On
this date, October 25, 1945, a Nazi Politician, Robert Ley committed suicide by
hanging himself in his prison cell. I will post information about him from
Wikipedia and other links.
 |
| Robert Ley |
Head
of the German Labour Front
|
|
In
office
1933–1945 |
|
Leader
|
|
Preceded by
|
|
Reich
Commissioner for Social House-Building
|
|
In
office
1941–1945 |
|
Personal
details
|
|
Born
|
15 February 1890
Niederbreidenbach, Rhine Province, German Empire |
Died
|
25 October 1945 (aged 55)
Nuremberg, Germany |
Nationality
|
German
|
Political party
|
|
Spouse(s)
|
Elisabeth Schmidt (? - 1938)
Inge Spilcker (1938–1942) Madeleine Wanderer (mistress) |
Children
|
Renate Wald (29 July 1922 - 2004)
Lore (25 October 1938) Wolf (14 May 1940) Gloria (27 June 1941) Rolf Robert (28 July 1944) |
Parents
|
Friedrich and Emilie (née Wald) Ley
|
Alma mater
|
|
Robert Ley
(German: [ˈlaɪ]; 15 February 1890 – 25 October 1945) was
a Nazi politician and head of the German Labour Front from 1933 to 1945. He
committed suicide while awaiting trial
at Nuremberg for war crimes.
Early
life
Ley
was born in Niederbreidenbach (now a part of Nümbrecht) in the Rhine Province,
the seventh of 11 children of a heavily indebted farmer, Friedrich Ley, and his
wife Emilie (née Wald). He studied chemistry at the Universities of Jena, Bonn,
and Münster. He volunteered for the army on the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and spent two years in
the artillery before training as an aerial artillery spotter with Field
Artillery Detachment 202. In July 1917 his aircraft was shot down over France
and he was taken prisoner. It has been suggested that he suffered a brain
injury in the crash; for the rest of his life he spoke with a stammer and
suffered bouts of erratic behaviour, aggravated by heavy drinking.
After
the war Ley returned to university, gaining a doctorate in 1920. He was
employed as a food chemist by a branch of the giant IG Farben company, based in Leverkusen in the Ruhr.
Enraged by the French occupation of the Ruhr in 1924, Ley became an
ultra-nationalist and joined the Nazi Party soon after reading Adolf
Hitler's speech at his trial following the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich. By 1925 he was Gauleiter of the Southern Rhineland district
and editor of a virulently anti-Semitic Nazi
newspaper, the Westdeutsche Beobachter. Ley proved unswervingly loyal to
Hitler, which led the party leader to ignore complaints about his arrogance,
incompetence and drunkenness.
Labour
Front head
In
1931, Ley was brought to the Nazi Party's Munich headquarters to take over as
head of the party organisation (Reichsorganisationsleiter)
following Hitler's dismissal of Gregor Strasser in an internal dispute. Ley's
impoverished upbringing and his experience as head of the largely working-class
Ruhr party region meant that he was sympathetic to those elements in the party
who were open to socialism, which Hitler opposed, 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 a drunken incompetent. When Hitler became Chancellor in
January 1933, Ley accompanied him to Berlin. In April, when the trade union
movement was taken over by the state, Hitler appointed him head of the German
Labor Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront, DAF).
The
DAF took over the existing Nazi trade union formation, the National
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,
Reinhard
Muchow, a member of the socialist 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.
Hitler
had no sympathy with the syndicalist
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 the Trustees of Labour
(Treuhänder der Arbeit),
dominated by the employers. At the same time Muchow was purged and Ley's
control over the DAF 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.
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, and Reichstag deputy, he pocketed the
large profits of the Westdeutsche Beobachter, and freely embezzled DAF
funds for his personal use. By 1938 he owned a luxurious estate near Cologne, 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." On 29 December 1942 his second wife Inge (1916-1942) shot
herself after a drunken brawl. Ley's subordinates took their lead from him, and
the DAF became a notorious centre of corruption, 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 the Third Reich. For this, Ley himself had to shoulder a large
part of the blame."
 |
|
The KDF-Schiff Robert Ley, March 1939
|
 |
|
The KDF-Schiff Wilhelm Gustloff, 23 Sept 1939
|
Strength
Through Joy
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 hasten German rearmament,
created a real risk of working-class discontent. In November 1933, as a means
of preventing labour disaffection, the DAF established Strength 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 (particularly Italy). Some of
the world's first purpose built cruise-liners, the Wilhelm Gustloff and the Robert Ley,
were built to take KdF members on Mediterranean cruises.
