In District of Galicia, SS and Police Leader Fritz Katzmann ordered Jews to work on the road in October 1941 (some photos of DG IV were included in the Katzmann Report of June 1943). Historians have proposed that when Reinhard Heydrich made a reference to Jews working on road construction during the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, it was an allusion to the DG IV project. The large-scale constructions works started in 1942 in preparation for the German advance towards Stalingrad. Organisation Todt was charged with constructing the road and provided technical supervisors while Legion Speer transported supplies. Various German constructions companies were contracted to build different sections of the road. The SS was tasked with providing forced laborers and their guards. Himmler put Higher SS and Police Leader Hans-Adolf Prützmann in charge of the SS units involved in the construction. Prützmann organized a special task force ("Einsatzstab") commanded by "Oberstleutnant" Walter Gieseke. He commanded four "Oberbauabschnittsleitungen" (Senior Construction Sector Directorates) based in Vinnytsia, Kirovograd, Kryvyi Rih, and Stalino. In total, about 5,000 Germans worked on the road. A network of small camps for forced laborers was set up about every . About 50 camps for Jews have been documented. These camps were guarded by various auxiliary police battalions of Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Cossack "Schutzmannschaft".The main tasks of forced laborers was to produce, collect, and transport materials (e.g. sand, gravel), construct the road, and build protections (e.g. walls against snowdrifts or ditches for drainage).