Project Nazi: The Truth Behind Germany’s Autobahn and People’s Car | Full History Documentary

Adolf Hitler promises to make Germany great again by creating 22,000 kms of motorway and building one and half million “People’s Cars” every year. But in reality, millions of forced labourers are viciously exploited. Most of the promised motorways are never built. The “People’s Car” turns out to be a scam, as the Nazi party steals all the money paid for them.

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[narrator] 1934. The International Motor Show in Berlin. One of Adolf Hitler’s favorite events. Here, he promotes the Nazis’ boldest propaganda project: building the motorways. Hitler fetishized mobility and loved cars. And you could tell that. [narrator] Just weeks after becoming chancellor, Hitler makes a promise. His plans for motorway building and car manufacturing

Will make Germany great again, ending years of hardship and high unemployment. “In my opinion, the most appropriate way to guide the German people back into work is to get the German economy back into gear through great, monumental works.” The Reich motorways were promoted and propagandized as the “Roads of the Führer.”

[narrator] For Hitler, the motorways are a powerful symbol of Germany’s return to power after humiliating defeat in the First World War. And the youth of Germany will build them. [Richard Bessel] The building of the Autobahn was done deliberately in a way to make work for as many hands as possible.

It wasn’t particularly mechanized; just a lot of guys out there with shovels. [narrator] Hitler also promises to build millions of cheap “People’s Cars” for the masses. But none of these promises are ever fulfilled. Not one person who subscribed to the car ever got one, because the war came,

And it was converted to military purposes in the factory. [narrator] Instead, millions of forced workers and prisoners struggle and die building roads that can never be completed. Because Hitler only has one real drive: to wage war. His motorways are just another route to Germany’s destruction. [dramatic music plays] [narrator] 1924.

Landsberg Castle, in southern Germany. Adolf Hitler is imprisoned here for staging a coup. But the authorities are surprisingly tolerant. The conditions in Hitler’s fortress prison are far from harsh. He has many visitors and many books. During his enforced idleness, Hitler re-reads one of his favorites: the autobiography of Henry Ford.

“I will build a motor car for the great multitude. It will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God’s great open spaces.” [narrator] Hitler is inspired by Ford’s vision

Of mass motorization. He also identifies with Ford himself, a brilliant industrialist from humble origins who creates the world’s most famous car, the Model T. As soon as he’s released, Hitler starts campaigning for the Nazi Party, right across Germany. [chanting “Heil”] [narrator] But now he refuses to take “boring” trains.

Instead, he prefers to travel by car to demonstrate his vision of national reconstruction through motorization. Hitler enjoyed driving powerful Mercedes cars at high speed or being chauffeured in them. Hitler was a real car fan. [narrator] But Hitler’s motorcade is something of a novelty. At the time, car ownership

Is still a privilege of the rich. [Bessel] Germany had fewer motor vehicles per capita than either Britain or France, to say nothing of the United States during the 1920s and early 1930s. [narrator] Hitler wants to do for Germany what Ford has done for the United States.

So he pushes his party to promise three things: jobs, cars and roads for everyone. Very quickly, he asserted and propagandized that the German economy should be grown or restored to health mainly through car manufacturing and road construction. [narrator] In 1933, Hitler consults an expert on road construction

Who is also a loyal Nazi Party member. His name is Fritz Todt. [Schütz] Todt was a construction engineer, a road builder. He had a senior position at a very reputable construction company. He joined the Nazi Party very early on, in 1922 or ’23, I think.

In contrast to many other Nazis, he was very competent in his field, and most people describe him as a level-headed guy. The most crucial person in the development and realization of the motorways was definitely Fritz Todt. [narrator] Todt presents Hitler with a plan for a national motorway network.

He argues it will create jobs, boost tourism and even have strategic military benefits. However, Todt’s proposal isn’t original. He borrows from plans created a decade earlier by the motorway lobby, HaFraBa. [Bessel] The Autobahn program begins in the Weimar Republic. But the first Autobahn is the one between Bonn and Cologne,

Which was supposed to be the first leg of an Autobahn going from Hamburg down to Frankfurt down to Basel: the HaFraBa. So that the idea of the Autobahn are already there. [narrator] It is more than just an idea. These are comprehensive blueprints. These plans were very meticulous

And were very advanced by the late 1920s. They had drawings for every 20 kilometer stretch, down to every last detail, which the Nazis were able to base their plans on, with only minor variations. [narrator] When the Nazis come to power, Hitler appoints Todt general inspector of roads. He gets to work immediately.

