People's Car, Power, & Patterns
Practicing resistance so we aren't condemned to repeat the past.
Content warning: Post includes references to Nazi history & Adolf Hitler.
Update: For those who appreciated my last Substack post on the pettiness of Michelangelo, I have an udpate for you, too.
The Volkswagen Beetle became the car of the countercultural movement of the 1960s. It was so popular, it garnered its own film franchise, with the Beetle featured as the title character of Herbie: The Love Bug. And as fun and whimsical as the Beetle looks, its origins are much darker.
In 1938, amid the fanfare of the Berlin Auto Show, Adolf Hilter introduced the German people to a small family vehicle. Cars at the time were typically accessible to those of wealth and means. But Hitler and his underling, Robert Ley, were focused on a movement known as Kraft durch Freude (KdF) which translates to “Strength through Joy.” KdF was an effort to make leisure activities available to all German people. Folks in the KdF built resorts and cruise ships so that the regular German worker and their families could enjoy activities that were previously limited to the bourgeoisie.
Another effort of the KdF? The Kraft durch Freude-Wagen. KdF leadership realized they had reached the limit of their original promises. The Volksgemeinschaft or “the People’s Community” were so interested in vacations, they overwhelmed the railways while en route to their holidays.1 So, the KdF pivoted and made another promise—a car for the people. Hitler commissioned the design of the KdF-Wagen by enlisting the services of engineering genuis, Dr. Ferdinand Porsche. Porsche was producing prototypes in his garage for Hitler while the Volkswagenwerk, “the People’s Car Factory,” was being built in Saxony.
Once the prototypes were created, KdF leadership began exhibiting the car. They continued to make promises of accessibility. The cost of the KdF-Wagen would be 9,900 Reichsmarks. The average German family earned about 32 marks a week at the time. So, the KdF created a savings card families could fill with stamps. If families sent 5 marks a week to the KdF, they received a stamp for their card book. If, however, they missed sending 5 marks just one week, their savings card became forfeit. Once the card was full, the family was to receive their very own car.2
The problem? Volkswagenwerk held a few prototypes, but they never made the cars. The marks German families sent weren’t used to create their promised vehicle. Every single mark was used to fund the manufacturing of the war machines used by the Third Reich and Nazi Party. Even the design for the KdF-Wagen was used to design other war vehicles such as the Kugelwagen (an all-terrain vehicle) and Schwimmwagen (an amphibious vehicle).3
Were the people ever going to receive the cars promised? No.4 The KdF and all leisure activities were a part of a mass effort to keep German workers happy and to quiet dissent among laborers who began embracing Marxism. The KdF existed to socially groom the German people into accepting their subjugation under Reich leadership. KdF activities kept German men healthy so they could serve as soldiers in the war to come.5
The “Strength through Joy” movement and the creation of a “People’s Car” was the Third Reich’s way of exploiting their own people.6
Oppressors First Invade Their Own
In Captain America: The First Avenger, Dr. Abraham Erskine has a memorable line: “People often forget the first country the Nazi’s invaded was their own.”7 To Dr. Erskine’s point, the KdF organization began in 1933. German leadership reintroduced conscription in 1935, openly rejecting the military restrictions instituted in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. The unveiling of the KdF-Wagen was on May 26, 1938. On September 1, 1939, many German men found themselves invading Poland, the irony being that their invasion was partially funded with their own money.
The aphorism goes, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”8 Many saw the news coverage from March 11, 2025 with DJT hawking Tesla’s wares on the South Lawn of the White House. Tesla stock had plummeted more than 40% since the start of 2025; DJT showed his support buy purchasing a red Tesla Model S. Since the start of the campaign leading up to the 2024 presidential election, folks have witnessed and written on the connections between Nazi Germany and MAGA U.S.A. More folks are reading and studying history so that we are not condemned to repeat the sorrows of the past. Because of this, we tend to know propaganda when we see it.
Since March 11, others began sharing thoughts online, making the connection between the KdF-Wagen announcement and the White House Tesla event. You can see the use of symbolism in propaganda between the photos from 1938 and March 11, 2025. (The licensing fees required to post these photos are beyond my means. To make a visual available for this post, I’ve done my own sketches based on the photos. You can also view the side-by-side first compared on BuzzFeed.)
The prominent symbol for the 1938 image is the Nazi swastika,9 which the Nazi Party appropriated from other cultures. If you zoom in on the original image, you’ll see the swastika featured on the podium, on flags, as decoration in the background, and, lastly, the massive swastika featured inside the cogwheel shape.
The prominent symbol for the Tesla event? The White House itself—one of the most recognizable buildings in the world. And while I was never a political science or communications major, I’m not naïve enough to believe DJT’s suit, tie, and the color of the Tesla are coincidental. Red, white, and blue are effective symbolic choices.
The Tesla shilling on the South Lawn—both the reason for it and the receptivity to it—is different from the unveiling of the KdF-Wagen in 1938. The similarities in both stories are found in the potential hope via promises made and the power of the people in their voting dollars. In both instances, the people were being pandered to—sold an idea of greatness. Hitler promised a vehicle that would be made accessible to the People’s Community (Volksgemeinschaft). Promises of upward mobility are tempting. So, the German people sent 5 marks every week to fill their savings card. Musk promised double vehicle output over the next two years. Promises of increased capital gains are alluring. Incidentally, Tesla stock did rise after the March 11th event.
