Robert Ley was born in the Rhineland in 1890. Trained in chemistry, he became a National Socialist in 1924. He was named director of the Aktionskomitee zum Schutz der deutscher Arbeit (Action Committee for the Defense of the German Worker) by Hitler after the Assumption of Power. With this organization Ley broke up the trade unions on 2 May 1933, replacing them with the Deutsche Arbeitsfront. Ley thus gained considerable power, which he extended through such spectacular enterprises as the leisuretime organization Kraft durch Freude, the system of workers’ advance payments for the Volkswagen and the elite NSDAP training schools, the Ordensburgen. Captured by the Americans, Ley was to be tried among the major war criminals at Niirnberg. He wrote to Henry Ford asking for employment when it was all over, but in May 1945 he hanged himself in his cell.