Dr. Kurt Lotz (18 September 1912 – 9 March 2005) was the second post-war Chief executive officer (CEO) of the Volkswagen automobile company in Germany. He was nominated in April 1967 to succeed Heinrich Nordhoff at the end of December 1968. Nordhoff died in April 1968. Lotz was the son of a farmer from the German state of Hesse. During World War II, he became a Luftwaffe general-staff Major, assigned to assessing needs for the military, which Lotz later looked back on as his first experience with industrial planning on a major scale.