Original subtitles

D-Day, 6th of June, 1944,

as Allied landing craft near the French coast

ready to take the fight to Hitler,

the imposing coastal defences,

known as the Atlantic Wall, came into view.

If you want a symbol of Nazi-controlled Europe,

this is it.

This foreboding wall looking out across the English channel,

and it's saying, "Don't you try it."

At D-Day, they did break through,

but there was a huge amount of sacrifice

that came with that.

Thousands died during the landings.

And this wasn't the only defensive line

blocking the route to Berlin.

In Nazi Germany, the job of building such colossal projects

fell to Organisation Todt.

Fritz Todt was chosen by Hitler

to carry out most important engineering tasks.

Most people haven't heard of Fritz Todt,

but he was one of the most important figures

in the whole buildup to war.

Todt was not merely an engineer,

he was a Nazi ideologue,

who placed engineering at the heart of the Third Reich.

He demonstrated that a modern engineer

must think in large-scale terms.

It's not just the project,

it must be aligned with the power of the state.

What he's trying to do is to have the engineer

be one of the pillars of the Third Reich.

He would die in suspicious circumstances,

but what it created outlived him and transformed Europe.

These concrete structures

always become a symbol of Nazism,

a permanent and indelible stamp of authority

and ownership on the land.

The concrete is not just concrete.

It carries an ideological message.

Engineers were a beating heart

of the Third Reich.

Forging advanced weapons,

feeding the Nazi war machine,

and motivating the masses.

They executed history's greatest horrors,

and yet for some,

their true role would remain hidden for decades.

On the evening of the 7th of February, 1942,

Fritz Todt, Germany's Minister of Armaments,

met in private with Adolf Hitler

at the eastern front headquarters, the Wolf's Lair".

While there is no official record of what was discussed,

it's believed that Todt expressed severe doubts

about the direction of the war.

According some historian, that discussing was about

that probably German army will be defeated in east front.

He wanted tell Hitler, admitted that it's no chance,

because Fritz Todt knew that

German army couldn't be successful.

His strong advice was to Hitler

to seek what peace terms he could with Stalin,

while he was still in a relatively strong position.

Accounts reportedly from aides

positioned outside the room

suggest Hitler did not welcome Todt's assessment.

Our knowledge maybe not so huge,

but some source told us

that Fritz Todt didn't agree with Hitler.

So, there was a quarrel.

Early the next morning

Todt boarded a flight bound for Berlin.

Minutes after takeoff the plane exploded.

There were no survivors.

Todt's plane blew up after he'd reportedly

had this disagreement with Hitler.

And Hitler is not a man, you know,

who likes being spoken to in certain ways.

So, of course, the timing of that

raises quite a few questions

about maybe this wasn't an accident.

Hitler's most highly valued engineer was dead

and Todt's name would soon be overshadowed by others.

But what Todt had achieved by this point

would prove to be of vital importance

to any future hopes of Nazi victory.

Hidden across Germany are remnants of a construction project

that helped establish Hitler's leadership.

A new motorway network, the autobahn.

The Nazi party had once opposed the building of such roads,

but when Hitler seized power, he saw an opportunity.

In 1933, Germany was still reeling

from the Great Depression

and struggling with mass unemployment.

Recognising the potential propaganda value

of such a large public works programme,

Hitler reversed the party's policy,

claimed the autobahn project as his own and raced ahead.

But to create this nationwide network,

he needed a skilled organisational leader.

This was the beginning

of the political career of Fritz Todt.

Fritz Todt was what the Nazis

called an Alter Kempfer, an old fighter,

because he joined extremely early in 1922.

I think his number was 2,000 and something,

which is very low,

but I think he had a real drive into Nazi ideology.

This is resembled in his dedication to his work.

As well as being a committed Nazi,

Todt was a decorated war hero and a qualified engineer

working for a Munich-based road building firm.

But it was one document in particular

that brought him to the attention of Hitler

at the end of 1932, his so-called Brown Memorandum.

It revealed that Todt was a man to realise Hitler's vision.

He says that he can put 600,000 workers

back to work over five years

and correct what's incorrect about

the way highways have been built in Germany.

But as Hitler already had an eye on the future,

there was something else in the proposal

that caught his attention.

