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84-531: Ley was born in Niederbreidenbach (now a part of Nümbrecht ) in the Rhine Province , the seventh of 11 children of a farmer, Friedrich Ley, and his wife Emilie ( née Wald). He studied chemistry at the universities of Jena , Bonn , and Münster . He volunteered for the army on the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and spent two years in the 10th Foot Artillery Regiment and saw action on both

168-464: A car ever received one. 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." (→ 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

252-534: A confiscation of ration cards. German is now the third official language of Belgium, along with French and Dutch (see German-Speaking Community of Belgium ). After the enlargement of the French occupation zone by the American withdrawal from the occupation (1919–1930) , the French encouraged the establishment of an independent Rhenish Republic by banking on traditional anti-Prussian resentments, especially in

336-603: A crossing of the river the day before the much anticipated Rhine crossings by the 21st Army Group ( First Canadian Army and the British Second Army ) under Field Marshal Montgomery in the third week of March 1945. Operation Varsity was a massive airborne operation in conjunction with Operation Plunder , the amphibious crossings. By early April, the Rhine had been crossed by all the Allied armies operating west of

420-741: A direct successor of the Rhine Province administration. There is no equivalent successor in Rhineland-Palatinate or Saarland. Inspekteur (NSDAP) Inspekteur ( inspector ) was a Nazi political rank that existed briefly in 1932 in a reorganization promulgated by Gregor Strasser , the Reichsorganisationsleiter (Reich Organizational Leader) of the Nazi Party since January 1928. Strasser largely had been given free rein to organize and structure

504-519: A large art collection. He increasingly devoted his time to "womanising and heavy drinking, both of which often led to embarrassing scenes in public." On 29 December 1942 his second wife Inge Ursula Spilcker (1916–1942) shot herself after a drunken brawl. 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

588-472: A list of materials, including a particular model circuit breaker, Speer found that the circuit breaker had not been manufactured in 40 years. As Nazi Germany collapsed in early 1945, Ley was among the government figures who remained fanatically loyal to Hitler. 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

672-645: A plebiscite in 1935, when the region was returned to Germany. In fact, the last Allied troops left Germany five years early, in 1930, as a result of an agreement reached between Germany and the Allies in parallel with the Young Plan on German war reparations . Sections of the Rhineland, which had once belonged to the Habsburg Netherlands ' Duchy of Limburg , were annexed by Belgium according to

756-497: A real risk of working-class discontent. In November 1933, as a means of preventing labour disaffection, the DAF established Strength Through Joy ( Kraft durch Freude , KdF), to provide a range of benefits and amenities to the German working class and their families. These included subsidised holidays both at resorts across Germany and in "safe" countries abroad (particularly Italy ). Two of the world's first purpose-built cruise-liners,

840-522: 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." 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 German rearmament , created

924-564: A space of about 30,000 acres (120 km ), about half of which was in the valley of the Mosel , a third in that of the Rhine itself, and the rest mainly on the Nahe and the Ahr . In the hilly districts more than half the surface was sometimes occupied by forests, and large plantations of oak are formed for the use of the bark in tanning. Considerable herds of cattle were reared on the rich pastures of

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1008-542: A specified geographic area. (See tables.) These new Landesinspekteurs were taken from the ranks of the existing Gauleiters , and vacated their Gau posts. Most were trusted colleagues of Strasser, and had worked with him when he was a principal organizer of the Party in northern Germany in the early 1920s. These Landesinspekteurs , in turn, reported to one of two new Reichsinspekteurs , either Paul Schulz or Robert Ley , both of whom served as close protégés of Strasser in

1092-547: 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. 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

1176-465: 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 Volkswagen , originally a project undertaken at Hitler's request by

1260-581: The Reichstag in September 1930 from electoral constituency 20, Cologne-Aachen. He remained as the Gauleiter of Rhineland until 1 June 1931 when his Gau was divided into two and new leaders named. 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

1344-539: The Wilhelm Gustloff and the Robert Ley , were built to take KdF members on Mediterranean cruises. 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

1428-655: The Armistice of 1918 , Allied forces occupied the Rhineland as far east as the river with some small bridgeheads on the east bank at places like Cologne . Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 the occupation was continued and the Inter-Allied Rhineland High Commission was set up to supervise affairs. The treaty specified three occupation zones, which were due to be evacuated by Allied troops five, ten and finally 15 years after

