Behind the Bastards
Part One: That Time Volkswagen Operated a Slave Plantation in Brazil
14 Oct 2025
Chapter 1: What historical context led to Volkswagen's involvement in slavery in Brazil?
Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the very worst people in all of history. A topic I am well suited to address because I am one of the worst people in all of history. Or at least I feel that way because I am calamitously hungover. I am the villain in my own life and very angry at myself. Here to express rage at me, my guest and friend, Maggie Mae Fess. Fess.
Fess.
You see how I'm doing today, Maggie? Oh, my God. I'm in rage. You see where my head is? It's a fire. I'm fucked up.
Oh, my God. It's almost like I'm not hungover either.
I need more fucking electrolytes. Sure. Thursday night's a normal party night.
Absolutely.
When you have a normal human schedule like us.
I was going to say for our kind. Yes, it is.
Yeah, for our kind. Normal, healthy people in the entertainment industry. Maggie. You and I go way back. We were colleagues at the old place, cracked.com. And you have grown and spread your wings from there, like all of our wonderful colleagues. And you have a YouTube channel now. And you just came out with a new project that I'm very excited to check out.
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Chapter 2: How did Volkswagen's early connections to the Nazi regime influence its operations?
That's one thing they're known for.
Barbie had one at one point.
Barbie had a Volkswagen. And some tenuous connection to Nazism? Is that? It's not tenuous. I'll tell you that much right now, Maggie. We'll be talking a little bit about that. I knew that like Volkswagen was connected to the Nazis, like a lot of car companies, right? Like there's no good car company. There's no like car company that's just got like a spotless, clean record. No war crimes.
No one evil was ever involved.
No.
You know, like fucking obviously everyone's aware of the fun journey that Elon Musk and Tesla have been on lately. But like Ford Motor Company was founded by a notorious anti-Semite, right?
Yes. People are aware of that.
In Michigan. Yes. Ford wound up being a valuable part of the United States is like war effort. Right. They made a lot of cars that were used by the military. But Ford himself, Henry, would have been much happier if the U.S. had sided with Nazi Germany. Right.
Like, absolutely. He's raring to go in my memory of.
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Chapter 3: What was the role of slave labor in Volkswagen's production during WWII?
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Chapter 4: How did Volkswagen transition to operating a slave plantation in Brazil?
You win.
Yeah. Get your huge Nazi family into this tiny car. And yeah, it'll be great. So unlike many of the Reich's policies, Hitler personally directed the search for a people's car. There was a bunch of shit that like Hitler was. I mean, even like to an extent, like the Holocaust was a thing that like he delegated a lot here.
he is directly involved in like the quest to motorize Germany in an extent that's kind of rare for him. Right. Cause he is a big delegation guy, you know?
Yeah. This is like a well beyond where he's just delegating everything and like, yeah. Having sex all the time. Okay.
Yeah, this is something he's personally obsessed with, just kind of in the same manner that he's obsessed with the rebuilding of Berlin and all of these kind of architectural programs where they're creating these massive buildings that will be symbols of the new Reich. He's personally involved in that, and he's personally involved in this quest to motorize Germany. Mm-hmm.
And Hitler never knew how to drive himself. He was not a driver, but he took great pleasure in being chauffeured around the country. One of his hobbies was just having people drive him around. He liked going on rides. Cars were more exciting back then, you know? We hadn't gotten completely burnt out on them.
And Porsche, Ferdinand Porsche, had been an advocate for something like the Volkswagen for years prior to the Nazis coming to power. So this was one of those things that was really convenient for Porsche.
Kismet.
Yes, exactly. It's kismet, you know, and his biographer Wolfram Pita describes both Porsche and Hitler as made for each other. Right. And, quote, Hitler needed a creative mind to produce his compact car suitable for mass production. And Porsche needed political backing to enable him to build it without financial pressure. Right.
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Chapter 5: What methods did Volkswagen use to recruit laborers for their plantation?
Strength through joy, productivity through joy. And so the motorization of Germany is a big part of this, right? The idea that a normal party member would be able to afford their own family car in a country that had been as strapped with poverty and economic collapse as Germany that had gone through something as devastating as a famine so recently. That's really appealing, right?
And it makes fascism look really powerful. The fact that, well, you know, a few years ago, everyone was starving. And now we're talking about giving everyone their own car, right? Again, they never do this, but it's important to Hitler and it's important to the image of Nazism that they were trying to do this, right? That this was something that they were, you know, talking about, right? Mm-hmm.
And cars were expressly a luxury commodity when Hitler took over. When he comes to power, only about one fiftieth of the country owned automobiles. And the idea is that, you know, cars are not cheap. Right. And the Volkswagen is supposed to cost just nine hundred and ninety nine Reichsmarks. And there will be like an installment plan. So regular citizens are able to afford it is a big deal.
automobile ownership is intensely politicized from the very earliest years of the Reich. The German General Automotive Club expelled all of its Jewish members in 1933. And after Kristallnacht in 1938, Jews were legally forbidden from driving or owning cars in the Reich. Hitler approves the first Volkswagen prototype near the end of 1935.
