''Bezirksleiter'' (District Leader) was a

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...

title which was used in the early years of the Party's existence, beginning around 1926.

History

The position of ''Bezirksleiter'' was originally established around 1926 as the next higher organizational official overseeing several local branches (''Ortsgruppen'') of the Party. As such, the ''Bezirksleiter'' served as the intermediary between the local Party heads ('' Ortsgruppenleiter'') and the head of the

Gau Gau or GAU may refer to: People * Gaugericus (–626), Bishop of Cambrai * Gau Ming-Ho (born 1949), Chinese mountaineer * Franz Christian Gau (1790–1854), German architect and archaeologist * James Gau (born 1957), Papua New Guinean politi ...

organization (''

Gauleiter A ''Gauleiter'' () was a regional leader of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) who served as the head of a '' Gau'' or ''Reichsgau''. ''Gauleiter'' was the third-highest rank in the Nazi political leadership, subordinate only to ''Reichsleiter'' and to th ...

''). The number of ''Bezirkleiters'' in each Gau, if any, depended on the size of the Gau, and their jurisdictions were not necessarily coterminous with existing governmental units. At a January 1929 Party Conference held in

Weimar Weimar is a city in the state (Germany), state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany (cultural area), Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg an ...

Gregor Strasser Gregor Strasser (also german: Straßer, see ß; 31 May 1892 – 30 June 1934) was an early prominent German Nazi official and politician who was murdered during the Night of the Long Knives in 1934. Born in 1892 in Bavaria, Strasser served in ...

, the ''Reichsorganisationsleiter'', authorized the ''Gauleiters'' to subdivide their Gaue into districts if the organizational strength of the Gau justified this change. The subdivisions were based on the '' Kreis'', the standard administrative unit existing in the German States, roughly analogous to a

county A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposes Chambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...

. With this organizational restructuring, the ''Bezirksleiter'' began to be phased out, to be replaced by the '' Kreisleiter'' as the standardized intermediate administrative level between the ''Gauleitung'' (Gau leadership) and the local Party branches. Many of the early ''Bezirksleiters'' advanced to the position of ''Gauleiter'', such as Franz Schwede,

Gustav Simon Gustav Simon (2 August 1900– 18 December 1945) was a Nazi Party official who served as ''Gauleiter'' of Gau Moselland from 1931 to 1945 and, from 1940 until 1942, as Chief of Civil Administration in occupied Luxembourg. Early years Gustav S ...

, Jakob Sprenger, Josef Terboven and Karl Wahl to name but a few.Michael D. Miller & Andreas Schulz: Gauleiter: The Regional Leaders of the Nazi Party and Their Deputies, 1925-1945, Volume 3 (Fritz Sauckel – Hans Zimmermann), Fonthill Media, 2021, pp. 231; 248; 283; 438; 608. .

References

{{Nazi Germany paramilitary ranks Nazi political ranks