Robert Ley

The son of a Rhine Province farmer, Ley flew in the First World War, earned the Iron Cross Second Class, and after the armistice finished a doctorate in chemistry and worked as a food chemist for IG Farben. Radicalized during the French occupation of the Ruhr, he joined the Nazi Party in 1925, became Gauleiter of the Southern Rhineland, entered the Reichstag in 1930, and in 1932 replaced Gregor Strasser as the party's organizational chief. In 1933 Hitler made him head of the newly founded German Labour Front after the regime crushed the unions; from that perch he oversaw rearmament programs, launched Strength Through Joy, and presided over the Volkswagen project. His influence waned after 1939 as Todt and later Speer eclipsed him and his alcoholism became conspicuous, but Hitler kept him in the inner circle until the final months. American paratroopers captured him near the Austrian border in May 1945; he committed suicide in October while awaiting trial at Nuremberg for war crimes and crimes against humanity.