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45-410: 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. In the early stages, the borders and leaders of these Gaue fluctuated frequently, mainly due to internal power struggles. The Gau Swabia was, for the most part, identical with today's Regierungsbezirk Swabia . The Gau Swabia came under

90-488: A Landesverwaltungsamt (county administration office) with three offices at the former seats of the Bezirksregierungen . On 1 January 2005, Lower Saxony followed suit, disbanding its remaining four Regierungsbezirke of Brunswick , Hanover , Lüneburg , and Weser-Ems . On 1 August 2008, Saxony restructured its counties ( Landkreise , German: [ˈlantˌkʁaɪ̯zə] ), changed

135-568: A form of inner-party administration to a political and administrative sub-division of the country was gradual, not sudden, but completed by 1934. The process termed Gleichschaltung took care of all political opposition and the " Law on the Reconstruction of the Reich " of 30 January 1934 can possibly be seen as the final date for the transfer of power from the states to the Gaue . In Swabia,

180-614: A group which the government has identified as dangerous or undesirable." Although the first example of civilian internment may date as far back as the 1830s, the English term concentration camp was first used in order to refer to the reconcentration camps (Spanish: reconcentrados ) which were set up by the Spanish military in Cuba during the Ten Years' War (1868–1878). The label

225-550: A relatively small Gau , the local Gauleiter Wahl had to initially fend off attempts by his more powerful neighbor, Adolf Wagner , Gauleiter of the Munich-Upper Bavaria region, to incooperate Swabia into his Gau . Wahl was actually the only one of the Bavarian Gauleiter not to have graduated from University. Unlike Wagner, who was a personal friend of Hitler's, Wahl wielded no real influence with

270-577: A result, the term "concentration camp" is sometimes conflated with the concept of an " extermination camp " and historians debate whether the term "concentration camp" or the term "internment camp" should be used to describe other examples of civilian internment. Also during World War II, concentration camps were established by Italian , Japanese , US , and Canadian forces. The former label continues to see expanded use for cases post- World War II , for instance in relation to British camps in Kenya during

315-556: A third authority in the still existing state, Franz Ritter von Epp held the office of Reichsstatthalter but wielded no real power. Swabia did not have a concentration camp within its boundaries but its close proximity to Dachau meant, that many of its subcamps were in the Gau . Swabia was also home to the Ordensburg Sonthofen , an elite Nazi training facility. As of 1938, Augsburg had around 900 Jews living within

360-411: A total of 19 Regierungsbezirke , ranging in population from 5,255,000 ( Düsseldorf ) to 1,065,000 ( Gießen ): [REDACTED] Media related to Regierungsbezirk at Wikimedia Commons Concentration camp A concentration camp is a form of internment camp for confining political prisoners or politically targeted demographics , such as members of national or minority ethnic groups, on

405-523: Is a type of administrative division in Germany. Currently, four of sixteen Bundesländer ( states of Germany ) are split into Regierungsbezirke . Beneath these are rural and urban districts Regierungsbezirke ( pronounced [ʁeˈɡiːʁʊŋsbəˌt͡sɪʁkə] ) serve as regional mid-level local government units in four of Germany's sixteen federal states : Baden-Württemberg , Bavaria , Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia . Each of

450-406: Is that inmates are held outside the rule of law . Extermination camps or death camps, whose primary purpose is killing, are also imprecisely referred to as "concentration camps". The American Heritage Dictionary defines the term concentration camp as: "A camp where persons are confined, usually without hearings and typically under harsh conditions, often as a result of their membership in

495-676: The Hitler Jugend . The Gau Schwaben belonged to the military district Wehrkreis VII , which had its headquarters in Munich. The highest position in the Gau , Gauleiter , was held by only one person during the history of the Gau Schwaben : Second in charge were the Stellvertretende Gauleiter : The Jewish population of Swabia had remained relatively stable from the turn of the 20th century to 1933. With

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540-634: The Cheka . These camps, as Lenin envisioned them, had a distinctly political purpose. These concentration camps were not identical to the Stalinist, but were introduced to isolate war prisoners given the extreme historical situation following World War 1 . In 1929, the distinction between criminal and political prisoners was eliminated, administration of the camps was turned over to the Joint State Political Directorate , and

