Saarpfalz district

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Gaue of the NSDAP in the German Reich in 1944

The Gau Saarpfalz bore his name from 1936 and was an administrative unit of the NSDAP , which was initially formed in 1935 as Gau Pfalz-Saar and in 1940 was given the name Gau Westmark .

History and structure

NSDAP districts in 1926, 1928, 1933 (top row), and 1937, 1939, 1943 (bottom row)

The Gau existed since 1925 as Gau Rheinpfalz , whose first Gauleiter Fritz Wambsganß was replaced in 1926 by Josef Bürckel . The administrative district Pfalz with the center Speyer belonged to the Free State of Bavaria . The Gau became a stronghold of National Socialism, with the NSDAP receiving 43.7 percent of the vote in the Reichstag elections in July 1932 . In addition, the Gau Saar in the Saar area had existed since 1926 and was administered by the League of Nations . In 1935, with the reintegration of the area into the German Reich, the Gau Pfalz-Saar was formed, which was called Gau Saarpfalz from March 1936 . The Gauleiter did not succeed in detaching the Palatinate from Bavaria, but de facto the Bavarian government hardly had any influence. The Gauleitung had its seat in Neustadt an der Haardt or (from 1936) Neustadt an der Weinstrasse , which did not change after the short-lived appointment of Kaiserslautern as "Gau capital" in 1939 and the amalgamation of the authorities headed by Bürckel in Saarbrücken in 1940. A Gauführerschule existed in Annweiler am Trifels .

During his activity as Reich Commissioner in Vienna after the annexation of Austria between 1938 and 1940, Bürckel was represented as Gauleiter by his long-time deputy (since 1927) Ernst Ludwig Leyser . After the victorious campaign in the west in the spring of 1940, the Nazi plans envisaged the annexation of the partly German-speaking French department of Moselle , which had already belonged to the German Empire from 1871 to 1918 as a district of Lorraine within the realm of Alsace-Lorraine . Gauleiter Bürckel was entrusted with the management of the civil administration in Lorraine, the CdZ area of ​​Lorraine , and the area was thus effectively connected to his domain. On the instructions of Adolf Hitler, the Gau had the new name Gau Westmark since December 7, 1940 , in which 2.6 million inhabitants lived in 1940 and which covered approx. 14,000 km². In 1940 Bürckel was appointed Reich Governor for Saarland . After Bürckel's death on September 28, 1944, Willi Stöhr took over the post on a temporary basis and was officially appointed the last Gauleiter of Westmark on January 30, 1945.

In terms of administrative policy, the Gau Westmark did not represent a unified territory. The three territorial administrative units controlled by Bürckel were no longer merged into a centralized Reichsgau .

The deputy Gauleiter Leyser sat for constituency 27 in the Reichstag from 1933 until the end of the war in 1945 and took over the management of the Josef Bürckel Foundation in mid-January 1934 . In 1930 Fritz Schwitzgebel was deputy for a short time and later became mayor of Saarbrücken. On September 8, 1944, Stöhr was appointed Gauleiter's representative and Reich Defense Commissioner for fortification in the Gau before he succeeded the Gauleiter. At the end of March 1945 he withdrew. Richard Imbt was the chief official for local politics, later Lord Mayor of Kaiserslautern and responsible for the occupied Metz .

Gauleiter Rheinpfalz:

Gauleiter Saar:

Gauleiter Pfalz-Saar, Saarpfalz or Westmark:

See also

literature

  • Wolfgang Freund: Race and Population Policy in an Expanding Gau: Rheinpfalz-Saarpfalz-Westmark , In: John, Jürgen / Möller, Horst / Schaarschmidt, Thomas (Ed.): The NS Gaue - Regional Mittelinstanzen in the centralized "Führerstaat" , Munich 2007, pp. 334-347.
  • Franz Maier: Biographical organization manual of the NSDAP and its structures in the area of ​​today's state of Rhineland-Palatinate , 2nd edition, Mainz 2009, ISBN 978-3-7758-1408-9 .

Web links

Single receipts

  1. ^ Weimar Republic 1918-1933, Reichstag elections, constituency Palatinate. www.wahlen-in-deutschland.de, July 5, 2014, accessed on December 3, 2016 .
  2. Wolfgang Freund: People, Empire and Western Frontier . German studies and politics in the Palatinate, Saarland and annexed Lorraine 1925-1945. In: Publications of the Commission for Saarland State History and Folk Research . tape 39 , 2006, p. 44 .
  3. www.findbuch.at : Address book 1940 , p. 43 (PDF; 2.02MB)
  4. ^ Franz Maier: Biographical Organizational Handbook of the NSDAP and its divisions in the area of ​​today's state of Rhineland-Palatinate. Publications of the commission of the state parliament for the history of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. Vol. 28. Hase & Koehler, Mainz 2007. ISBN 3-7758-1407-8 ; P. 14
  5. www.europese-bibliotheek.nl : Annweiler