Organization Todt

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Blackboard on a barracks for forced labor in Kranjska Gora, Slovenia
OT employee in Finland in 1943

The Organization Todt ( OT ) was a paramilitary construction force in National Socialist Germany , which bore the name of its leader Fritz Todt (1891-1942). The organization, founded in 1938, was also subordinate to the Reich Minister for Armaments and Ammunition (RMfBM and the successor ministry under Albert Speer ) from March 1940 . After the beginning of the Second World War , it was mainly used for construction work in the areas occupied by Germany. She became known through the expansion of the West Wall , the construction of the submarine bases on the French coast and the " Atlantic Wall " (bunkered artillery and defensive positions). From 1943 she built the launch pads for the V1 and V2 rockets . In the summer of 1943, air raids for the civilian population were expanded ( extended LS guide program) and industrial companies were relocated underground . Since the beginning of the war, forced laborers , prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates have often been deployed in the organization .

Tasks and organization

Armband for OT workers

The Todt organization served the structural implementation of protection and armament projects. It was created as a construction organization for military facilities, which carried out construction projects that were important to the war effort both in Germany and in the areas occupied by German troops. The OT was organized according to a strict hierarchy and its members were uniformed.

Origin and further development

The Organization Todt (abbreviation OT) goes back to an order by Adolf Hitler to Fritz Todt . This was ordered on 28 May 1938 to the French Maginot Line to build a German fortress line, the Western Wall . October 1, 1938 was set as the completion date for the estimated 5,000 concrete plants. The short-term termination is due to Hitler's plans to attack Czechoslovakia . The line of defense was intended to deter France from an expected counterattack. On June 14, 1938 Todt received from Hitler the power of attorney to requisition materials and workers for the construction project at his own discretion.

In 1943 Todt's successor Speer was given the "Fritz Todt Ring" by Hitler.

In a private room, Hitler spoke to General Otto-Wilhelm Förster from the Todt Organization for the first time, delighted with the rapid start of construction work on the Westwall . The name was introduced publicly during the Nazi Party Congress in September 1938. Even after Todt's death, it remained under his successor Albert Speer until the end of the war.

After Todt was appointed Reich Minister for Armaments and Ammunition in 1940, the OT received an office group in the new ministry as the central administrative body. When Todt was killed in an airplane crash on February 8, 1942 under unknown circumstances, Albert Speer was appointed as his successor in the ministry and the new leader of the OT. Speer's deputy in the OT was Ministerialrat Franz Xaver Dorsch , head of the OT headquarters in Berlin since 1941.

First Westwall construction project

Bunker in the Siegfried Line

Probably the best known building project was the Siegfried Line . With the start of his construction work, Todt and his administrative staff succeeded in deploying over 241,000 men by the end of September 1938. The Siegfried Line formed a fortified barrage hundreds of kilometers long along the German-French border. At the height of construction there were 430,000 men. 300 departments of the Reich Labor Service were also involved . Up to 51% of the total cement production of the empire was delivered through this, 45,000 cubic meters of reinforced concrete were processed daily. The Reichsbahn had released 9,000 wagons for the transport of building materials, the number of trucks required was 16,000, and a third of the Rhine fleet was used for material transport. 4,100 buses were used to transport the workers every day. For the workers looked after by the German Labor Front , the conditions were harsh, the daily working time was 13 hours and the accommodation was in mass quarters. The remuneration of up to 90 RM was good.

Further construction projects

One of the first OT measures was the construction of the Hunsrückhöhenstrasse . In the 1940s, the OT built the Atlantic Wall , the Führer headquarters Wolfsschanze and Werwolf, as well as numerous roads, railroad lines and airfields in the Reich, in the front line and in the occupied areas. This also included projects in occupied Yugoslavia that were controlled from Klagenfurt . With Friedrich Tamms as the planner, the Todt organization implemented a total of eight pairs of flak towers in the cities of Berlin , Hamburg and Vienna , which were equipped with anti-aircraft guns (flak).

After the occupation of Norway , OT continued to build the Nordlandsbane and the polar orbit from 1940 ; the latter remained unfinished.

