There is a fascinating symbiotic relationship between fascism and the automobile. Hitler drooled over cars. His triumphal entry into conquered territories was always in a car and he was intimately involved in the development of the KdF Wagen, the precursor to the Volks Wagen. It is no coincidence that Henry Ford had many of the same ideas as Hitler (including anti-semitism).
"The very first essential for success," Hitler once said, "is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence."
Could there be any more "constant and regular violence" than war? Well actually, yes. If you put everyone in cars, peacetime could also be perpetually violent. Walk in the vicinity of any highway and feel the "constant an regular employment of violence" around you. The Autobahn and the 401 are extremely violent places, a blitzkreig of armoured machine violence, hurtling past the unarmoured observer. Feel the fierce turbulence and vibration, hear and feel the mighty roar, breathe the toxic air, inhale the dust and salt, watch the serried, armoured ranks go speeding by, encased comfortably and enjoyably in tons of metal, rubber and plastic. Strength through Joy indeed! Are we, when we drive, armoured, supine pawns of the M.I.C. (Military Industrial Complex)? Lord Byron used that devastating word supine to describe the majority of Greeks in his day who would not stand up for their ancestral gift of democracy but were bought by trinkets. Did fascism lose the second World War or did it in fact rise like the phoenix out of the ruins of German industry to join with its American counterpart in putting every family into an armoured vehicle to join in the rearguard of the great conquest of territory and nature already begun by the war-machine blitzkrieg of the M.I.C.? When we sink, supine into that bucket seat and switch her on, we've bought the fascist package?
"Every German, after the war, he [Hitler] remarked, had to have the chance with his 'Peoples Car' (Volkswagen) personally to see the conquered territories, since he would have 'to be ready if need be to fight for them.' The mistake of the pre-war era of limiting the colonial idea to the property of a few capitalists or companies could not be repeated. Roads would be more important in the future than the railways for passenger transport. Only through travel by road could a country be known, he asserted." --Ian Kershaw, paraphrasing Hitler in 'Hitler 1936-1945 Nemesis.'
Chilling.