Gau Westphalia-South

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Gaue of the German Reich 1944

The Gau Westfalen-Süd was a territorial division of the NSDAP . The Gau existed from 1930/1931 to 1945.

structure

The predecessor was the Gau Ruhr, based in Elberfeld . This was created in 1926 through the merger of the Gaue Westphalia and Rhineland-North and was reduced in size in 1928 through the spin-off of Gau Essen . In 1930 Gau Düsseldorf was formed , and in 1930/1931 the remaining areas of Westphalia were divided into Gaue Westphalia-North and Westphalia-South. This Gau was congruent with the Prussian administrative district Arnsberg and therefore included the central and eastern Ruhr area , the Sauerland and Siegerland as well as the Hellweg zone. The seat of the district was Bochum at Wilhelmstrasse 15. In 1936, this district had the second highest population density of all NSDAP districts after the district of Saxony .

Political structure before 1933

The area was denominationally and socially very heterogeneous. Before 1933 the socialist labor movement was strong in the Ruhr area and political Catholicism was strong in the former part of the Sauerland region in Cologne . Here the acceptance of the NSDAP was rather low. The party official representation from 1938 admitted that the organization in the Sauerland barely made progress until 1930 and that old fighters like Heinrich Teipel had lost positions in the middle of this central stronghold. Richard Manderbach, on the other hand, had notable successes in the Siegerland. In the Reichstag elections of July 1932 and March 1933 , the party was only able to achieve an absolute majority in the Siegerland.

time of the nationalsocialism

As in other parts of the National Socialist state, state authorities and institutions of the party competed with one another. The state side was represented by the President of the Prussian Province of Westphalia, Ferdinand von Lüninck, with the provincial administration and the administrative districts bound by instructions . During the Second World War, as a result of the bombing war, there was a district housing and settlement commissioner based in Bochum and at the same time a corresponding department in the Arnsberg district .

The Gauleiter of the Gaus Westfalen-Süd tried again and again until 1944 to free themselves from their dependence on the province of Westphalia . Instead, they sought an independent Reichsgau or a Prussian province independent of Münster . The Reich Ministry of the Interior protested against it. The plans had to be abandoned in 1944 when Adolf Hitler and Martin Bormann also spoke out against it. The personnel discontinuity at the top of the Gaus also contributed to the failure. Gauleiter Wagner, who also headed the Gau Silesia until 1940 , was dismissed in 1941 after an intrigue because he did not seem anti-Catholic to the party leadership. Ultimately, the Gau Westfalen-Süd was an artificial structure; a real replacement of the whole of Westphalia did not succeed. Attempts to create a district identity remained limited and largely failed. It is significant, for example, that the party newspaper Westfälische Landeszeitung - Rote Erde was not renamed "Südwestfälische Landeszeitung" or something similar.

As Gauleiter, Giesler's successor had other functions: Prussian State Councilor , as Gau Housing Commissioner, regional representative of Reich Housing Commissioner Robert Ley and, from April 6, 1942 , Gau Commissioner of the “General Plenipotentiary for Labor Deployment”, Fritz Sauckel , and Reich Defense Commissioner for the Gau.

Towards the end of the war, a Sauerland Freikorps was formed from September 1944 . This was incorporated a short time later as a Gauverband in the Volkssturm , whose commandant was the last Gauleiter Albert Hoffmann . In the end, on April 13, 1945, he announced the dissolution of the NSDAP in his area.

Gauleiter

NSDAP district leadership

literature

  • Jürgen John, Horst Möller (Ed.): The NS-Gaue. Regional middle authorities in the centralized “leader state”. Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-58086-0 .
  • Alfred Bruns: The Gau Westphalia-South. In: Alfred Bruns, Michael Senger (editor): The swastika in the Sauerland. Schieferbergbau-Heimatmuseum, Schmallenberg-Holthausen 1988, ISBN 3-922659-48-9 , pp. 25-58.
  • Ralf Blank : Mobilization in War. The Westphalia-South district from 1943 to 1945 . In: Mobilization under National Socialism. Institutions and regions in the war economy and the administration of the ›Third Reich‹ 1936 to 1945. Paderborn, 2013 pp. 197–215 PDF preview

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Wolfgang Stelbrink: Westphalia in National Socialism (1933-1939). Internet portal "Westphalian History", accessed in October 2019.
  2. cf. Friedrich Alfred Beck: Kampf und Sieg. History of the National Socialist German Workers' Party in the Gau Westfalen-Süd from the beginning to the takeover of power. Dortmund 1938