Other
KdF programs included concerts, opera and other forms of entertainment in
factories and other workplaces, free physical education and gymnastics 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 Reichsmarks 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", the
Volkswagen, originally a project undertaken at Hitler's request by the
car-maker Ferdinand Porsche. When the German car industry was unable to meet
Hitler's demand that the Volkswagen be sold at 1,000 Reichsmarks 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 at Fallersleben,
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. The entire project was
financially unsound, and only the corruption and lack of accountability of the
Nazi regime made it possible. [a]
"No compassion will be tolerated for the Jews. We deny the Pope's statement that there is but one human race. The Jews are parasites."- Robert Ley in Vienna, Austria.
Wartime
role
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."
With the actual outbreak of World War II in 1939, however, 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 wound up.
Ley's drunkenness and erratic behaviour were less tolerated in wartime, and he
was supplanted by Armaments Minister Fritz Todt
and his successor Albert Speer as the czar
of the German workforce (the head of the Organisation
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 by Fritz Sauckel, General Plenipotentiary for the
Distribution of Labour (Generalbevollmächtigter für den Arbeitseinsatz),
in 1942.
Nevertheless
Ley was deeply implicated in the mistreatment of foreign slave workers. In
October 1942 he attended a meeting in Essen with Paul Plieger (head of the giant Hermann 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.'
Despite
his failings, Ley retained Hitler's favour; until the last months of the war he
was part of Hitler's inner circle along with Martin Bormann and Joseph Goebbels. In
November 1941 he was given a new role, as Reich Commissioner for Social
House-Building (Reichskommissar für den sozialen Wohnungsbau), later
shortened to Reich Housing Commissioner (Reichswohnungskommissar). Here
his job was to prepare for the effects on German housing of the expected Allied
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 Allied area 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's programme 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 Marshal Wilhelm 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.
 |
|
Picture showing Dr. Robert Ley's arrest in
1945. He was still in his pyjamas at the time of the arrest by US troops.
Cropped, converted to greyscale and lightened using GIMP.
|
 |
|
The cell where Robert Ley hanged himself
|
Postwar
As
the Third Reich collapsed in early 1945, Ley was among the government figures
who remained fanatically loyal to Hitler. He last saw Hitler on 20 April 1945,
Hitler's birthday, in the Führerbunker in central Berlin. The next
day he left for southern Bavaria, in the expectation that Hitler would make his
last stand in the "National Redoubt"
in the alpine areas. When Hitler refused to leave Berlin, this idea was
abandoned, and Ley was then effectively unemployed. On 16 May he was captured
by American paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division in a shoemaker's house
in the village of Schleching. He told
them he was "Dr. Ernst Distelmeyer," but he was identified by Franz Xaver Schwarz,
the treasurer of the Nazi Party and a long-time enemy.
At
the Nuremberg 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, religions or political
grounds"). Ley was apparently indignant at being regarded as a war
criminal, telling the American prison, he was seen and tested by the
psychiatrist Douglas Kelley
and the psychologist Gustave Gilbert:
"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!"
On
24 October, three days after receiving the indictment, Ley strangled himself in
his prison cell using a noose made by tearing a towel into strips, fastened to
the toilet pipe in his cell.
See
also
Notes
1. Tooze
notes: "Even if the war had not intervened, developments up to 1939 made
clear that the entire conception of the 'people's car' was a disastrous
flop." Tooze
2006, p. 156.
INTERNET SOURCE: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Ley
Robert Ley
(February 15 1890 – October 25 1945) was a Nazi German politician and head of
the German Labor Front from 1933 to 1945. While awaiting trial for war crimes,
on October 25, four days after receiving the indictment, Ley committed suicide
by strangling himself in his cell, using a noose made by tearing a towel into
strips, fastened to the toilet pipe in his cell.
