Robert Ley
Robert Ley | |
---|---|
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 the German 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 Reich Organization Leader of the Nazi Party | |
In office 9 December 1932 – 10 November 1934 | |
Leader | Adolf Hitler |
Preceded by | Gregor Strasser |
Succeeded by | Position abolished |
Gauleiter of Southern Rhineland, later Rhineland | |
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 the Prussian State Council |
1933—1945 | Reichsleiter of the Nazi Party |
1933–1945 | Member of the Greater German Reichstag |
June–December 1932 | Reichsinspecteur of the Nazi Party |
1930–1933 | Member of the Reichstag |
Personal details | |
Born | Niederbreidenbach, National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) | 15 February 1890
Children | 5 |
Alma mater | Jena, Bonn, Münster |
Known for | Head of the German 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:
Early life
Ley was born in Niederbreidenbach (now a part of
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 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. 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 largely
Rise in the Nazi Party
Ley rejoined the re-founded Nazi Party in March 1925, shortly after the ban on the Party was lifted (membership number 18,441). He was named Deputy Gauleiter of the Southern Rhineland (later, Rhineland) that month, and was promoted to Gauleiter on 17 July.[7] In September 1925, he became a member of the National Socialist Working Association, a short-lived group of northern and western German Gauleiters, organized and led by Gregor Strasser, which advocated a more working-class focus for the Party and unsuccessfully sought to amend the Party 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 the Bamberg Conference.
In March 1928, Ley became the editor and publisher of a virulently
On 21 October 1931, Ley was brought to Munich party headquarters as the Deputy to Strasser, then the head of party organization. Ley was styled Reichsorganisationsinspekteur and conducted inspection visits to the various Gaue. On 10 June 1932, following a further organizational restructuring by Strasser, Ley was named one of two
Labour Front head
By April, 1933 Hitler decided to have the Nazi Party take over the
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 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.
As head of the Labour Front, Ley invited
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 Westdeutscher Beobachter, and freely embezzled DAF funds for his personal use.[18] 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."[18]
On 29 December 1942 his second wife Inge Ursula née 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 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."[18]
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
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 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," the
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."[19] (→ German rearmament) After the beginning of World 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 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) since March 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.'[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 with
He was aware in general terms of the Nazi regime's
... 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]
Postwar: arrest and suicide
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 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, Ley was 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.[27] Ley 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. 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 the
On 24 October, three days after receiving the indictment, Ley strangled himself to death in his prison cell using a noose made by tearing a towel into strips, fastened to the toilet pipe.[31]
See also
- Glossary of Nazi Germany
- List of Nazi Party leaders and officials
- List of people who died by suicide by hanging
Notes
References
Citations
- ^ "Dr. Ley's Brain: Study by Army Doctors Show Nazi Suicide was Medically Degenerate". LIFE. February 4, 1946. p. 45.
- ^ Miller & Schulz 2017, p. 191.
- ^ Smelser 1988, p. 15.
- ^ Evans 2005, p. 458.
- ^ Miller & Schulz 2017, p. 214.
- ^ Evans 2005, p. 459.
- ^ Miller & Schulz 2017, pp. 190–192.
- ^ Miller & Schulz 2017, p. 193.
- ^ Noakes 1966, pp. 26–27.
- ^ Miller & Schulz 2017, pp. 192–194.
- ^ Miller & Schulz 2017, p. 194.
- ^ Orlow 1969, pp. 293–295.
- ^ Orlow 1973, p. 74.
- ^ Miller & Schulz 2017, pp. 197–198.
- ^ Evans 2005, p. 460.
- ISBN 978-0-24119-642-7.
- ISBN 978-1-40884-509-7.
- ^ a b c d Evans 2005, p. 463.
- ^ Jackson 1946.
- ^ Tooze 2006, p. 529.
- ^ Sereny 1995, p. 477.
- ^ Miller & Schulz 2017, pp. 206–207.
- ^ Kershaw 2000, p. 350.
- ^ Herf 2005, p. 57.
- ^ Speer 1970, p. 464.
- ^ Kershaw 2000, p. 774.
- ^ Rapport, Northwood & Marshall 1948, pp. 741–744.
- ISBN 978-1-63149-827-5.
- ^ Nuremberg Indictment.
- ISBN 161039156X
- ^ a b Sereny 1995, p. 573.
Bibliography
- ISBN 978-0-7139-9649-4.
- S2CID 143944355.
- Jackson, Robert (July 26, 1946). "Summation of Robert Jackson in the Nuremberg Major War Figures Trial". law2.umkc.edu. Retrieved 10 February 2012.
- ISBN 978-0-393-04994-7.
- "The Avalon Project: Indictment of the International Military Tribunal". avalon.law.yale.edu. Retrieved 10 February 2012.
- Miller, Michael; Schulz, Andreas (2017). Gauleiter: The Regional Leaders of the Nazi Party and Their Deputies, 1925-1945, Volume II (Georg Joel - Dr. Bernhard Rust). R. James Bender Publishing. ISBN 978-1-932970-32-6.
- Orlow, Dietrich (1969). The History of the Nazi Party: 1919–1933. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. ISBN 0-8229-3183-4.
- Noakes, Jeremy (October 1966). "Conflict and Development in the NSDAP 1924-1927". Journal of Contemporary History. 1 (4). Sage Publications, Ltd.: 3–36. S2CID 154357701.
- Orlow, Dietrich (1973). The History of the Nazi Party: 1933–1945. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. ISBN 0-8229-3253-9.
- Rapport, Leonard; Northwood, Arthur Jr; Marshall, Samuel Lyman Atwood (1948). Rendezvous With Destiny: A History of The 101st Airborne Division. Washington: Infantry Journal Press. OCLC 4166870.
- ISBN 978-0-333-64519-2.
- ISBN 978-0-85496-161-0.
- ISBN 0-684-82949-5.
- ISBN 978-0-7139-9566-4.
External links
- Ley's 1936 speech to Nazi Party factory activists
- Newspaper clippings about Robert Ley in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW
- Information about Robert Ley in the Reichstag database