Scene at Volkswagen's main plant, Wolfsburg, Germany, July 1951.

Inspecting a VW engine, 1951.

People gathered around a VW bus, 1951.

People gaze at photographer Walter Sanders through the open roll-top of a VW bus, 1951.

A young woman and man enjoy themselves beside a VW cabriolet, 1951.

Most people who have ever owned a Volkswagen Beetle or, say, an early, split-windshield VW bus or even a Karmann Ghia will swear that those uncomfortable, relatively bare-bones vehicles were among the favorite cars they’ve ever driven. They’re not for everyone, of course — but for a certain breed of driver, the old-school VWs offered a rare combination of reliability, ease of maintenance and, most importantly, personality that so many other mass-produced automobiles lacked.The story of Volkswagen, meanwhile, is among the most fascinating and, in some regards, most troubling of any car manufacturer in existence. One well-documented example of VW’s paradoxical lore: in its early days, during World War II, Volkswagen used slave labor (the company has admitted as much) to build vehicles for the Nazi war effort; decades later, the archetypal Volkswagens, the Beetle and the T1 bus, would become the four-wheeled symbols of the “peace and love” movement of the 1960s. From Hitler to hippies: not many other companies, automobile or otherwise, can lay claim to that sort of bizarre corporate narrative.Here, a series of photos made byphotographer Walter Sanders at the company’s famous Wolfsburg plant in 1951. A refugee from Hitler’s Germany himself, who fled his native country the same year VW began making cars, Sanders captures in these pictures of the factory and the factory workers a nation in the process of recreating itself. Here, in black and white, is a portrait of the labor and mechanization that would again make Germany one of the world’s most powerful economies before the end of the century.(Photos: Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)