From 1933 onwards, after the Nazi seizure of power, the Gaue increasingly replaced the German states as administrative subdivisions in Germany.

[1] 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.

[1][2] The position of Gauleiter in Mecklenburg was held by Friedrich Hildebrandt for the duration of the existence of the Gau, interrupted only by an eight-month suspension from July 1930 to February 1931 when he was briefly succeeded by Herbert Albrecht.

[3][4] Hildebrandt was sentenced to death by a military tribunal and executed for war crimes in 1948.