Robert Ley
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Robert Ley (February 15, 1890 – October 25, 1945) was a prominent Nazi figure in the Third Reich.
Born in Niederbreidenbach, Germany, to poor parents he studied at the Universities of Jena and Bonn before receiving a PhD in chemistry. During WW I he was a pilot, and shot down in 1917, he spent two years as a French POW. He worked for IG Farbenindustrie after the war, but was dismissed in 1928 due to excessive drinking.
In a slip of irony, Robert Ley was completely oblivious to the existence of the Nazi party, until the trial of Adolf Hitler in 1924 . Dr. Ley became enamored with the ideology of the party and its appeal to working class men and women. Ley had grown up a poor farmer, his father having squandered his dowry and causing his mother to raise the family on a meager farm. This gave him a true desire to exceed at academics and make something for himself; it also gave him an intrinsic caring for underprivileged and burdened peoples. Therefore as any good German Nationalist would do he approached the party leadership for admittance. The Nazi leaders gladly accepted him in order to have a true “academic in their midst.”
Ley got his start in the party organization early. In the summer of 1925, Robert found himself in a position of power as Gauleiter in Rhineland-South. Ley inherited a poor situation: debt and back dues; took what little there was to work with and created a substantial party for his Gau. He increased membership and appealed to the workers of the Socialist and Communist Parties as much as he could. His work in the Rhine would later come to serve him well, as he received promotions and power.
Even though the Nazi party by definition was for the worker, the leaders, since its creation had found it difficult to attract employed workers; instead appealing to the unemployed workers and classless vagrants of the urban centers. This became a most vexing problem to Hitler, for he knew he must find some way to appeal to the employed workers so they could be integrated into the party structure in order to exert influence and control over them.
In May 1933, Hitler dissolved all trade unions and created the German Labor Front, the DAF (Deutsche Arbeitsfront), and appointed Ley as its leader. As leader of the DAF Ley developed a plan to present the appearance of true care for the German worker by the Nazi Party. Wages were fixed by the Labor Front and each wage had a certain compulsory deduction taken from it. These deductions were taken to support Robert Ley’s pride and joy, the Strength through Joy program. With these funds, Ley ordered the building of two new cruise-liners purposed to take German workers on foreign holidays (1938 an estimated 180,000 people went on cruises). Many other workers were given free vacations in Germany, paid for by their own deductions. Ley did not stop with vacations, he used the Strength through Joy program to build sports facilities and support the arts. The greatest, long-lasting result of the Strength through Joy program was the subsidized development of the People's Car, the Volkswagen. Ley’s efforts to appeal to the workers through this program paid off, as party membership increased in such a dramatic manner that the employed working class had to be responsible.
At the end of WW II, Reichsleiter Ley fled to Berchtesgaden but was captured on May 16, 1945, and sent to trial at Nuremberg.
He committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell before the trial proper could begin;
- "Robert Ley, the field marshal of the battle against labor, answered our indictment with suicide. Apparently he knew no better answer".
He had stated that he could not bear the accusation of being a war criminal.de:Robert Ley he:רוברט ליי ka:ლაი, რობერტ nl:Robert Ley pt:Robert Ley fi:Robert Ley sv:Robert Ley