“* * * My Fuehrer! When you, my Fuehrer, ordered me in mid-April 1933 to take over the trade unions, I could not understand why you gave this order to me since I could not see any connection between my task as Organizational Leader of the Party and my new task. Very soon, however, your decision, my Fuehrer, became clear to me and I recognized that the organizational measures of the Party could only come to full fruition when supplemented by the organization of the people, that is to say, by the mobilization of the energies of the people and by their concentration and alignment. If the Party represents the concentration of the Political Leaders of the people—as you, my Fuehrer, have told us again and again—then the people is the retinue and must be organized and trained according to the same principles. Leader and retinue, elite and community at large—these were the clear directives for my work. These were the consequences:
“(1) My tasks as Organizational Leader of the Party and as the leader of the German Labor Front were a completely homogeneous task: in other words, in everything I did I acted as Reich Organization Leader of the NSDAP.
“(2) The German Labor Front was an institution of the Party and was led by it.
“(3) The German Labor Front had to be organized regionally and professionally according to the same principles as the Party.
“That is why trade union and employer associations had to be smashed unrelentingly, and the basis of construction was formed, as in the Party, by the cell and the local section [Ortsgruppe].
* * * * * *
“National Socialism has conquered the factory. Factory troops [Die Werkschar] are the National Socialist shock troops within the factory, and their motto is:
‘THE FUEHRER IS ALWAYS RIGHT’.” (2283-PS)
In furtherance of the Nazi policy to destroy the independent trade unions of Germany, Ley issued a Party directive on 21 April 1933 outlining what was termed a “coordination action” scheduled for 2 May 1933 against the General German Trade Union Federation and the General Independent Employee Federation (392-PS). This directive ordered the SA and the SS to occupy trade union premises, seize trade union funds, and take into protective custody the higher union leaders.
Pertinent portions of Ley’s order provide: