Robert Ley
From Metapedia
Robert Ley (February 15, 1890 – October 25, 1945) was a Third Reich labor minister.
Before the outbreak of the First World War Ley's profession was chemist. During WWI he was shot down over France and he was taken prisoner. Following the war, he held a job at I.G Farben, a chemical conglomerate company. In 1923 Ley joined the NSDAP after reading a speech given by Adolf Hitler at his trial for the Munich Putsch. Ley became a ultra-Nationalist. When Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, he was appointed head of the German Labor Front (DAP), with his ties to the common farming families, he could related to the socialist wing of the Party. Soon after Ley was appointed, the German Labour Front took over the National Socialist Factory Cell Organisation.
With his rise to power, Ley became greedy, and was pocketing funds from the DAP, and by 1938 he was said to own a mansion in Cologne, half a dozen Villas, a private fleet of fine automobiles and a private train coach and spent most of his free time drinking heavily and womanizing. The scandals continued when Ley was greeted by The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and was legless. His second wife had shot herself during a drunken brawl in 1942.
Many of Ley's ideas and the DAP were implemented through the program Strength Through Joy, from the building of the Wilhelm Gustloff (ship),free gymnastic programs,trips abroad (Italy mainly) and the project with car maker Ferdinand Porsche in developing the Volkswagen.
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 April 20 1945, the Führer's birthday, in the bunker 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 May 16 he was captured by American paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division in a shoemaker's house in the village of Schleching, Germany. He told them he was "Dr. Ernst Distelmeyer," but he was identified by Franz Xaver Schwarz, the treasurer of the NSDAP and a long-time enemy.
At the Nuremberg Trials, Ley was indicted under charges of War Crimes and Crime Against Humanity. Ley was apparently insulted at being regarded as a war criminal, telling the American prison psychiatrist 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 [criminal] out!"
On October 25, four days after receiving the indictment, Ley strangled himself in his cell, using a noose made by tearing a towel into strips, fastened to the toilet pipe in his cell.
