Fritz Todt

Fritz Todt ([fʁɪt͡s tot]; 4 September 1891 – 8 February 1942) was a German construction engineer and senior political figure of the Nazi Party. He was the founder of Organisation Todt (OT), a military-engineering organisation that supplied German industry with forced labour, and served as Reich Minister for Armaments and Ammunition in Nazi Germany early in World War II, directing the entire German wartime military economy from that position.

An engineer by training, Todt served in the Luftstreitkräfte during World War I and was a recipient of the Iron Cross. He joined the Nazi Party in 1922 and the Sturmabteilung (SA) in 1931. Steadily rising through the ranks, Todt became Inspector General for German Roadways after Adolf Hitler came to power.^[1] In that capacity, he was responsible for the construction of the German autobahns. In 1938, he founded Organisation Todt and directed large-scale engineering projects such as the Westwall (Siegfried Line) and the Atlantic Wall. In 1940, he was appointed Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production. During World War II Todt made extensive use of forced labour, with as many as 800,000 labourers from German-occupied territories in the service of his organisation. To this end, Todt's eponymously named agency can be linked to the Holocaust as SS personnel murdered many of the forced labourers (especially Jews) under the auspices of eliminating security risks or as a component of the Nazi genocidal programme.

Todt was killed along with four other people in February 1942 near Wilhelmsdorf when his aircraft crashed en route from Rastenburg to Berlin-Tempelhof. He was succeeded as Reichsminister and head of the OT by Albert Speer.

Todt was born in Pforzheim^[2] in the Grand Duchy of Baden (now in Baden-Württemberg) to Emil Todt (1861–1909) and his wife, Elise, née Unterecker (1868–1935). His father owned a small ring factory.^[3]

In 1910, he volunteered for one-year military service. From 1911 to 1914, Todt studied engineering at Technical Hochschule of Munich and Karlsruhe, graduating with a Diplom degree in construction engineering from the latter.^[4]

During World War I, he served initially with the infantry and then as a front-line reconnaissance observer within the Luftstreitkräfte, winning the Iron Cross. Todt had been wounded in combat during his role as a flying observer.^[5] After the war he resumed his studies and graduated in 1920, completing his studies at Karlsruhe.^[5][4]

In 1921, Todt married Elsbeth Müller who bore him four children, three daughters and a son; the latter died in 1944.^[3]

In 1921, he initially worked on waterpower stations for the Grün & Bilfinger AG, Mannheim company and the same year for the civil engineering company Sager & Woerner where he worked until 1933.^[4] In January 1922, he joined the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), or Nazi Party.^[6] In 1931, he joined the Sturmabteilung (SA), which was then commanded by Ernst Röhm. He rose steadily through its ranks, attaining the rank of SA-Obergruppenführer in September 1938. In 1932, Todt completed his thesis at Technical Hochschule of Munich Fehlerquellen beim Bau von Landstraßendecken aus Teer und Asphalt ("Sources of defects in the construction of tarmac and asphalt road surfaces") and became a Doctor of Engineering (Dr.-Ing.).^[4]

On 5 July 1933, five months after Adolf Hitler became Reichskanzler, Todt was appointed Generalinspektor für das deutsche Straßenwesen (Inspector General for German Roadways).^[6] In November, this public authority was raised to the status of a "Supreme Reich Authority" (Oberste Reichsbehörde) outside the hierarchy of Reich Ministries; Todt was subordinated directly to Hitler.^[7] Alan S. Milward characterized this phase of Todt's emergence in the heirarchy as follows:

"His personal views on business questions and, what was more important, the success of the motorway project kept Todt in the inner circle of the Führer. At the same time, his deliberate pose as a technical expert, as a man without interest in internal power struggles...shielded him from the hostility of the more prominent Party leaders".^[8]

He was given the task of organizing a new construction company for the motorways (Reichsautobahnen).^[9][a] For his work on the autobahnen, Todt was recognized with the German National Prize for Art and Science by Hitler, next to Ernst Heinkel, Ferdinand Porsche and Willy Messerschmitt.^[4] Hitler donated the award during 1937, devised as a replacement for the Nobel Prize, which Hitler forbade Germans from accepting starting during 1936.^[10]

In December 1936, he became Leiter des Hauptamts für Technik in der Reichsleitung der NSDAP (Director of the Head Office for Engineering in the National Directorate of the NSDAP) and, in December 1938, Generalbevollmächtigter für die Regelung der Bauwirtschaft (General Plenipotentiary for the Regulation of the Construction Industry) in the Four Year Plan.^[2] At the beginning of World War II in Europe, he was also appointed to the rank of Generalmajor of the Luftwaffe.^[4]

