Robert Ley | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Ley in the 1930s | |
| Reich Organization Leader of the Nazi Party | |
| In office 10 November 1934 – 8 May 1945 | |
| Preceded by | Adolf Hitler |
| Succeeded by | Position abolished |
| Head of theGerman Labour Front | |
| In office 10 May 1933 – 8 May 1945 | |
| Leader | Adolf Hitler |
| Preceded by | Position established |
| Succeeded by | Position abolished |
| Chief of Staff of the Nazi Party Reich Organization Leader | |
| In office 9 December 1932 – 10 November 1934 | |
| Leader | Adolf Hitler |
| Preceded by | Gregor Strasser |
| Succeeded by | Position abolished |
| Gauleiter of Southern Rhineland,laterRhineland | |
| In office 17 July 1925 – 31 May 1931 | |
| Preceded by | Heinrich Haake |
| Succeeded by | Position abolished |
| Additional positions | |
| 1940—1945 | Reichskommissar for Social Housing Construction |
| 1933—1945 | Member of thePrussian State Council |
| 1933–1945 | Reichsleiter of theNazi Party |
| 1933–1945 | Member of theGreater German Reichstag |
| June – December 1932 | Reichsinspecteur of theNazi Party |
| 1930–1933 | Member of theReichstag |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1890-02-15)15 February 1890 |
| Died | 25 October 1945(1945-10-25) (aged 55) Nuremberg, Germany |
| Cause of death | Suicide by hanging |
| Party | Nazi Party |
| Spouse(s) | |
| Children | 5 |
| Alma mater | |
| Known for | Head of theGerman Labour Front (1933–1945) |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance | German Empire |
| Branch/service | Imperial German Army |
| Years of service | 1914–1920 |
| Rank | Leutnant |
| Unit | 10th Foot Artillery Regiment |
| Battles/wars | World War I |
| Awards | Iron Cross 2nd class Wound Badge, in silver |
Robert Ley (German:[ˈlaɪ]; 15 February 1890 – 25 October 1945) was a GermanNazi politician and head of theGerman Labour Front during its entire existence, from 1933 to 1945. He also held many other high positions in theNazi Party, includingGauleiter,Reichsleiter andReichsorganisationsleiter.
The son of a farmer from theRhine Province, Ley saw action in both theeastern andwestern fronts of theFirst World War and received theIron Cross Second Class. After the war he resumed his studies in chemistry, obtained his doctorate, and worked forIG Farben as a food chemist. Radicalised following theFrench occupation of the Ruhr, Ley joined the Nazi Party in 1925 and subsequently became theGauleiter of Southern Rhineland (later Rhineland). Steadily rising through the ranks, he was elected to theReichstag in 1930, and replacedGregor Strasser asReichsorganisationsleiter in 1932.
In 1933, Hitler appointed Ley as the head of the newly founded German Labour Front following the suppression of the trade unions. In addition to facilitatingGerman rearmament, Ley also presided over the creation of a number of programs, includingStrength Through Joy and theVolkswagen. Ley's influence declined after the outbreak of theSecond World War, his role as leader of the German workforce supplanted byFritz Todt (and laterAlbert Speer) and his alcoholism gradually coming into focus. Nevertheless, he retained Hitler's favour, and remained part of Hitler's inner circle until the last months of the war.
Ley was captured by American paratroopers near the Austrian border at the end of the war. He died by suicide in October 1945 while awaitingtrial at Nuremberg forcrimes against humanity andwar crimes.[1]
Ley was born in Niederbreidenbach (now a part ofNümbrecht) in theRhine Province, the seventh of 11 children of a farmer, Friedrich Ley, and his wife Emilie (née Wald). He studiedchemistry at the universities ofJena,Bonn, andMünster. He volunteered for the army on the outbreak ofWorld War I in 1914 and spent two years in the 10th Foot Artillery Regiment and saw action on both theeastern andwestern fronts.[2] In 1916 he was promoted toLeutnant and trained as an aerial artillery spotter[3] with Artillery Flier Detachment 202. In July 1917 his aircraft was shot down overFrance and he was takenprisoner of war. It has been suggested that he suffered a traumatic brain injury in the crash; for the rest of his life he spoke with astammer and suffered bouts of erratic behaviour, aggravated by heavy drinking.[4] He earned theIron Cross, 2nd class and theWound Badge, in silver.[5]
After the war Ley was released from captivity in January 1920 and returned to university, gaining a doctorate later that year. He was employed as a food chemist by a branch of the giantIG Farben company, based inLeverkusen in theRuhr. Enraged by theFrench occupation of the Ruhr in 1924, Ley became anultra-nationalist and joined theNazi Party soon after readingAdolf Hitler's speech at his trial following theBeer Hall Putsch inMunich. Ley proved unswervingly loyal to Hitler, which led Hitler to ignore complaints about his arrogance, incompetence and drunkenness.[6]
Ley's impoverished upbringing and his experience as head of the largelyworking-class Rhineland party region meant that he was sympathetic to theStrasserite elements in the party, but he always sided with Hitler in inner party disputes. This helped him survive the hostility of other party officials such as the party treasurer,Franz Xaver Schwarz, who regarded him as an incompetent drunk.
