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What does Volkswagen mean?

I was looking at Volkswagens earlier today and it occurred to me that I have no idea what the word actually means or where it came from. All I know is it’s German. What does Volkswagen mean?

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Michelle Ballestrasse · Updated on
Reviewed by Shannon Martin, Licensed Insurance Agent.
Hey, nobody really thinks of the story behind major brand names unless someone brings it up. In German, the word Volkswagen means the people’s car. And the story behind it is quite interesting—although it involves one of history’s most notorious tyrants.
Volkswagen was originally founded in Germany in 1937, so you may already know what the political climate in the country was like at the time. It was early in Adolf Hitler’s tenure as Führer when Volkswagen was first established by the German Labour Front, the Nazi Party’s labor organization. Only one in 50 Germans owned a car at the time, something that Hitler was looking to amend.
While there were other established carmakers in Germany back then, Volkswagen was founded with the sole purpose of creating an affordable passenger car that any German citizen could easily buy. Volkswagen had the direct financial support of the state under the Nazi regime, which allowed the car manufacturer to succeed at an endeavor otherwise not considered commercially viable.
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