Naturally, sweeping promises about route completions were made. By 1937/38, 10,000 kilometers were meant to have been completed. The overall plan envisaged 22,000 kilometers of motorway. [speaking German] Germany had 35 or more percent of the workforce unemployed when the Nazis came to power. The depression in Germany was deeper than anywhere else in Europe,

And it’s a big reason why the Nazis managed to come to power, because they’d promised to try and deal with it. People were fed the propaganda: “This is a means to an end. A great glory will arise from this, and you’re a part of that great glory.”

In other words, this idea that we live in epic times. You want to be part of that, then get digging the motorway, because everything will come to you, all the goodies, because then we’ll be able to deliver by lorry, and it will be delivered fast, and you’ll have a great future awaiting you.

[Schütz] Many unemployed people put great effort into applying for jobs on the motorways. The federal archives have records of the unemployed sending in poems and using these poems to put themselves forward to finally get a job on the motorways. “Queuing up for the dole, many years I spent.

Now, finally, I hold a shovel in my hand. Doing physical work in nature out there worked on me like a miraculous cure. This is why I work with gratitude for the master builder of all time to realize the jewel in the crown of his monumental plan: the Reich motorway.”

[Bessel] The building of the Autobahn was done deliberately in such a way as to make work for as many hands as possible. It wasn’t particularly mechanized; just a lot of guys out there with shovels. [Schütz] The routine was that workers were given work clothes and equipped with spades and shovels.

The authorities would officially release them from the state of unemployment. Then, they marched off or were transported to the construction sites by lorries, which were driven by members of the SA in a kind of triumphal march. The population showed great interest. Sometimes, hundreds of thousands of people crowded around these construction sites.

[narrator] These “back to work” ceremonies take place all around the country. Todt carefully schedules motorway construction to spread the propaganda message as widely as possible. All Germans are meant to feel that they are directly benefiting from the motorways. The commissioning of the construction sites always ran to more or less the same pattern,

Which was designed for propaganda purposes in both film and sound. It was very important that the radio was always there to broadcast, as well as the weekly newsreel. [narrator] And, when the cameras are rolling, even the Führer gets his hands dirty. Hitler often tells the workers that he understands their needs,

Because he, too, had suffered during his humble, earlier life, before his rise to power. “Back then they used to say: ‘What does he want, that former builder or painter?’ But I am happy and proud that fate forced me down this road. It is, perhaps, why I have a deeper understanding than others

Of the German worker, of his nature, but also of his vital needs.” It’s hard to imagine today the extent to which the motorway shaped the perceptions of the population across all media. [narrator] Fritz Todt takes charge of motorway-related propaganda personally. He edits the weekly magazine The Road

And commissions films, which portray the Führer’s project as a miraculous road to recovery. But this doesn’t distract him from overseeing all the technical details. The motorway was intended to meet the following criteria: to have two lanes in each direction separated by a central reservation. It was meant to have no junctions

And was reserved for car traffic only. In the early planning stages, quite a few railway engineers were involved, which means that their plans followed railway construction conventions: an elevated track, preferably going in a totally straight line over long distances. [narrator] Todt dismisses these coldly efficient straight lines.

He prefers a route design known as “the curved path.” In this conception of the curved path, two aspects come together: first, that landscape should be experienced, which links to the emphasis on travel and tourism, which was a priority. So they wanted to open up a panoramic vista for the driver.

To a large extent, this was copied from the USA. These designs were based on the idea of landscape entertaining the driving audience. [narrator] Even though Todt has copied the curved path from America, he insists that Nazi ideology makes German roads different. “Motorways can, after all, be built by any nation,

But that we should have been the first to span our fatherland with these ribbons of light, and that they are looked upon and felt by everyone in the nation as being throughout a work of National Socialism, is no mere chance. These roads bear witness to the unity of the Reich.”

