| Gau Schleswig-Holstein | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gau ofNazi Germany | |||||||||||||
| 1925–1945 | |||||||||||||
.svg) Flag  Coat of arms | |||||||||||||
 | |||||||||||||
| Capital | Kiel | ||||||||||||
| Government | |||||||||||||
| Gauleiter | |||||||||||||
• 1925–1945 | Hinrich Lohse | ||||||||||||
| History | |||||||||||||
| 26 February 1925 | |||||||||||||
| 8 May 1945 | |||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
| Today part of | Germany | ||||||||||||
TheGau Schleswig-Holstein was formed on 26 February 1925. It was anadministrative division ofNazi Germany from 1933 to 1945 in thePrussianProvince of Schleswig-Holstein, parts of theFree State of Oldenburg and, from 1 April 1937, theFree City of Lübeck. Before that, from 1925 to 1933, it was the regional subdivision of theNazi Party in that area.
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 Schleswig-Holstein was held byHinrich Lohse from its establishment on 26 February 1925 throughout the history of the Gau, with the exception of a six-month period in 1932 when the office was held byJoachim Meyer-Quade.[3][4] From 1941 onward Lohse was simultaneously in charge of theReichskommissariat Ostland where he was responsible for the implementation ofNazi Germanization policies built on the foundations of theGeneralplan Ost: the killing of almost allJews,Romani people andCommunists and the oppression of the local population were its necessary corollaries.[5] He was sentenced to ten years in prison in 1948 but released in 1951, an extradition request by the Soviet Union having been refused, and died in 1964.[6]