Prisoners building the Valentin submarine bunker in Bremen-Rekum , 1944

In the area of ​​the Soviet territories occupied from June 22, 1941, three OT "Einsatzgruppen" (not to be confused with the SS Einsatzgruppen ) operated in the north, center and south sections. Mainly large thoroughfares, abbreviated DG and provided with a Roman ordinal number, were to be built here. The OT Einsatzgruppe Mitte (Smolensk headquarters) built the through roads VII, VIII and IX in 1942 . There was a line manager responsible for DG VII in Bobruisk, DG VIII in Smolensk and DG IX in Vitebsk. As in occupied Poland, large numbers of forced laborers from the Jewish population were used here. The OT was also involved in the construction of the notorious IV through road (often referred to as Rollbahn Süd or Straße der SS ) from Berlin to Stalino (today Donetsk ).

The huge submarine bunker systems along the Atlantic coast were also built from 1940 by workers and forced laborers organized by the OT (partly completed in 1942). Furthermore, in the summer of 1943 it rebuilt the Möhne and Edertalsperre, which were destroyed by a British bombing raid in May of the same year . In 1944 OT took over the construction management for the Riese project in the Lower Silesian Voivodeship and in 1944/45 for the Goth line in northeastern Italy .

staff

The workers of the Todt Organization, unless they were forced laborers, prisoners of war or concentration camp inmates, wore olive-green uniforms , some with a swastika armband .

Service book of a civil engineer with an extract from the deployment locations in the deployment group "Russia South"

The Todt organization was based on voluntary helpers from Western European countries and, from 1942, increasingly on forced laborers and prisoners of war , some of whom had to register on a pro forma “voluntary” basis. From 1943/1944 onwards, concentration camp prisoners, prisoners from work education and other prison camps of the Nazi regime were increasingly deployed. The responsibilities for provision, catering and security could be regulated differently. This enabled the SS to receive state funds for the concentration camp prisoners they had "rented".

An armed man from the Todt Organization supervises two Jews during road construction in the Soviet Union, 1941

After the number of German construction workers and engineers decreased, more and more concentration camp prisoners , prisoners from work education and police camps and other prisoners of the Nazi regime were deployed. From autumn 1944 10,000–20,000 so-called " half-Jews " and people who were married to Jews were forcibly recruited into special departments or arrested in the course of the so-called " mixed race " of September 19, 1944 and taken to OT camps.

By the end of 1944, the Todt organization had a workforce of 1,360,000, of which only 14,000 were Germans who were “unfit for military service”. The majority of the remaining workers were forced laborers, prisoners of war and 22,000 concentration camp prisoners. After the end of the war, in the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals, the defendants Wilhelm Keitel , Fritz Sauckel and Albert Speer were proven to have planned and implemented the illegal use of foreign civilians and prisoners of war under inhumane conditions for military infrastructure measures of the OT such as the Atlantic Wall .

Ranks and insignia

Epaulets (teams): foremen (1) foremen (2) foremen (3)
Collar tab (from 1943): Teams (1) Troop leaders (2) Obertruppführer (3) Haupttruppführer (4) Frontführer / Baufführer (5) Oberfrontführer / Oberbaufführer (6) Hauptfrontführer / Hauptbaufführer (7)

Up to 1943 ranks up to Hauptfrontführer / Hauptbaufführer wore shoulder boards, which were highlighted with an activity color. A distinction was made between the colors white (supply), blue (medical services), black (structural engineering), green (administration) and yellow (news). Team ranks also wore Tressenwinkel on the upper arm. From 1943 the epaulets were replaced by collar tabs for all ranks.

Motor vehicle pennant

Members of the Todt Organization also carried a motor vehicle pennant, which was presumably already adopted in 1938. It was about 22 cm × 35 cm in size and showed the organization's badge in gold-colored letters on top of one another on a brown-red cloth. It was provided with a black stripe on the long sides.

  • Organization Todt pennant

  • Vehicle registration number of the Todt organization

Yellow armed forces armband

As far as members of the OT participated in combat operations, they had to wear the yellow armband "German Wehrmacht", since Germany had not reported the uniform of the OT as a combatant uniform . Anyone who took part in combat without this armband ran the risk of being treated as a partisan by the enemy .

resolution

With the Control Council Act No. 2 of October 10, 1945, the Todt Organization was banned by the Allied Control Council and its property was confiscated.

