chaadster

That’s part-and-parcel of what I’m talking about. One cannot talk about a nation becoming “obsessed” about something as a stand-alone idea; to the extent such a thing could be true or have any meaning is closely tied to economic and social conditions, which in this case are the post war conditions I’ve been talking about. Any kind of German “obsession” with cars would not and could not have happened without the Marshall Plan. Consider the competing Morgenthau Plan, and that becomes quite clear.

Further, German automotive manufacturing was not strong until, as I mentioned earlier, the Wirtschaftwunder period, and it was really only VW powering that sector until the ‘50s. For reference, consider that VW, as the largest W. German manufacturer in 1950, made ~90k cars, while US car production was ~58 million. Within the context of the Marshall Plan, which had among its primary goals making the German market amenable to US business, it’s easy to imagine how, as companies like Webasto—which today make auto parts and were in the bike parts business from at least 1914 to 1955– mention in their history, that it was simply unprofitable to be in the bike biz in 1955, because of economic factors favoring auto industry. Were materials shortages and cost inflation of steel from allocation and preference to heavy industry and infrastructure rebuilding in preceeding years part of that lack of profitability in the bike sector? I’m no expert, but it certainly seems extremely likely.