Quotes
- 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 [criminal] out!
- To G.M. Gilbert. Quoted in Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth - Page 573 - by Gitta Sereny - History - 1996
- When a Russian pig has to be beaten, it would be the ordinary German worker who would have to do it.
- Quoted in The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze - Page 529
- The Weimar system appeared to me like a father who locks his little boys in a room and stirs them up against one another and says: 'Beat each other up as much as you want.'
- Leipzig, 1939. Quoted in Robert Ley: Hitler's Labor Front Leader - Page 24 - by Ronald Smelser - 1988
- 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.
- Quoted in "Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal" - Page 408 - Nuremberg, Germany - 1948
- The trade unions that were swayed by Marxist teaching did not want social peace. They calculated that their chances of acquiring political power would improve with the growing dissatisfaction of the workers. One of the first necessities with which the Hitler Government found itself faced was that of dissolving the organizations that kept alive the antagonism between employers and employees. They were replaced by the Labour Front.
- Quoted in Social Policy in the New Germany by Bruno Rauecker - 1936
- You know we have this new poison gas - I've heard about it. The Fuehrer must do it. He must use it. Now he has to do it!
- To Albert Speer, autumn of 1944. Quoted in "Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs" - Page 417 - by Albert Speer - History - 1970
- Catastrophe was only narrowly averted. It was all due to the faith of one man! Yes, you who called us godless, we found our faith in Adolf Hitler, and through him found God once again. That is the greatness of our day, that is our good fortune!
- Speech given on November 3, 1936. Quoted in Wir alle helfen dem Führer "Schicksal — ich glaube!" (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1937), pages 103-114
- Understanding sometimes is not enough to explain something. Only faith is sufficient. The Führer in Nuremberg said: 'Woe to him who does not believe!' He who does not believe has no soul. He is empty. He has no ideals. He has nothing to live for. He has no sunshine, no light, no joy in life. He is a poor, poor man. What is wealth? What are possessions? What does it all mean? Problems come despite them, only faith is left. Woe to him who does not believe!
- Speech given on November 3, 1936. Quoted in Wir alle helfen dem Führer "Schicksal — ich glaube!" (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1937), pages 103-114
- Our god is the wonderful law of creation, whose amazing unity of all things shows itself if wonderful flowers, in growing trees, in new born children, in the secrets of a mother, in the growth of our people, in work and accomplishment and creation, in life itself. It is the joy we have in everything. How beautiful everything is. Do you feel the same way? I am so happy to be alive.
- Speech given on March 31, 1939. Quoted in Die Hoheitsträger and titled "Wir oder die Juden" - By Robert Ley - (May 1939), pages 4-6.
- We believe on this earth in Adolf Hitler alone! We believe in National Socialism as the creed which is the sole source of grace! We believe that Almighty God has sent us Adolf Hitler so that he may rid Germany of the hypocrites and Pharisees.
- Quoted in "Thus Spake Germany" - Page 30 - by W. W. Coole, Władysław Wszebór Kulski, M. F. Potter - 1941
- We swear we are not going to abandon the struggle until the Last Jew in Europe has been exterminated and is actually dead. It is not enough to isolate the Jewish enemy of mankind - the Jew has got to be exterminated!
- May 1943. Quoted in The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation - Page 224 - by David Cesarani - History - 1994
- The second German secret weapon is anti-Semitism, because if it is consistently pursued by Germany, it will become a universal problem which all nations will be forced to consider.
- Quoted in "Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal" - Page 118 - Nuremberg, Germany - 1947
- Workers of all lands, unite — to smash the rule of English capitalism! You young upward-striving nations of the earth, combine to annihilate the old English dragon who blocks the treasures of the earth and withholds from you the riches of the world.
- Quoted in Metapolitics: From Wagner and the German Romantics to Hitler - Page 140 by Peter Robert Edwin Viereck, Peter Viereck - Political Science - 2004
- The fight against the Jews has not ended... it will not have ended until the Jews throughout the world have been exterminated.
- 1939. Quoted in The Incomparable Crime - by Roger Manvell, Heinrich Fraenkel - 1967
OTHER LINKS:
No comments:
Post a Comment