| Gau Lower Silesia | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gau ofNazi Germany | |||||||||||||
| 1941–1945 | |||||||||||||
.svg) Flag | |||||||||||||
 | |||||||||||||
| Capital | Breslau | ||||||||||||
| Government | |||||||||||||
| Gauleiter | |||||||||||||
• 1941–1945 | Karl Hanke | ||||||||||||
| History | |||||||||||||
| 27 January 1941 | |||||||||||||
| 1 August 1945 | |||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
| Today part of | GermanyPoland | ||||||||||||
TheGau Lower Silesia (German:Gau Niederschlesien) was anadministrative division ofNazi Germany from 1941 to 1945 in theLower Silesia part of thePrussianProvince of Silesia. The Gau was created when theGau Silesia was split into Lower Silesia andUpper Silesia in 1941. The majority of the former Gau became part of Poland after the Second World War, with small parts in the far west becoming part of the futureEast Germany.
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 both the government and party positions and were in charge of, among other things, propaganda, surveillance and, from September 1944 onward, theVolkssturm and the defense of the Gau.[1][2]
The position of Gauleiter in Lower Silesia was held byKarl Hanke throughout the short history of the Gau.[3][4] On 29 April 1945, Hitler, in his political testament, appointed Hanke to be the last Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police, replacing Heinrich Himmler. Hanke who evacuated the Gau's capital too late and, for a long time, refused its surrender during theSiege of Breslau escaped shortly before the eventual surrender of Breslau on 6 May 1945. Hanke was killed by Czech partisans after having been captured and making an escape attempt.[5]
TheGross-Rosen concentration camp was located in the Gau Lower Silesia. Of the 140,000 prisoners that were sent to the camp 40,000 perished.[6]