585-619: The Communist Party of Germany and the Social Democratic Party of Germany , in 1933, detaining tens of thousands of prisoners. Many camps were closed following releases of prisoners at the end of the year, and the camp population would continue to dwindle through 1936; this trend would reverse in 1937, with the Nazi regime arresting tens of thousands of " anti-socials ", a category that included Romani people as well as

630-748: The Mau Mau rebellion (1952–1960), and camps set up in Chile during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990). According to the United States Department of Defense as many as 3 million Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minority groups are being held in China 's internment camps which are located in the Xinjiang region and which American news reports often label as concentration camps . The camps were established in

675-670: The state parliament . Regierungsbezirk is a German term variously translated into English as "governmental district", "administrative district" or "province", with the first two being the closest literal translations. The first Regierungsbezirke were established in the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Kingdom of Prussia in 1808. During the course of the Prussian reforms between 1808 and 1816, Prussia subdivided its provinces into 25 Regierungsbezirke , eventually featuring 37 such districts within 12 provinces. By 1871, at

720-755: The Jewish population of Swabia was small, only Memmingen and Nördlingen having substantial numbers. After the forced addition of Austria to the Reich in March 1938, small parts of the former country were added to the south of the Gau Schwaben , specifically the Jungholz region. With the outbreak of the Second World War , the power of the Gauleiters , and therefore the power of the Gaue compared to

765-616: The Nazis rise to power it declined through deportation and emigration. After 1939, few of those remaining would have had a chance to escape or even survive the Holocaust . Source: "Der Gau Schwaben der NSDAP" (in German). Verwaltungsgeschichte.de . Retrieved 2008-06-26 . Regierungsbezirk A Regierungsbezirk ( German pronunciation: [ʁeˈɡiːʁʊŋsbəˌtsɪʁk] ) means "governmental district" and

810-460: The Province of Hanover and Schaumburg-Lippe. These differences in autonomy and size were levelled on 1 January 1978, when four Regierungsbezirke replaced the two Verwaltungsbezirke and the six Regierungsbezirke : Brunswick and Oldenburg, Aurich , Hanover (remaining mostly the same), Hildesheim, Lüneburg, Osnabrück and Stade . Following the reunification of Germany in 1990,

855-797: The Spanish–Cuban Ten Years' War when Spanish forces detained Cuban civilians in camps in order to more easily combat guerrilla forces. Over the following decades the British during the Second Boer War and the Americans during the Philippine–American War also used concentration camps. The term "concentration camp" and "internment camp" are used to refer to a variety of systems that greatly differ in their severity, mortality rate, and architecture; their defining characteristic

900-691: The camps were greatly expanded to the point that they comprised a significant portion of the Soviet economy. This Gulag system consisted of several hundred camps for most of its existence and detained some 18 million from 1929 until 1953. As part of a series of reforms during the Khrushchev Thaw , the Gulag shrank to a quarter of its former size and receded in its significance in Soviet society. The Nazis first established concentration camps for tens of thousands of political prisoners, primarily members of

945-529: The camps, of whom about a million died during their imprisonment. The total number of casualties in these camps is difficult to determine, but the deliberate policy of extermination through labor in many of the camps was designed to ensure that the inmates would die of starvation, untreated disease and summary executions within set periods of time. In addition to the concentration camps, Nazi Germany established six extermination camps , specifically designed to kill millions of people, primarily by gassing . As

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990-462: The city boundaries and was home to a magnificent synagogue , destroyed during Kristallnacht on 10 November 1938. It also had 200 Jewish men sent to Dachau that day. In the following years, the Jewish population of the city was gradually deported to concentration camps , that of 3 April 1942, numbering 128 persons, being the largest deportation since the Kristallnacht. Outside of the capital,

1035-414: The death rate of these camps was 45 per cent, twice that of the British camps. The Russian Empire used forced exile and forced labour as forms of judicial punishment. Katorga , a category of punishment which was reserved for those who were convicted of the most serious crimes, had many of the features which were associated with labor-camp imprisonment. According to historian Anne Applebaum , katorga

1080-624: The first former Kreisleiter to be elected for the West German parliament, the Bundestag . The various departments of the Nazi organisation were by no means streamlined with the Gau system, but rather fiercely independent and competitive to each other. For example, while Bavaria was sub-divided in six Gaue , it was also divided in four sections of the SA , three sections of the SS and six sections of