Others

For members of the organization, two special editions of the Baedeker travel guide were even published in 1944 : the “OT Guide West” for the occupied countries of Belgium, France and the Netherlands and the “OT Guide Italy”.

See also

literature

  • Rudolf Dittrich: On becoming, essence and work of the Organization Todt. Biblio-Verlag, Osnabrück 1998, ISBN 3-7648-1739-9 (Publications of German source material on the Second World War, Section III: Sources on the history of the Organization Todt, Vol. 1 and 2; D. was head of the official group in the Reich Ministry)
  • Fabian Lemmes: Forced Labor in Occupied Europe. The Todt Organization in France and Italy, 1940–1945. In: Andreas Heusler (Hrsg.): Armaments, war economy and forced labor in the “Third Reich”. Oldenbourg, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-486-58858-3 , pp. 219-252.
  • Silvia Amella Mai: Wilhelm Frank: From Fürth to the front (1909–1943). Epubli, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-8442-2543-3 (biography of a leader / site manager of the OT)
  • Franz W. Seidler : The Organization Todt. Building for the state and the armed forces 1938–1945. Bernard & Graefe, Koblenz 1987, ISBN 3-7637-5842-9 .
  • Franz W. Seidler: Phantom Alpine Fortress? The secret blueprints of the Todt Organization. Pour le Mérite Verlag, Selent 2000, ISBN 3-932381-10-6 .
  • Franz W. Seidler, Dieter Zeigert: The Führer Headquarters 1939-45. Facilities and planning in World War II. FA Herbig Verlagbuchhandlung, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-7766-2154-0 . (Reviews by Jörg Friedrich at perlentaucher.de)
  • Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, Counter-Intelligence Sub-Division: Handbook of the Organization Todt. London 1945 (Reprint: Osnabrück 1992 in the publications of German source material for the Second World War, Section III: Sources for the history of the Todt Organization, vol. 4th title in German: Handbook of the Organization Todt. ISBN 3-7648-1281-8 ) .

Web links

Commons : Organization Todt  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Alan S. Milward: Fritz Todt as Minister for Armaments and Ammunition In: VfZ. 1966, issue 1, p. 45.
  2. ^ Franz W. Seidler: The Organization Todt - Building for State and Wehrmacht 1938 - 1945. Bonn 1998, p. 15.
  3. ↑ All information according to: Franz W. Seidler: Die Organization Todt - Building for the State and Wehrmacht 1938 - 1945. Bonn 1998, p. 15.
  4. ↑ See Fond 379 in the Main State Archives Minsk, Belarus Central State Archives records, 1941–1949 [microform]. [manuscript RG-53.002M], held in the US Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC.
  5. ↑ Prof. Dr. Siegfried Wolf: through road IV , pdf
  6. ↑ Wolf Gruner (2006). Jewish Forced Labor Under the Nazis. Economic Needs and Racial Aims, 1938-1944. Institute of Contemporary History, Munich and Berlin. New York: Cambridge University Press. Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, ISBN 978-0-521-83875-7 .
  7. ↑ Hagen Historical Center . The number given for the concentration camp prisoners seems very small.
  8. ↑ Randy Holderfield, Michael Varhola: D-day: The Invasion of Normandy, June 6, 1944 , Da Capo Press, April 30, 2009, ISBN 1-882810-46-5 , pp. 34ff
  9. ^ Indictment against Speer at the Nuremberg Trial , Zeno.org, accessed on August 4, 2015.
  10. ^ Andreas Herzfeld: The Riemann Collection of German Car Flags and Motor Vehicle Stands. Volume 1, ISBN 978-3-935131-08-7 , pp. 241/242.
  11. ^ Rudolf Absolon: The Wehrmacht in the Third Reich: December 19, 1941 to May 9, 1945 , Harald Boldt Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-7646-1940-6 , p. 60ff.
  12. ↑ Baedeker's OT Leader West. Belgium-France-Netherlands. Front Worker's Manual. Prepared on behalf of the Todt Organization, Department of Culture. Karl Baedeker Verlag, Leipzig 1944.
  13. ↑ Baedeker's OT Guide Italy. Front Worker's Manual. Prepared on behalf of the Todt Organization, Department of Culture. Karl Baedeker Verlag, Leipzig 1944.