What if Porsche accepted?

with Tatra and Porsche, the Soviet Union is monopoly power on rear-engine performance car.


Preston Tucker consider defect to USSR for fulfillment project.


In Soviet Union, technology innovate you!

800px-Tatra_T603.jpg
 
What if Ferdinand Porsche in 1932 would have accepted the offer of Stalin to modernise Russia. He got offered to kinda build russian industry to western standards with a "blank check".


The result would have been an even more inefficient Russian industrial system.

Porsche was a toymaker more than anything else. If given the power suggested in the offer, he would have "rationalized" Russian production towards a series of goals which would have had long term negative consequences and, given the already dysfunctional nature of Russia's industrial programs, that would have caused great dislocations.

Thanks to it's huge ideological handicaps, prewar Russia was barely able to utilize Ford's expertise or the same from US oil men. Putting a toymaker with huge tunnel vision issues like Porsche in control of the whole ramshackle system would have had a profoundly negative impact.
 
The result would have been an even more inefficient Russian industrial system.

Porsche was a toymaker more than anything else. If given the power suggested in the offer, he would have "rationalized" Russian production towards a series of goals which would have had long term negative consequences and, given the already dysfunctional nature of Russia's industrial programs, that would have caused great dislocations.

Thanks to it's huge ideological handicaps, prewar Russia was barely able to utilize Ford's expertise or the same from US oil men. Putting a toymaker with huge tunnel vision issues like Porsche in control of the whole ramshackle system would have had a profoundly negative impact.

I'm wondering if this might actually help the German war effort following Barbarossa, assuming it still happens.
 

maverick

Banned
The result would have been an even more inefficient Russian industrial system.

Porsche was a toymaker more than anything else. If given the power suggested in the offer, he would have "rationalized" Russian production towards a series of goals which would have had long term negative consequences and, given the already dysfunctional nature of Russia's industrial programs, that would have caused great dislocations.

Thanks to it's huge ideological handicaps, prewar Russia was barely able to utilize Ford's expertise or the same from US oil men. Putting a toymaker with huge tunnel vision issues like Porsche in control of the whole ramshackle system would have had a profoundly negative impact.


This sounds like an interesting scenario. Any idea or speculation on how it would develop through the 1930s?
 
One downside to this would be that Porsche might've been captured by the Nazis at some point had the invasion of Russia been even marginally successful like it was for a time OTL.

@simssss: Actually, that's not really true. Porsche had the idea of building his own car for some time, going back to around 1930, I believe. Contrary to the statements of some people{including many neo-Nazis I would suspect} all Hitler did was promote the project, and nothing more, and in fact, the good Dr. actually had to leave Germany right around the time WWII was getting started.

@TheMann: Not sure if I can entirely agree with you on the 'No Beetle' part. Granted, whatever car he ends up making might be substantially different from OTL's Beetle, but it'd probably still have a rear engine.

And then there was his part-time coworker{only for a brief time, though, I think} Josef Ganz who had actually made a similar design back all the way back in 1928 it seems: http://jalopnik.com/#!120493/volkswagen-beetle-icon-of-the-age-not-developed-by-ferdinand-porsche {BTW, he had to leave Germany himself in 1933........wonder what happened to him?}
Porsche didn't copy he had done prototype before for a cheap car, one for zundapp and others.
 
I'm wondering if this might actually help the German war effort following Barbarossa, assuming it still happens.

This sounds like an interesting scenario. Any idea or speculation on how it would develop through the 1930s?


Both these questions are somewhat related so I hope you don't mind that I combined them.

Porsche is going to have a negative effect, just as he did on German war production. The size of that effect is going to depend on how much power Porsche actually wields and the length of time he wields it. The more of each the more negative the effect.

There's another T-34 thread currently active on the board, so let's use that as an example.

