Out Of Respect For Life
Dr. Robert Ley (1890-1945) Reichsorganisationsleiter and Deutsche Arbeitsfront (DAF) Reichsleiter from 1933 to 1945 has been called ‘the genius behind most of the organization of the Nazi Party’. He promoted procreation and argued that the stigma against illegitimacy was absurd: ‘we used to have a habit on looking down on illegitimate children’, Ley pronounced in February 1937. ‘It was an old-fashioned prejudice that has today become an absurdity. We must grant the unmarried mother, who bears a child as the result of natural healthy instincts, the same respect and the same protection that we grant married mothers.’
The debate over quality versus quantity occupied a meeting of Nazi leaders on June 15th1937, at which Ley argued that he was a racial hygienist (Rassenhygieniker), that the morality of the past could no longer help Germany, and that law has no purpose; it was the servant of the German people. Referring to the large number of abortions before Nazism, Ley went on to state that there was no advantage in increasing birth per se; that while abortion should remain illegal, Germany still had to measure quality against quantity, and that abortion was a necessary evil that Germany had to accept out of respect for life. Ley’s personal confession is quoted by Schirrmacher:
Once your heart is branded with the swastika/ You hate any other cross!/ If you identify yourself with your nation/ You laugh at Redeemer cranks!/ Beware anyone who demands:/ ‘Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself’/ What the Nazarene demands is our demise/