Re: VW/Audi setting up fund for slave laborers (news)

["Ian J Haseltine" <jim_haseltine@email.msn.com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Brandon Hull <brandon@cardinalventures.com>


>This press release just triggered a recollection of a piece in "Automobile
>Quarterly" describing the history of VW in occupied Germany following the
>war.  The gist of the story was that VW's plants, distribution networks and
>personnel had been completely eradicated.  A small cadre of British
>officers, as part of the Allied effort to jump start the German economy,
>recognized the market potential of the Beetle and re-started VW from
>scratch.  As I recall, the article concludes that these guys were
>responsible for the existence of what today is one of the world's great
>automakers, without taking any equity or salary beyond their military pay.
>Is this common knowledge in the UK?  I'd be happy to dig up the article
were
>anyone interested.


I read an article on this subject some years ago. It implied that one of the
reasons for re-starting VW was to supply the motor pools of the occupying
forces and showed a number of pictures of khaki coloured Beetles being
driven from the assembly plant by members of a British tank regiment.

Jim Haseltine