Hitler gives an address at a ceremony marking the start of construction of the Volkswagen factory at Fallersleben, June 1938.

Hitler and the prototype Volkswagen

A bit off-topic perhaps; I offer the excuse that Sepp Dietrich's first acquaintance with tanks came when he helped crew one of these as a member of Sturmpanzerwagen-Abteilung 15 in WW1.  This is a rare 'photo of a Sturmpanzerwagen A7V on the move - rare because they were not very good at moving.  This approximated to the early model of a tank as a "land ship" more than British prototypes actually called that.  It weighed 33,500 kg - not that much more than British heavy tanks of the period weighing in at about 29,000 kg.  However, it was painfully slow (perhaps 8 mph on road, if you were lucky; off-road performance was terrible), underpowered, clumsy, unreliable and difficult to deploy.  Armament varied, but typically would be one 57mm body-mounted artillery cannon and six machine-guns.  Crew was a staggering 18, composed of a mixed force of Army and Navy personnel.  Only 20 examples were produced; the German Sturmpanzerwagen-Abteilung generally relied on captured Allied tanks.  At least one tank-to-tank combat between these vehicles and British tanks is recorded.  In this, a single AV 7 pressed a pair of "female" British heavies (i.e. armed only with machine guns) until it was in turn driven off by a British "male" tank (armed with two 6-pounder guns) arriving late on the scene.  Given that the road speed of the British tanks (and, proportionately, their off-road speed) would have been even slower than that of the AV 7, it is surprising that either party was capable of driving the other anywhere.  I suppose that it took some vision for people like Guderian to see the great future that awaited the successors of vehicles like this ... Best regards, JR.

The first panzer.

Eastern front, 1942 ? Note the camo trousers.
Patdau