And here he adds a component,

which lots of historians have claimed

is really the most important part of this memorandum,

which he says that the highways

would be excellent for defence and military purposes.

Todt's proposal suggested that with new roads

300,000 troops could be moved across Germany

in just two nights of driving.

In June, 1933 Todt was made

inspector general for German roadways.

I think Hitler saw in Todt a true believer,

someone he could trust,

at the same time, someone who was already part of a world

in which construction was really a core value.

This was something that would naturally

draw him to Hitler and the inner circle.

Today, a number of the modern autobahns

stand above those old Nazi roads.

Hitler originally planned to carve out 6,000 kilometres

worth of new routes connecting the country,

and once other territories were conquered,

the autobahn would grow beyond the borders.

But for now, the priority was to show

that the Nazis were tackling more pressing issues.

One aspect of these programmes

was not to use a lot of machines,

but to use human workforce,

which was quite inefficient,

but especially, helped the propaganda,

to claim or to show,

yeah, these people have jobs right now,

they're away from the streets.

The autobahns are like a concrete expression

of the success of Nazi Germany.

This government would not be able to build autobahns

unless they were doing well economically.

It became a propaganda showcase for the Nazi regime

and its modern technological achievements.

Todt was the man who did that and did it supremely well.

Todt was giving Hitler

an important propaganda victory.

He was showing that the Nazi future was being built today.

But beneath the surface, not everything was what it seemed.

It is often said that the construction of the autobahn

that its main goal was to reduce unemployment

and that it had strong military aspects in it.

As we know today, none of them were really true.

While Nazi propaganda

capitalised on the images,

of the 600,000 jobs promised by Todt,

only around a fifth of them ever materialised.

And as for the military aspect,

when the war eventually came,

most troop movements would rely upon the railways

not the road network.

It is more reasonable that Todt emphasised this point,

especially the military point,

to convince Hitler to choose his Brown Memorandum.

Once at the helm, Todt set to work

establishing strong relationships with private firms.

This was the basis from which his own organisation grew

and here he'd utilised them in his effort

to place the engineer at the heart of the Third Reich.

When war broke out,

around half of the intended autobahn network had been built.

Sites like this, a planned bridge

on a route far from the fighting

and far from the border were quickly abandoned,

but routes such as this actually, reveal how Todt

hoped to cement his own ideology directly onto German soil.

The whole blood and soil component,

which Todt himself doesn't

talk a whole lot about necessarily,

but the idea of being bound to the soil

and that the soil and the landscape and all of that

create the basis on which the Aryan race develops

is clearly an underlying component in this.

But Todt added to this.

He wedded Nazi ideology with the need for technology

demonstrating how vital engineers were to the regime.

Todt argues that the Audubon

represent this harmony of man, machine, and nature.

Todt's routes did not simply go from A to B.

They were designed to compliment the beauty on display,

flowing through the countryside,

connecting cultural and political landmarks,

inspiring travellers to fall in love with their homeland.

He keeps arguing that engineers have never understood

what it meant to really take a task

and look at it with the eyes of an artist,

And he says this is the way that they should be

looking at the construction of the autobahn.

To make this imagined scene a reality

meant sacrificing function.

The turn leading onto this planned bridge

would have to bank at an incline of 8%.

At the Nazi party rally in 1937,

Todt set out how he'd deliver for Hitler in the future.

Rather than targeting all of Germany's engineers,

as head of the Nazi party organisation for engineers,

he'd focus on turning its members into his loyal followers.

He says, "I'm much more interested in having

80,000 activists than I am in having 200,000 hangers on."

And that's what he sees.

He's trying to develop this sense of activism,

which he thinks is gonna make the engineers

more effective within the society.

To accelerate this transformation,

Todt established an institution with this goal at its heart.

The site he chose was Plassenberg Castle

in northern Bavaria.

Under Todt's authority,

it became known as the Reich Castle of Technology.

A central focus was on educating attendees

about the latest technologies and techniques,

but Todt also wanted it to do something further.

He wanted it to win over the well-educated engineers

to the Nazi cause.

Engineers were notoriously apolitical in Germany

and the idea here was to create this atmosphere

and create these model engineers

that would go on to influence others and so on.

Inside, artworks hung on the walls

and exhibitions were hosted.

Everything was intended to appeal

to the senses of the cultured, educated attendees.

