This required the development of a new system for the 35 mm format (24 mm × 36 mm). Leitz recognized the trend toward compact, handy cameras at an early stage. This was his most significant entrepreneurial decision. With the words 'I hereby decide: It will be risked', Leitz decided to launch the Leica 35-mm camera in 1924. Leitz's three sons Ludwig, Ernst (III), Günther followed him as managing directors of the family business. The Anti-Defamation League, which campaigns against anti-Semitism, honored Leitz's humanitarian service with the 'Courage to Care' award in 2007. It was not until 1942, at the age of 71, that he joined the Nazi Party in order to avert the threatened takeover of his company by the National Socialists. He stood as a candidate for the DDP in various Reichstag elections. Leitz was a member of the left-liberal German Democratic Party (DDP) (later German State Party) and of the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold, an organization for the defense of the Weimar Republic. With his father, he introduced the 8-hour workday as early as 1906, twelve years before it was required by law. Leitz continued his father's company's social policy by founding an employee support and pension fund and a company health insurance fund. It was a small, lightweight camera using 24 mm × 36 mm film rolls of 36 shots, establishing dynamic live photography. The Leica, a 35 mm camera developed by Leitz's collaborator Oskar Barnack with the interchangeable lenses of Max Berek was distributed worldwide from 1925. The large Leitz Ortholux research microscope with built-in illumination (1935) also became a great success. Leitz initially devoted himself to the development of new microscopes, in particular the world's first binocular microscope that could also be used for high magnifications, which was launched in 1913. After an apprenticeship as a mechanic in his father's business and training as a merchant, Leitz joined the company as a partner in 1906 and became sole shareholder after his father's death in 1920. Ernst Leitz was the second son of the entrepreneur Ernst Leitz I.

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