Talk:Organisation Todt

message: re my 20070929 undo of the last edit:
The Nazi regime was totalitarian (cf. e.g. Gleichschaltung, Gestapo, KZ as a few of the many mechanisms for establishing absolute social control). It was ruthless (cf. eg. the invasion of Czechoslovakia even though the Suddetenland had been conceded or the invasion of Russia even though Poland had been successfully divided. Compulsory laborers were in the state's complete service: there was no option to do anything else and many were worked to death. If you still genuinely believe this is somehow merely an opinion, please demonstrate that and reinstate the change, otherwise leaave the text alone.
Ludwig X 14:54, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: How dare you insinuate that Todt et al were anything but Lawful Good? (Weirdly, it turns out that words had meanings before Gygax.) Idontcareanymore (talk) 03:19, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Some edits

message: *What were Organisation Todt uniforms like? Boilersuits (except for officers), or what? The article lists only the badges. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 08:27, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Uniforms?

message: *According to the Wikipedia article, Project Riese was the "code name for a mining and construction project of Nazi Germany (my emphasis), in upper Silesia" (then Germany, now Poland). Did the OT go in for mining?
*I can find no mention in this article of the Submarine pens that were largely built by the OT.
*A library book in my (temporary) possession Hitler's U-boat Bases by Jak P Mallmann Showell (2002), has photographic evidence which seems to contradict the statement that the OT employed conscripted men as its workers. e.g. On page 12: "...pay day...", page 10: " Men of southern European or African origin...", page 6: a OT worker, complete with armband, who is smiling into the camera!
The text is also hard to ignore, discussing as it does the galley slave theory and the construction of a replica Greek war galley and "discover[ing] that it took a considerable time before even highly motivated volunteers could master the task" [of operating the galley]. Showell continues: "The colossal undertaking required more skill and effort than an underfed, conscripted workforce could provide and the majority of labourers were volunteers who were offered considerable incentives in the form of additional pay and extra food rations to get the job done".
All in all, Showell doesn't seem to agree with the 'slave labour' term, at least as far as submarine pens are concerned.
RASAM (talk) 19:40, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Showell also comes perilously close to being an apologist at times, using a pacifistic veneer to tar Allied conduct with the same brush as Nazi crimes. There is, however, a difference in how the OT operated during the early years of the war (when the U-boat pens in France were largely completed) versus how it did so later in the war.--172.190.50.23 (talk) 07:04, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mining, submarine pens and slave labour 

message: The categories of this article (currently :Category:Nazi Party organizations, :Category:Economy of Nazi Germany, and :Category:Nazi paramilitary ranks) are wrong. OT was not a party organization, but part of the government, loosely similar to the United States Army Corps of Engineers. Also,  the role of the organization in the German economy was not important, most important was its role as in forced labor. I have yet to find the right categories for this.  Andreas  (T) 01:26, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categories