They would do concerts, there were poetry readings,

there were all kinds of general cultural events

that took place there in which the engineers had to engage.

And this becomes part of this process

of drawing the person out.

But culture wasn't the only tool

used to influence them.

From the moment the engineers

stepped off the train in the town below,

they were actively made to feel a part of something larger.

They think that they're just going for a four-day course,

but then they quickly find,

oh, we are marching from the station to Plassenberg.

It was run on a kind of militaristic basis.

They had to be in uniform.

There was a morning sport process.

You couldn't leave the castle to go downtown.

At its core, this was a school,

and over the years,

different areas of the castle were adapted

and some even rebuilt for that purpose.

Taken by an attendee at one of the courses,

these photos have never been shown publicly.

If the connection to history,

the atmosphere, the cultural events, and the exhibitions

were all intended to help draw out the individual,

then once this was achieved,

the attendees would be more responsive

to the next stage of Todt's plan.

It is interesting to note

that some of the courses are heavily antisemitic.

And even Julius Streicher,

who is the most vehement antisemite in the Nazi party,

is invited to the Plassenberg to talk about

the role of the Jews and so on.

So, it's not necessarily a sort of

high-flying ideological approach,

man, machine, and nature in harmony, which is part of it,

but that whole ideology of Todt's.

Plassenberg is an opportunity for the Nazis

to ensure that whilst they're bringing people

together for scientific purposes,

there's an ideological undercurrent

to that the entire way through.

The more of these committed Nazi engineers

that Todt can manage to develop,

the more that he can push forward his technical ideology

and the more that technical ideology

will come to play a decisive role

as we move into the Nazi future.

Todt hoped Plassenberg

would create Nazi engineers

ready to build the Third Reich's glorious future,

but their true capabilities would be tested far sooner.

In early 1938, Hitler's foreign policy

showed that before the Nazi dream could be made a reality,

a vital first step must be taken.

He's made it explicit by reinhabiting the Rhineland.

He has started his demand toward land,

for example, the Sudetenland.

So, he's really clearly gearing up for war.

With the end game coming into view,

Todt would now be drawn more directly into the fight.

The West Wall transforms the engineering of the autobahn

into a overt military goal,

and I think that transformation was really crucial

to showcase that Germany had the capacity to wage war.

Facing France's own Maginot Line.

The West Wall was a 600 kilometre long deterrent,

that would allow Hitler to move east into Czechoslovakia,

while keeping the west secure.

The West Wall or the Siegfried Line,

as it became known by the Allies, was a huge commission.

You've got tank traps,

you've got these things called dragons teeth,

you've got bunkers,

and you've got these really cleverly designed areas

that looked weaker in order to kind of tempt the enemy

to funnel in close and then you could ambush him.

For me, the importance of Todt is exactly

that he proved the ability of Germany

to plan and implement large-scale construction activity.

Not only that, he argued for its importance

and why it was something not merely for job creation,

but something essential to the modern German state.

As the rapid construction

of the West Wall continued, it appeared

that Todt was becoming indispensable to the Fuhrer

who that year sang his praises to the German public.

But Hitler went a step further.

For the first time in public,

he referred to Todt's workforce as Organisation Todt.

Hitler announces the Organisation Todt,

which was sort of a real honour

to have an organisation named after yourself.

In the Third Reich, there weren't many.

Todt's position was secure.

In effect, he had become Hitler's chief engineer.

Hitler always intended to build for centuries.

You can't have an empire that lasts for 1,000 years,

if you don't build.

And the primary purpose of the Todt Organisation

was to build.

My take is that he was extremely ambitious.

As he moves forward and is more and more successful,

I think the ultimate goal was he wanted

to be in a post-war period

to have a kind of role as minister of technology

with a major say in terms of the German economy.

With war fast approaching,

the regime's need for him

and his organisation would only grow.

But Todt's efforts to push his own technical ideology

would soon have to be sidelined,

giving way to cold, efficient military necessity.

As Europe descended into war, Todt's priorities shifted.

Organisation Todt's main task

was too march behind the advancing armies

and to do pioneer works like railway construction,

like repairing damaged roads and bridges.

And this was very vital for logistics and transport,

and to keep up the supply of the Wehrmacht.

In March, 1940, Todt was promoted

to Minister of Armaments and Munitions.

