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Gau Düsseldorf
Gau of Nazi Germany
1930–1945
Flag Coat of arms
Gau Düsseldorf on the left, bordering The Netherlands
Capital	Düsseldorf
Area
•	2,700 km (1,000 sq mi)
Population
•	2,200,000
Government
Gauleiter
• 1930–1945	Friedrich Karl Florian
History
• Establishment	1 August 1930
• Allied capture of Düsseldorf and destruction of the Ruhr pocket	18 April 1945
Preceded by Succeeded by Rhine Province North Rhine-Westphalia
Today part of	Germany

The Gau Düsseldorf was an administrative division of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945 in the Düsseldorf region of the Prussian Rhine Province. Before that, from 1930 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. The region had originally belonged to the Gau Ruhr, initially led by Joseph Goebbels, became part of the Gau Westphalia in 1928 before becoming its own Gau in August 1930.

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.

Interwar period

The position of Gauleiter in Düsseldorf was held by Friedrich Karl Florian throughout the history of the Gau from 1930 to 1945.

On 10 November 1938, Florian played an active part in the Kristallnacht pogrom in Düsseldorf, leading SA and Hitler Youth in attacking the home of the Regierungspräsident Carl Christian Schmid, whose wife was Jewish. In the city-wide attacks on Jewish homes and businesses, five persons were killed and hundreds were injured or left homeless.

World War II

On 16 November 1942, Florian was named Reich Defense Commissioner for his Gau and in October 1944 he was made head of the Düsseldorf Volkssturm contingent.

Throughout the war, the Gau's capital Düsseldorf was heavily destroyed by allied aerial bombardment. The most severe attack occurred on June 12, 1943, when a firestorm was ignited through targeted bombing by the British Royal Air Force, largely destroying the historical city center, downtown, and other adjacent neighborhoods.

At the end of February 1945, the allies invaded the Gau, with Schwalmtal and Jüchen, in the south of the Gau, being among the first settlements occupied. In early March, the allies occupied all the Gau's territories of west of the Rhine, though the river served as a natural defensive boundary and stalled further allied advance into the Gau for several weeks. After the allies secured a new bridgehead in the Battle of Remagen (7–25 March 1945), further advance became possible.

On 23 March 1945, Florian and two other Gauleiters from the industrial Ruhr area (Albert Hoffmann and Fritz Schlessmann) met with Reichsminister of Armaments and War Production Albert Speer. Speer tried to convince them to ignore Adolf Hitler’s Nero Decree mandating a scorched earth policy ahead of the Allied armies’ advance. A rabid Nazi, Florian alone argued in favor of the policy. He read aloud a proclamation he intended to issue ordering the evacuation of the population of Düsseldorf and setting fire to all buildings, leaving the Allies a burned-out, deserted city. However, in the end, he did not issue the proclamation and was unable to implement these drastic actions before the Allies captured the city.

The German-held territory inside the Gau would become surrounded by the allies on 1 April and form the Ruhr pocket. Initially encompassing areas from not only Gau Düsseldorf but also Gau Cologne-Aachen, Gau Westphalia-South, Gau Westphalia-North, and Gau Essen, the Ruhr pocket underwent a significant reduction over the next weeks due to the allied advance. Eventually, by 15 April, the pocket had contracted to include only Gau Düsseldorf. On 18 April 1945, Dusseldorf, the Gau's capital, was taken with the help of a local anti-Nazi resistance group led by Karl August Wiedenhofen [de] which launched Aktion Rheinland, and the last resistance in the pocket was finally eliminated that same day.

A timeline of the allied advance is listed below.

Aftermath

Geography and demographics

The Gau had a size of 2,700 km (2,741 sq mi) and a population of 2,200,000, which placed it in mid-table for size and population in the list of Gaue.

