Battle for the Beetle.(Brief Article)

You would think there can't be much left to say aboutthe iconic Volks-wagen Beetle. Yet a sizable part of the car's story had never been completely told.

From spring of 1938, when the cornerstone was laid for the VW plant, until 1949, when the Beetle finally became

a mass-production vehicle, that period is marked by how little we really know about it. Into that gap steps Karl Ludvigsen with a groundbreaking new book, Battle for the Beetle.

To be fair, the Bug's early history has been given a sound, if relatively broad treatment before. And it's understandable that the finer and harder facts have been clouded in obscurity. As Ludvigsen relates, just when the Volkswagen appeared on the world stage as Adolph Hitler's dream to put the German people on wheels, that world began to fall apart-the result of Hitler's other, terrifying aspirations. The giant factory, which also built the V-1 buzz bomb, narrowly escaped destruction. And in the turbulent days following the war, the factory and the Beetle design itself became game pieces on the complex chessboard of postwar European politics. The focus of Battle for the Beetle, the struggle to which its title refers, is on the powerful forces (political, industrial ...