Keeping the German war machines stocked with shells, tanks,

and weapons was now an extra responsibility of his.

After conquering Poland,

Hitler's forces next pushed north and west

invading Denmark, Norway, Belgium,

the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.

Organisation Todt followed close behind.

His power now stretched over the German borders

to the occupied countries and territory.

Such was Germany's success

that by the end of the 4th of June,

the evacuation of Dunkirk was complete

and the majority of Allied forces

had been driven out of mainland Europe.

Less than three weeks later,

the French government surrendered.

Central to the next phase of Hitler's campaign

was construction on an epic scale,

and one of the first tasks would be

to prepare for a major offensive operation

codenamed Sea Lion.

Organisation Todt would lead the charge.

In the north of France,

Organisation Todt set to work building emplacements

for guns capable of firing 500 kilogramme shells

over the English channel.

But the construction of these batteries

was just one example of what Organisation Todt

would be called upon for during the war years.

As Germany conquered more and more territory,

the fortifications, the airports, the gun emplacements,

the simple barracks, the concentration camps,

all these building projects

were given over to the Todt Organisation.

Hitler was directly involved

and interested in many construction sites

and buildings Organisation Todt came up with

like the submarine bunkers or later on the Atlantic Wall.

Organisation Todt's operations

expanded across Europe

and all the way north to the Arctic Circle.

But to achieve this, it needed vast amounts of labour,

whether paid, forced, or enslaved.

Foreign labour was central and crucial

for the way Organisation Todt operated,

and became a more and more crucial part of it,

especially in the later stages of the war.

Prior to the war, Todt had overseen

a German workforce of around 350,000 people,

but as Organisation Todt transformed during wartime,

that number grew to around 1.5 million,

mainly foreign workers.

If it comes to the question of forced labour,

of course, Todt knew what was going on

and Todt was clearly aware that this organisation

couldn't work without the use of forced labourers.

The worst excesses of this

came after Todt's death,

but the framework had been established.

I think Todt cared for human life

as later on did Speer,

not because he felt sympathy with the individuals,

but he cared for their working and living conditions

to keep their man power and their work power intact.

In the end, the batteries at Cape Gris-Nez

were never used for the invasion of Britain.

With the Luftwaffe's failure to destroy the RAF,

and Britain's superior naval power still in evidence,

Operation Sea Lion was postponed indefinitely.

Instead, Hitler's attention turned east.

And with that, these batteries

were repurposed for Germany's defence.

Todt, however,

would not live to see that happen.

From late 1940 in the Masurian woods of Poland,

Organisation Todt had been secretly constructing

Hitler's eastern front headquarters, the Wolf's Lair.

On the 24th of June the following year,

Hitler visited for the first time.

The attack on the Soviet Union had begun two days earlier.

Operation Barbarossa is the Nazi invasion of the USSR

and the key thing there is that

this is a breakaway from the Nazi-Soviet pact.

Hitler intended for this to be a swift campaign

and it began with the Nazis

rapidly advancing towards Moscow.

But as winter approached the push forward ground to a halt.

It does not go well for the Nazis for many reasons.

The Nazis are famously delayed,

so they get stuck in freezing conditions

that they're not used to.

And there's also a scorched earth policy

that Stalin puts in place.

So, it means that even when the Nazis have managed

to break into certain parts of the country,

there's nothing there left for them to take.

As the war dragged on,

both sides suffered horrendous losses.

Hitler would end up spending over 800 days

at the Wolf's Lair.

Todt, however, had seen it all coming

and he was one of only a handful

who dared to question the Fuhrer's decisions.

He was quite courageous,

and if he believed that Hitler was taking a wrong decision,

he was prepared to stand up to him and tell him so.

It's believed this was what

Todt discussed with Hitler

on the evening of the 7th of February, 1942.

Initially, Todt was very much on board

and very much part of this initiative.

However, by early '42, he seems to have realised

the problem with supply chains,

the problem with overextension of the military drive.

He stated openly to Hitler

that his analysis of the resources of the two sides

and the fact that they had failed

to subdue Russia in the first six months of the campaign

meant that the war could not be won.

That indicates his engineering role.

He can't just promise productivity,

he can't just promise results.

He's got to think about the complexity

and the interaction of all of these elements

of the production process.