[narrator] Driving on these “roads of the Führer” is both a convenient and political experience. They are the height of modernity, yet also lasting monuments to Germany’s power. The first stretch of motorway completed by the Nazis links Frankfurt with Darmstadt in May 1935. Thousands line the 22-kilometer route.

But there are still not many drivers, as even now, few Germans own a car. Germany was a very under-motorized country. If you look at early film, newsreel film of the Autobahn, there’s hardly any cars on them. Just one or two. [narrator] Hitler hates the fact that cars

Are simply too expensive for most Germans. “It is bitter to think of the millions of brave, industrious and hard-working fellow men who are excluded from the start from owning motor vehicles. This class of people would really benefit from car ownership, especially on Sundays and holidays,

When it would be a source of a joyous happiness previously unknown to them.” [narrator] But Hitler is planning a solution. [German folk music plays] The German people were meant to be furnished with the German “People’s Car,” similar to the Americans’ Ford Model T, and as soon as possible.

[narrator] The “People’s Car” has to be cheap enough for workers. Hitler tells German manufacturers that it must cost no more than two months’ average earnings. “It must be possible to give the German people a motor vehicle that does not cost more than a mid-range motorbike used to.”

The price was set at 990 marks by diktat. The car was not allowed to cost any more. But economically, this was completely unachievable. [Evans] It was a big problem for the motor industry. Because it… Selling it for 1,000 marks was not going to bring them in any profit. [narrator] Despite their reservations,

The car industry builds a prototype, designed by Ferdinand Porsche. It only just about managed to go without any frills, any luxuries at all; very, very uncomfortable. [narrator] But the manufacturers calculate that even a basic “People’s Car” will cost far more to make than Hitler has decreed. When they tell him, he is furious.

“I was told, ‘This is impossible!’ My only reply to this is, ‘What is possible in other countries, is also possible in Germany.’ I hate that word ‘impossible,’ since it has always been the mark of people not daring enough to make and to implement great decisions.

The automobile must become the means of transportation for the people!” [narrator] And what the Führer wants, the Führer gets. [Evans] The way the economy worked in Nazi Germany was, it was directed and controlled, increasingly so, by the Nazi government for political reasons, and then,

In the end, Hitler, of course, could not be resisted, and he pushed through the idea. [narrator] The car firms are desperate not to be stuck with a loss-making model. So they cast their eyes on another source of funds for the “People’s Car.” All workers are now forced to join the Nazi workers’ organization,

The German Labor Front. It takes over independent trade unions and confiscates their assets of nearly 500 million Reichsmarks, equivalent to more than eight and a half billion US dollars today. To produce the “People’s Car,” Hitler, like his hero Henry Ford, builds his own factory.

And he steals German Labor Front money to fund it. So he’s forcing German workers to take on the risk of this loss-making venture, now rebranded the “Strength through Joy” car. [Schütz] This means that, from the word “go,” this was an enterprise dependent on subsidies.

A new factory was built, the “Strength through Joy” plant, which later became the Wolfsburg plant. [narrator] The factory is planned to be the largest in the world, bigger even than Ford’s, with enormous output. [Schütz] Propaganda was spread that from 1939, 1.5 million “People’s Cars” would be built each year.

[narrator] The Nazis come up with an ingenious way of taking yet more money from the workers. There was a peculiar hire purchase system where first you had to pay for the car, and then you got it somewhat later. [narrator] Sales are limited to German Labor Front members

Who have to buy a “Strength through Joy” savings stamp every week until they reach the purchase price. But if they miss a single payment, everything they’ve spent is forfeit. So the workers are paying for their cars even before the factory is built.

This was a new thing, the idea that I, in my remote village, might actually be able to have a car. And the Nazi Party were telling all the time: you could. It was only a matter of waiting: Be patient, and you’ll get one. A lot of it was aspirational consumption.

You lived in hope, and they played on your hope. [narrator] Hitler wants more people to own cars. But there is one group he does not want to see on Germany’s roads: the Jews. There’s a great diary from Nazi Germany by a Jewish professor called Victor Klemperer,

Who, with great pride and joy, buys a car, and then, he’s banned from driving it. Jews are banned from driving. “The Jews driving offends the German traffic community, especially as they have presumptuously made use of the Reich motorways, which were built by German workers’ hands. This prohibition hits us terribly hard.”