The question to ask now isn’t so much, “Is DJT pandering to the people and using Musk’s Tesla to do it?” He absolutely is.
What We the People should be asking ourselves is, “How is our government socially grooming us into accepting a new empire?”
Being Maladjusted
On June 4, 1957, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave an address at the University of California at Berkeley which was later published in 1958. Titled “The Power of Nonviolence,” King ends with an encouragement to be “maladjusted.” He mentions that modern psychology would say that a maladjusted individual is one who is ill-equipped to navigate life in a healthy way. But King offers an alternate definition:
“[T]here are some things within our social order to which I am proud to be maladjusted and to which I call upon you to be maladjusted. I never intend to adjust myself to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to adjust myself to mob rule. I never intend to adjust myself to the tragic effects of the methods of physical violence and to tragic militarism. I call upon you to be maladjusted to such things… As maladjusted as Jesus of Nazareth who dreamed a dream of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. God grant that we will be so maladjusted that we will be able to to go out and change our world and our civilization.”10
- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1957)
So often, when leaders have used and abused their power to dismiss, hurt, and harm people, the leader’s “community,” followers, or fanatics default to the perspective of the leader. They may say, “We need to give him grace; leading people is a hard job.” This is the behavioral conditioning doing it’s work. The temptation of power is that a leader can leverage a “community”, even a “new” Volksgemeinschaft, to slowly condition folks to adjust to a new normal—to become foot soldiers, ready to carry out the mission and defend said leader, even when the leader been credibly accused of misconduct. This may resonate with folks paying attention to the fallout since the release of the report on The New Evangelicals on March 16. Adjustment to toxic systems is the fruit of empire that grows within us.
Many folks use Jesus’s name as a symbol for a new empire. They speak Jesus’s name, not as a delight, but as decoration for pyramids. We can make discerned distinctions when we pay attention to the story Jesus lives. He doesn’t repeat the pattern of the empire. He divests. When Jesus extended grace, it wasn’t to the empire or to the emperor. He extended grace to those whom the empire had chewed up and spat out.
In the words of Jesus, “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10:37b, NRSV). Extend grace to those on the margins. Divest of white Christian nationalism. Divest of white supremacy.
Be maladjusted to the empires of the world. Be discerning of the patterns of history. Dissent to being socially groomed by propaganda. Embrace the power of nonviolence. Love your neighbors and your enemies.
Be so maladjusted that you just might be a part of changing the world. Get weird with it.
Extras
First, kudos:
I have my engineer husband, Tyler, to thank for teaching me the history of the Beetle. A fan of British host and commentator James May, Tyler learns plenty about engineering history. I inevitably learn by proximity. This lesson stuck with me such that it came to mind when I saw the images from the White House lawn on March 11th.
I linked the original Cars of the People episode in the footnotes. It is where Tyler and I first learned of the history of the Volkswagen Beetle. It’s worth your time.
Second, for appreciators of my recent post on Michelangelo:
To jog your memory, I wrote about Michelangelo painting a nemesis of his in “hell” while finishing his second Sistine Chapel fresco The Last Judgment. If you read my post, “God Bless Good Pettiness,” (linked below), you’ll know exactly where this nemesis is in the fresco. 😏
Imaged below is DJT and Melania visiting the Sistine Chapel in May of 2017. Our friend Biagio de Cesena as Minos, host who ushers folks into hell, is just right of DJT’s right shoulder. 🙃
Lastly, Shirt Donation Update:
I announced in a former post (linked below) that I had created a “Courageous Women” shirt. I mentioned that the profit from the sales of said shirts would be donated.
Thanks to those who ordered, I raised $54.52 in profit in February 2025. My original plan was to donate to a nonprofit as I’m connected and work with quite a few who resources survivors or marginalized folks. However, while waiting for the payout transfer, I learned of a single mother leaving a domestically abusive situation. She was having to start from scratch in furnishing a new home for herself and her children.
I donated the proceeds of February 2025 shirt sales personally to her on March 3.
The plan is to continue donating any and all shirt proceeds, so if you have your eye on one 👀 :
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Tom Whitter dir. “Episode #1.1”, 11:39.
After WWII, Volkwagenwerk was turned over to the people of Saxony and there was an effort to compensate those who sent marks for a car. Watch the Cars of the People episode mentioned for more details.
I mention this is often a theme of toxic organization and communities, exploitation of the community itself, in Othered. I think it’s worth your time.
Captain America: The First Avenger, 24:57.
George Santayana, The Life of Reason: Introduction and Reason in Common Sense, PDF (1905) 172. *I’m quoting a well-known aphorism, but to clarify, I do not hold the same views as Santayana. He was known to view eugenics positively and, as a philosophical naturalist, he didn’t believe interracial marriage was a benefit to society.
I wasn’t certain I wanted to draw the swastika in my sketches, so I used a repeating line pattern that followed the line direction and shape of the swastika.
Whew! Scary! I wonder if we as Americans are going to just blindly walk into a third reich. Most people I know are actively resisting, but blindness to the “grooming”. abounds. I will remain maladjusted to all things Trump.
Thank you for this. I’ve never heard that particular MLK quote before, and I won’t be forgetting it.