13.

On the day that Adolf Hitler seized the most powerful post in the country, an entirely different Adolf quit his job. On January 30, 1933, the thirty-two-year-old Adolf Rosenberger gathered the staff of nineteen at the office of the Porsche automobile design firm in central Stuttgart’s Kronenstrasse and told them he was resigning as their commercial director. Rosenberger had cofounded the company two years earlier with two partners: the mercurial but brilliant car designer Ferdinand Porsche and his son-in-law, Anton Piëch, a pugnacious Viennese lawyer. Rosenberger was the firm’s financial backer and fundraiser, but he had grown tired of spending his own money and raising funds from family and friends for the Porsche firm, which was burning through cash and nearing insolvency. Rosenberger had arranged a successor: Baron Hans von Veyder-Malberg, a retired race-car driver and an acquaintance of both Rosenberger and Porsche. The firm was in such dire straits that the Austrian aristocrat had to bring in forty thousand reichsmarks as a bridge loan. Despite the financial situation, Rosenberger left his job on good terms. He would stay on as a shareholder and focus on peddling Porsche patents to foreign markets in more of a freelance role.

Adolf Rosenberger could not have been more different from the new chancellor, despite the shared first name. The handsome, tech-savvy German Jew had been a race-car driver for Mercedes. Some of his race cars were designed by Ferdinand Porsche. Rosenberger’s racing career ended abruptly in 1926, after a serious accident at the Grand Prix in Berlin left three people dead; he was severely injured. He instead began investing in real estate in his hometown, then partnered with Porsche to help finance their race-car designs and turn them into drivable prototypes.

When Ferdinand Porsche started his namesake firm in Stuttgart at the height of the Great Depression, it was the first time that the fifty-five-year-old mustachioed autodidact had struck out on his own as an entrepreneur. Previously, he had been terminated twice as chief technical designer, most recently at Austria’s Steyr Automobiles, where he was laid off after a few months because of the economic crisis. Before that, his executive contract at Daimler-Benz wasn’t renewed because his designs were exceedingly expensive and the personal debt that he owed to the carmaker was mounting; he had taken loans from Daimler to finance the building of a vast family villa on a hill in Stuttgart.

Porsche’s Jewish cofounder, Adolf Rosenberger.

Courtesy of the Adolf Rosenberger/Alan Arthur Robert estate

Porsche moved back to Stuttgart from Austria with his family in 1930. Finding a job during the worst economic crisis in modern times was tough, especially for a man in his midfifties operating in a niche industry and expecting a good salary. Plus, Porsche had a reputation for being difficult. Those in the automotive industry viewed him as an “unemployable perfectionist” because of his lack of financial discipline and volatile temper. So Porsche started his own company. He hired veteran engineers and partnered with cofounders who could lend balance where he lacked it. But Porsche could not overcome his worst impulses. He still threw tantrums, often grabbing the wide-brimmed hat he always wore, throwing it on the ground, and stomping on it like a petulant child. What’s more, his designs continued to be too costly. They would never be approved for production during a depression. He found himself facing bankruptcy.

When Hitler seized power, Porsche had just turned down a job to head up vehicle production for Joseph Stalin’s Soviet regime in Moscow. After careful consideration, Porsche declined this lifeline. He deemed himself too old, and besides, he didn’t speak Russian. Politics didn’t matter to Porsche; he cared only about his car designs. When the dictator back home threw Porsche another lifeline, he grabbed it with both hands.

At 10 a.m. on February 11, 1933, twelve days after Adolf Rosenberger quit his job, Hitler gave his first opening speech at Berlin’s International Motor Show. In his upbeat address, the chancellor announced tax relief for motorists and a modern road-construction plan to revive the ailing car industry, which was still reeling from the economic crisis. Hitler, a car nut who had never even obtained a driver’s license, praised Germany’s automotive designers and engineers “whose genius creates these marvels of human ingenuity. It’s sad that our people hardly ever get to know these nameless men.” The führer was, however, about to get to know one particular car designer exceptionally well.

Hitler’s message was met with cheers back at the Porsche office in Stuttgart, where the whole team was listening to the speech on the radio. After Hitler finished speaking, Ferdinand Porsche sent him a telegram, providing a brief résumé and offering his services: “As the creator of many renowned constructions in the field of German and Austrian motor and aviation and as a co-fighter for more than 30 years for today’s success, I congratulate Your Excellency on the profound opening speech.” Porsche and his staff were ready to put their “will and ability at the disposal of the German people,” he cabled to Berlin. In an accompanying telegram, Porsche wrote: “We express the hope that in our endeavors we will receive Your Excellency’s attention and encouragement.” His telegrams weren’t just acknowledged by Hitler’s state secretary. They were received graciously, and Porsche promptly was sent words of encouragement.

Porsche’s first contact with Hitler had been indirect, and a sheer coincidence. In 1925, the Mercedes limousine that was used to chauffeur Hitler was brought to Daimler’s body shop in Berlin for repair. Porsche, then Daimler’s technical director, happened to be visiting the garage and diagnosed the problem: heavily contaminated lubricating oil. He had no idea whose shiny black limo it was. A year later, the two men were properly introduced on the sidelines of a racing event in Stuttgart. Now, seven years later, Ferdinand Porsche was about to become Hitler’s favorite engineer.

On May 10, 1933, Hitler and Porsche met again, this time at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. During their thirty-five-minute meeting, Porsche convinced Hitler to allocate state subsidies for the development of a race car that Porsche and Rosenberger had designed, regaling the car-crazy führer with tales of technical innovation. Hitler’s decision helped Porsche turn things around financially. And when the time came for Hitler to look for a man capable of realizing his prestige car project — the Volkswagen — he knew just where to find him: at his drawing desk in Stuttgart.