Ley rejoined the re-founded Nazi Party in March 1925, shortly after the party's ban was lifted (membership number 18,441). He was named DeputyGauleiter of the Southern Rhineland (later,Rhineland) that month, and was promoted toGauleiter on 17 July.[7] In September 1925, he became a member of theNational Socialist Working Association, a short-lived group of northern and western GermanGauleiters, organized and led byGregor Strasser, which advocated a more working-class focus for the Party and unsuccessfully sought to amend theParty program.[8] At a meeting on 24 January 1926, however, Ley joined with others in raising objections to Strasser's proposed new draft program and it was shelved.[9] Shortly thereafter, the Working Association was dissolved following theBamberg Conference.
In March 1928, Ley became the editor and publisher of a virulentlyanti-Semitic Nazi newspaper, theWestdeutscher Beobachter (West German Observer) inCologne. On 20 May 1928, he was elected to thePrussian Landtag, and also was appointed to the provincial parliament of the Rhine Province. He was first elected to theReichstag in September 1930 from electoral constituency 20,Cologne-Aachen, a seat he retained until May 1945. He remained as theGauleiter of Rhineland until 1 June 1931 when hisGau was divided into two and new leaders named.[10]
On 21 October 1931, Ley was brought to Munich party headquarters as the Deputy to Strasser, then the head of party organization. Ley was styledReichsorganisationsinspekteur and conducted inspection visits to the variousGaue. On 10 June 1932, following a further organizational restructuring by Strasser, Ley was named one of twoReichsinspecteurs with oversight of approximately half theGaue. Furthermore, he was made the ActingLandesinspekteur for Bavaria with direct responsibility for the six BavarianGaue.[11] This was a short-lived initiative by Strasser to centralize control over theGaue. However, it was unpopular with theGauleiters and was repealed on Strasser's fall from power. Strasser resigned on 8 December 1932 in a break with Hitler over the future direction of the Party. Hitler himself took over asReichsorganisationsleiter and installed Ley as hisStabschef (Chief of Staff). The positions ofReichsinspecteur andLandesinspekteur were abolished.[12] When Hitler becameReich Chancellor in January 1933, Ley accompanied him to Berlin. On 2 June 1933, Ley was among those raised toReichsleiter, the second highest political rank in the Nazi Party.[13] This was followed on 14 September 1933 by his appointment to the reconstitutedPrussian State Council by PrussianMinister-PresidentHermann Göring. On 3 October 1933, Ley was named toHans Frank'sAcademy for German Law and, on 10 November 1934, Hitler finally formally promoted Ley to the position ofReichsorganisationsleiter. Ley would retain these positions until the fall of the Nazi regime.[14]
By April, 1933 Hitler decided to have the Nazi Party take over thetrade union movement. On 10 May 1933, Hitler appointed Ley head of the newly foundedGerman Labour Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront, DAF). The DAF took over the existing Nazi trade union formation, theNational Socialist Factory Cell Organisation (Nationalsozialistische Betriebszellenorganisation, NSBO) as well as the main trade union federation. But Ley's lack of administrative ability meant that the NSBO leader,Reinhold Muchow, a member ofthe Strasserite wing of the Nazi Party, soon became the dominant figure in the DAF, overshadowing Ley. Muchow began a purge of the DAF administration, rooting out ex-Social Democrats and ex-Communists and placing his own militants in their place.
The NSBO cells continued to agitate in the factories on issues of wages and conditions, annoying the employers, who soon complained to Hitler and other Nazi leaders that the DAF was as bad as the Communists had been.[15]
Hitler had no sympathy with thesyndicalist tendencies of the NSBO, and in January 1934 a new Law for the Ordering of National Labour effectively suppressed independent working-class factory organisations, even Nazi ones, and put questions of wages and conditions in the hands of theTrustees of Labour (Treuhänder der Arbeit), dominated by the employers. Around this time Muchow died in a tavern brawl and Ley's control over the DAF was re-established. The NSBO was completely suppressed and the DAF became little more than an arm of the state for the more efficient deployment and disciplining of labour to serve the needs of the regime, particularly its massive expansion of the arms industry.
