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

[2] 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.

[6] Giesler, a well connected member of the top-hierarchy of Nazi Germany, held a number of high offices during the era, last of those as the German Minister of the Interior in the final days of the war.

He died in West Germany in 1972 after a successful business career, not charged with any further crimes committed during the Nazi era.