1125-556: The grounds of state security, or for exploitation or punishment. Prominent examples of historic concentration camps include the British confinement of non-combatants during the Second Boer War , the mass internment of Japanese-American citizens by the US during the Second World War , the Nazi concentration camps (which later morphed into extermination camps ), and the Soviet labour camps or gulag . The term concentration camp originates from

1170-627: The head of the party. Only when Hitler's ambitions turned national did his interest in Bavarian affairs dwindle. With the end of the internal power struggle, the following six Gaue had been established in Bavaria: With the ascent of the Nazis to power on 30 January 1933, the so-called Machtergreifung , the party immediately began to disassemble the power of the German states, the Länder . It

1215-440: The homeless, mentally ill, and social non-conformists. Jews were increasingly targeted beginning in 1938. Following the Nazi invasion of Poland and the beginning of World War II, the camps were massively expanded and became increasingly deadly. At its peak, the Nazi concentration camp system was extensive, with as many as 15,000 camps and at least 715,000 simultaneous internees. About 1.65 million people were registered prisoners in

1260-541: The leadership of Karl Wahl (1892–1981), later an SS-Obergruppenführer , on 1 October 1928, when the Gau system in Bavaria was formalised, and remained under his control for the duration of the existence of the Gau. Until 1930, Bavaria, as the heartland of the Nazi movement in the 1920s, was seen by Hitler as his personal realm, the local Gaue commonly being called Untergaue (English: Sub-Gaue ), to show their dependence on

1305-462: The mayor of Augsburg, unsuccessfully. Nevertheless, their rise to power there could not be stopped either and by 1941, the party had 39,000 members in the city. Gradually, the Gauleiter (English: Gau Leader ) took control over their territories, reducing the local Minister Presidents , nominally the highest office in the German states, to figureheads. As such, the development of the Gau from

1350-747: The name of its Regierungsbezirke to Direktionsbezirke (directorate districts), and moved some responsibilities to the districts. The Direktionsbezirke were still named Chemnitz , Dresden , and Leipzig , but a border change was necessary because the new district of Mittelsachsen crossed the borders of the old Regierungsbezirke . On 1 March 2012, the Direktionsbezirke were merged into one Landesdirektion (county directorate). Currently, only four German states out of 16 in total are divided into Regierungsbezirke ; all others are directly divided into districts without mid-level agencies. Those four states are divided into

1395-457: The nineteen Regierungsbezirke features a non- legislative governing body called a Regierungspräsidium (governing presidium) or Bezirksregierung (district government) headed by a Regierungspräsident (governing president), concerned mostly with administrative decisions on a local level for districts within its jurisdiction. Saxony has Direktionsbezirke (directorate districts) with more responsibilities shifted from

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1440-421: The party leadership. The Gauleiter was directly appointed by Hitler and only answerable to him. In practice, Hitler interfered little in the affairs of the local leaders and their power was almost absolute. Parallel to the five Bavarian Gauleiter , a Bavarian Minister President still existed during this time, the Nazi politician Ludwig Siebert and, after his death in 1942, his successor, Paul Giesler . As

1485-452: The refugee problem, nearly a quarter of the population of Augsburg after the war being refugees and displaced persons . Karl Wahl, Gauleiter of Swabia for almost 17 years, only served a light sentence after the war. He died in 1981, aged 88. Philipp Meyer , Nazi Kreisleiter for Donauwörth , was sentenced to death at end of the war for refusing to evacuate his district and prepare it for defense and, in post-war West Germany , he became

1530-489: The state government, increased. Many of the Gauleiters were put in charge of the war effort in their Military District (German: Wehrkreis ). Swabia, with its capital Augsburg , was a vital place for the war effort, being home to the manufacturers MAN AG and Messerschmitt . For this reason, Augsburg suffered heavily under allied bombing raids. Many of the companies in Swabia and Augsburg which were in some way involved in

1575-791: The state of North Rhine-Westphalia in modern Germany are in direct continuation of those created in the Prussian Rhine and Westphalia provinces in 1816. Regierungsbezirke never existed in Bremen , Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein , and Saarland . In 1946, Lower Saxony was founded by the merger of the three former Free States of Brunswick , Oldenburg , Schaumburg-Lippe , and the former Prussian province of Hanover . Brunswick and Oldenburg became Verwaltungsbezirke [fɛɐ̯ˈvaltʊŋsbəˌt͡sɪʁkə] (roughly administrative regions of extended competence) alongside six less autonomous Prussian-style Regierungsbezirke comprising

