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Organisation Todt (OT; ) was a civil and
military engineer Military engineering is loosely defined as the art, science, and practice of designing and building military works and maintaining lines of military transport and military communications. Military engineers are also responsible for logistics be ...
ing organisation in
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
from 1933 to 1945, named for its founder,
Fritz Todt Fritz Todt (; 4 September 1891 – 8 February 1942) was a German construction engineer and senior Nazi who rose from the position of Inspector General for German Roadways, in which he directed the construction of the German autobahns (''Reichsa ...
, an engineer and senior
Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
. The organisation was responsible for a huge range of engineering projects both in Nazi Germany and in
occupied territories Military occupation, also known as belligerent occupation or simply occupation, is the effective military control by a ruling power over a territory that is outside of that power's sovereign territory.Eyāl Benveniśtî. The international law ...
from France to the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
during World War II. It became notorious for using
forced labour Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, violence including death, or other forms of e ...
. From 1943 until 1945 during the late phase of the Third Reich, OT administered all constructions of
concentration camps Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simp ...
to supply forced labour to industry.


Overview

The history of the organisation can be divided into three phases. From 1933 to 1938, before the organisation existed,
Fritz Todt Fritz Todt (; 4 September 1891 – 8 February 1942) was a German construction engineer and senior Nazi who rose from the position of Inspector General for German Roadways, in which he directed the construction of the German autobahns (''Reichsa ...
's primary post was that of the General Inspector of German Roadways (''Generalinspektor für das deutsche Straßenwesen'') and his primary responsibility, the construction of the ''
Autobahn The (; German plural ) is the federal controlled-access highway system in Germany. The official German term is (abbreviated ''BAB''), which translates as 'federal motorway'. The literal meaning of the word is 'Federal Auto(mobile) Track'. ...
'' network. He was able to draw on "conscripted" (i.e., compulsory) labour, from within Germany, through the Reich Labour Service (''
Reichsarbeitsdienst The Reich Labour Service (''Reichsarbeitsdienst''; RAD) was a major organisation established in Nazi Germany as an agency to help mitigate the effects of unemployment on the German economy, militarise the workforce and indoctrinate it with Naz ...
'', RAD). The second period lasted from 1938, when the Organisation Todt group proper was created, until February 1942, when Todt died in an aeroplane crash. After the
invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week aft ...
, Todt was named the Minister for Armaments and Munitions in 1940 (''Reichsminister für Bewaffnung und Munition''), and the projects of the OT became almost exclusively military. The huge increase in the demand for labour created by the various military and paramilitary projects was satisfied by a series of expansions of the laws concerning compulsory service, which ultimately obligated all Germans to arbitrarily determined (i.e., effectively unlimited) compulsory labour for the state: ''Zwangsarbeit''. From 1938 to 1940, more than 1.75 million Germans were conscripted into labour service. From 1940 to 1942, Organisation Todt began its reliance on ''Gastarbeitnehmer'' ( 'guest workers'), ''Militärinternierte'' ( 'military internees'), ''
Zivilarbeiter Zivilarbeiter ( German for ''civilian worker'') refers primarily to ethnic Polish residents from the General Government (Nazi-occupied central Poland), used during World War II as forced laborers in the Third Reich. Polish Zivilarbeiters The re ...
'' ('civilian workers'), ''
Ostarbeiter : ' (, "Eastern worker") was a Nazi German designation for foreign slave workers gathered from occupied Central and Eastern Europe to perform forced labor in Germany during World War II. The Germans started deporting civilians at the beginnin ...
'' ('Eastern workers'), and ''
Hilfswillige Hiwi (), the German abbreviation of the word ''Hilfswilliger'' or, in English, auxiliary volunteer, designated, during World War II, a member of different kinds of voluntary auxiliary forces made up of recruits indigenous to the territories of E ...
'' ('volunteer') POW workers. The third period lasted from 1942 until the end of the war in 1945, when
Albert Speer Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer (; ; 19 March 1905 – 1 September 1981) was a German architect who served as the Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany during most of World War II. A close ally of Adolf Hitler, h ...
succeeded Todt in office and the OT was absorbed into the renamed and expanded
Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production The Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production () was established on March 17, 1940, in Nazi Germany. Its official name before September 2, 1943, was the 'Reichsministerium für Bewaffnung und Munition' (). Its task was to improve the su ...
. Approximately 1.4 million labourers were in the service of the organisation. One per cent were Germans rejected from military service and 1.5% were
concentration camp Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simp ...
prisoners; the rest were prisoners of war and forced labourers from occupied countries. All were effectively treated as slaves and existed in the complete and arbitrary service of the
totalitarian Totalitarianism is a form of government and a political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual and group opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high if not complete degree of control and reg ...
state. Many did not survive the work or the war.