So, this was not, I would say from his perspective,

an anti-Nazi or critical point of view.

It was much more about

how do we achieve our goals

within the context of the conditions we have

and how do we do that strategically now so that

we can build for the future goals at some later date.

While Todt may have spoken his mind,

he was also loyal.

By using his connections to private firms,

he'd already begun making plans

to restructure the armaments industry

for a long drawn-out war.

But he wouldn't be there to see these plans through.

This is airfield for Wolf's Lair.

And Fritz Todt had planned to back to Berlin

early morning in the 8th of February.

The weather wasn't nice.

There was snowing, clouds was very low,

and also it was very, very windy.

Todt was a pilot,

but on this occasion he was not at the controls

and this was not his usual plane.

The plane takes off.

It flies out about three kilometres

and reaches a height of about 200 metres.

And then all of a sudden banks sharply to the left

and comes back towards the airport.

Obviously, the pilot planning

on making an emergency landing.

And when he accelerates again, there's an explosion.

Flames shoot up from the front of the aircraft

and the plane crashes.

There was a big fire and there was a problem,

because the plane had got a lot of petrol, 3,000 litres.

So, all people were killed.

Todt was honoured with a state funeral,

but definitive proof of what caused the accident

has never been uncovered.

So actually, to about Fritz Todt's death,

the question and different version.

So, we don't know what is really true story.

Todt had rivals.

He'd had a heated disagreement with Hitler,

and Albert Speer, the man who succeeded him

had originally intended to join him on the flight.

All of this has fueled suspicion over the years.

Quickly there came up rumours about Todt's death

and it was assumed that maybe Todt died,

because of an assassination.

But these arguments, it's can't be proven.

If you ask me direct,

I think these speculations are absolute nonsense.

It was not in Hitler's interest

to get someone like Todt out of the way,

because in the end,

Fritz Todt was always loyal to Hitler,

and as far as we know,

would have always stayed loyal with Hitler.

The most common theory, to my knowledge,

is that there is a self-destruction mechanism on the plane,

which by accident they triggered.

And that was the reason why it then crashed.

Todt was dead,

but the organisation he had created lived on,

keeping the name of its founder.

In March, Hitler officially issued a directive

to build what would soon be called the Atlantic Wall.

With the gun emplacements that Battery Todt covered over

by three metres of reinforced concrete,

they became one of the links in the chain of defences

that stretched from France's border with Spain

up to the north of Norway.

Todt had established the framework of an organisation

for building anything that needed to be built.

He built up this organisation composed

of the centralization of private companies

into one umbrella organisation, and it survived him.

Todt had established the foundation,

but his successor, Albert Speer,

undoubtedly left his own mark upon the organisation.

And in the role of armaments minister,

while Speer went on to achieve great successes,

again, Todt, had helped pave the way.

Many of the reforms Fritz Todt already intended,

Speer adopted or only slightly modified them.

For example, Speer later was known

for involving the private industry

into the production, into the war economy.

A lot of this is already foreshadowed

within Todt's own reforms.

I think if Todt wouldn't have died

in a plane accident as an armaments minister,

he would have become as successful as Albert Speer was.

Following the hard-fought success

of the D-Day landings in June 1944,

Allied forces marched east towards Berlin,

but in their way stood the West Wall.

In some areas, the Allies traversed the defences easily.

In others, heavily re-armed and expanded zones of defence

saw bloody fighting for months on end.

The cost of progress was high.

Estimates suggest the US alone suffered 140,000 casualties

in their efforts to break through.

Although built as a deterrent and a propaganda statement,

Todt's West Wall provided a deadly platform

for the defence of Germany.

It was extraordinary what Todt

and what his organisation achieved,

by increasingly ruthless methods, it's true.

We remember the name of his organisation.

We don't remember him so much as a person,

because he wasn't involved in the end of Nazi Germany

when it crashed into the abyss.

In 1945, British Intelligence Services

suggested that Organisation Todt had carried out

the most impressive building programme since Roman times.

The result of much of this is still with us today.

In terms of the way that the end of the war took place,

the foundations that he built for Speer

were perhaps the greatest historical significance

in a sense,

but I don't think that's the way Hitler would've seen it.

I think he had lost a loyal

and very effective compatriot in the process.

And I think for Hitler, that was the most important.