Foreign News: Automotive Politics

Only one statesman has ever made the motor vehicle and everything connected with it a major plank in his political platform : Adolf Hitler. The Nazis have made almost a national festival out of Berlin’s annual Automobile Show. Last week it opened with loud speakers boasting in every corner of the Fatherland that since the Führer took over the Government in 1933 the number of motorcars in Germany has increased from 548,700 to 1,108,500, motor trucks from 176,685 to 344,717.

Several foreign highway commissions have recently-reported with admiration on the 1.250 miles of Nazi-built superspeed highways (Autobahnen). On them British Minister of Transport Leslie Burgin was recently driven for some hours at an average speed of 89 m.p.h. “We have the best motor roads in the world!” cried the Führer, opening the 1938 show. “Soon we will build the cheapest car in the world!”This car, the famed Volkswagen or “people’s car,” often referred to in Nazi electioneering speeches, has been under development by German engineers since 1933, and the Führer has several times voiced his impatience with their slowness.

The Government officially announced that the Labor Front is now beginning work “immediately” near Brunswick on the world’s largest automobile plant, expressly to build Volkswagen. The plant, a Nazi show place, is to rise in the open countryside, surrounded by new homes for thousands of workers, with sports grounds, gymnasium, a hotel for visitors, administration offices perched high in a tower. Keynoted Nazi spokesmen: “Soon there will be a Volkswagen for every German.”