The Army era

It may have escaped your notice, but it was recently the 70th anniversary of Britain giving Volkswagen back to West Germany. The years of 1945 to 1949, when the British military ran Wolfsburg, were more crucial than many enthusiasts appreciate

- Richard Gunn

This year (2019) marked 70 years since Volkswagen was handed back to the German people by the British Army. You may think we’ve got our arithmetic slightly wrong there because surely VW set out on its own when Heinz Nordhoff became its boss at the beginning of 1948? However, it really was in 1949, on October 8 to be exact, that the British Military Government, established after WW2 to return some order to the defeated and ruined country it controlled, transferred trusteeship of Volkswagenwerk GmbH to the Federal Republic of Germany. The civilian West German state had only been formed itself a few months previously and passed on the responsibility for VW’s administration to the regional Lower Saxony authorities. The company would remain nationalised until privatisation in 1960.

Remains of the day

Major Ivan Hirst, of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME), is the man now most associated with saving the immediate post-war Volkswagen and pointing it down the path to success so that, come 1949, there was something to go back to the German people. While his contribution should never be underestimated, he was a cog – albeit a pretty significant one – in a much bigger machine that transformed what was a bombed-out factory, constructing an “ugly, bizarre, noisy and flimsy,” car with unfortunate Third Reich links and considered worthless by many, into a solid industrial concern with a bright economic future.