IF IT WASN’T FOR the inconvenience of Germany losing World War Two, Fritz Todt now might be celebrated as the greatest civil engineer and road builder since the Romans.
He was born into an upper-middle class family in Pforzheim in 1891, where his father Emil owned a small ring factory. His engineering studies at Munich’s Technische Hochschule were interrupted by World War One, during which he earned the Iron Cross as an air force reconnaissance observer. He resumed his studies in Karlsruhe after the war, graduating with a degree in construction engineering