1512-753: The First United States Army fought a costly battle to capture the Hürtgen Forest . The heavily forested and ravined terrain of the Hürtgen negated Allied combined arms advantages (close air support, armor, artillery) and favoured German defenders. The U.S. Army lost 24,000 troops. The military necessity of their sacrifice has been debated by military historians. In early 1945, after a long winter stalemate, military operations by most Allied armies in Northwest Europe resumed with

1596-791: The Iron Cross , 2nd class and the Wound Badge , in silver. 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

1680-769: The Kingdom of Prussia and the Free State of Prussia , within the German Reich , from 1822 to 1946. It was created from the provinces of the Lower Rhine and Jülich-Cleves-Berg . Its capital was Koblenz and in 1939 it had 8 million inhabitants. The Province of Hohenzollern was militarily associated with the Oberpräsident of the Rhine Province. Also, for a short period of time, the Province of Hohenzollern

1764-601: 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. Ley's impoverished upbringing and his experience as head of the largely working-class Rhineland party region meant that he was sympathetic to the Strasserite elements in

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1848-555: The Palatinate . In the end, the separatists failed to gain any decisive support among the population since they were viewed as puppets of the French. The Treaty of Versailles also specified the demilitarization of the entire area to provide a buffer between Germany on one side and France, Belgium and Luxembourg (and, to a lesser extent, the Netherlands) on the other side, which meant that no German forces were allowed there after

1932-700: The People's State of Hesse , was transferred to Hesse-Nassau. In the last free German federal election in March 1933 , two of the four parliamentary districts of the Rhine Province (Cologne-Aachen and Koblenz-Trier) were the only districts in Germany in which the Nazi Party did not win the plurality of votes. In violation of the Treaty of Versailles and the spirit of the Locarno Pact , Nazi Germany remilitarized

2016-464: The Treaty of Versailles . The cantons of Eupen , Malmedy and Sankt Vith though (with the exception of Malmedy) German in culture and language, became the East Cantons of Belgium. Although a plebiscite was held in early 1920, it was not conducted as a secret ballot but required only those opposed to Belgian annexation to register their formal protest. Only a few did so because of the threat of

2100-458: The eastern and western fronts. In 1916 he was promoted to Leutnant and trained as an aerial artillery spotter with Artillery Flier Detachment 202. In July 1917 his aircraft was shot down over France and he was taken prisoner of war . It has been suggested that he suffered a traumatic brain injury in the crash; for the rest of his life he spoke with a stammer and suffered bouts of erratic behaviour, aggravated by heavy drinking. He earned

2184-582: The " Jewish question" at some length, making it clear that he intended the "disappearance" of the Jews one way or another. According to American historian Jeffrey Herf , Ley issued some of the most overt propaganda accusing Jews of plotting the extermination of Germans and threatening to do the reverse. In December 1939, he said that in the event of a British victory: ... 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

2268-464: The Allied area bombing campaign, and Ley's organisation was increasingly unable to cope with the resulting housing crisis. He was aware in general terms of the Nazi regime's programme of extermination of the Jews of Europe. Ley encouraged it through the virulent anti-Semitism of his publications and speeches. In February 1941 he was present at a meeting along with Speer, Bormann and Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel at which Hitler had set out his views on

2352-405: The Allied forces had withdrawn. Furthermore, quite unbearably from the German perspective, the treaty entitled the Allies to reoccupy the Rhineland at their will if the Allies unilaterally found the German side responsible for any violation of the treaty. In 1932, Wetzlar ( Landkreis Wetzlar  [ de ] ), formerly an exclave of the Rhine Province situated between Hesse-Nassau and

2436-509: The British and the French but did not demand war over the issue. The remilitarization of the Rhineland was supported by most of the local population because of a resurgence of German nationalism and the bitterness that had been harboured over the Allied occupation of the Rhineland until 1930 and Saarland until 1935. A side effect of the French occupations was the offspring of French soldiers and German women. Those children, who were seen as

2520-425: 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. 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

2604-619: The Netherlands. The small exclave district of Wetzlar , wedged between the grand duchy states Hesse-Nassau and Hesse-Darmstadt was also part of the Rhine Province. The principality of Birkenfeld , on the other hand, was an enclave of the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg , a separate state of the German Empire . In 1911, the extent of the province was 10,423 km (4,024 sq mi); its extreme length, from north to south,