In May 1938, he initiated the Organisation Todt, joining government firms, private companies and the Reichsarbeitsdienst (Reich Labour Service).^[4] OT used up to 800,000 forced labourers (Zwangsarbeiter) from countries that Germany occupied during World War II.^[4] Todt was responsible for the construction of the "West Wall" (commonly named the "Siegfried Line" in English-speaking countries) to defend the Reich territory.^[11][12] For the West Wall, Todt assembled some 350,000 workers, drawn foremost from among former autobahn construction workers, to which 100,000 Reich Labor Service workers and 90,000 army engineers were added, and he also used his "well-developed contacts" with German industry magnates from nearly 1,000 individual firms.^[13]

Notwithstanding his disagreements with Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring over energy policy, it was Göring himself who appointed Todt Plenipotentiary for the Regulation of Construction on 9 December 1938—a mandate whose execution reveals Todt's sustained investment in modern technology and the technocratic aspirations of the engineering profession.^[14] The program he advanced was simultaneously technical and ideological: mechanization, fixed material quotas, labor reallocation, production rationalization, and the closure of unproductive building sites, each measure underwritten by his insistent demand that entrepreneurs, engineers, and workmen alike reconstitute themselves as "more productive Volk comrades."^[14] Resistance from the military and local Party leadership makes the program's relative success the more telling; within little more than a year, Göring elevated Todt to Inspector General for Special Tasks in the Four Year Plan, extending his technocratic remit beyond construction into the broader structural deficiencies of the war economy.^[15]

On 17 March 1940, Todt was appointed Reichsminister für Bewaffnung und Munition (Minister for Armaments and Munitions) which meant he managed the entire military economy.^[4]

On 1 January 1939, Todt assumed the chairmanship of the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure (VDI), completing the process of professional coordination that the Party had pursued, with considerably less success, since Gottfried Feder's failed attempt to achieve the same objective in 1933.^[16] With Germany's most prestigious technical association now fully integrated into the new order, its institutional weight served as an implicit warning to any professional body within Germany that continued to withhold cooperation from the Nazi Party.^[16]

During February 1940, Göring named Todt Inspector General for Extraordinary Activities in the Four Year Plan, after which the Reichsmarschall instructed "the agencies of the state, Party, and armed forces, as well as business" to provide their "support" to the "Inspector General in every way."^[17]

In October 1940, Todt formed a colonial working group focused on road construction in preparation for what Nazi leaders saw as an imminent return of Germany's African colonies. Todt wanted to use Fascist Italy's empire as a model for the development of a Nazi colonial empire.^[18]

After the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Todt was appointed to manage the restoration of the infrastructure there, as well as plans to ramp up armaments production.^[19] In late July 1941, Todt was named Generalinspekteur für Wasser und Energie (Inspector General for Water and Energy).^[20] During that year, he became increasingly distant from the commanders of the Wehrmacht, in particular from Hermann Göring, the Oberbefehlshaber der Luftwaffe (Commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe).^[4] The ideological significance of the enhanced power acquired by Nazi engineers like Todt during the war years was an outgrowth of the technical demands of modern warfare, individual career ambition, and Hitler's admiration for Todt's unbureaucratic methods.^[21]

By the summer's end of 1941, Germany confronted a cascading series of structural crises—a major coal shortage with direct consequences for steel and armaments production, a fuel crisis in the autumn, and severe inflationary pressures—to the degree that historian Adam Tooze characterized the situation as a "bankruptcy" of the Nazi's "entire war-fighting strategy."^[22] For Todt, the situation had become untenable: the difficulties encountered by the Wehrmacht, particularly Army Group Center's stalled advance on Moscow, the chronic shortages of arms, and the prospect of American belligerence combined to produce a settled despair about Germany's prospects for victory.^[23] Between November 29, 1941, and what appears to have been a stormy final confrontation on February 7, 1942, Todt presented Hitler on four separate occasions with statistical and factual arguments for ending the war.^[23] Walter Rohland, head of the Main Committee for tank production and Todt's emissary to the front, recorded in his memoirs that at the first of these meetings Todt told Hitler plainly: "This war can no longer be won by military means" and stressed that a political solution was necessary.^[23] Hitler rejected such an assessment in heated discussions the night before Todt's ill-fated plane crash and elected to continue the offensive against the Soviets.^[24]

Though the Organisation Todt is conventionally characterized as a construction body rather than a criminal one, the evidence suggests a more incriminating picture. Its personnel moved fluidly between technical and lethal roles, as its architects became task-group leaders overseeing slave labour, surveyors coordinated with SS execution squads, and medical staff conducted selections for Auschwitz.^[25] The same institutional flexibility that allowed the Ordnungspolizei to transition from routine policing to mass murder operated within the OT as well—personnel were simply reassigned to whatever the regime required. Members of formally designated criminal organisations, including the SS, served within OT ranks without friction, and the organisation's indifference to the motivations of its personnel extended equally to its ambivalence to their methods, provided the work in service to the Reich was completed.^[25] Commenting on Todt specifically, historian Charles Dick avows that "he viewed Jews, Slavs and other prisoners as expendable to achieve his goals."^[26] To this end, the Organisation Todt and its founder bear substantial responsibility for both the Holocaust and the catastrophic mortality of the Nazi slave-labor program—a culpability that warrants their unambiguous recognition among the principal instruments of the regime's criminal enterprise.^[26]