[narrator] Jews are banned from driving and even owning cars. Victor Klemperer records the growing list of small, everyday pleasures now denied to Jews like him. “They’re wearing us down with ever new tricks. Ban on purchasing flowers. Ban on going to the barber. Compulsory surrender of bicycles.

It is allowed to cycle to work, but Sunday outings and visits by bicycle are forbidden.” Gradually, you see these things that he likes doing are gradually circumscribed and stopped, and his life kind of closes in, because he’s able to do less and less. [narrator] The Jews are persecuted, because the Nazis believe

They are an inferior race. Whereas Germans are seen as superior, partly because of the concept of “German work.” The idea was that there was a special element of honor in German work, that there was an element of sincerity of a work ethos that was specific to the German people.

That was part of the Nazi ideology, and also something that Hitler very much stressed in his public speeches. I am asking you to bear in mind that we live in a time which sees work as an essential matter, and that we want to build a state which values work for its own sake

And respects the worker, because he is fulfilling a duty to the nation. [narrator] The Nazis create a new national organization to embody this ideal: the Reich Labor Service. It takes over existing job creation schemes around the country. School leavers, students and long-term unemployed men are forced to do at least six months’ service,

Creating an army of cheap labor. The propaganda message is clear: Physical labor should be admired and experienced by every German, regardless of social class. I ask you to keep in mind that we want to build a state which uses its labor service to teach everyone, even the pampered son of high-born parents,

To value work and respect physical labor in the service of the national community. [O’Shaughnessy] Whether you were a prince or whether you were a pauper, you had to build roads. [narrator] The Reich Labor Service’s propaganda also says it is unifying the country and overcoming regional differences.

The Reich Labor Service was an important organization of the Nazi regime, because it was an important element of Nazi propaganda. The most important propaganda opportunity was certainly the annual rally in Nuremberg, where the Reich Labor Service since 1933 was always a central element of the propaganda marches and demonstrations.

So you would have 100,000 young men marching in front of Hitler, showing to the Führer that this organization was a powerful and important tool for the regime. [speaking German] [O’Shaughnessy] This is one of the great achievements of propaganda, this elevation of labor partly by making everyone for a period a laborer,

But continuously producing posters and films and so forth celebrating labor as the sinews of the culture, the foundation of the culture. It was a symbol of the regime in its attempt to overcome the Great Depression. It had young men, mostly men, put to work

To show that the regime was trying to help the people. That it was an active attempt to overcome the crisis. That was the most important propaganda element that it actually had. Young men walking with their spades through small villages, singing their songs, looking happy and being back to work. [singing a patriotic tune]

[narrator] But beneath the happy image lurks the power of the Nazi state. The Labor Service obviously had an element of coercion in it. And the Nazi idea of work was one of self-sacrifice for the nation, whether you volunteered or not. [narrator] The service is run in a quasi-military fashion.

The Reich Labor Service had a specific uniform. It was brown. It didn’t look particularly nice. People in the Third Reich also complained sometimes about the way the uniforms looked. It was almost like a military uniform, and there were all these badges and things that normally distinguish people in military organizations.

“Each of us had a work shovel and a second spade, which we polished to perfection, which we handled like a gun. We were drilled in presenting it so that it flashed in the sunlight.” [O’Shaughnessy] All of this was very powerful propaganda, and it’s very, very persuasive to people looking at Germany from outside.

Sir Nevile Henderson, the British Ambassador, he actually was totally taken in. He said, “These are marvelous structures. Not everyone in Nazi Germany is an evil clown. It has some very great men, and it’s created some fantastic nationalizing institutions, which destroy all the barriers of social class and create solidarity.”

It’s a marvelous thing, and in many ways it is the new dawn they promise. [narrator] Relentless propaganda shows the young men of the Reich Labor Service as heroes, serving the national community by constructing Hitler’s roads. In fact, they are not really up to the job.

[Patel] The workforce of the Labor Service was unskilled labor. We have to remember that these are 17-, 18-, 19-year-old young men from all walks of life who have to do this kind of service, and therefore it is impossible to think of them as a qualified workforce. What it mainly did was infrastructure projects

Such as cultivating the ground, irrigation work for instance, but also some other jobs in that field of building smaller pathways, roads… So that was its main job in the early years. [narrator] For the more complex work of motorway construction, Fritz Todt hires skilled labor and qualified engineers.

