In March 2025, a rumor circulated online that a black-and-white photograph showed German dictator Adolf Hitler helping a major financial donor to his regime sell a car from the individual's vehicle manufacturer. Some users compared the picture with photos captured on the White House driveway showing U.S. President Donald Trump supporting the car company led by his adviser and major campaign donor, Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
For example, Bluesky (archived) and X (archived) user @BladeoftheS posted on March 12: "Adolf Hitler helping one of his biggest donors sell a car in 1938. History doesn't change it just repeats." The X post had amassed more than 5.1 million views as of this writing. Another post (archived) by X user @kamaufranklin displayed the same caption with a photo comparison of the past and present leaders with the carmakers. Other users shared similar claims on X, Facebook, Reddit, Threads and other websites.
While the historical and contemporary photographs shared visual similarities of leaders pictured with carmakers and their vehicles, no evidence in any available sources (listed below this article) suggested the claim that Ferdinand Porsche, the man to Hitler's left, donated significant funds to the German dictator.
Porsche, an Austrian automotive engineer and Nazi Party member, served as the public face of the design team behind the "beetle-like" Volkswagen, which did not officially receive its Beetle name until 1968. He also founded the Porsche sports car company with his son, Ferdinand, or "Ferry."
As for Trump and Musk, photos and videos showed the pair standing in the driveway of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue beside several Tesla vehicles on March 11, one day after Tesla's stock fell to pre-November 2024 election levels. In front of members of the press, Trump pledged to buy one of Tesla's "beautiful" cars, referencing Musk by saying: "We have to celebrate him."
The two users, @BladeoftheS and @kamaufranklin, had not responded to requests for their evidence at the time of publication.
The context of the Hitler photo
On May 26, 1938, The Associated Press (AP) reported on the event shown in the photograph of Hitler sitting in one of Ferdinand Porsche's new Volkswagen vehicles. Earlier that day, a photographer captured the image during the ceremony in Fallersleben, a district of Wolfsburg, Germany.
Adolf Hitler inaugurating the construction site of the Volkswagen factory in Wolfsburg, May 26, 1938. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
The AP's headline read: "Hitler Lays Cornerstone of Plant For Building Low-Priced Autos. 'Volkswagen' Factory Under Way After Many Postponements — Fuehrer Wants 6,000,000 Cars on the Road."
The article said the ceremony marked a new chapter in Hitler's plans to produce a state-sponsored, affordable car known as "the people's car" — or its German-language translation and modern-day car brand name of Volkswagen — "so Germany would no longer lag behind the United States in motorization."
Image courtesy of St. Louis Post-Dispatch via The Associated Press (Newspapers.com)
The AP piece read in part:
Today, three sample cars, four-seaters, of different types, were ranged along the rostrum from which the Fuehrer spoke. The cars each weighed 1,430 pounds and were capable of speeds up to 60 miles an hour, powered from the rear by a 24-horsepower motor. They were built to sell at 990 marks — $396.
"Even before I took over power," Hitler said, "I conceived a plan to have a car produced to serve virtually all classes of the population."
"We need between 6,000,000 and 7,000,000 popular cars on the road."
Getty Images hosts the picture shared by social media users. The caption (translated from German to English) reads: "Adolf Hitler (left in the car) during the inspection of a Volkswagen model, with Dr. Ferdinand Porsche to his right - May 1938." The caption credited the photo to the ullstein bild picture archive. Getty hosts several additional photos featuring other moments from the day.
However, Hitler never delivered on his promise of a "people's car" for Germany. The country's Fallersleben plant switched to military production during World War II. After the war, French officials briefly imprisoned Porsche. He died in 1951.
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) published a detailed history of Volkswagen's actions during World War II, including its forced labor practices and operation of concentration camps and labor camps. The article's author also noted Volkswagen's present-day transparency regarding its dark past. For example, an official company website features an article addressing its decades of memorial work at the Auschwitz concentration camp — a camp complex where more than 1.1 million people died, including nearly 1 million Jews.
Josef Ganz
In 2012, Dutch technology journalist Paul Schilperoord published a book attributing the design of the car later known as the Volkswagen Beetle to Jewish engineer Josef Ganz.
Writing in The New York Times, Phil Patton, a journalist and author, said of the book: "The tale is intriguing: a Jewish engineer and journalist, whose designs and published work in the 1930s laid out the basics for the Volkswagen Beetle championed by Hitler, was arrested, chased from Germany and nearly airbrushed out of history."
Schilperoord wrote in a brief biography of Ganz: "Josef Ganz died in obscurity in Australia in 1967, his legacy known and admired by all but his name forgotten. His desk lay full of evidence for his bizarre life story that he so desperately wanted to be told."
Patton's Times article also mentioned other people credited with the vehicle's creation, including Austrian designer Hans Ledwinka and Hungarian engineer Bela Barenyi.