1620-513: The territory of the former East Germany was organized into six re-established new federal states , including a reunified Berlin . Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt established three Regierungsbezirke each, while the other new states didn't implement them. During the 2000s, four German states discontinued the use of Regierungsbezirke . On 1 January 2000, Rhineland-Palatinate disbanded its three Regierungsbezirke of Koblenz , Rheinhessen-Pfalz and Trier . The employees and assets of

1665-548: The three Bezirksregierungen ( German pronunciation: [bəˈt͡sɪʁksʁeˌɡiːʁʊŋən] ) were converted into three public authorities responsible for the whole state, each covering a part of the former responsibilities of the Bezirksregierung ( German: [bəˈt͡sɪʁksʁeˌɡiːʁʊŋ] ). On 1 January 2004, Saxony-Anhalt disbanded its three Regierungsbezirke of Dessau , Halle and Magdeburg . The responsibilities are now covered by

1710-892: The time of German unification , the concept of Regierungsbezirke had been adopted by most States of the German Empire . Similar entities were initially established in other states under different names, including Kreishauptmannschaft (district captainship) in Saxony , Kreis (district) in Bavaria and Württemberg (not to be confused with the present-day Kreis or Landkreis districts), and province in Hesse. The names of these equivalent administrative divisions were standardized to Regierungsbezirk in Nazi Germany , but after World War II these naming reforms were reverted. The Regierungsbezirke in

1755-451: The very south-west of the Gau , became part of the French occupation zone. Political power, at first lying with the occupation authorities, was soon returned to the new Bavarian government. The Regierungsbezirk Swabia , never having formally been dissolved, took control of the civil administration of the region again. Its most pressing issue was the reconstruction of the destroyed cities and

1800-504: The war effort also used slave labour to be able to continue producing. A large number of those died through exhaustion, mistreatment and allied air raids on the production facilities. A monument in Augsburg remembers those victims of the Nazi regime. As the war progressed and Nazi Germany grew more desperate, the Gauleiters were put in total control of the war effort in their Gau . On 16 November 1942 Wahl, along with all Gauleiters ,

1845-656: Was applied yet again to camps set up by the United States during the Philippine–American War (1899–1902). And expanded usage of the concentration camp label continued, when the British set up camps during the Second Boer War (1899–1902) in South Africa for interning Boers during the same time period. The German Empire also established concentration camps during the Herero and Namaqua genocide (1904–1907);

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1890-554: Was envisioned by the Nazis that the Party-Gaue would take the place of the old structure. In reality, Hitler was afraid of such a move, fearing it would upset local party leaders and could possibly result in an inner-party power struggle. In Augsburg, the Swabian capital, the Nazis did not gain a strong foothold straight away, only having received 33% of the votes at the 1933 elections. Wahl even interceded with Hitler not to dismiss

1935-597: Was named a Reich Defense Commissioner ( Reichsverteidigungskommissar ). In September 1944, the Gauleiters were ordered to form the Volkssturm in a last effort to mobilise all of the male population. Near the end of the war in April 1945, Wahl and Swabia were subordinated to Paul Giesler , the Gauleiter of Gau Munich-Upper Bavaria , who was named Reich Defense Commissioner - South and, in addition to his own Gau ,

1980-580: Was not a common sentence; approximately 6,000 katorga convicts were serving sentences in 1906 and 28,600 in 1916. These camps served as a model for political imprisonment during the Soviet period. In the midst of the Russian Civil War , Lenin and the Bolsheviks established "special" prison camps and "special" gas chambers, separate from its traditional prison system and under the control of

2025-462: Was placed in charge of Swabia and three of the formerly Austrian Gaue ( Reichsgau Salzburg , Reichsgau Upper Danube and Reichsgau Tirol-Vorarlberg ). In the last days of the war, Karl Wahl made no effort to prevent the hand over of Augsburg to the allies. Shortly after, he was arrested. Almost all of Swabia, like the rest of Bavaria, became part of the American occupation zone . Lindau , at

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