Autobahn construction, 1933–1938

The autobahn concept had its beginnings in the efforts of a private consortium, the ''HaFraBa (Verein zur Vorbereitung der Autostraße Hansestädte-Frankfurt-Basel)'', initiated during 1926 for the purpose of building a high-speed highway between northern Germany and
Basel Basel ( , ), also known as Basle ( ),french: Bâle ; it, Basilea ; rm, label= Sutsilvan, Basileia; other rm, Basilea . is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine. Basel is Switzerland's third-most-populous city (after Zürich a ...
, in Switzerland. While the idea did not originate with the Nazis,
Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
issued a decree establishing a ''Reichsautobahnen'' project for an entire network of highways, issued on 27 June 1933. He made it a vastly more ambitious public project and the responsibility was given to Fritz Todt as the newly named Inspector General of German Roadways. By 1934, Todt had succeeded in elevating his office to near cabinet rank. Todt was an extremely capable administrator, and by 1938 the organisation had built more than of the roadway. The ''Autobahn'' project became one of the show pieces of the
Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
regime. In that period, Todt had also put together the administrative framework of what would become the Organisation Todt. Initially, the ''Autobahn'' project relied on the open labour market as a source of workers. Germany was at this time still recovering from the effects of the
Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The Financial contagion, ...
and there was no shortage of available labour. As the economy recovered and the supply of labour became a more serious issue, the OT was able to draw on conscripted (i.e., compulsory) workers, from within Germany through the Reich Labour Service (RAD) from 1935. As per the law of 26 June 1935, all male Germans between the ages of 18 and 25 were required to perform six months of state service. During this period, the work was compensated, at a rate slightly greater than that of unemployment assistance. The working conditions of the labour force would change drastically for the worse over the course of the following ten years.


Organisation "Todt", 1938–1942

The OT was not given an official name until Hitler bestowed one soon after coming to power in 1933.Showell, Jak P. Mallmann. ''Hitler's U-boat bases''. Sutton Publishing, 2002. During 1938 Todt initiated the Organisation Todt proper as a consortium of the administrative offices, which Todt had established in the course of the Autobahn project, private companies as subcontractors and the primary source of technical engineering expertise, and the Labour Service as the source of manpower. He was appointed by Hitler as a plenipotentiary for labour for the second four-year plan, decreasing Göring's role. Investment in civil engineering work was reduced greatly. Between 1939 and 1943, in contrast to the period from 1933 to 1938, fewer than of roadway were added to the Autobahn network. Emphasis was shifted to military efforts, the first major project being the Westwall (known in English as the
Siegfried Line The Siegfried Line, known in German as the ''Westwall'', was a German defensive line built during the 1930s (started 1936) opposite the French Maginot Line. It stretched more than ; from Kleve on the border with the Netherlands, along the weste ...
) built opposite the French
Maginot Line The Maginot Line (french: Ligne Maginot, ), named after the French Minister of War André Maginot, is a line of concrete fortifications, obstacles and weapon installations built by France in the 1930s to deter invasion by Germany and force t ...
and serving a similar purpose. Correspondingly, Todt himself was named Reich Minister of Armaments and Munitions in 1940. In 1941 Todt and his organisation were further charged with a project even larger, the construction of the
Atlantic Wall The Atlantic Wall (german: link=no, Atlantikwall) was an extensive system of coastal defences and fortifications built by Nazi Germany between 1942 and 1944 along the coast of continental Europe and Scandinavia as a defence against an antic ...
, to be built on the coasts of occupied France, the occupied Netherlands, occupied Belgium, occupied Denmark, and
occupied Norway The occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany during the Second World War began on 9 April 1940 after Operation Weserübung. Conventional armed resistance to the German invasion ended on 10 June 1940, and Nazi Germany controlled Norway until th ...
. Included with this project were the fortification of the British
Channel Islands The Channel Islands ( nrf, Îles d'la Manche; french: îles Anglo-Normandes or ''îles de la Manche'') are an archipelago in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They include two Crown Dependencies: the Bailiwick of Jersey, ...
, which were occupied by Nazi Germany from 30 June 1940 to 9 May 1945. The only camps on British soil operated by the OT were in the Channel Islands; two of these OT camps were given to the management of the SS from March 1943 converting them into the Alderney concentration camps. Fritz Todt died in an aeroplane crash on 8 February 1942, soon after a meeting with Hitler in
East Prussia East Prussia ; german: Ostpreißen, label= Low Prussian; pl, Prusy Wschodnie; lt, Rytų Prūsija was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1773 to 1829 and again from 1878 (with the Kingdom itself being part of the German Empire from 1 ...
. Todt had become convinced that the war on the eastern front could not be won and thought himself independent enough to say as much to Hitler.Stefan Kuh
Fritz Todt
Deutsches Historisches Museum online, 17. September 2015 (German)
As a result, there has been some speculation that Todt's death was a
covert Secrecy is the practice of hiding information from certain individuals or groups who do not have the "need to know", perhaps while sharing it with other individuals. That which is kept hidden is known as the secret. Secrecy is often controvers ...
assassination, but this has never been substantiated.


Under Albert Speer, 1942–1945

Todt was succeeded by
Albert Speer Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer (; ; 19 March 1905 – 1 September 1981) was a German architect who served as the Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany during most of World War II. A close ally of Adolf Hitler, h ...
as Minister of Armaments and Munitions, and ''
de facto ''De facto'' ( ; , "in fact") describes practices that exist in reality, whether or not they are officially recognized by laws or other formal norms. It is commonly used to refer to what happens in practice, in contrast with ''de jure'' ("by la ...
'' manager of the Organisation Todt. Despite Todt's death, the OT continued to exist as an engineering organisation and was given more assignments. At the beginning of 1943, in addition to its continuing work on the Atlantic Wall, the organisation also undertook the construction of launch platforms in northern France for the
V-1 flying bomb The V-1 flying bomb (german: Vergeltungswaffe 1 "Vengeance Weapon 1") was an early cruise missile. Its official Reich Aviation Ministry () designation was Fi 103. It was also known to the Allies as the buzz bomb or doodlebug and in Germany ...
and
V-2 rocket The V-2 (german: Vergeltungswaffe 2, lit=Retaliation Weapon 2), with the technical name ''Aggregat 4'' (A-4), was the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was develop ...
. During the summer of that year, German war efforts became increasingly defensive, and the organisation was directed to construct air-raid shelters, repair bombed buildings in German urban areas, and construct underground refineries and armaments factories, also termed Project Riese. In 1943, the organisation was administratively incorporated into Albert Speer's Ministry of Armaments and War Production. Speer's concerns, in the context of an increasingly desperate Germany, in which all production had been severely affected by materials and manpower shortages and by Allied bombing, ranged over almost the whole of the German war-time economy. Speer managed to increase production significantly, at the cost of a vastly increased reliance on compulsory labour. This applied as well to the labour force of the OT.


OT contractors

The OT was a co-operative effort of the German government and the German construction industry; the former supplied the manpower and the material, the latter supplied the technical know-how in the form of individual contractors ''(OT-Firmen)'' with their staff and equipment. Up to about 1942, the construction companies dominated the OT, but after Speer became its director, the government's control of the organisation increased through standardised contracts and uniform pay scales. The volunteer contracts with the OT were later augmented with compulsory contracts, forcing construction companies to work for the OT. The construction company contracted became a self-contained unit within the OT, composed of technical and administrative staff with the skill and equipment necessary to execute the construction tasks assigned to it. Smaller companies were hence combined to form an ''Arbeitsgemeinschaft''. The organisation of OT contractors was standardised through instructions issued by ''Wirtschaftsgruppe Bauindustrie'', the German construction industry association. Among the OT contractors were also construction companies in occupied Europe. French, Danish, and Norwegian companies contracted with German companies as sub-contractors for OT building projects. There were several kinds of contracts between OT and OT contractors. The most important were: *Cost reimbursement contract, where the materiel and labour was supplied by the company. It allowed a commission of 4½% as the profit of the contractor. *Efficiency output contracts, where the materiel and labour was supplied by the OT. The profit was computed on the basis of the wages paid to the contractor's own staff. This was the dominant type of contract from late 1942.


