Ships Through Joy

When Adolf Hitler descended on German trade unions in 1933, jailed their Lewises, Greens and Homer Martins, he lumped them together, willy-nilly, in the government-controlled Labor Front. Over it he placed 48-year-old Robert Ley (pronounced Lie), party henchman and passionate organizer. Dr. Ley did not at once promise his charges more wages, or fewer hours of work, but he did promise job security, no pay cuts and the Kraft durch Freude (Strength Through Joy) Society. Strength Through Joy provides sports, inexpensive cinema, theatre, military band concerts, exhibitions, holiday trips on its four ocean liners. Last week in Hamburg 18-year-old Lieschen Kiesling, pretty factory worker from a Leipzig spinning mill, broke a bottle of German champagne over the fifth big liner, christened it Robert Ley. Master of ceremonies at the microphone was Reichsfuehrer Adolf Hitler himself.

The Robert Ley, a 15 1/2-knot motor ship of 25,000 tons, is about the size of the two biggest ships (Manhattan and Washington) of the U. S. merchant marine. Besides a swimming pool with "voluptuous murals" and 5,000 sq. yd. of deck space, it has outside staterooms for all its 1,500 passengers. The Robert Ley is the second of no less than 20 25,000-ton ships planned for Kraft durch Fretide--no small project since there are now only about two dozen ships in the world which are as big. If built they will give Germany a handsome fleet of naval auxiliaries and troop ships.

Until the next war the Ley and sister ships will cruise regularly to the Mediterranean and Norwegian Fjords, carry "deserving workers," approved by their employers and the Labor Front. The fare to approved passengers will be as little as $30 per trip. Closing the launching ceremonies, Orator Hitler, looking meaningly at a big delegation of voters from Germany's newest province, Austria, cried: "What formerly was available only to a small privileged class we shall make available to all."

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