Robert Ley

Robert Ley, the seventh of eleven children, was born on 15th February, 1890. When he was a child, his father got deeply into debt and tried to raise insurance money to repay it by setting fire to his farm.

Richard Evans has argued: "To judge from Ley's later autobiographical writings, the poverty and disgrace that ensued for the family after his father's conviction for arson left the boy with a permanent sense of social insecurity and resentment against the upper classes."

Ley was a military aviator during the First World War but was shot down over France in 1917 and spent over two years as a prisoner of war. The incident left Ley with serious injuries, including damage to the frontal lobe of his brain. After the war Ley worked as a chemist but was sacked because of his serious drink problem.

Ley joined the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) in 1925 and later that year became Gauleiter for Rhineland South. Ley became close to Gregor Strasser and his brother, Otto Strasser, who had established the Berliner Arbeiter Zeitung, a left-wing newspaper, that advocated world revolution

The next day, Hitler ordered the Sturm Abteilung (SA) to destroy the trade union movement. Their headquarters throughout the country were occupied, union funds confiscated, the unions dissolved and the leaders arrested. Large numbers were sent to concentration camps. Within a few days 169 different trade unions were under Nazi control.

Hitler gave Robert Ley the task of forming the German Labour Front (DAF). Ley, in his first proclamation, stated: "Workers! Your institutions are sacred to us National Socialists. I myself am a poor peasant's son and understand poverty... I know the exploitation of anonymous capitalism. Workers! I swear to you, we will not only keep everything that exists, we will build up the protection and the rights of the workers still further."

In 1928 Hitler appointed Ley as the Gauleiter of Cologne. He was elected to the Prussian Landtag and in 1930 to the Reichstag. In the spring of 1932 he was sentenced to three months in prison for assaulting Otto Wels, the Chairman of the Social Democrat Party (SDP).

Soon after Adolf Hitler became chancellor in January 1933 he announced new elections. Hermann Goering called a meeting of important industrialists where he told them that the election would be the last in Germany for a very long time. He explained that Hitler "disapproved of trade unions and workers' interference in the freedom of owners and managers to run their concerns."

Berliner Arbeiter Zeitung

German Labour front poster

The results of the elections to works councils suggest that the Labour Front representatives were not popular with the German workforce. As a result, no further elections were held after 1935. Some workers continued to resist fascism and in some sectors, such as metal and wood workers, railwaymen and seafarers maintained impressive illegal networks.

Albert Speer was a great supporter of Ley's plan to persuade factory owners to improve the workplace: "First we persuaded factory owners to modernize their offices and to have some flowers about. But we did not stop there. Lawn was to take the place of asphalt. What had been wasteland was to be turned into little parks where the workers could sit during breaks. We urged that window areas within factories be enlarged and workers' canteen set up... We provided educational movies and a counseling service to help businessmen on questions of illumination and ventilation... One and all devoted themselves to the cause of making some improvements in the workers' living conditions and moving closer to the ideal of a classless People's Community."

DAF Logo Flag

KDF logo & The Robert ley cruise ship

The most popular aspect of Strength Through Joy was the provision of subsidized holidays. Large sections of the labour force were for the first time given the opportunity of holidaying away from home. The holidays ranged in price from a week in the Harz Mountains (28 marks), one week at the North Sea coast (35 marks) and a fortnight at Lake Constance (65 marks). As the average wage of an industrial worker was about 30 marks, it enabled a third of all workers to go on holiday.

The KdF set about building its own model resort on the Baltic island of Rügen. Construction began under the supervision of Albert Speer on 3rd May 1936. "The resort spanned eight kilometres of the Baltic shore, with six-story residence blocks interspersed with refectories and centred on a huge communal hall designed to accommodate all 20,000 of the resort's holidaymakers as they engaged in collective demonstration of enthusiasm for the regime and its policies. It was consciously designed for families, to make good the lack of facilities for them in other Strength Through Joy enterprises, and it was intended to be cheap enough for the ordinary worker to afford, at a price of no more than 20 Reichsmarks for a week's stay."

The better paid workers were able to go abroad. A tour of Italy cost 155 marks. Strength Through Joy commissioned the building of two 25,000-ton purpose-built ships and chartered ten others to handle ocean cruises. The Robert Ley could carry 1,600 passengers. It only had forty lavatories and 100 showers but 156 loudspeakers that relayed on-board propaganda. The liner also included a gymnasium, a theatre and a swimming pool to ensure that participants engaged in regular healthy exercise and experienced serious cultural events.

These cruise liners sailed as far as the Norwegian fjords, Maderia, Libya, Finland, Bulgaria and Turkey. 180,000 Germans went on cruises in 1938 and the volume of tourism doubled. In 1939 alone, 175,000 people went to Italy on organized trips, a good number of them travelling on cruise liners.

Robert Ley married Elisabeth Schmidt. He was known as a great womanizer and the couple divorced in 1938. He then married the young soprano, Inge Spilcker. According to Otto Dietrich, Robert and Inge Ley were often invited by Adolf Hitler to visit him at the Berghof. "Robert Ley and his wife, with whom Hitler was also extremely friendley, were frequently invited." According to Richard Evans, the author of The Third Reich in Power (2005), "Ley... bought a whole series of grand villas in the most fashionable districts of Germany's towns and cities. The running costs, which in his villa in Berlin's Grunewald included a cook, two nannies, a chambermaid, a gardener and a housekeeper, were met by the Labour Front up to 1938, and even after that it paid all Ley's entertainment expenses. He was fond of expensive automobiles and gave two to his second wife as presents. Ley also had a railway carriage refitted for his personal use. He collected paintings and furniture for his houses." Hitler's secretary, Traudl Junge, points out that Ley spent a lot of time with Hitler. However, she claimed that Ley used to irritate Hitler: "Robert Ley had a speech impediment that meant he could form words only with difficulty, and in addition he talked such sheer nonsense that you could hardly take him seriously."

According to one source Robert Ley often behaved strangely with his new wife: "His infatuation with her physical charms led to him commissioning a painting of her, naked from the waist up, which he proudly showed to visiting dignitaries, while on one occasion he was even said to have torn her clothes off in the presence of guests in order to show them how beautiful her body was. Subjected to such pressure, and unable to cope with Ley's growing alcoholism, Inge took to the bottle, became a drug addict, and shot herself dead on 29 December 1942 after the last of many violent rows with her husband."

On 20th October, 1945, Ley with twenty-one others, was indicted by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. He asked Gustave M. Gilbert, the prison psychologist. "How can I prepare a defense? Am I supposed to defend myself against all these crimes which I knew nothing about? Stand us up against the wall and shoot us - you are the victors." On 24th October, he was found dead in his cell. "He had made a noose from the edges of a towel and fastened it to the toilet pipe."

Robert Ley left a suicide note that said: "We have forsaken God, and therefore we were forsaken by God. We put human volition in the place of His godly grace. In anti-Semitism we violated a basic commandment of His creation. Anti-Semitism distorted our outlook, and we made grave errors. It is hard to admit mistakes, but the whole existence of our people is in question; we Nazis must have the courage to rid ourselves of anti-Semitism. We have to declare to the youth that it was a mistake.”

Ley’s cell where he hung himself

Born

15th February 1890
Niederbreidenbach, Rhine Province, German Empire

Died

25th October 1945 (aged 55)
Nuremberg Prison, Nuremberg, Allied-occupied Germany