Builders of Terror, Ally to Justice: Charles Dick on Organisation Todt & Carla Kaplan on Jessica Mitford

Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

This week on Writer’s Voice, we look at two stories from history that illuminate the choices people face as they confront evil: collaborate or resist?

First, independent scholar Charles Dick joins us to discuss Unknown Enemy: The Hidden Nazi Force That Built the Third Reich — the first full account of Organisation Todt, the massive construction arm of the Nazi regime that operated across Europe with lethal brutality. His book reveals how ordinary engineers and builders became central participants in enslavement and murder — and how much of this history remained hidden for decades.

“If you’re told… your prisoners are subhuman, you’re more likely to work them to death.” — Charles Dick

Then, in Segment Two, biographer Carla Kaplan returns to Writer’s Voice to talk about Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford. Kaplan brings to life the incomparable “Decca” Mitford — aristocrat, Communist, civil-rights activist and bestselling muckraker.

“If she believed in something, she was unbending — and always willing to pay the price of her convictions.”  — Carla Kaplan

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Key Words: Unknown Enemy Charles Dick, Fritz Todt, Holocaust studies, Jessica Mitford biography, Troublemaker Carla Kaplan, The American Way of Death, muckraking journalism, civil rights history, Freedom Rides, Mitford sisters,Francesca Rheannon interview,

You Might Also Like: Carla Kaplan, MISS ANNE IN HARLEM, Andrew Nagorski, THE NAZI HUNTERS

Read the transcript

SEGMENT ONE — Charles Dick on Unknown Enemy

Historian Charles Dick exposes the full scope of Organisation Todt (OT) — the Nazi regime’s massive, understudied construction force. OT built the Autobahn, the massive North Atlantic coastal fortifications and Hitler’s underground weapons factories; oversaw millions of enslaved laborers; and carried out brutal operations across occupied Europe.

Despite its central role, OT escaped the scrutiny that fell on the SS and Wehrmacht — leaving its crimes obscured until now.

Dick explains how:

• Engineers, builders, and architects became perpetrators.
• Death rates in OT camps often equaled or exceeded those under the SS.
• The organization expanded across Europe into a continent-wide system of forced labor.
• OT leadership — including Fritz Todt and Albert Speer — held immense power and largely avoided justice.

He shares harrowing survivor accounts revealed in the book — from Ukraine, Alderney, Estonia, Stutthof, and the Kaufering/Dachau subcamps — stories long buried in archives.

SEGMENT TWO — Carla Kaplan on Troublemaker

Biographer Carla Kaplan returns to discuss Jessica Mitford — aristocrat-turned-revolutionary, Communist organizer, civil-rights witness, and author of the groundbreaking exposé The American Way of Death.

Kaplan traces Mitford’s transformation from an eccentric, cloistered, aristocratic childhood among the infamous Mitford sisters — including Nazi sympathizers Diana and Unity — to her self-invented life as a radical activist and bestselling writer in the U.S.

Kaplan shares:

• Mitford’s early sense of injustice.
• Her refusal to compromise with editors over The American Way of Death.
• Her experiences during the Freedom Rides — including witnessing John Lewis’s beating.
• Why she and her husband joined and later left the Communist Party.
• Her complicated relationship to feminism.
• Her deep belief in political loyalty, humor, and collective action.

Read An Excerpt