References

1. ^ "Die NS-Gaue" [The Nazi Gaue]. dhm.de (in German). Deutsches Historisches Museum. Retrieved 26 March 2016.
2. ^ "Gau Düsseldorf". verwaltungsgeschichte.de (in German). Archived from the original on 23 May 2017. Retrieved 26 March 2016.
3. "The Organization of the Nazi Party & State". nizkor.org. The Nizkor Project. Archived from the original on 9 November 2016. Retrieved 26 March 2016.
4. "Übersicht der NSDAP-Gaue, der Gauleiter und der Stellvertretenden Gauleiter zwischen 1933 und 1945" [Overview of Nazi Gaue, the Gauleiter and assistant Gauleiter from 1933 to 1945]. zukunft-braucht-erinnerung.de (in German). Zukunft braucht Erinnerung. Retrieved 26 March 2016.
5. Miller & Schulz 2012, pp. 176–178.
6. Miller & Schulz 2012, p. 179.
7. Speer 1970, pp. 565–566.
8. Hans Kaiser: Vom Rathaus aus den GIs entgegen. In: Rheinische Post (Lokalteil Viersen), 21. Februar 2015, Seite C6. Ihr Vormarsch war Teil der Operation Grenade.
9. ONLINE, RP (2010-02-26). "Jüchen: Als der Amerikaner kam". RP ONLINE (in German). Retrieved 2023-09-01.
10. Sommerfeld, Carsten (2020-02-07). "1945 in Grevenbroich: Die letzten Schrecken des Krieges". RP ONLINE (in German). Retrieved 2023-09-01.
11. Peters, Leo (2020-02-28). "Serie Vor 75 Jahren: Als die Amerikaner Kaldenkirchen besetzten". RP ONLINE (in German). Retrieved 2023-09-01.
12. Die letzten Kämpfe in der Region
13. U.S. Library of Congress March 1, 1945: HQ Twelfth Army Group situation map
14. Seeger, Stephan (2019-01-19). "Geschichtsforschung in Kaarst: Als die USA in Kaarst einmarschierten". RP ONLINE (in German). Retrieved 2023-09-01.
15. Zeitung, Westdeutsche (2020-02-28). "2. März 1945 - vor 75 Jahren: Tag der Befreiung in Kempen". Westdeutsche Zeitung (in German). Retrieved 2023-09-01.
16. Zeitung, Westdeutsche (2020-03-01). "75 Jahre Kriegsende: "Friedliche Panzer" kamen in Grefrath an". Westdeutsche Zeitung (in German). Retrieved 2023-09-01.
17. Buchbauer, Andreas (2020-02-29). "Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs: Als die Alliierten nach Neuss kamen". RP ONLINE (in German). Retrieved 2023-09-01.
18. "Als der Zweite Weltkrieg in Krefeld endete | Stadt Krefeld". www.krefeld.de. Retrieved 2023-09-01.
19. ONLINE, RP (2007-02-28). "Rommerskirchen: Viele Tote kurz vor Kriegsende". RP ONLINE (in German). Retrieved 2023-09-01.
20. Schumilas, Klaus-Dieter (2020-02-25). "Einmarsch der US-Armee 1945: Dormagen gedenkt der Befreiung der Stadt". RP ONLINE (in German). Retrieved 2023-09-01.
21. "Kämpfe bei Leverkusen-Schlebusch | Das Kriegsende in der Heimat". www.das-kriegsende.de. Retrieved 2023-09-01.
22. Demski, Theresa (2020-05-08). "Das Kriegsende vor 75 Jahren: "Wir waren froh, dass der Spuk aufhörte"". RP ONLINE (in German). Retrieved 2023-09-01.
23. "Wuppertal | Das Jahr 1945" (in German). Retrieved 2023-09-01.
24. Ludwig, Marie (2020-04-16). "75 Jahre Kriegsende in Mettmann: Der Tag, an dem die Amerikaner kamen". RP ONLINE (in German). Retrieved 2023-09-01.
25. "Vor 75 Jahren endete der Krieg in Solingen". solinger-tageblatt.de (in German). 2020-04-16. Retrieved 2023-09-01.
26. Köhnes, Paul (2020-04-05). "Gedenken: Wie der Krieg in der Stadt zu Ende ging". RP ONLINE (in German). Retrieved 2023-09-02.
27. "Stadt Ratingen" (PDF).
28. Oliver, Dennis (2019-04-30). Tank Destroyer, Achilles and M10: British Army Anti-Tank Units, Western Europe, 1944–1945. Pen and Sword. ISBN 978-1-5267-4191-2.
29. Miller & Schulz 2012, p. 180.
30. Baumann, Hermann (7 May 1971). "Brauner im Bunker" [Brown man in the bunker]. Die Zeit (in German). Retrieved 26 March 2016.
31. Miller & Schulz 2012, pp. 180–181.
32. "ZEITGESCHICHTE / NATIONALSOZIALISTEN" [History/Nazis]. spiegel.de (in German). Der Spiegel. 8 May 1967. Retrieved 26 March 2016.
33. Klee 2007, p. 156.
34. "Gau Köln-Aachen" [Gau Cologne-Aix-la-Chapelle]. rheinische-geschichte.lvr.de (in German). Landschaftsverband Rheinland. Archived from the original on 22 October 2016. Retrieved 26 March 2016.

Sources

• Klee, Ernst (2007). Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945. Frankfurt-am-Main: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag. ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8.
• Miller, Michael; Schulz, Andreas (2012). Gauleiter: The Regional Leaders of the Nazi Party and Their Deputies, 1925-1945, Vol. 1. R. James Bender Publishing. ISBN 978-1-932970-21-0.
• Speer, Albert (1970). Inside the Third Reich. New York: Avon Books. ISBN 978-0-380-00071-5.

External links

• Illustrated list of Gauleiter

• States and territories established in 1930
• States and territories disestablished in 1945
• 1930 establishments in Germany
• 1945 disestablishments in Germany
• History of Düsseldorf
• Rhine Province under Nazi rule