As head of the Labour Front, Ley invitedEdward, Duke of Windsor, andWallis, Duchess of Windsor, to conducta tour of Germany in 1937, months after Edward hadabdicated the British throne. Ley served as their host and their personal chaperone. During the visit, Ley's alcoholism was noticed, and at one point he crashed the Windsors' car into a gate.[16][17]
Once his power was established, Ley began to abuse it in a way that was conspicuous even by the standards of the Nazi regime. On top of his generous salaries as DAF head,Reichsorganisationsleiter, andReichstag deputy, he pocketed the large profits of theWestdeutscher Beobachter, and freely embezzled DAF funds for his personal use.[18] By 1938 he owned a luxurious estate nearCologne, a string of villas in other cities, a fleet of cars, a private railway carriage and a large art collection. He increasingly devoted his time to "womanising and heavy drinking, both of which often led to embarrassing scenes in public."[18]
On 29 December 1942 his second wife Inge Ursula Spilcker (1916–1942) shot herself after a drunken brawl.[18] Ley's subordinates took their lead from him, and the DAF became a notorious centre ofcorruption, all paid for with the compulsory dues paid by German workers. One historian says: "The DAF quickly began to gain a reputation as perhaps the most corrupt of all the major institutions of theThird Reich. For this, Ley himself had to shoulder a large part of the blame."[18]
Hitler and Ley were aware that the suppression of the trade unions and the prevention of wage increases by the Trustees of Labour system, when coupled with their relentless demands for increased productivity to hastenGerman rearmament, created a real risk of working-class discontent. In November 1933, as a means of preventing labour disaffection, the DAF establishedStrength Through Joy (Kraft durch Freude, KdF), to provide a range of benefits and amenities to the German working class and their families. These included subsidised holidays both at resorts across Germany and in "safe" countries abroad (particularlyItaly). Two of the world's first purpose-built cruise-liners, theWilhelm Gustloff and theRobert Ley, were built to take KdF members onMediterranean cruises.
Other KdF programs included concerts,opera and other forms of entertainment in factories and other workplaces, free physical education andgymnastics training and coaching in sports such as football, tennis and sailing. All this was paid for by the DAF, at a cost of 29 million ℛ︁ℳ︁ a year by 1937, and ultimately by the workers themselves through their dues, although the employers also contributed. KdF was one of the Nazi regime's most popular programs, and played a large part in reconciling the working class to the regime, at least before 1939.
The DAF and KdF's most ambitious program was the "people's car," theVolkswagen, originally a project undertaken at Hitler's request by the car-makerFerdinand Porsche. When the German car industry was unable to meet Hitler's demand that the Volkswagen be sold at 1,000 ℛ︁ℳ︁ or less, the project was taken over by the DAF. This brought Ley's old socialist tendencies back into prominence. The party, he said, had taken over where private industry had failed, because of the "short-sightedness, malevolence,profiteering and stupidity" of the business class. Now working for the DAF, Porsche built a new Volkswagen factory atFallersleben, at a huge cost which was partly met by raiding the DAF's accumulated assets and misappropriating the dues paid by DAF members. The Volkswagen was sold to German workers on an installment plan, and the first models appeared in February 1939. The outbreak of war, however, meant that none of the 340,000 workers who paid for a car ever received one.
Ley said in a speech in 1939: "We National Socialists have monopolized all resources and all our energies during the past seven years so as to be able to be equipped for the supreme effort of battle."[19] (→German rearmament) Afterthe beginning ofWorld War II in September 1939, Ley's importance declined. The militarisation of the workforce and the diversion of resources to the war greatly reduced the role of the DAF, and the KdF was largely curtailed. Ley's drunkenness and erratic behaviour were less tolerated in wartime, and he was supplanted by Armaments MinisterFritz Todt and his successorAlbert Speer as the czar of the German workforce (the head of theOrganisation Todt (OT)). As German workers were increasingly conscripted, foreign workers, first"guest workers" from France and later slave labourers from Poland, Ukraine and other eastern countries, were brought in to replace them. Ley played some role in this program, but was overshadowed byFritz Sauckel, General Plenipotentiary for the Distribution of Labour (Generalbevollmächtigter für den Arbeitseinsatz) from March 1942.
