A EXAMINATION ON PROPAGANDA ACTIVITIES OF THE TODT ORGANIZATION IN ITALY

The Todt Organization (Organization Todt, OT) was founded in 1933 under the leadership of Fritz Todt to gather civilian and military engineering units in Nazi Germany under a single roof. When the Second World War began, the OT became responsible for all the official engineering works in both Germany and the occupied areas. When a significant number of German workers employed in Nazi Germany were sent to the fronts, the OT needed to supply the labor force from the concentration camps and from voluntary workers in the occupied countries. Indeed, the last two years of the war between the years 1943-1945 OT made an intense propaganda activity to increase the workforce. In particular, OT intensified its propaganda activities in Italy, the ally of Nazi Germany. In this study, the propaganda activities carried out by the OT in order to seize the work force in Italy were tried to be put forward in the Second World War. For this purpose, four propaganda posters, which were determined by using the sampling method within the propaganda posters used by the OT, were examined using semiotic analysis method in the qualitative research methods. The propaganda posters determined within the scope of the study were analyzed in the light of the French Linguist Roland Barthes' semiotics concepts. In the findings, it was found that the messages reganding that the welfare of the people would increase and the Allied States would lose the war in a short time when the Italian people worked within the OT were given in posters