They are vital, as he plans to build 20,000 kilometers of road across Germany. And progress in the first few years of Nazi rule is swift. Nearly 600 kilometers are completed each year. The completion of every regional section of motorway is celebrated and broadcast nationwide, with the Führer present,

Painting a picture of future prosperity. [speaking German] [narrator] Hitler claims his make-work schemes are curing unemployment. The reality is different. While it is true that unemployment levels are coming down… It would be wrong to say the Labor Service played an important role in reducing them. Other factors really were more important

To explain the economic upswing. It had started already in 1932, prior to the rise to power, and a good part of it also owed to the rearmament of the military, so in that sense, it was also an artificial and aggressive form of overcoming the economic crisis.

[narrator] And the Nazi state is tightening its grip on the working class. There was the idea and the rhetoric of supporting workers and celebrating also the hard physical work of laborers, but in practice, the regime did little to support them. If you look at the development of wages, for instance,

You see a downward trend in the second half of the 1930s. [narrator] Workers had formed trade unions to protect their interests. But the German Labor Front, which replaces them, exists to control the workers, not represent them. The Labor Front doesn’t care about the conditions of those toiling on the motorways.

Obviously the moving workplace of building a motorway… They’d be living in very rough, temporary accommodation. They’d be served pretty basic food, the wages weren’t great and if you objected, you got into trouble. The day would have started with flag raising, and then very much a routine day of work and of labor.

[Schütz] They had to do heavy physical work eight hours a day, sometimes ten hours a day. And this led to severe health problems. There was a new phrase, which nearly gained the status of a new medical condition: shoveler’s sickness. This was caused by the uneven strain when shifting soil,

And it presented itself through symptoms such as torn ligaments, joint strain, back pain and suchlike. They were not to be envied. Even after-work time was regimented too, so that the German Labor Front was responsible for after-work hours as well. The regime was making sure that people’s leisure time also was quite heavily regimented.

[narrator] The Nazis start banning strikes as early as 1933. Yet conditions are so bad on the motorway construction sites that sometimes, workers feel they have to lay down their shovels. In 1934/35, there were some reports of strikes. Now, this is always difficult, because officially there were no such things.

But we know that there were some minor uprisings. [narrator] Strikes in the 1920s caused political unrest. The Nazis will not tolerate such dissent. Workers who had written stirring poems about their new jobs are now chanting different rhymes. “The motorway is knocking us dead. Tomorrow we’ll go back to voting red!”

But in those cases, the authorities took drastic measures. They threw these people in prison or sent them to re-education camps. [narrator] This is the site of one of these camps, a former Labor Service barracks. After the barracks burn down, the Nazis turn this exposed site into a prison camp for workers.

Now, it’s a memorial to all who suffered here. [Steffen Reinhard] SS Special Camp Hinzert was used for the retraining of German workers that were accused of anti-social behavior. For instance, they came to work too late, started drinking alcohol or complained about the bad working conditions. The conditions must have been, of course, inhumane.

The prisoners had no proper uniforms or proper shoes. The climate is very rough, wet and cold. Screams and beatings and barking dogs “welcomed” the arriving prisoners. They had to work 13 hours a day. The head was shaved, and they had a special haircut, which means in the middle, it was very, very small.

The prisoners called it “Hinzerter Autobahn.” And it was actually used just in case a prisoner escaped, everyone saw from his haircut, he must be a prisoner. This was the intention. The idea was to retrain them. They had to do hard physical labor, military drills,

And in the evenings, they were indoctrinated by Nazi ideology. [narrator] The Nazis believe that the needs of the national community outweigh individual needs. [Lisa Pine] As far as the Nazis were concerned, human beings were only acceptable if they were able to contribute to society in a positive way.

So they needed to be healthy. They needed to be productive to society. So working and playing their part in society, whether they were women or men, boys or girls. Everyone had a role. The ideal Nazi family would have the father going out to work as the breadwinner in the public sphere,

The woman at home as a wife and mother, keeping home, doing the cooking, nurturing her children, nurturing the future of Germany as it were. [narrator] Hitler needs workers and soldiers to turn his vision of empire into reality. So what he wants from German women are German babies.

