Heinrich Nordhoff

Who was Heinrich Nordhoff?

Heinz Heinrich Nordhoff was a German engineer famous for his leadership of the Volkswagen company as it was rebuilt after World War II.

Nordhoff attended technical college in Berlin, where he became a member of the Roman Catholic fraternity Askania-Burgundia, and in 1927, began work for BMW working on aircraft engines.

In 1929 he went to work for Opel where he gained experience of the automotive industry and rapid promotion. In 1936 he was the Commercial-Technical director who presented the company's innovative new small car, the Kadett to the public. In 1942, with passenger car production much diminished on account of the war, he took over as Production Director at the company's flagship truck plant at Brandenburg.

Following the war he obtained a job as a service manager at a Hamburg garage. Hamburg was a central location for the Control Commission for Germany - British Element who recruited him for the position of Managing Director of the badly damaged Volkswagen plant at Wolfsburg. He assumed the position on 2 January 1948 from British Army Major Ivan Hirst. During his first year in post Nordhoff doubled production to 19,244 cars. By the end of 1961 annual production exceeded a million vehicles.