Organisation


Central organisation

In 1942 a centralised organisation of the OT was created when Speer became ''Reichsminister''. A new HQ in Berlin, Amt OTZ, was created with Ministerialdirigent
Franz Xaver Dorsch Franz Xaver Dorsch (24 December 1899 – 8 November 1986) was a German civil engineer who became the chief engineer of the Organisation Todt (OT), a civil and military engineering group in Nazi Germany that was responsible for a huge range of engin ...
as chief of staff. It merged during 1944 with Amt Bau-OT to form Amt Bau-OT Zentrale directed by Speer, and with Dorsch as chief, representative of Speer as a minister, and as general plenipotentiary for construction. ;Amt Bau-OT Zentrale * Planning and construction * Supply * Manpower and social policy * Chief Engineer * Motor Vehicles * Administration and personnel * Front area personnel * Medical services * Communications * Central committee for construction Source:


Administrative units

Area control staffs
Army Group An army group is a military organization consisting of several field armies, which is self-sufficient for indefinite periods. It is usually responsible for a particular geographic area. An army group is the largest field organization handled b ...
level
*Einsatzgruppen ** Construction ** Technical ** Supply ** Administration and personnel **Front line personnel ** Medical services ''German (national) and foreign'' *''OT-Einsatzgruppe Italien'' *''OT-Einsatzgruppe Ost'' (
Kiev Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the seventh-most populous city in Europe. Kyi ...
) *''OT-Einsatzgruppe Reich'' ( Berlin) *''OT-Einsatzgruppe Südost'' (
Belgrade Belgrade ( , ;, ; names in other languages) is the capital and largest city in Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers and the crossroads of the Pannonian Plain and the Balkan Peninsula. Nearly 1,166,763 m ...
) *''OT-Einsatzgruppe West'' (
Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
) *''OT-Einsatzgruppe Wiking'' (
Oslo Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...
) *''OT-Einsatzgruppe Russland Nord'' (
Tallinn Tallinn () is the most populous and capital city of Estonia. Situated on a bay in north Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, Tallinn has a population of 437,811 (as of 2022) and administratively lies in the Harju ' ...
) Area control staffs Army level * Einsatz Basic construction sector * Oberbauleitung under Oberbauleiter. Sub-sector *Bauleitung Local control *Abschnittsbauleitung Construction site * Baustelle ''Intra German'' *''Deutschland I'' ("Tannenberg") ( Rastenburg) *''Deutschland II'' ( Berlin) *''Deutschland III'' ("Hansa") (
Essen Essen (; Latin: ''Assindia'') is the central and, after Dortmund, second-largest city of the Ruhr, the largest urban area in Germany. Its population of makes it the fourth-largest city of North Rhine-Westphalia after Cologne, Düsseldorf and ...
) *''Deutschland IV'' ("Kyffhäuser") (
Weimar Weimar is a city in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together with the neighbourin ...
) *''Deutschland V'' ( Heidelberg) *''Deutschland VI'' (
Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and H ...
) *''Deutschland VII'' (
Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a tempera ...
) *''Deutschland VIII'' ("Alpen") ( Villach) *Sources:


Schutzkommando

The ''Schutzkommando'' was the security guards of the OT, whose mission was to maintain discipline and order among the foreign workers, as well as guarding the OT construction camps, buildings, and other property against enemy activities and theft. During marches the SK guarded the foreign workers in order to prevent escapes; the ratio of one SK-man per twenty foreign workers was used normally. Organisation * SK-Kameradschaft (squad of 8-12 men) * SK-Zug (platoon of 35-60 men) *SK-Bereitschaft (company of 120-150 men) *SK-Abteilung (battalion); one or more per ''Einsatzgruppe.'' Auxiliary field gendarmery
Two special organisations existed within the SK: * Ordnungskommando, stationary auxiliaries to the
Feldgendarmerie The ''Feldgendarmerie'' (, "field gendarmerie") were a type of military police units of the armies of the Kingdom of Saxony (from 1810), the German Empire and Nazi Germany until the conclusion of World War II in Europe. Early history From 1810 ...
. * Streifendienst, mobile Auxiliaries to the Feldgendarmerie *Source:


Auxiliary organisations

The NSKK supplied motor vehicle transportation for the OT until 1944. The role of the NSKK began in 1938, with the ''NSKK-Transportbrigade Todt'' in charge of motor transportation for the construction of the
Siegfried Line The Siegfried Line, known in German as the ''Westwall'', was a German defensive line built during the 1930s (started 1936) opposite the French Maginot Line. It stretched more than ; from Kleve on the border with the Netherlands, along the weste ...
. In 1939, ''NSKK-Transportbrigade Speer'' was organised and put in charge of the motor transportation for the air base constructions under Baustab Speer within the OT. Foreign drivers were, however, recruited into the Legion Speer, since they – as aliens – could not be members of the NSKK, which was a sub-organisation of the Nazi Party. In 1942, Transportbrigade Todt, Transportbrigade Speer, and Legion Speer, was subsumed into an umbrella organisation, ''Transportgruppe Todt'', which in 1944 was made into an organisation independent of the NSKK, the
Transportkorps Speer Transportkorps Speer was created in 1944 from Legion Speer and the units of the National Socialist Motor Corps that was serving the Organisation Todt. Shortly after its creation it became subordinated to the Wehrmacht. Yet, its major mission rema ...
. Inland waterways transportation was since 1937 the scope of the Transportflotte Speer, the Speer river fleet.


Forced labour

Organisation Todt was notorious for using
forced labour Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, violence including death, or other forms of e ...
. Most of the so-called "volunteer" Soviet POW workers were assigned to the Organisation Todt. The history of the forced labour by Nazi Germany has three main phases: * Organisation Todt was preceded by the office of General Inspector of German Roadways (''Generalinspektor für das deutsche Straßenwesen''), operating between 1933 and 1938, responsible primarily for the construction of the German ''
Autobahn The (; German plural ) is the federal controlled-access highway system in Germany. The official German term is (abbreviated ''BAB''), which translates as 'federal motorway'. The literal meaning of the word is 'Federal Auto(mobile) Track'. ...
'' network. The organisation was able to use "conscripted" (i.e. compulsory) labour from within Germany through the Reich Labour Service (RAD). * The period from 1938 until 1942, after
Operation Barbarossa Operation Barbarossa (german: link=no, Unternehmen Barbarossa; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. The operation, code-named afte ...
, when the Organisation Todt proper was initiated and utilised on the Eastern front. The huge increase in the demand for labour created by the various military and paramilitary projects was satisfied by a series of expansions of the laws on compulsory service, which ultimately obligated all Germans to arbitrarily determined (i.e. effectively unlimited) compulsory labour for the state: ''Zwangsarbeit''. From 1938 to 1940, over 1.75 million Germans were conscripted into labour service. From 1940 to 1942, Organization Todt began its reliance on Gastarbeitnehmer (guest workers), Militärinternierte (military internees), civilian workers, Eastern workers, and "volunteer" POW workers. * The period from 1942 until the end of the war, with approximately 1.4 million labourers in the service of the Organisation Todt. Overall, 1% were Germans rejected from military service and 1.5% were concentration camp prisoners; the rest were prisoners of war and compulsory labourers from occupied countries. All were effectively treated as slaves and existed in the complete and arbitrary service of a totalitarian state. Many did not survive the work or the war. By the end of the war, the
Reichsarbeitsdienst The Reich Labour Service (''Reichsarbeitsdienst''; RAD) was a major organisation established in Nazi Germany as an agency to help mitigate the effects of unemployment on the German economy, militarise the workforce and indoctrinate it with Naz ...
service for Germans had been reduced to six weeks of perfunctory military training and all available conscript German manpower diverted to military units and direct military support organisations. From the beginning of 1942 at the latest, their place was increasingly taken by prisoners of war and compulsory labourers from occupied countries. Foreign nationals and POWs were often, somewhat euphemistically, referred to as "foreign workers" (''Fremdarbeiter''). During 1943 and 1944, these were further augmented by concentration camp and other prisoners. Beginning in the autumn of 1944, between 10,000 and 20,000 half-Jews (''
Mischling (; "mix-ling"; plural: ) was a pejorative legal term used in Nazi Germany to denote persons of mixed "Aryan" and non-Aryan, such as Jewish, ancestry as codified in the Nuremberg racial laws of 1935. In German, the word has the general denota ...
e'') and persons related to Jews by marriage were recruited into special units.