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2688-634: The Netherlands. On the western and southern frontiers (especially in the Saarland ) resided smaller French-speaking communities, while the industrial region of the Ruhr housed recent Polish migrants from the eastern provinces of the Empire . The Rhine Province was the most densely populated part of Prussia, the general average being 617 persons per km . The province contains a greater number of large towns than any other province in Prussia. Upwards of half,

2772-404: The Party by Adolf Hitler who was not interested in administrative detail and mundane day-to-day organizational concerns. Strasser sought to consolidate and centralize the organizational structure by imposing an additional layer of supervision on the then existing 44 Gauleiters in Germany and Austria. Strasser sought to improve organizational control of the Party throughout the country ahead of

2856-662: The Party's Reichsleitung (Reich Leadership Office) in Munich . The Landesinspekteurs were independent agents, given the authority to conduct surprise Gau inspections day or night, without advance notice. They also were given the authority to supersede the Gauleiters ’ directives, if necessary. The new organization was opposed by many Gauleiters , as it imposed additional layers of Party bureaucracy between them and Hitler. They always had considered themselves as Hitler’s direct agents in their jurisdictions, and were used to reporting directly to him. The position of Inspekteur

2940-602: The Rhine Province furnished its most substantial claim to the title of the "richest jewel in the crown of Prussia". Besides parts of the carboniferous measures of the Saar and the Ruhr, it also contains important deposits of coal near Aachen . Iron ore was found in abundance near Koblenz, the Bleiberg in the Eifel possessed an apparently inexhaustible supply of lead, and zinc was found near Cologne and Aachen. The mineral products of

3024-402: The Rhine Province in 1905 was 6,435,778, including 4,472,058 Roman Catholics , 1,877,582 Protestants and 55,408 Jews . The left bank was predominantly Catholic, while on the right bank about half the population was Protestant. The great bulk of the population was ethnically German, although some villages and towns in the northern part ( Province of Jülich-Cleves-Berg ) were more oriented toward

3108-539: The Rhine Province was split between the French and British Occupation Zones . The Rhine Province was abolished in August 1946 when the northern part of the province, under British administration, was merged with the former province of Westphalia to form North Rhine-Westphalia and most of the southern portion, under French administration, was merged with the Palatinate (previously an exclave of Bavaria ) and other territories to form Rhineland-Palatinate . These areas of

3192-596: The Rhine river. The supporting operation by the US Ninth Army, Operation Grenade , was planned to coincide from the River Roer , in the south. This was delayed for two weeks, however, by German flooding of the Roer valley. On March 7, 1945, a company of armoured infantry of the U.S. 9th Armored Division captured the last intact bridge over the Rhine at Remagen . General George Patton 's Third US Army also made

3276-409: The Rhineland on Saturday, March 7, 1936. The occupation was done with very little military force, the troops entered on tractors and no effort was made to stop it . Even though France had an overwhelming force nearby it did not act because of its political instability, and since the remilitarization occurred during a weekend, the British government could not find out or discuss actions to be taken until

3360-556: The arms industry. As head of the Labour Front, Ley invited Edward, Duke of Windsor , and Wallis, Duchess of Windsor , to conduct a tour of Germany in 1937, months after Edward had abdicated the British throne. Ley served as their host and their personal chaperone. During the visit, Ley's alcoholism was noticed, and at one point he crashed the Windsors' car into a gate. Once his power was established, Ley began to abuse it in

3444-399: The basis of racial, religious or political grounds"). Ley was apparently indignant at being regarded as a war criminal , telling the American psychiatrist Douglas Kelley and psychologist Gustave Gilbert who had seen and tested him in prison: "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

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3528-481: The business class. Now working for the DAF, Porsche built a new Volkswagen factory at Fallersleben , at a huge cost which was partly met by raiding the DAF's accumulated assets and misappropriating the dues paid by DAF members. The Volkswagen was sold to German workers on an installment plan, and the first models appeared in February 1939. The outbreak of war, however, meant that none of the 340,000 workers who paid for

3612-483: The car-maker Ferdinand Porsche . When the German car industry was unable to meet Hitler's demand that the Volkswagen be sold at 1,000 ℛ︁ℳ︁ or less, the project was taken over by the DAF. This brought Ley's old socialist tendencies back into prominence. The party, he said, had taken over where private industry had failed, because of the "short-sightedness, malevolence, profiteering and stupidity" of