But not enough of them are doing their “duty.” [Hester Vaizey] There had been a declining birth rate from the late 19th century across Europe, but most pronouncedly in Germany. And Hitler, especially with his territorial ambitions, was keen to reverse this with pro-natal policies.

So when the Nazis came to power, they shut down birth control centers, which had been some of the most advanced in Europe at the time, and made abortion illegal. “German women, be true to your task. See to it that Germany shall not be a people without youth, that is, without a future.

When you have blessed as many children as possible with life, only then will you have your greatest purpose in life.” [Vaizey] Propaganda posters at the time would depict women with babes in arms, surrounded by children, with a strong father figure. In contrast were films where women were wearing lots of makeup

And might have been sort of lithe. Nazi propaganda portrayed women in much more of a strong, farmhand, breeding light. [narrator] The regime also introduces a range of incentives to boost fertility. Very soon after the Nazis seized power, in June 1933, they brought in a marriage loan, which offered couples

A monetary loan that was reduced by a quarter every time the couple produced a child. Contingent on being able to get this loan was being politically reliable, so you couldn’t be an opponent to the regime, a communist or a social democrat. The Nazis attached a hierarchy to different levels of motherhood.

One of the symbolic ways in which they did this was to distribute Crosses of Honor of the German Mother. And these were given out in bronze, silver and gold for mothers who had four, six and eight children, respectively. [Vaizey] And members of the Hitler Youth were required

To salute wearers of these medals in the street if they saw them. [O’Shaughnessey] When a mother gave birth, members of the Hitler Youth and the Deutsche Mädchen Bund would come round and garland the house. It was made into an epic. You were made to feel terrifically important. [narrator] So the regime strongly favors

Childbirth and motherhood. But there is another, sinister side to the Nazi’s growing control over reproduction. They wanted to prevent births of what they considered to be the unfit. Those could be the racially inferior, which were considered to be the Jews and the Gypsies, and then the hereditarily inferior,

Or the people who were regarded to be unhealthy, unfit. The Jews were seen as particularly culpable for polluting the Aryan German race, in spite of the fact they were only one percent of the population of Germany. [narrator] The Nazis turn their ideological policies into laws, which progressively strip Jews of their rights.

The Nuremberg Laws were introduced in 1935. These were racial laws designed to take away the German citizenship of Germany’s Jews, effectively turning them into subjects instead of citizens. [narrator] Racial discrimination is now enshrined in law. The Nazi state intrudes into the most intimate areas of the people’s lives.

Germans and Jews were from this point onwards forbidden to marry or even have sex. Jewish men were forbidden from employing Aryan German women as housemaids. This was playing on a stereotype of a Jewish man as a sexual predator intent on defiling Aryan women. This was an example of the regime infringing and penetrating

Very strongly into family life, permeating family life in quite an unprecedented way. [narrator] But all these Nazi laws, awards, propaganda and subsidies do not achieve their critical objective: boosting the birth rate of pure, Aryan Germans. There was a slight increase in the birth rate during the Nazi period of power,

But arguably this was as a result of the recovery from the Great Depression and had little to do with all the efforts that were put into propaganda. Ultimately, the members of the Party could not stand over couples and force them to breed.

[narrator] Whether women have babies or not is affected at least as much by economics as Nazi policies or propaganda. Two million men died in the First World War, so many women have to work to survive. They are too busy being breadwinners to breed. The reality was: For working class women,

They weren’t working out of a sense of emancipation or personal fulfillment. They were working, because their husband’s wage was insufficient. They worked out of financial necessity. [narrator] German women actually participate more in the workforce than in Britain or the United States. But the Nazis prefer them to stay in acceptably female roles,

Such as agriculture. [Vaizey] Women worked most frequently on farms. But there were also women doing factory work and increasingly doing secretarial work, too. The Nazis were keen, if women were going to work… they wanted them to work in what they considered their natural spheres. [narrator] But Hitler is turning the country towards war.

Having militarized the economy, the regime is now forced to soften its line on women’s roles, because military conscription is taking many men out of the workforce. [Evans] From spring of 1935 onwards, all young men had to join the armed forces, and that immediately snapped up a couple of million.

