Charles Dick tells for the first time the story of the Organisation Todt a hidden and brutal
organisation overseen by Hitler at the heart of the Nazi machine. Adolf Hitler described the
Organisation Todt as ?the greatest construction organisation of all time'. In 1945 British
intelligence credited it with having carried out in little over five years ?the most impressive
building programme since Roman times'. It was from this organisation headed by Albert Speer
that Hitler enlisted the nation's leading engineers and architects to build his empire. In time
it became an indispensable partner to the SS and the Wehrmacht and led to the deaths of
millions. Why then has much of the general public never heard of it? In Unknown Enemy
Charles Dick reveals for the first time the full extent of the Organisation Todt and its long
arm across Europe and the Reich. In wartime its operations relied mainly on Germany's slave
labour system the largest such exploitation of foreign labour since the end of the
transatlantic slave trade - and one in which millions of civilians Jews and prisoners of war
lost their lives. Dick takes us inside the OT's vast building projects throughout
German-occupied Europe from the Arctic circle to the Balkans and deep into what the Third
Reich termed its ?eastern Lebensraum' to tell the story of how engineers and builders -
so-called ?ordinary men' - perpetrated some of the gravest war crimes under its banner.
Despite its extensive network the Organisation Todt largely managed to slip under the radar of
war prosecutors after Germany's defeat. Drawing on extensive new research first-person
accounts and survivor testimony Unknown Enemy finally unearths its dark story.