3696-498: The continuing French pollution of German culture, were shunned by the broader German society and were known as Rhineland Bastards . Children fathered by French colonial or American troops of African ancestry were especially despised and became targets of Nazi sterilisation programmes in the 1930s. The American poet Charles Bukowski was born in 1920 in Andernach as the son of a German mother and an American soldier, who served in

3780-411: The district also included lignite, copper, manganese, vitriol, lime, gypsum, volcanic stones (used for millstones) and slates. By far the most important item was coal. Of the numerous mineral springs, the best known were those of Aachen and Kreuznach. The mineral resources of the Rhine Province, coupled with its favourable situation and the facilities of transit afforded by its great waterway, made it

3864-436: The district, while the principal exports are coal, fruit, wine, dyes, cloth, silk and other manufactured articles of various descriptions. In the 1815 Congress of Vienna , Prussia gained control of the duchies of Cleves, Berg, Gelderland and Jülich, the ecclesiastical principalities of Trier and Cologne, the free cities of Aachen and Cologne, and nearly one hundred small lordships and abbeys which would all be amalgamated into

3948-478: The duties of Reichsorganisationsleiter , with Robert Ley as Chief of Staff. Paul Schulz followed Strasser into retirement. In seeking to eradicate Strasser’s legacy, Hitler decreed a thorough revocation of the recent administrative reforms. He further reconfirmed the Gauleiters ’ status as his personal agents. The positions of Landesinspekteur and Reichsinspekteur were abolished. All ten Landesinspekteurs were returned to their former Gauleiter positions. Thus,

4032-405: 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 . Ley told them he was "Dr Ernst Distelmeyer," but he was identified by Franz Xaver Schwarz ,

4116-614: 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. 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

4200-581: The fall of the Nazi regime. By April, 1933 Hitler decided to have the Nazi Party take over the trade union movement. On 10 May 1933, Hitler appointed Ley head of the newly founded German Labour Front ( Deutsche Arbeitsfront , DAF). The DAF took over the existing Nazi trade union formation, the National Socialist Factory Cell Organisation ( Nationalsozialistische Betriebszellenorganisation , NSBO) as well as

4284-572: The following Monday. As a result, the governments were inclined to see the remilitarization as a fait accompli . Adolf Hitler took a risk when he sent his troops to the Rhineland. He told them to "turn back and not to resist" if they were stopped by the French Army. The French, however, did not try to stop them because they were about to hold legislative elections ; further, President Albert Lebrun did not want to start an unpopular war against Germany and French intelligence greatly overestimated

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4368-584: The formal ratification of the treaty, which took place in 1920, thus the occupation was intended to last until 1935. Initially, 5 zones of Occupation of the Rhineland were established, but the American Forces handed over their zone in 1923, since they had not ratified the Treaty of Versailles, to the French. The treaty also separated the Saar from the Province and administered by the League of Nations until

4452-777: The former province were incorporated as states into the new Federal Republic of Germany when it was established in May 1949. The French organised the Saarland as a separate protectorate on 16 February 1946 and it eventually joined the Federal Republic as a separate state in 1957. Within North Rhine-Westphalia, the Landschaftsverband Rheinland  [ de ] (LVR), which was established in 1953 as regional council, still holds considerable administrative power and can be regarded as

4536-542: The goal of reaching the Rhine. From their winter positions in The Netherlands, the First Canadian Army under General Henry Crerar reinforced by elements of the British Second Army under General Miles Dempsey , drove through the Rhineland beginning in the first week of February 1945. Operation Veritable lasted several weeks, resulting in the clearance of all German forces from the west side of

4620-403: 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

4704-529: The high-lying plateaus in the south of the province, but the river-valleys and the northern lowlands were extremely fertile. The great bulk of the soil was in the hands of small proprietors, and this is alleged to have had the effect of somewhat retarding the progress of scientific agriculture. The usual cereal crops were, however, all grown with success, and tobacco, hops, flax, hemp and beetroot (for sugar) were cultivated for commercial purposes. Large quantities of fruit were also produced. The vine-culture occupied

4788-409: The lower Rhine, but the number of sheep in the province was comparatively small, not greatly in excess of that of the goats. The wooded hills were well stocked with deer, and a stray wolf occasionally found its way from the forests of the Ardennes into those of the Hunsrück . The salmon fishery of the Rhine was very productive, and trout abound in the mountain streams. The great mineral wealth of

