Ley, Robert

Ley, Robert (1890–1945),early and fervent Nazi supporter who in 1933 created the sham trade union known as the Nazi German Labour Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront, or DAF).

Ley, the son of a prosperous farmer, was born at Niederbrei denbach east of Cologne. He fought in the army and the flying corps during the First World War and was badly wounded. After completing his university degree he obtained a well-paid job but soon detached himself from bourgeois society to become a devoted Nazi Party member. Appointed a Gauleiter, he was quick to show his skill as an agitator and Jew-baiter, and in May 1933, on Hitler's orders, he organized the obliteration of the free trade unions and replaced them with the DAF, which embraced both employers and employees. Its function, which it performed with marked success, was to educate all working Germans to the Nazis' way of thinking, and to abolish industrial and class conflict by improving the workers' lot.

DAF's growth, economically and numerically, soon made it a powerful conglomerate with tentacles stretching into welfare, insurance, and housing, as well as into such political functions as wage bargaining and working conditions. One of its most successful ventures was its leisure organization, Strength Through Joy (Kraft durch Freude, or KdF), which offered workers lavish holidays and gave them, as Ley put it, ‘the best of the best in food for the soul, mind, and body’.

By 1938 DAF had become so powerful, and Ley's ambitions so grandiose, that the union threatened to overshadow party and government, but once Germany was at war its importance inevitably declined as did Ley's career. He was charged with formulating the post-war social agenda and with controlling German housing. One became irrelevant; the other a disaster once the strategic air offensive against Germany had got into its stride. Nevertheless, he remained a fervent supporter of Hitler and his regime until the end. He committed suicide before he could appear at the Nuremberg trials.

Bibliography

Smelser, R. , Robert Ley, Hitler's Labor Front Leader (Oxford, 1988).