The British Army officer widely credited with reopening the Volkswagen factory was Ivan Hirst.
Major Ivan Hirst was an engineer in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME). After the British took control of the heavily damaged Volkswagen plant in 1945, Hirst helped turn it from a wartime facility into a functioning postwar automobile factory. The site had originally been associated with the KdF-Wagen, but civilian production had been disrupted by World War II.
Hirst first used the factory and its workers to repair military vehicles. He then recognized that the Volkswagen design could be put back into production, despite shortages of fuel, raw materials, equipment and housing. His efforts helped secure a British order for vehicles, giving the factory a practical reason to restart rather than being dismantled as war reparations.
Hirst did not single-handedly create the Beetle or run Volkswagen permanently. His role was to revive the plant under British military administration. In 1948, management passed to Heinrich Nordhoff, who expanded production dramatically and helped establish the Beetle as a global bestseller. Hirst’s contribution was the crucial postwar restart.