Fritz Todt
Fritz Todt (September 4, 1891 – February 8, 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 (Reichsautobahnen), to become the Reich Minister for Armaments and Ammunition. From that position, he directed the entire German wartime military economy. Before the beginning of World War II, he initiated what Hitler called Organisation Todt, a military-engineering company that supplied industry with forced labour, built fortifications such as the Westwall and Atlantic Wall with that labour, and administered construction of the Nazi concentration camps in the late phase of Nazi Germany.
On 8 February 1942, soon after take-off from the Wolfsschanze ("Wolf's Lair") airfield near Rastenburg, in East Prussia, Todt's aircraft crashed and he was killed. He was buried in the Invalidenfriedhof (Invalids' Cemetery) in the Scharnhorst-Strasse in Berlin. Posthumously, he became the first recipient of the newly created Deutscher Orden ("German Order").
Quotes
- The purpose of the Reichsautobahnen is to become the roads of Adolf Hitler.
- Quoted in "Fascism in action: A documented study and analysis of fascism in Europe" - Page 147 - 1947.
- The car is not a rabbit or a deer that jumps around in sweeping lines, but it is a man-made work of technology in need of an appropriate roadway. Rather, the car resembles a dragon fly or any other jumping animal that moves shorter distances in straight lines and then changes its direction at different points.
- Quoted in "Technologies of Landscape: From Reaping to Recycling" - by David E. Nye - Nature - 2000.
- I could not imagine that we should make much of an effort to preserve remainders of natural beauty in conquered Poland.
- Quoted in "Technologies of Landscape: From Reaping to Recycling" - by David E. Nye - Nature - 2000 - Page 227.
- The external appearance of any construction projects that are created during the time of the National Socialist Reich must take on the sensibility of our time. Factories are the workplaces of our National Socialist racial comrades. Streets and highways carry the name of the Führer. Settlements today are not isolated communities, but rather parts of greater city-construction plans. Every work site must be properly located within its neighborhood and surrounding setting (i.e., the natural world).
- Quoted in "Deutsche Technik", May 1938, p. 209.
- We do not build speedways, but roads which correspond to the character of the German landscape.
- Quoted in "Vortrag in der Leipzig-Hochschule am 6.2.1934" in Die Autobahn, 4/1934, p. 125.
- For decades engineers have stood accused that their buildings do not have any cultural value. We have attempted to liberate engineering of this accusation. As National Socialists we are dedicated to working with boldness, but also with love of the Volk and our landscape in mind. These roads do not serve transportation alone, they also bind our Fatherland. In these highways our engineering will reflect the National Socialist movement.
- Quoted in "Deutsche Technik", June 1935, p. 270.
- The German landscape is something unique that we cannot disturb and have no right to destroy. The more densely populated our 'living space' becomes with settlements, the greater our hunger will grow for unspoilt nature. The ever increasing spiritual damage caused by life within the big city will make this hunger practically uncontrollable... when we build here on this the landscape of our homeland we must be clear that we will protect its beauty; and in places where this beauty has already disappeared, we will reconstruct it.
- Quoted in "Fritz Todt: Baumeister des Dritten Reiches" (München: F.A. Herbig, 1986), by Franz W. Seidler, p. 113.
