Franz Xaver Dorsch Franz Xaver Dorsch ( 24 December 1899 – 8 November 1986 ) was a German civil engineer who became the chief engineer of the Organisation Todt ( OT ) , a civil and military engineering group in Nazi Germany that was responsible for a huge range of engineering projects at home and in the territories occupied by the Germans during the Second World War . He played a leading role in many of the Third Reich ' s biggest engineering projects , including the construction of the Siegfried Line ( Westwall ) , the Atlantic Wall and numerous other fortifications in Germany and occupied Europe . Following the war , he founded the Dorsch Consult consulting engineering company in Wiesbaden . Life . Dorsch was born in Illertissen in the Allgäu region of Bavaria . He served in the German Army during the First World War from 1 June 1917 to 2 January 1919 , leaving with the rank of sergeant . After demobilising he joined the paramilitary Freikorps and participated in the crushing of the Bavarian Soviet Republic in May 1919 . Later that year he enrolled as a student of civil engineering at the Technische Hochschule Stuttgart , now the University of Stuttgart , and qualified as an architect in 1928 . From 1929 to 1933 he worked with Fritz Todt , later to become the founder of the Organisation Todt , at the Munich engineering firm of Sager und Wörner . Both men were early supporters of Adolf Hitler . Dorsch joined the embryonic Nazi Party and its paramilitary wing , the Sturmabteilung , in 1922 and he participated in the unsuccessful Beer Hall Putsch of 8 – 9 November 1923 . He was later entitled to wear the Golden Party Badge and the Blood Order of the Nazi Party in recognition of his early service . In July 1933 , Todt was appointed by Hitler as the " Generalinspektor für das deutsche Straßenwesen " ( " Inspector General for German Roadways " ) , charged with the task of building the German autobahn network . Todt recruited Dorsch to serve as his deputy and " Leiter " ( head ) of the OT Zentrale office in Berlin , working on the autobahn project . In 1938 Dorsch played a leading role in the building of the Siegfried Line ( known as the " Westwall " in German ) , a vast defence system stretching more than along German ' s western borders from the Netherlands to Switzerland . From December 1941 he directed the construction of the Atlantic Wall along the western coastline of occupied Europe , though his work was criticised by the military for ignoring input from the Army and Navy . On 8 February 1942 Fritz Todt was killed in an air crash . He was replaced by Albert Speer , Hitler ' s chief architect . Speer retained overall control of the OT as Minister of Armaments and War Production but gave Dorsch the authority to run it as he saw fit , in effect making him the operational chief of the OT . In recognition of his service , Dorsch was awarded the Knight ' s Cross of the War Merit Cross with Swords on 13 May 1943 . However , the relationship between Speer and Dorsch was strained . A major bone of contention was the fact that the OT only had responsibility for building projects outside the " Reich " . It was now increasingly being employed for construction work at home and needed to have control of the domestic construction industry . Dorsch and Speer fought a bitter battle over the issue , with Dorsch demanding that he be put in charge of all building activity inside the " Reich " so that new projects could be managed by the OT . Dorsch was secretly an ally of Speer ' s arch - enemy , Martin Bormann , who recruited him as an agent of the Parteikanzlei ( the Nazi Party head office ) to spy on Speer ; as Speer later put it , Dorsch made him feel " insecure in my own Ministry " . In the spring of 1944 , Dorsch instigated a move to oust Speer ; although he was unsuccessful , Speer ' s position was seriously weakened . Hitler took command of the OT away from Speer and gave it to Dorsch in April 1944 . Dorsch was invited to submit proposals for a scheme , which Speer vigorously opposed , to move German industrial facilities into " concrete factories " or underground facilities to protect them from Allied bombing . Hermann Göring , the Reich Minister of Aviation , also ordered Dorsch to undertake the construction of underground aircraft hangars for the Luftwaffe . Dorsch was put in charge of the armaments ministry ' s building office and served as the minister ' s deputy as general commissioner for construction industry matters , as well as retaining his existing post as the head of the OT . He was thus in charge of virtually all the Third Reich ' s building projects in the final year of the war . Hitler ' s directive to build bombproof factories gave Dorsch the authority he needed to take control of the whole German construction industry and by September 1944 he controlled a workforce of 780 , 000 people , mostly forced labourers from abroad , who were engaged in construction projects within the " Reich " . Dorsch avoided prosecution following the war and was commissioned by the United States Army to write a 1 , 000 - page study of the Organisation Todt , which was published in 1947 . In 1950 , he set up the firm of " Reg . Baumeister Xaver Dorsch , Ingenieurbüro " which became the consulting engineering company Dorsch Consult in 1951 and Dorsch Gruppe in 2006 . The company now employs 1 , 600 people and is Germany ' s largest independent planning and consulting company . Xaver Dorsch died in Munich on 8 November 1986 .