4872-426: The main trade union federation. But Ley's lack of administrative ability meant that the NSBO leader, Reinhold Muchow , a member of the Strasserite wing of the Nazi Party , soon became the dominant figure in the DAF, overshadowing Ley. Muchow began a purge of the DAF administration, rooting out ex- Social Democrats and ex- Communists and placing his own militants in their place. The NSBO cells continued to agitate in

4956-419: 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

5040-522: The most important manufacturing district in Germany. The industry was mainly concentrated around two chief centres, Aachen and Düsseldorf (with the valley of the Wupper ), while there were naturally few manufacturers in the hilly districts of the south or the marshy flats of the north. The largest iron and steel works were at Essen , Oberhausen , Duisburg , Düsseldorf and Cologne, while cutlery and other small metallic wares were extensively made at Solingen, Remscheid and Aachen. The cloth of Aachen and

5124-551: 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.' 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 Martin Bormann and Joseph Goebbels . In November 1940 he was given a new role, as Reich Commissioner for Social Housing Construction ( Reichskommissar für den sozialen Wohnungsbau ), later shortened to Reich Housing Commissioner ( Reichswohnungskommissar ). Here his job

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5208-425: The new Prussian Rhine Province. In 1822 Prussia established the Rhine Province by joining the provinces of Lower Rhine and Jülich-Cleves-Berg . Its capital was Koblenz ; it had 8.0 million inhabitants by 1939. Popes Pius VIII (in 1830) and Gregory XVI (in 1833) raised concerns regarding the pastoral care of Catholics in the Upper Rhineland, both writing letters of concern to the local bishops. Following

5292-428: The number of German troops. The British government did not oppose the remilitarization in principle, and Lord Lothian famously stated that "the Germans are after all only going into their own back garden". However, the British government rejected the Nazi manner of accomplishing the act, which they had been willing to concede by negotiations with Germany. Winston Churchill advocated military action by co-operation by

5376-402: The occupation troops. Two different military campaigns were fought in the Rhineland. The first operation of the campaign was the Allied Operation Market Garden that sought to allow the Second British Army to advance past the northern flank of the Siegfried Line and enter the Ruhr industrial area. After the failure of that operation for five months, from September 1944 until February 1945,

5460-446: The party, but he always sided with Hitler in inner party disputes. This helped him survive the hostility of other party officials such as the party treasurer, Franz Xaver Schwarz , who regarded him as an incompetent drunk. Ley rejoined the re-founded Nazi Party in March 1925, shortly after the party's ban was lifted (membership number 18,441). He was named Deputy Gauleiter of the Southern Rhineland (later, Rhineland ) that month, and

5544-412: The population were supported by industrial and commercial pursuits, and barely a quarter by agriculture. There was the University of Bonn , and elementary education was especially successful. For purposes of administration, the province was divided into the five districts ( Regierungsbezirke ) of Koblenz , Düsseldorf , Cologne , Aachen and Trier . Koblenz was the official capital, though Cologne

5628-418: The river, and the battles for the Rhineland were over. In the official histories of the British and Canadian armies, the term Rhineland refers only to fighting west of the river in February and March 1945, with subsequent operations on the river and to the east known as "Rhine Crossing". Both terms are official Battle Honours in the Commonwealth forces. Following the unconditional surrender of Germany in 1945,

5712-403: The silk of Krefeld formed important articles of export. The chief industries of Elberfeld - Barmen and the valley of the Wupper was cotton-weaving, calico-printing and the manufacture of turkey red and other dyes. Linen was largely made at Mönchengladbach , leather at Malmedy , glass in the Saar district and beetroot sugar near Cologne. Though the Rhineland was par excellence the country of

5796-594: 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." At the Nuremberg Trials , Ley was indicted under Count One ("The Common Plan or Conspiracy to wage an aggressive war in violation of international law or treaties"), Count Three (War Crimes, including among other things "mistreatment of prisoners of war or civilian populations") and Count Four (" Crimes Against Humanity – murder, extermination, enslavement of civilian populations, persecution on

5880-405: The upcoming 31 July 1932 election to the German Reichstag . The overall objective was to give the Party the kind of organisational structure that would allow it to contest the election in a more effective and disciplined manner. On 15 July 1932, the Party Gauleiters were subordinated to ten new officials titled Landesinspekteurs , each with oversight responsibilities for several Gaue within