Nevertheless, Ley was deeply implicated in themistreatment of foreign slave workers. In October 1942 he attended a meeting inEssen withPaul Pleiger (head of the giantHermann Göring Works industrial combine) and leaders of the German coal industry. A verbatim account of the meeting was kept by one of the managers. A recent historian writes:
The key item on the agenda was the question of 'how to treat the Russians.'... Robert Ley, as usual, was drunk. And when Ley got drunk he was prone to speak his mind. With so much at stake, there was no room for compassion or civility. No degree of coercion was too much, and Ley expected the mine managers to back up their foremen in meting out the necessary discipline. As Ley put it: 'When a Russian pig has to be beaten, it would be the ordinary German worker who would have to do it.'[20]
Despite his failings, Ley retained Hitler's favour; until the last months of the war he was part of Hitler's inner circle along withMartin Bormann andJoseph Goebbels.[21] In November 1940 he was given a new role, as Reich Commissioner for Social Housing Construction (Reichskommissar für den sozialen Wohnungsbau), later shortened to Reich Housing Commissioner (Reichswohnungskommissar).[22] Here his job was to prepare for the effects on German housing of the expectedAllied air attacks on German cities, which began to increase in intensity from 1941 onwards. In this role he became a key ally of Armaments Minister Albert Speer, who recognised that German workers must be adequately housed if productivity was to be maintained. As the air war against Germany increased from 1943, "dehousing" German workers became an objective of the Alliedarea bombing campaign, and Ley's organisation was increasingly unable to cope with the resulting housing crisis.
He was aware in general terms of the Nazi regime'sprogramme of extermination of the Jews of Europe. Ley encouraged it through the virulent anti-Semitism of his publications and speeches. In February 1941 he was present at a meeting along with Speer, Bormann and Field MarshalWilhelm Keitel at which Hitler had set out his views on the "Jewish question" at some length, making it clear that he intended the "disappearance" of the Jews one way or another.[23] According to American historianJeffrey Herf, Ley issued some of the most overt propaganda accusing Jews of plotting the extermination of Germans and threatening to do the reverse. In December 1939, he said that in the event of a British victory:
... the German people, man, woman, and child would be exterminated [ausgerottet]... The Jew would be wading in blood. Funeral pyres would be built on which the Jews would burn us... we want to prevent this. Hence it should be rather the Jews who fry, rather they who should burn, they who should starve, they who should be exterminated.[24]
In April 1945, Ley became enamored with the idea of creating a "death ray" after receiving a letter from an unnamed inventor: "I've studied the documentation; there's no doubt about it. This will be the decisive weapon!" Once Ley gave Speer a list of materials, including a particular model circuit breaker, Speer found that the circuit breaker had not been manufactured in 40 years.[25]
As Nazi Germany collapsed in early 1945, Ley was among the government figures who remained fanatically loyal to Hitler.[26] He last saw Hitler on 20 April 1945, Hitler's birthday, in theFührerbunker in centralBerlin. The next day he left for southernBavaria, in the expectation that Hitler would make his last stand in the "National Redoubt" in the alpine areas. When Hitler refused to leave Berlin, Ley was effectively unemployed.
On 16 May he was captured by American paratroopers of the101st Airborne Division in a shoemaker's house in the village ofSchleching.[27] Ley told them he was "Dr Ernst Distelmeyer," but he was identified byFranz Xaver Schwarz, the treasurer of the Nazi Party and a long-time enemy. After his arrest, he declared: "You can torture or beat me or impale me on a stake. But I will never doubt the greater deeds of Hitler."[28]
At theNuremberg Trials, Ley was indicted under Count One ("The Common Plan or Conspiracy to wage an aggressive war in violation of international law or treaties"), Count Three (War Crimes, including among other things "mistreatment of prisoners of war or civilian populations") and Count Four ("Crimes Against Humanity – murder, extermination, enslavement of civilian populations, persecution on the basis of racial, religious or political grounds").[29] Ley was apparently indignant at being regarded as awar criminal, telling the American psychiatristDouglas Kelley[30] and psychologistGustave Gilbert who had seen and tested him in prison: "Stand us against a wall and shoot us, well and good, you are victors. But why should I be brought before a Tribunal like a c-c-c- ... I can't even get the word out!"[31]
On 24 October, three days after receiving the indictment, Leystrangled himself to death in his prison cell using a noose made by tearing a towel into strips, fastened to the toilet pipe.[31] The Chief Medical Office of theMilitary Tribunal,Lt. Col Rene Juchli, made a report toMajor GeneralWilliam J. Donovan regarding the effect the suicide had on other prisoners, stating "It appears to be the unanimous consensus of opinion among the witnesses that no bereavement was indicated over the self-inflicted death of the late Dr. Ley."[32]
