Construction of the "Westwall" defenses

From 1938 onwards HOCHTIEF worked on the "Westwall" line of defenses under the direction of the Nazi labor organization, the head of which, Fritz Todt (1891-1942), had been instructed in 1938 by Hitler's Air Force chief, Hermann Göring, to carry out all the construction work of relevance to war. The Todt Organization thus took charge of virtually all construction projects. Everything was regarded as "relevant to war", not only the obviously military buildings and the Westwall defenses, but also industrial buildings and traffic routes. Civilian building activity steadily declined.

Traffic routes and buildings for the Führer

Once Germany had defeated France in 1940, work started on the "Atlantic Wall", and HOCHTIEF was involved in this as well, and in "Operation Viking", which started in Norway in October 1941. HOCHTIEF also operated outside Germany, in countries that Germany had occupied and others as well: Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Poland, Hungary, Austria and even Iran. These projects mainly involved traffic routes and sometimes industrial buildings, but HOCHTIEF also worked on "buildings for the Führer" such as his mountain retreat in the Bavarian Alps, called the Berghof, his "Wolf's lair" command headquarters in Rastenburg (then in East Prussia, now Poland), and the notorious Führerbunker in Berlin.