BIOGRAPHY - L

LAMMERS, HANS HEINRICH (1879-1962) Chief of the Reich Chancellery, 1933-45. SS lieutenant general. Sentenced to 20 years emprisonment in 1949. Released in 1952.

LANZ, ADOLF JOSEF (GEORG LANZ von LIEBENFELS) (1874-1954) Defrocked Cistercian monk, conman (doctor, baron) and race-fanatic whose writings had a great influence on both Hitler and Eckart. In 1900, Lanz founded an antisemitic lodge known as the "Order of the New Temple" and set himself up as grandmaster. Its symbol, chosen by Lanz himself, was the Swastika. Lanz's magazine "Ostara" became extremely popular for a time in Vienna and throughout the German speaking world. Lanz and Hitler met in Vienna sometime in 1908-1909 (possibly earlier when Lanz visited Lambach in late 1890's). Several books by Lanz were found in Hitler's library when it was seized by the Allies at the end of the war.

LASKI, HAROLD J. (1893-1950) Prominent British Socialist; member of the Fabian Society and executive committee of the Labour Party; professor of political science, University of London; connected with the London School of Economics; one of Felix Frankfurter's closest friends. Laski's frequent correspondence with President Roosevelt was a well-kept secret until after his death. (Freedman)

LAVAL, PIERRE (1883-1945) French politician and collaborator; Premier of the Vichy government from 1942 to 1944.

LEHMANN, JULIUS FRIEDRICH (1864-1935) Munich publisher and Nazi party member from 1922. Strong supporter of the German military and one of Hitler's most important early financial backers.

LENIN, NIKOLAI (VLADIMIR ILICH ULYANOV) (1870-1924) Leader of the Communist movement in Russia and founder of the Soviet Union (USSR). A fanatical proponent of the Communist doctrine of Karl Marx, Lenin spread it throughout Russia and attempted to put it into practice. Lenin was arrested in 1895 and exiled to Siberia. When freed in 1900, he went abroad, where he became a leader of the Russian Social Democratic Party. He returned to Russia in 1905, but went abroad again after an unsuccessful armed revolt in Moscow. Until 1914 he was active in the Second International, a worldwide Socialist organization. News of the Czar's downfall in March 1917, found Lenin in exile in Switzerland. He then returned to Russia across Germany in a "sealed" train provided by the Imperial German government, which hoped Lenin would take Russia out of the war. After seizing power in Oct.-Nov., 1917, Lenin ruled Russia as virtual dictator until his death in 1924. (Clark)

LEY, DR. ROBERT (1890-1945) Chemist and Nazi party member from 1924. In 1932 Ley became NSDAP Reich organization director and in 1933 founded the German Labor Front. With Hitler's permission he quickly smashed Germany's free labor unions. Charged with organizing slave labor by the Allies, he committed suicide before his trial at Nuremberg could begin.

LEY, WILLY German rocket expert and self-confessed member of the Vril Society who immigrated to the U.S. after Hitler came to power. Ley later worked with Walt Disney among others.

LICHTHEIM, RICHARD Representative of the Jewish Agency for Palestine in Switzerland. During the war he continually supplied Jewish leaders in Jerusalem, London and New York with details about the Nazi persecution of the Jews.

LIEBENFELS, GEORG LANZ von See Lanz, Adolf Josef.

LIST, GUIDO von (1865-1919) Influential Austrian writer, mystic and neo-paganist who greatly influenced the Pan-German movement, the Germanenorden, the Thule Society, and a great many others who later rose to prominence in Germany during the 1920's and 30's. Many of List's ideas were incorportaed into the Nazi Party and its organization into Gaue, each with a Gauleiter.

LITVINOV, MAXIM (1876-1951) Russian revolutionary and diplomat; born M.M. Wallach. Left Russia after the abortive 1905 Revolution and didn't return until 1917. Soviet foreign minister from 1930 until removed by Stalin in May 1939, shortly before the Soviet-German Non-Agression Pact. Married to a British woman, he was ambassador to the United States 1941-43. (Fehrenbach)

LLOYD GEORGE, DAVID (1863-1945) British Liberal party leader, who served as Prime Minister during the last half of Word War I and was prominent in drafting the Versailles Peace Treaty. Lloyd George made his early repuation as a "radical" people's-socialist, but served as president of the Board of Trade from 1905 to 1908 and Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1908 to 1915. He succeeded Lord Horatio Kitchener as Secretary of War in July 1916, and in December 1916 replaced Herbert Asquith as Prime Minister of a coalition cabinet. At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, he is said to have mediated between the idealism of President Wilson and the severe peace terms sought by Premier George Clemenceau of France. After several economic failures in the early 1920s, Lloyd George resigned in 1922 and never again held office. In 1936, he met with Hitler at Berchtesgaden and returned with praise for the German leader but later became a critic of appeasement. In 1945, shortly before his death he was created Earl of Dwyfor.

LOSSOW, OTTO HERMANN von (1868-1938). Bavarian lieutenant general. Bavarian state commander of the Reichswehr. In 1923, member of the junta (Kahr, Lossow, Seisser). Died as a retired general, overlooked by Hitler.

LOTHIAN, LORD (Philip Henry Kerr) (1882-1940) British Ambassador to the U.S. (1939-1940). Lothian was a trustee of Cecil Rhode's will and his duties as such often brought him to America before the war. (Ickes)

LUDENDORFF, ERICH (1865-1937) General Ludendorff was the virtual dictator of Germany during the final years of WWI. During the Munich Putsch on November 9, 1923, he walked with Hitler at the head of the Nazi column and was quickly arrested. Ludendorff was found not guilty and returned to home in the country. According to Hitler, Ludendorff's staunch opposition to the Catholic Church caused their split after the Putsch. Ludendorff and his second wife, Mathilde von Kemnitz, published a number of viciously antisemitic, anti-Freemason and anti-Catholic publications right up until the time of his death. It is said that Ludendorff warned Hindenburg against appointing Hitler chancellor.

LÜGER (LUEGER), KARL Nationalistic and antisemitic mayor of Vienna who was greatly admired and praised by Hitler. As head of the Christian Social party, Lueger was, after Emperor Franz Josef, the most important Austrian politician of his day. With millions of voters, his party was the most powerful antisemitic movement in Europe before Hitler. In 1911, the last election before 1914, two-thirds of Austro-Germans voted for antisemites. (Weiss)

(Note: During the Third Reich, the percentage of Austrians who joined the Nazi party was twice that of the Germans. Austrians, who comprised only 8% of the population of the Greater Reich amounted to 14% of the SS, 40% of the staff of the death camps, and 70% of Eichmann's staff.) (Weiss)

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