The Gau Essen was an administrative division of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945 in the northern parts of the Prussian Rhine Province. Before that, from 1928 to 1933, it was the regional subdivision of the Nazi Party in that area.
History
Establishment and government The Nazi Gau (plural Gaue) system was originally established in a party conference on 22 May 1926, in order to improve administration of the party structure. From 1933 onward, after the Nazi seizure of power, the Gaue increasingly replaced the German states as administrative subdivisions in Germany.
At the head of each Gau stood a Gauleiter, a position which became increasingly more powerful, especially after the outbreak of the Second 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, the Volkssturm and the defense of the Gau.
World War II The position of Gauleiter in Essen was held by Josef Terboven throughout the history of the Gau. After the German conquest of Norway in 1940 Hitler promoted Terboven Reichskommissar for the occupied country, where he ruled with almost absolute power. He committed suicide on 8 May 1945 by detonating 50 kilograms of explosives in a bunker. While Terboven was in Norway, the Deputy Gauleiter, Fritz Schlessmann, ran the Gau in an acting capacity.Michael D. Miller & Andreas Schulz: Gauleiter: The Regional Leaders of the Nazi Party and Their Deputies, 1925-1945, Volume I (Herbert Albrecht - H. Wilhelm Hüttmann). R. James Bender Publishing, 2012, p.21. .
As Gauleiter, Schlessmann had responsibility for air raid defense measures in Essen throughout the war. As a large industrial center and the site of the Krupp armaments works, Essen was a frequent target of Allied bombing raids. In the fall of 1944, Schlessmann was placed in charge of the local Volkssturm forces in Essen and was also charged with improving the fortifications along the area of the Westwall defensive line adjacent to his Gau. He was promoted to the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer on 9 November 1944.
From February to March 1945, Operation Veritable saw the allies advance further into the Gau.
The Gau had a size of 1,900 km2 (2,741 sq mi) and a population of 2,800,000, which placed it in mid-table for size and population in the list of Gaue.
Allied invasion and occupation Near the end of World War II, the Gau was invaded by the western allies, who would gradually capture its territory until the end of the war. The timeline of the allied advance is detailed in the table below. +Date of captureLocation8 February 1945Wyler8 February 1945Frasselt8-10 February 1945Kranenburg8-12 February 1945Kleve9 February 194517 February 1945Moyland19 February 1945Goch18 February-3 March 1945Uedem21 February 1945Wertzhof22-27 February 1945Weeze25 February 1945Grotendonk26 February-1 March 194527 February 1945Kalkar1 March 19451 March 1945Wemb3 March 19453 March 1945Kevelaer3 March 1945Geldern3 March 19453 March 1945Straelen4 March 1945Moers4 March 1945Issum4 March 19454 March 1945Marienbaum5 March 1945Sonsbeck5 March 1945Homberg5 March 1945Rheinhausen5 March 1945Kamp-Lintfort7 March 1945Rheinberg8 March 1945Xanten9 March 194523 March 1945Dinslaken26-27 March 194526-27 March 1945USA-SS-Chronology. S. 45628 March 1945Haldern31 March 1945Emmerich7 April 1945Altenessen11 April 1945Essen12 April 1945Duisburg15 April 1945Werden15 April 1945Kettwig
References
Sources
External links Illustrated list of Gauleiter