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Germans at the Wheel
unmistakable. The differences between this individualizing vision and the collectivist
imagery (if not the reality) associated with both socialist and Nazi mass travel
cultures must once again be noted.
This difference is reinforced if it is pointed out that Hauser, after emigrating to
the United States, criticized Nazi state plans to reduce the number of car models
available to the public. National Socialist policy was based in part on vociferous
criticism of allegedly outmoded “liberal” approaches to automotive leisure by
which consumers would have the choice of many models and makes adapted to
the variety of everyday needs. 56 Formulated in 1938 as part of the Four-Year Plan
adopted two years previously, the National Socialist scheme anticipated large-scale
military requisitioning and the technical difficulties involved in army maintenance
of a large variety of car models. Hauser argued that standardization would only
hurt the German automotive industry, which would be unable to compete with
foreign auto firms that not only made technical progress through yearly model
changes but also were able to gain new consumers by marketing many automobile
brands. Consumer choice obviously mattered in Hauser’s scheme of things. Hauser
also criticized the KdF-Wagen, inspired at least in part by Fordist images of a
standardized product for the masses, arguing that it was no “People’s Car” at all
because it would remain too expensive for most Germans – a doubt shared, not
insignificantly, by many of the manufacturers and engineers opposed to the
project. 57 Whether its design suited Hauser’s vision of more flexible and individualized
leisure travel is impossible to say on the basis of the sources available for
the present study.
Hauser’s critical remarks toward German drivers in the 1936 article were counterbalanced
by his praise for the collectivity, and especially by adoration for the
National Socialist regime.
We now have at our disposal vacation areas and leisure time pleasures so great and varied
that hardly any other country in the world can match them [he wrote triumphantly]. If
German drivers now begin to live their existence more strongly and with greater pleasure,
we know that our thanks must go to just one man, who has put the automobile in its
rightful place, and who has forged the way for it: the Führer. 58
Yet it is worth emphasizing that such adoration contained unspoken assumptions.
It was noted before that the Volksgemeinschaft both enabled and prescribed new
forms of driving, which is to say that it made innovative demands on its people,
who were expected to drive according to new rules and travel technologies. At the
same time, however, drivers might make new demands on other drivers and the
state. If Hauser expected German motorists to be more courteous, to avoid
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