Reichsgau

A Reichsgau was an administrative subdivision created in a number of areas annexed by Nazi Germany between 1938 and 1945.

Overview

The term was formed from the words Reich and Gau, the latter a deliberately medieval-sounding word with a meaning approximately equivalent to shire. The Reichsgaue were an attempt to resolve the administrative chaos resulting from the mutually overlapping jurisdictions and different boundaries of the NSDAP Party Gau, placed under a Party Gauleiter, and the federal states, under a Reichsstatthalter responsible to the Ministry of the Interior. Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick had long desired to streamline the German administration, and the Reichsgaue were the result: the borders of party Gaue and those of the federal states were to be identical, and the party Gauleiter also occupied the post of Reichsstatthalter. Rival interests and the influence the Gauleiter wielded with Hitler prevented any reform from being undertaken in the "Old Reich", which meant Germany in its borders of 1937 before the annexation of other territories like Austria, the Sudetenland, and Bohemia, and the Reichsgau scheme was therefore implemented only in newly-acquired territories.
There were several Reichsgaue:

Ostmark formed from the formerly independent Austria
Sudetenland, formed from a substantial part of the German-speaking outer rim areas of the former Czechoslovakia occupied in 1938
Danzig-Westpreußen and Wartheland, formed from the Free City of Danzig and areas annexed from Poland

The East March was subsequently subdivided into seven smaller Reichsgaue, generally coterminous with the former Austrian Länder.

List of

in Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia established in 1938

established during the Second World War

Planned that were never established

Planned for a post-Nazi Germany

The conservative wing of the German resistance to Nazism, namely Ludwig Beck and Carl Goerdeler, had planned to divide all of Germany after a successful takeover of the government into Reichsgaue, modeled after the counties in the UK and the provinces of Prussia. According to Goerdelers 1941 memorandum Das Ziel, every Gau should have been self-administered by a Gau Landtag and overseen by a Oberpräsident. In every Gau, there should have been a Gau court, a Gau attorney, and a Gau president of each the Reichsbahn, the Reichspost, and the revenue services.

Gau name	German name	Notes
East Prussia	Ostpreußen	To be formed out of the Prussian Province of East Prussia in the 1918 borders
West Prussia	Westpreußen	To be formed out of the Reichsgau Danzig-Westpreußen, roughly corresponding to the former Province of West Prussia
Wartheland	Wartheland	To be formed out of the Reichsgau Wartheland, roughly corresponding to the former Province of Posen
Upper Silesia	Oberschlesien	To be formed out of the Province of Upper Silesia
Lower Silesia	Niederschlesien	To be formed out of the Province of Lower Silesia
Sudetenland	Sudetenland
Upper Saxony	Obersachsen	To be formed out of Saxony and probably the later Prussian Province of Halle-Merseburg, capital in Dresden
Middle Saxony	Mittelsachsen	To be formed out of Anhalt and the later Prussian Province of Magdeburg
Brandenburg	Brandenburg	To be formed out of the Prussian Province of Brandenburg
Berlin	Berlin	To be formed out of Greater Berlin
Pomerania	Pommern	To be formed out of the Prussian Province of Pomerania
Mecklenburg	Mecklenburg
Schleswig-Holstein	Schleswig-Holstein	To be formed out of the Prussian Province of Schleswig-Holstein
Lower Saxony	Niedersachsen	To be formed out of the Prussian Province of Hanover, the State of Brunswick and Bremen
Hamburg	Hamburg
Oldenburg	Oldenburg	To be formed out of the State of Oldenburg
Westphalia	Westfalen	To be formed out of the Prussian Province of Westphalia
Rhineland	Rheinland	To be formed out of the Prussian Regierungsbezirke of Koblenz, Düsseldorf, Cologne and Aachen
Hesse-Nassau	Hessen-Nassau	To be formed out of the Prussian Province of Hesse-Nassau, capital in Kassel
Thuringia	Thüringen	To be formed out of the State of Thuringia and the Prussian Regierungsbezirk Erfurt
Saar-Palatinate	Saarpfalz	To be formed out of the Territory of the Saar Basin, the Bavarian Palatinate and the Regierungsbezirk Trier
Hesse	Hessen	To be formed out of the State of Hesse, capital in Darmstadt
Alsace	Elsass	To be formed out of the German-speaking parts of Alsace and probably German Lorraine, with a high degree of autonomy
Baden	Baden	To be formed out of the State of Baden
Württemberg	Württemberg	To be formed out of the State of Württemberg, Vorarlberg and probably Bavarian Swabia
Bavaria	Bayern	To be formed out of the Bavarian Regierungsbezirke Upper Bavaria, Lower Bavaria and Upper Palatinate and Tyrol, capital in Munich
Franconia	Franken	To be formed out of the Bavarian Regierungsbezirke Upper Franconia, Middle Franconia and Lower Franconia, capital in Nuremberg
Austria	Österreich	To be formed out of Vienna, Lower Austria, Upper Austria, Styria, Salzburg and Carinthia