Unless they came into the labor market, they went into the army. The massive arms build-up began in a small way already in 1933, but by 1936 or ’37, the arms industry was sucking in labor and resources from all over the economy. [narrator] A new source of labor is needed

To replace the male factory workers. So Nazi ideological principles are abandoned. Even mothers leave the marital home to take up jobs. [Vaizey] Women were a fantastically cheap labor source in comparison to men. Their wages remained persistently lower than men. They were a resource that the regime couldn’t afford to ignore

When they were in the business of rearming. [narrator] Yet before Hitler can start his war in the east, he first wants to fortify his border in the west. He orders Fritz Todt to build an enormous defensive structure, the Westwall. But his workforce is busy building the motorways.

So Todt turns to the unskilled workers of the Reich Labor Service. [Patel] It was part of building these fortifications in the west of the country, the so-called “Westwall,” which was an important new dimension that absorbed many of its units in 1938 and ’39. So the whole idea

Of education, of indoctrination was less important, and work hours, work days become much longer. [narrator] Six hundred thousand men build the Westwall, working seven days a week. Todt’s work is so crucial to Hitler’s war plans, he grants him authority over the nation’s entire construction program, with his own task force: Organization Todt.

Now Todt is able to complete the Westwall in just over a year. With its 630 kilometers of bunkers and fortifications, this is a real line of defense, as well as a show of strength. And it bears a striking resemblance to Todt’s other propaganda project. When you saw the Westwall embedded in the landscape,

It looked a bit like a prickly motorway, crossing hills and valleys, just like the curved path of the motorways. And the idea was that these massive concrete dragons’ teeth and fortifications would stop tanks from penetrating, which is what happened. But perhaps even more powerful was its psychological and visual effect.

[narrator] Todt completes the Westwall in summer 1939. His career is made. September 1939. Germany is now at war. At first, Hitler is victorious. As the Reich’s borders expand both east and west, Fritz Todt extends his plans for the motorway network. But the new roads are no longer intended

For enjoyable drives with scenic views. These roads have an aggressive political purpose: supply lines for the army and routes for future German settlers. [Schütz] They were already making plans for huge thoroughfares that would’ve connected the empire with the territories they planned to enslave in the event of victory,

Which they were convinced would come. These plans would have extended the motorway network from Holland, France and Italy, that is, from the west and the south, all the way to Moscow. [narrator] These are big plans. But even at home, there is not enough labor to build the motorways. Workers have been lured away

By the high wages offered creating the Westwall. So, to keep expanding his motorway network, Todt has to find another solution. It was one that had previously been rejected: mechanization, turning to technology. Remember that in the early years, work was done almost exclusively by hand. And now, road construction machines were deployed

To replace labor. [narrator] On the motorways, mechanization helps. But machines cannot replace men entirely. So Todt is forced to abandon another key Nazi principle. There had previously been plans to deploy Jews from concentration camps. Todt had rejected this, arguing that the honorable German motorway should not be sullied by Jewish hands.

[narrator] Todt reluctantly uses Jewish concentration camp prisoners on the Führer’s roads. But the decision does not harm his career. In fact, he gains power when Hitler gives him an even more important job. [Schütz] During the war, he was made Reich Minister for Armaments and Munitions. He successfully demonstrated his competence

And was considered an authority. The Organization Todt went east too, of course, to Poland, to Russia, to Ukraine, to build roads, accommodation and so on. Everything that falls under military engineering, especially bridge construction. Organization Todt was also really involved in highly destructive tasks during World War Two.

The most important example is probably building the Durchgangsstrassen, highways, basically, to the eastern occupied parts of Europe where forced labor and many Jewish forced laborers were employed. And there was this idea of exterminating them through work. [narrator] From 1941, the Organization Todt uses forced labor and prisoners of war to construct these

“Durchgangsstrassen,” or thoroughfares. These men are literally worked to death. [Schütz] You could argue that the further away you got from the center of the empire and the further you left behind the area where the population could monitor you, and the further the war progressed and became more problematic,

The lower the reluctance to use forced labor, until you didn’t even try to hide the fact that people were being worked to death. [Patel] The Nazis had this very important idea that people who were not deemed to be part of the national community, of the Volksgemeinschaft,

Should be excluded and also be exterminated by work. [narrator] At first this “extermination through labor” only takes place openly on the edges of the Reich. But even within Germany, the regime and private companies have no qualms about using forced labor in every part of the economy.