Personnel structure

All members of the Organisation Todt, even forced labourers, with the exception of Jews, were regarded as ''Wehrmachtsgefolge'', that is
combatants Combatant is the legal status of an individual who has the right to engage in hostilities during an armed conflict. The legal definition of "combatant" is found at article 43(2) of Additional Protocol I (AP1) to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. I ...
by the
law of war The law of war is the component of international law that regulates the conditions for initiating war ('' jus ad bellum'') and the conduct of warring parties (''jus in bello''). Laws of war define sovereignty and nationhood, states and territ ...
. Of these, only the German personnel were regarded as being Wehrmacht Auxiliaries (i.e. belonging to the ''Wehrmachtgefolgschaft''). The ''Frontarbeiter'' (front workers) were German,
Volksdeutsche In Nazi German terminology, ''Volksdeutsche'' () were "people whose language and culture had German origins but who did not hold German citizenship". The term is the nominalised plural of ''volksdeutsch'', with ''Volksdeutsche'' denoting a sin ...
, or Nordic members of the OT. They swore an oath of fidelity to Hitler, wore uniforms, and were armed. The mean age of this group was about 45-50 years. An ''Einssatzarbeiter'' was a foreign worker that swore an oath of allegiance, wore a uniform, but were not normally armed. They could not include Czechs, Poles, Jews, or Communists. At the end of the war, their designation became ''OT-Legionäre.'' ''OT-Eigenes Personal'' was the organic personnel of the OT, as opposed to the ''OT-Firmenangehörige,'' employees of the contractors working for the OT. At wars end, all Org Todt members received blanket amnesty from the Western Allies. Many went on to serve in the post-war British and U.S. Labor Services in occupied Germany before emigrating to Britain, Australia, Canada and the United States. The U.S. Labor Service was considered the forerunner of the new German army. The Organisation Todt itself was found not guilty of war crimes at Nuremberg, although its leader Albert Speer served 20 years in Spandau Prison after admitting his crimes against humanity. Categories *''OT-Eigenes Personal'' consisted of administrative, supervisory, and clerical staff, recruited through voluntary employment of German citizens, or through conscription of Germans and Volksdeutsche, as well as French citizens working for OT in France, and also included ''Frontarbeiter'' and ''Einsatzarbeiter.'' *''OT-Firmenangehörige'' consisted of the German permanent employees of the contractors. as well as conscripts serving with the contracted companies. These employees received uniforms, were given a rank, and were supposed to be given a briefer period of military training. They also included ''Frontarbeiter'' and ''Einsatzarbeiter.'' *Foreign workers, who were either
Hilfswillige Hiwi (), the German abbreviation of the word ''Hilfswilliger'' or, in English, auxiliary volunteer, designated, during World War II, a member of different kinds of voluntary auxiliary forces made up of recruits indigenous to the territories of E ...
, East European volunteers, or forced Labourers of many nationalities. Classification of personnel according to nationality * Germans and Volksdeutsche. ''Frontarbeiter'' in OT uniform. * Nordics (English, Norwegians, Swedes, Finns, Dutch, Danes, Flemings, Swiss). ''Frontarbeiter'' in OT uniform if volunteers. Civilian clothing for local workers in Scandinavia. ''Hilfsarbeiter'' if conscripted. * Latins and Slovaks. ''Einsatzarbeiter'' or ''Hilfsarbeiter'' in local uniforms. * Baltics and Balkans. ''Hilfsarbeiter''. * Russians, Poles, Czech. ''Hilfswilliger'' or ''Zwangsarbeiter.'' * Jews. ''Zwangsarbeiter.'' * Stateless German Speakers. "Auslander".''Frontarbeiter'' in OT uniform.