On 8 February 1942, sometime after take off from the Wolfsschanze ("Wolf's Lair") airfield near Rastenburg, in East Prussia, Todt's Heinkel He 111 aircraft crashed near the village of Wilhelmsdorf and he was killed.^[4][b] He was buried in the Invalids' Cemetery in the Scharnhorst-Strasse in Berlin. Posthumously, he became the first recipient of the newly created Deutscher Orden ("German Order").^[4][28]

During Todt's funeral oration, Hitler pronounced him as "the most powerful builder of all time," recalled' his early commitment to the NSDAP, his Party career, and praised his oversight of the Autobahnen and Westwall's construction.^[29] Nazi theorist and ideologue Alfred Rosenberg offered a characteristically ideological gloss, casting Todt as a creative engineer possessed of deep feeling for the profound laws of nature and animated by a love of art.^[29] Hitler's funeral observations aside, it has been suggested that Todt had been the victim of an assassination orchestrated by the Führer, but that has never been confirmed.^[30] A possible motive for killing Todt was that he had flown to the Wolf's Lair to recommend that Hitler sue for peace with the Soviet Union. Todt's production figures suggested that the German economy was not able to support the defeat of Russia and, by February, it was apparent Hitler's plan to rapidly subdue Russia in a Blitzkrieg was not succeeding.^[31]

Todt's successor as Reichsminister was Albert Speer,^[32] whom Hitler awarded an Org.Todt ring during May 1943. Speer was supposed to be on the same plane as Todt. In his autobiography, Speer mentioned a Reich Air Ministry inquiry into the airplane accident, which he said ended with the sentence: "The possibility of sabotage is ruled out. Further measures are therefore neither requisite nor intended".^[33] Even Todt's own son Fritz (named for his father)—who became a pilot himself—claimed to have personally investigated the matter and concluded "there was no explosive device on the plane."^[34]

• 1918 Iron Cross
• 1937 Werner von Siemens Ring
• 1938 German National Prize for Art and Science
• 1939 Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown of Italy
• 1942 German Order

• Economy of Nazi Germany
• Forced labour under German rule during World War II
• Nazi architecture

• Kroener, Bernhard R., Rolf-Dieter Muller, and Hans Umbreit, eds. Germany and the Second World War: Volume 5: Organization and Mobilization of the German Sphere of Power. Part I: Wartime Administration, Economy, and Manpower Resources, 1939–1941 Oxford University Press, (2000)
• Overy, Richard J. (1988). "Mobilization for Total War in Germany 1939–1941". English Historical Review. 103 (408): 613–639. doi:10.1093/ehr/CIII.CCCCVIII.613. JSTOR 572694.
• Taylor, Blaine. Hitler's Engineers: Fritz Todt and Albert Speer-Master Builders of the Third Reich (Casemate Publishers, 2010)
• Busch, Andreas: Die Geschichte des Autobahnbaus in Deutschland bis 1945. Rockstuhl, Bad Langensalza 2002, ISBN 3-936030-40-5.
• Miller, Michael D.; Schulz, Andreas (2017). Leaders of the Storm Troops. Vol. 2. Solihull, England: Helion & Company. ISBN 978-1-910777-84-8.
• Schönleben, Eduard: Fritz Todt, der Mensch, der Ingenieur, der Nationalsozialist. Ein Bericht über Leben und Werk. Gerhard Stalling, Oldenburg 1943.
• Schütz, Erhard, Eckhard Gruber: Mythos Reichsautobahn. 2. Auflage. Links, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-86153-117-8.
• Franz W. Seidler: Fritz Todt. Baumeister des Dritten Reiches. Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main/Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-548-33095-9.419 pp.
• Adam Tooze: Ökonomie der Zerstörung. Die Geschichte der Wirtschaft im Nationalsozialismus. Siedler, München 2006 (German 2007), ISBN 978-3-88680-857-1. New edition: Schriftenreihe der Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, vol. 663, ISBN 978-3-89331-822-3. Wieder: Pantheon, München 2008, ISBN 978-3-570-55056-4.

• Tribute to Fritz Todt. Story RG-60.3910, Film ID: 2691. Deutsche Wochenschau, February 1942 (in German). Duration 8:35 min. Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive, USHMM. Funeral of Fritz Todt at 01:05:12.
• Newspaper clippings about Fritz Todt in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW