Constructive Nazi

Last week the Germans announced that along the coast of Occupied France, German engineers had completed a chain of submarine bases that would assure Germany's victory in the Battle of the Atlantic, were hard at work on "the largest naval bases ever built." Whether or not they were the largest ever, it seemed likely that the new French bases would be pretty good. They were the latest effort of the Nazis' Busiest Beaver, Dr. Fritz Todt,* and last week the Third Reich characteristically rewarded him--by giving him another huge job.

In addition to the two Cabinet posts and five other titles he holds, Beaverman Todt was made Inspector General for Water and Power, became in titles as well as in fact one of the most potent men in Germany outside of the Army.

Twin passions of Fritz Todt's life are engineering and Adolf Hitler. Just out of the University of Munich he served in World War I, joined the Nazi Party in 1923, remained a devoted and inconspicuous disciple, at length became a Standard-bearer in the Storm Troops. He worked as a construction engineer for a road-building company until the Nazis came to power.

Installed in Hitler's Cabinet as Inspector General of Roads, Engineer Todt's first great job was to plan and build the Autobahnen. He employed as many as 250,000 men at a time. He covered Germany from Belgium to Poland and from the North Sea to Austria with a network of model high-speed highways, which could be used equally well for military or commercial transport. With the annexation of Austria and the conquest of Poland, Road-builder Todt added new links.

When General Georg Thomas began in 1935 to form the War Economy Board, Dr. Todt was called in to plan the engineering side of the conquests to come. With Germanic thoroughness he improvised his Economic Mobile Units to salvage anything from an outhouse to a mine in the wake of the armies.

In 1938 Todt was given the rank of Major General and set to building the Siegfried Line. He commuted to Berlin for a personal job for his boss, building in short order the new Reich Chancellery. He is also supposed to have constructed the Fuehrer's retreat at Berchtesgaden.

Six months after the war started, Dr. Todt was tossed still another job. As Minister for Armaments and Munitions, he became straw boss for the whole German munitions industry.

No stiff-necked hell-roarer, the Nazi's No. 1 engineer is a soft-spoken handsome man of 49 who prefers the tweed coat, breeches and boots of an engineer on the job to his medal-decked Storm Trooper's uniform. Seldom seen in public, he spends the time he can spare from his multiplicity of jobs in Munich with his wife and five children. Subordinates like his lack of ceremony, call him "our Doctor."

Part of Dr. Todt's success is undoubtedly due to his diplomatic way with his Fuehrer. When in 1938 he wanted to build the great Elbe bridge, he did not try to go ahead under his own steam to requisition materials from Germany's scant stocks of steel and iron. Instead he got quick action by suggesting that Hitler himself help to design it.

* (rhymes with throat) is pronounced the same as Tod, which in German means death.

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