Ranks


Crimes against humanity and prosecution

During the construction of the
Blood Road The Blood Road ( no, Blodveien) is a route northeast of Rognan in the municipality of Saltdal in Nordland county, Norway that was built by prisoners during the Second World War. The route was a new section of Norwegian National Road 50 betw ...
in Norway, more than 10,000 slave labourers from eastern Europe and some hundred German political prisoners were worked to death as part of the "''vernichtung durch arbeit''" ("annihilation by labour"). Several SS guards and local collaborators were sentenced to prison and death after the war in trials in Belgrade and Oslo. The head of the responsible OT unit for Scandinavia, Willi Henne, was extradited to the Soviet Union and served 10 years as a prisoner of war before returning to Hessen in West Germany. While building the main military road for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, the so-called "''Durchgangsstrasse IV''" or Road of the SS from
Lemberg Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in western Ukraine, and the seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is one of the main cultural centres of Ukrain ...
to
Donetsk Donetsk ( , ; uk, Донецьк, translit=Donets'k ; russian: Донецк ), formerly known as Aleksandrovka, Yuzivka (or Hughesovka), Stalin and Stalino (see also: cities' alternative names), is an industrial city in eastern Ukraine loc ...
, approximately 20,000
Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites"" ...
were worked to death or shot dead in Nazi-occupied Poland. and 25,000 in German-occupied Ukraine, as well approximately 50,000 Soviet prisoners of war. The road was issued by the SS that also rented slave labour and half-free labour to OT. OT subcontracted to German building companies and German engineers oversaw work of the more than 2000 km road. The survivor Arnold Daghani published his memoirs in 1960 in German translation, accusing companies like Dohrmann and others to have assisted SS, SD and auxiliary troops in the deliberate killing of slave workers. A two-decade-long process against the main culprits with 1,500 witnesses interviewed resulted in not a single conviction, leading Daghani to call the process "merely a farce, a meaningless gesture. None of the OT personnel were sentenced to prison in the
Nuremberg Trials The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II. Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi Germany invaded ...
or other postwar trials in Germany. Despite a British Secret Service report stating that "Supervisory assignments in OT were generally reserved for Old Party Fighters, Party members with influential connections, and more recently for older SS members in rapidly increasing numbers. ..The result is that ..in proportion it harbours at least in its permanent administrative staff, possibly more ardent Nazis than a regular formation of the Party.British Secret Service (1945
"Handbook of Organisation Todt"
p.1


See also

*
Battery Moltke Battery most often refers to: * Electric battery, a device that provides electrical power * Battery (crime), a crime involving unlawful physical contact Battery may also refer to: Energy source *Automotive battery, a device to provide power t ...
*
Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke German Equipment Works (, ) was a Nazi German defense contractor with headquarters in Berlin during World War II, owned and operated by the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS). It consisted of a network of requisitioned factories and camp workshops across German ...
(DAW) defence contractor owned and operated by the
Schutzstaffel The ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS; also stylized as ''ᛋᛋ'' with Armanen runes; ; "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe du ...
(SS) *
Forced labour under German rule during World War II The use of slave and forced labour in Nazi Germany (german: Zwangsarbeit) and throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II took place on an unprecedented scale. It was a vital part of the German economic exploitation of conquered t ...


References

Notes Bibliography * * * Herf, Jeffrey
"The Engineer as Ideologue: Reactionary Modernists in Weimar and Nazi Germany."
''Journal of Contemporary History'' (1984): 631–648. * Heyl, John D
"The Construction of the Westwall, 1938: An Exemplar for National Socialist Policymaking."
''Central European History'' (1981) 14#1 pp: 63–78. 0 * 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
"Mobilization for Total War in Germany 1939–1941."
''English Historical Review'' (1988): 613–639. * Overy, Richard J
"Cars, roads, and economic recovery in Germany, 1932–8."
''The Economic History Review'' (1975) 28#3 pp: 466–483. * Seidler, Franz W. "Die Organisation Todt. Bauen für Staat und Wehrmacht 1938-1945." 301 pp. * Shand, James D
"The Reichsautobahn: Symbol for the Third Reich."
''Journal of Contemporary History'' (1984): 189–200. * Taylor, Blaine. ''Hitler's Engineers: Fritz Todt and Albert Speer-Master Builders of the Third Reich'' (Casemate Publishers, 2010) * Zeller, Thomas. ''Driving Germany: the landscape of the German autobahn, 1930–1970'' (Berghahn Books, 2007)


External links

* Ralf Blan

2013 (''Historisches Centrum Hagen'')
''Fritz Todt''
(''Deutsches Historisches Museum'')

(Deutsches Historisches Museum)

histclo.com * U.S. War Department, "The Todt Organization and Affiliated Services" Tactical and Technical Trends No. 30 (July 29, 1943).
Monochrome wartime image

Small-scale model of an Organisation Todt security guard, uniform as in autumn 1942 at the rear of the front in Russia
{{Authority control Todt, Organisation Todt, Organisation