Dr. Fritz Todt, an engineer and master road builder, is
appointed Minister for Weapons and Munitions, ushering in a new
era in the efficient use of German industry and forced labor. A
civil engineer with a doctorate from the School for Advanced
Technical Studies in Munich, Fritz Todt caught the attention of
Adolf Hitler in 1932 as Todt spoke out about the importance of
building new roads to jumpstart a moribund German economy. Once
Hitler came to power, Hitler placed Todt in charge of a massive
road-building project that remains remarkable today: the
Autobahn, Germany's superhighway. Todt designed the Autobahn so
it would "harmonize with the German landscape." One of the
unintentional outcomes of the project was that it provided a
working model of the use of slave labor within the Nazi regime.
In February 1940, realizing that mass executions in occupied
Poland were not serving the Reich efficiently, Hitler decided to
create a centralized and supervised source of mass slave labor.
It was Todt who was chosen to