Prisoners of war, along with people from occupied territories, are shipped into Germany to work. And again, the ideological objection to using Jews is abandoned. [Schütz] After 1939/40, even Jewish forced labor was used. And forced laborers were treated decidedly worse than German workers. They lived in terrible conditions.

[Evans] Forced labor becomes increasingly necessary for a regime which is sending literally millions of men into their deaths on the Eastern Front. [narrator] At Hitler’s car factory, two-thirds of the workforce are forced laborers. But they are not building the promised “People’s Car.” Not one person who subscribed to the car ever got one,

Because the war came, and it was converted to military purposes in the factory. [Schütz] In reality, only 600 cars were built, most of them for display or similar purposes. Whereas they built about 50,000 Kübelwagen and about 15,000 amphibious Schwimmwagen, which are military vehicles. The “People’s Car” itself only existed in propaganda films

Or occasional propaganda rides. [narrator] More than 300,000 German workers paid their weekly contributions in the hope of owning a “People’s Car.” They had hoped in vain. In January 1942, Hitler himself issues a decree banning all private car journeys. No one is now allowed to drive on the Führer’s roads

Unless it directly supports the war effort. And finally, all motorway construction in Germany comes to a complete stop. But Fritz Todt does not live to see all this. [Schütz] In February 1942, Todt was killed in a plane crash when he was visiting Hitler’s headquarters, the Wolf’s Lair.

[narrator] His death comes as a huge shock to Hitler. Todt’s importance to the Nazi project is shown by the grandiose state funeral he is awarded, with military honors. Fritz Todt had used the enticing argument that the motorways would play a valuable military role. He had the idea that 60,000 men

Could be moved from one border to the other within two days. But this was delusional. Even if they had completed the motorway network, this would have been impossible, firstly because they lacked trucks. Secondly, rail transport was much more efficient. So the military was, in fact, quite skeptical about the motorways.

They were concerned they might be used by enemy aircraft as guidelines. The motorways turned out to be incredibly useful for bombers, because they were very white and bright, and they went from one city to another. You could use them as navigational aids. In the end, they were painted over with camouflage.

[narrator] The army’s fears about “the Führer’s roads” are realized during the 1943 Allied bombing campaign. Germany’s decisive defeat at Stalingrad is a sign of even greater reverses to come. But Hitler is in denial and carries on regardless. His propaganda machine starts using a new slogan: “total war.” [speaking German]

[Pine] Total war meant lots of mobilization on the home front as well as on the fighting front. And eventually in January 1943, the call-up for work began. Total war had a specific economic purpose, and that is to fully militarize its economy. [narrator] The Nazis issue decrees that minimum working hours

For all workers must go up. And Hitler is finally forced to accept that women must work in the munitions industry. Women were working in evacuation procedures, air raid protection. They were working in distribution of goods. So the real mobilization, although it went against earlier Nazi propaganda, and earlier Nazi motives,

Was a pragmatic attempt to get the whole nation working together for this total war effort. [narrator] The very survival of Germany is in doubt. So now, almost every Nazi principle is sacrificed. Even children are drafted into military service. Hitler’s top propaganda project, the motorway network, lies unfinished under camouflage.

Todt’s workers had only managed to build 4,000 kilometers, less than 20 percent of the promised network. Despite its scale, the Westwall only holds back Allied forces for a few months. Nazi Germany is now suffering defeat after defeat. The Allies are advancing on all fronts.

The Allies, of course, did not show a great deal of respect for the motorways, but drove right over them with their tanks. The motorways were littered with destroyed, burned-out cars, which had been abandoned as people fled. And finally, the motorways were used to move German prisoners of war,

Because there were no trucks or trains to transport them. As was common with prisoners of war, they were marched along the roads partly to humiliate them. So once again, the motorways became the “roads of the Führer.” [narrator] Hitler promised a network of super highways to link up his European empire.

But he failed to deliver. In the end, the limited scale of the motorway network reveals the huge difference between Nazi propaganda and the grim reality.