And in the late spring of 1938, construction begins on the first factory in Wolfsburg. Hitler himself made an appearance at the ceremony, basically cuts the ribbon as they're creating and building this factory in Wolfsburg. And at this point, the Volkswagen, which is known initially, they don't start calling it the Volkswagen.
It's called the KDF wagon, which I think is just like the strength through joy wagon, basically. Mm-hmm. yeah sure right yeah they found a better name we can all agree volkswagen rolls off the tongue better than the kdf wagon oh yeah no i uh my friends got this classic kdf wagon still got the swastikas on the back end and everything yeah right kill fuck death wagon right A kill death fuck wagon.
Yeah, there we go. So the idea in Nazi propaganda is that the KDF wagon is going to be the symbol of the National Socialist People's Community. And the plant in Wolfsburg would be known as the city of the KDF car. In short order, Hitler promised more than 1.5 million of these cars would be produced every year. Now, they never achieve this.
This is never more than a propagandistic boast because they start building the factory in 1938 and World War II kicks off like a year later. And so as soon as Germany gets into a war with everybody, the military need for different vehicles and tanks trumps the desire to get civilians automobiles.
You can only do one at a time, basically, given the nature of the German economy and their access to resources.
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Chapter 6: How did the Brazilian military dictatorship impact Volkswagen's practices?
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Honestly, I gotta follow him. He can see right through me. Listen to Crimeless on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
You know, we always say new year, new me, but real change starts on the inside. It starts with giving your mind and your spirit the same attention you give your goals. Hey everybody, it's Michelle Williams, host of Checking In on the Black Effect Podcast Network. And on my podcast, we talk mental health, healing, growth, and everything you need to step into your next season whole and empowered.
New year, real you. Listen to Checking In with Michelle Williams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Dad had the strong belief that the devil was attacking us.
Two brothers, one devout household, two radically different paths. Gabe Ortiz became one of the highest-ranking law enforcement officers in Texas.
32 years total law enforcement experience. But his brother Larry, he stayed behind and built an entirely different legacy.
He was the head of this gang, and nobody was going to tell him what to do.
You're going to push that line for the cause.
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Chapter 7: What are the long-term effects of Volkswagen's actions on Brazilian society?
It doesn't work well. And as soon as it becomes clear the war is lost, Ole Anton flees to Austria and hides out on the personal estate of Ferdinand Porsche, who's his father-in-law. He takes about 10 million Reichsmarks with him when the Nazis lose, and he tries to hide out there. It's not going to be super successful because, like, it's Austria. You haven't fled that far.
Like, it's still going to be occupied.
Yeah.
And yeah, he's going to get charged criminally for his involvement here, as is Dr. Korbel, who ran that child death camp nursery thing. Korbel actually gets charged by the British occupying officials with criminal neglect in 1946, and he's executed in 1947. And again, I just really want to emphasize, these are all Volkswagen employees, right? Yes.
And Dr. Korbel is going to be one of the very few VW employees to pay for his war era crimes. Porsche and Pike, you know, obviously we know who Fred and Porsche is. Pike is the guy who was managing the factory. They're both arrested and held in custody after the war, but the allied authorities never got around to really charging them with any crimes.
Hmm.
Volkswagen continues to operate after World War II, and the Wolfsburg plant remained the headquarters of the company up until the modern era. They never changed their HQ from like the place where they had slave factories. Again, this is this very German thing of it's like, well, the buildings are perfectly good. Like it's not the building's fault.
What are we going to do?
Why would we change where we're based out of? It harms no one. We have the factory right here. Wow.
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Chapter 8: How has Volkswagen's history of slavery been addressed in modern times?
Right.
Mm-hmm. It rhymes. It's true.
Yeah, it rhymes. And a big part of this is like, well, we kind of got to get rid of a lot of the Amazon. You know, that's just wasted space. Brazil is going to be a modern country. We got to pave over that motherfucker.
You know, we all agree on that. Yeah.
Too much. Amazon's a real problem for Brazil. You know, we got to get rid of that shit so we can have cattle farms and the like. So the fact that the military junta does engage in this kind of building and industrialization process, it's cited a lot by defenders of the regime, including Jair Bolsonaro, who just got convicted of doing a coup.
But Bolsonaro is very much influenced by the military dictatorship, right? He is a guy who will always see this as like the military dictatorship was doing the right thing, and that's what we ā his whole ā Time and power was trying to go back to those days in a lot of ways.
Right.
And this is why he was a huge advocate for the illegal logging and clear cutting of the Amazon. You know, this is a thing that was important to him. And this really I'm not going to say it starts entirely under the military junta, but the military junta makes it a major part of the regime. Right. Is that we're going to get rid of this fucking jungle and develop it. Mm hmm.
And so what you're seeing in this period from the 60s to the early 80s is the birth of the systematic state-encouraged annihilation of the rainforest. This has continued to be a celebrated cause among the Brazilian right wing ever since.
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