very likely prospect.

Oh, of course, there's many a hero-in-waiting to state at any propicious moment that "one has a responsibility towards humanity" etcetera... But then, which Nazi (is that spelled with a capital "N"?) was it said "your country right or wrong" and "if you don't like it, leave it" anyway? The world is full of hypocrits (ask me how I know!).

Azasadny, IBM were very active in Germany, and Ford's Cologne factories were "very bombed" by the U.S. allies during the war (especially the "slave" workers' sleeping quarters there), and 25 years after the war, the U.S. federal courts granted Ford full compensation for the destruction of their German properties.

Justice? Fôôget it, they ain't no such thing. But there are Porsche cars, that's a fact, does that make Porsche cars nazi cars? Were the U-boots (despicably good machines, in their own sordid manner) Nazi machines? What about the cuckoo clock?

Go drive a Wodka, but if you want it to be politically correct, make sure it's American...er no, Finnish, or whatever it might be tomorrow.

[TerryBPP]

I believe the thought process for some people goes like this:

Porsche = VW = Hitler

I say Hail.............Pelican!

[Jdub]

Should we blame Von Braun for Apollo 11?

Sheesh.

John