5964-416: The various Gaue . On 10 June 1932, following a further organizational restructuring by Strasser, Ley was named one of two Reichsinspecteurs with oversight of approximately half the Gaue . Furthermore, he was made the Acting Landesinspekteur for Bavaria with direct responsibility for the six Bavarian Gaue . This was a short-lived initiative by Strasser to centralize control over the Gaue . However, it

6048-413: The vine, beer was produced in quantities, distilleries were also numerous, and large quantities of sparkling Mosel wine were made at Koblenz, chiefly for exportation to Britain. Commerce was greatly aided by the navigable rivers, a very extensive network of railways, and the excellent roads constructed during the French régime. The imports consist mainly of raw material for working up in the factories of

6132-691: 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

6216-480: The word out!". 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. Rhine Province The Rhine Province ( German : Rheinprovinz ), also known as Rhenish Prussia ( Rheinpreußen ) or synonymous with the Rhineland ( Rheinland ), was the westernmost province of

6300-477: Was among those raised to Reichsleiter , the second highest political rank in the Nazi Party. This was followed on 14 September 1933 by his appointment to the reconstituted Prussian State Council by Prussian Minister-President Hermann Göring . On 3 October 1933, Ley was named to Hans Frank 's Academy for German Law and, on 10 November 1934, Hitler finally formally promoted Ley to the position of Reichsorganisationsleiter . Ley would retain these positions until

6384-406: Was denoted on Nazi Party brown shirts by either one of two collar bars worn on a dark red collar patch. The shoulder boards were also paired up with a one or two knotted gold shoulder cord. On 8 December 1932, Strasser resigned as Reichsorganisationsleiter in a major policy dispute with Hitler over the future direction of the Party. By 15 December, Hitler announced that he was temporarily assuming

6468-529: Was indirectly and de facto controlled by the Rhine Province. The Rhine Province was bounded on the north by the Netherlands , on the east by the Prussian provinces of Westphalia and Hesse-Nassau , and the grand duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt , on the southeast by the Palatinate (a district of the Kingdom of Bavaria ), on the south and southwest by Lorraine , and on the west by Luxembourg , Belgium and

6552-479: Was nearly 200 km (120 mi), and its greatest breadth was just under 90 km (56 mi). It included about 200 km (120 mi) of the course of the Rhine, which formed the eastern border of the province from Bingen to Koblenz , and then flows in a north-northwesterly direction inside the province, approximately following its eastern border. It is now part of North Rhine-Westphalia , Rhineland-Palatinate , Saarland , and Hesse . The population of

6636-556: 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

6720-625: Was promoted to Gauleiter on 17 July. 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 . At a meeting on 24 January 1926, however, Ley joined with others in raising objections to Strasser's proposed new draft program and it

6804-732: Was shelved. Shortly thereafter, the Working Association was dissolved following the Bamberg Conference . In March 1928, Ley became the editor and publisher of a virulently anti-Semitic Nazi newspaper, the Westdeutscher Beobachter (West German Observer) in Cologne . On 20 May 1928, he was elected to the Prussian Landtag , and also was appointed to the Rhenish provincial legislature. He was first elected to

6888-652: Was the largest and most important city. Being a frontier province, the Rhineland was strongly garrisoned, and the Rhine was guarded by the three strong fortresses of Cologne with Deutz , Koblenz with Ehrenbreitstein , and Wesel . The province sent 35 members to the German Reichstag and 62 to the Prussian House of Representatives . Of the total area of the Rhine Province, about 45% was occupied by arable land, 16% by meadows and pastures, and 31% by forests. Little except oats and potatoes could be raised on

6972-432: Was to prepare for the effects on German housing of the expected Allied air attacks on German cities , which began to increase in intensity from 1941 onwards. In this role he became a key ally of Armaments Minister Albert Speer, who recognised that German workers must be adequately housed if productivity was to be maintained. As the air war against Germany increased from 1943, " dehousing " German workers became an objective of

7056-475: Was unpopular with the Gauleiters and was repealed on Strasser's fall from power. Strasser resigned on 8 December 1932 in a break with Hitler over the future direction of the Party. Hitler himself took over as Reichsorganisationsleiter and installed Ley as his Stabschef (Chief of Staff). The positions of Reichsinspecteur and Landesinspekteur were abolished. When Hitler became Reich Chancellor in January 1933, Ley accompanied him to Berlin. On 2 June 1933, Ley

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