We all know that the T-34 prototype lost out to another prototype during trials but a chance decision by Stalin saved the T-34 program from being terminated. Assuming Porsche is made the USSR's chief industrial commissar and assuming Stalin backs Porsche's various decisions with the full force of Beria's wet work boys, what would the chances be of the T-34 program being saved on what was basically a whim?

Now, spin that same question out across the entirety of a nation's industrial production. Beginning the see the possibilities?

The USSR produced a lot of junk because the USSR's centralized command system allowed politically connected projects to continue well beyond the point where their limited worth would have led to their being shut down. We must remember however, that this same politically-focused centralized command system saved "losing" programs, like the T-34, which eventually proved wildly successful.

The USSR's politicized command industrial system also didn't fit well with things like quality control and the relative lack of quality control is another reason why the USSR produced a lot of junk for decades. Would Porsche be able to impose an apolitical application of quality control? Again, that would depend on how strongly he's backed by Stalin and for how long, but I'm not betting on Porsche making either profound or long lasting changes in this area.

In Porsche's hands, I see the USSR moving towards more of a "perfect" design approach for it's many needs than the "shotgun" approach it's heavily politicized system employed. There would be one "perfect" light tank, one "perfect" medium tank, one "perfect" heavy, one fighter, one bomber, one of this, one of that, etc., etc. and that mindset would fit neatly with the the theory, if not the practice, of the USSR's centrally commanded economy.

This narrowing of choices is going to greatly lessen the number of equipment options the USSR has once war breaks out and greatly increase the chances that one of the "perfect" designs is in all actuality a perfect disaster.

Porsche isn't going to last long the post, I can't see him lasting more than five years for various reasons. The sooner he leaves, the sooner the USSR's industrial system metastasizes under political pressure into the "shotgun" set-up it "enjoyed" in the OTL.

However, while he's in power, or whatever power Stalin truly allows him, Porsche the Toymaker is going to make fundamental decisions based more on what's "kewl" than anything else and those decisions cannot help but negatively effect the USSR.
 

maverick

Banned
So I guess the question is: for how long does Stalin put up with Porsche?

Assuming that he has considerable amount of power in the 1930s, which might or might not rise and waver from time to time depending on Stalin's mood, does Porsche last enough to affect the Soviet War production?

Of course, if he actually lasts til June of 1941, and that's a pretty big IF, he might be purged since he's a German citizen.
 
So I guess the question is: for how long does Stalin put up with Porsche?

Assuming that he has considerable amount of power in the 1930s, which might or might not rise and waver from time to time depending on Stalin's mood, does Porsche last enough to affect the Soviet War production?

Of course, if he actually lasts til June of 1941, and that's a pretty big IF, he might be purged since he's a German citizen.

I woner if he would be purged too late to change the character of Soviet war ptoduction effectively, even if said purge occurred in or before 1939.
 
So I guess the question is: for how long does Stalin put up with Porsche?

That's a tough one. Three or four years? Long enough for Porsche's actions to show some effect but also enough time for Stalin to turn on him? Another question is how much are they going to let Porsche going to see?

I also think Porsche will simply be shown the border, not purged. He's too high profile to stuff in a gulag or kill out of hand.

Assuming that he has considerable amount of power in the 1930s, which might or might not rise and waver from time to time depending on Stalin's mood, does Porsche last enough to affect the Soviet War production?

I think he's going to be gone one way or another early enough for the Soviet's politically-driven, harum-scarum, industrial set-up to reassert itself. I think the most lasting negative effect he'll have is on the number of production options available to the USSR in 1941. He's going to rationalize production or rationalize it as much as he's allowed. The trouble is that his decisions about just what target to rationalize on won't be exactly the best so the options his work will leave the Soviets won't be a much as the options they had in the OTL.

Porsche's decisions are going to look wonderful at first, but as time goes on the flaws will become more and more evident. Those flaws will be allowed to accumulate due to political concerns, but even the Soviets will eventually have to acknowledge them.
 
Top