In addition to creating a collectivist, racist Utopia, Ley promised that his social insurance plan would increase national production by raising the will of the people to work, since they would have no fears about their future, and release the untapped labor reserves of older people.
These early schemes were too vague or too conservative for Ley. His goals were to bring the social insurance system under his control as well as to radicalize it.
Ley sought to have the DAF speak with one voice by creating the Institute for Labor Science (Arbeitswissenschaftliches Institute or Awl) in 1935.
Despite Ley's efforts, social insurance planning in the DAF remained fragmented.
Ley then took the initiative with a series of explosive remarks made at a national meeting of the DAF held at Leipzig on 4 December 1935.
(37) Ley mentioned new methods that would be introduced by the Nazis that would allow people to work later in their lives.
A meeting took place between Seldte and Ley, accompanied by their advisors, on 5 March 1936.
Ley's intermediary was a member of the party and the SS as well as head of the National Socialist Factory Organization, its political labor union.
The Labor Ministry marshaled all of its expertise to smash Ley's concept.
Ley did not feel himself bound by any agreement with Seldte.
Ley, however, persisted in demanding that the separate insurance plans be subordinated to a single entity, preferably his Strength through joy organization and his Homestead Office (Heimstattenamt), which would channel the insurance plans' reserves into a home loan program for workers.
On the basis of its work, Ley decided to press forward and met Hermann Goring to discuss his ambitions on 3 March 1939.
By formally presenting a written plan, Ley gave his opponents something substantial that they could attack.
The outbreak of the war encouraged Ley to press his ideas with greater vigor.
