While studying military history, and in particular the different stages of the Second World War, we sometimes gloss over the seemingly irrelevant – the footnotes to history that oftentimes get overlooked in favor of the ebb and flow of war including its battles, personalities and aftermath. And yet there are episodes that are equally important, such as the German KdF program and its impact on the psyche of the average German citizen in the run up to war.
The Kraft durch Freude (German for Strength through Joy, abbreviated KdF) was a large state-operated leisure organization in Nazi Germany. It was a part of the German Labour Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront, DAF), the national German labour organization at that time. Set up as a tool to promote the advantages of National Socialism to the people, it soon became the world’s largest tourism operator of the 1930s.
The KdF was supposed to bridge the class divide by making middle-class leisure activities available to the masses. This was underscored by having cruises with passengers of mixed classes and having them, regardless of social status, draw lots for allocation of cabins.
Another less ideological goal was to boost the German economy by stimulating the tourist industry out of its slump from the 1920s. It was quite successful up until the outbreak of World War II. By 1934, over two million Germans had participated on a KdF trip; by 1939 the reported numbers lay around 25 million people. With the outbreak of war in 1939 the organization was mothballed, and several projects, such as the massive Prora holiday resort, were never completed.
One of the offshoots of the KdF program was the Volkswagen, the so-called People’s Car, which was designed to be a low-cost, family-owned vehicle that the average German family could own at a fraction of the cost of some of the more luxury-minded vehicles. It came about as a result of an edict by Germany’s chancellor, Adolf Hitler, who wanted his newly-developed Autobahn system to be flooded with masses of these vehicles. Developed and realized in 1938, the KdF Volkswagen never really got off the ground simply because it was overshadowed by the start of World War II. Volkswagen, as a result, was temporarily forced to abandon Hitler’s project and instead produce Kubelwagens and Schwimmwagens for the Wehrmacht.
Anyway, RIO Models happens to make an excellent representation of three 1:43 scale variants on the KdF Volkswagen (RIO4217D), which comes with a Hitler figure looking on, no doubt proud of his inspiration. Admittedly, its a bit pricey, but nonetheless a fitting tribute to a shard of history that often times gets overlooked.