The Volksflugzeug (People's Aircraft) was a grand Nazi-era scheme for the mass-production of a small and simple airplane in the 1930s. It was one of the attempts of the Nazi regime to use consumer technologies as a propaganda tool. Unlike the Volkswagen car, the showpiece of the Nazis’ attempt to appear to work for the good of the average German, as well as the less-known Volksempfänger radio, the Volkskühlschrank refrigerator and the Volksgasmaske gas mask, the Volksflugzeug project was contemplated but never fully realized. The Volksflugzeug grand plan surfaced at different times and in different locations in Germany during Nazi rule. However, since it only had lukewarm official backing, it remained ill-defined and vague. World War II necessitated a change in priorities that abruptly ended most of the projects connected with the scheme.
History
Early attempts The idea of a "People's Aircraft" predated the Nazi regime. Its main source of inspiration was Henry Ford’s Ford T. After the industrial production of a cheap car that the ordinary citizen could afford was made possible, there was only one step in the minds of some towards building an aircraft on the same pattern. The idea of a ‘People's Plane’ was put forward to Henry Ford by William Bushnell Stout and Ford immediately became enthusiastic about it. The Ford Flivver was the resulting plane, a project that ended up not becoming as successful as expected. In Germany itself, some projects in the second half of the 1920 decade were intended as early Volksflugzeug planes. Already in 1928 the Raab-Katzenstein RK-9 Grasmücke (Warbler) was a 2-seat biplane trainer fitted with a 3-cylinder Anzani motor that was planned as a 'Volksflugzeug'. The Etrich Sport-Taube, built in 1929 by the Etrich company, was also intended as a Volksflugzeug, but it soon faced difficulties regarding production in series and the project was given up. Other early People's Aircraft projects were the Deicke ADM 11 Volksflugzeug built in 1933, the Gerner G.I and G.II biplanes, and the Messerschmitt M 17. Engineers such as Hanns Klemm saw that there was a future in light aircraft. This led Klemm to design the Daimler L15 while he worked at the Daimler Motor Company in Sindelfingen. Klemm had a clear goal: to build in series a Volksflugzeug, a plane that would be low in production costs, fitted with a low-priced motor and low in maintenance. Later, after leaving Daimler, Klemm established his own company Leichtflugzeugbau Klemm in Böblingen.
There was a competition for the construction of a single-seat low-cost Volksflugzeug in the early 1930s before the Nazi Party came to power. In addition to industrial and private companies, also academic groups took part in the contest. Thus the Akademische Fliegergruppe Berlin of the Berlin Technical High School produced the B 4, also known as „FF“, fast fertig (almost ready) and won the first prize. Following the Nazi takeover such Academic Flying Groups were disbanded through a decree issued on 11 April 1933 by the Reichskommissar responsible for aviation.
Propaganda tool The prefix ‘Volks-’ became for Nazism a kind of honor badge that was awarded to selected industrial products. The capacity to mass-produce such items flattered a totalitarian state which sought to present itself as a leader in technical progress as well as the forerunner of a more egalitarian world led by the Führer. In the post war years such people's projects were often mentioned as “the good side” of the Nazi times. Initiative and eventual instructions regarding the “People’s Products” proposals came from the German Labour Front, led by Robert Ley, as well as from the Nazi Propaganda Ministry led by Joseph Goebbels. Political, ideological, as well as economical factors dictated their viability within the Nazi context. The “People’s Products” had a double function, on one hand they were key elements of the official propaganda, which promised an affluent and comfortable future society to citizens, mainly in order to make the actual economic hardships dictated by the German re-armament acceptable to the population. On the other hand, they constituted real plans and visions of a specifically Nazi consumer's society. The failure of the grand scheme became evident, however, when the economic goal of massive people's consumption revealed itself incompatible with the simultaneous political goals of autarky, re-armament and territorial expansion. By mid-1937 with the German re-armament in full gear, such small planes were labelled as 'weak-engined planes' (schwachmotorige Flugzeuge) and Nazi engineer Hermann Schäfer would write in Berlin that: The name „Volksflugzeug“ is only acceptable for a plane that wide layers of a Volk can afford to buy and upkeep. However, in the foreseeable time one can neither count on a plane of that type nor on the creation of the necessary conditions for it, such as take-off, landing and maintenance infrastructures.
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