| Gau Hesse-Nassau | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gau ofNazi Germany | |||||||||||
| 1933–1945 | |||||||||||
.svg) Flag | |||||||||||
 | |||||||||||
| Capital | Frankfurt | ||||||||||
| Government | |||||||||||
| Gauleiter | |||||||||||
• 1933–1945 | Jakob Sprenger | ||||||||||
| History | |||||||||||
| 1 January 1933 | |||||||||||
| 8 May 1945 | |||||||||||
| |||||||||||
| Today part of | Germany | ||||||||||
TheGau Hesse-Nassau (German:Gau Hessen-Nassau) was anadministrative division ofNazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. It was formed by the merger of two separate Gaue comprising thePeople's State of Hesse (also known as Hesse-Darmstadt) and the southern parts of thePrussian province ofHesse-Nassau that were, from 1927 to 1933, the regional subdivisions of theNazi Party in those areas.
The Nazi Gau (plural Gaue) system was originally established in aparty conference on 22 May 1926, in order to improve administration of the party structure. From 1933 onwards, after theNazi seizure of power, theGaue increasingly replaced the German states as administrative subdivisions in Germany.[1]
At the head of each Gau stood aGauleiter, a position which became increasingly more powerful, especially after the outbreak of theSecond World War, with little interference from above. Local Gauleiters often held government positions as well as party ones and were in charge of, among other things, propaganda and surveillance and, from September 1944 onward, theVolkssturm and the defense of the Gau.[1][2]
The position of Gauleiter in Hesse-Nassau was held byJakob Sprenger throughout the history of the Gau.[3][4] Sprenger and his wife committed suicide inTyrol on 7 May 1945, where they had gone into hiding.[5]
