Organisation Todt

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Organisation Todt was a civil and military engineering organisation in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, named for its founder, Fritz Todt, an engineer and senior member of the Nazi Party. The organisat

Woman with Ostarbeiter OT badge at Auschwitz

From left: Rudolf Hess, Heinrich Himmler, Philipp Bouhler, Fritz Todt and Reinhard Heydrich listen to Konrad Meyer at a Generalplan Ost exhibition in Berlin, 20 March 1941.

German soldier in front of part of the OT-built Atlantic Wall at Cap Gris Nez, France

Street round-up (Polish łapanka [waˈpanka]) of random civilians to be deported to Germany for forced labour; Warsaw's Żoliborz district, 1941

Ostarbeiter

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Ostarbeiter was a Nazi German designation for millions of foreign workers deported from the occupied Soviet Union for slave labor in Germany during World War II. The program was a war crime and a crim

Organisation Todt

…Organisation Todt began its reliance on Gastarbeitnehmer ('guest workers'), Militärinternierte ('military internees'), Zivilarbeiter ('civilian workers'), Ostarbeiter ('Eastern workers'), and Hilfswillige ('volunteer') POW workers. The third period lasted from 1942 until the end of the war in 1945, when Albert Speer…

"Nationality badges" (Volkstumabzeichen) of Ostarbeiter from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus colored in accordance with their national flags: blue Saint Andrew's cross on white within a red oval (white-blue-red flag of Russia), yellow within blue badge with the Ukrainian trident and white and red badge in accordance to the white-red-white flag of Belarus. The badges were legally introduced on 19 June 1944 as replacements for the "OST" badges and practically implemented seemingly only after February 1945.

Nazi propaganda caption: "A 14-year-old youth from Ukraine repairs damaged motor vehicles in a Berlin workshop of the German Wehrmacht. January 1945."

Forced laborers before departure, Ukraine, May 1942