[[File:Bezirksleiter armband 1930-1933.svg|thumb|''Bezirksleiter'' armband, 1930–33]] '''''Bezirksleiter''''' (District Leader) was a [[Nazi Party]] title which was used in the early years of the Party's existence, beginning around 1926.
==History== The position of ''Bezirksleiter'' was originally established around 1926 as the next higher organizational official overseeing several local branches (''Ortsgruppen'') of the Party. As such, the ''Bezirksleiter'' served as the intermediary between the local Party heads (''[[Ortsgruppenleiter]]'') and the head of the [[Administrative divisions of Nazi Germany|Gau]] organization (''[[Gauleiter]]''). The number of ''Bezirkleiters'' in each Gau, if any, depended on the size of the Gau, and their jurisdictions were not necessarily coterminous with existing governmental units. At a January 1929 Party Conference held in [[Weimar]], [[Gregor Strasser]], the ''Reichsorganisationsleiter'', authorized the ''Gauleiters'' to subdivide their Gaue into districts if the organizational strength of the Gau justified this change.<ref>Orlow, Dietrich: The History of the Nazi Party: 1919-1933 (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1969, p. 145. {{ISBN|0-8229-3183-4}}.</ref> The subdivisions were based on the ''[[Districts of Germany|Kreis]]'', the standard administrative unit existing in the German States, roughly analogous to a [[county]]. With this organizational restructuring, the ''Bezirksleiter'' began to be phased out, to be replaced by the ''[[Kreisleiter]]'' as the standardized intermediate administrative level between the ''Gauleitung'' (Gau leadership) and the local Party branches.
Many of the early ''Bezirksleiters'' advanced to the position of ''Gauleiter'', such as [[Franz Schwede]], [[Gustav Simon]], [[Jakob Sprenger]], [[Josef Terboven]] and [[Karl Wahl]] to name but a few.<ref>Michael D. Miller & Andreas Schulz: Gauleiter: The Regional Leaders of the Nazi Party and Their Deputies, 1925-1945, Volume 3 (Fritz Sauckel – Hans Zimmermann), Fonthill Media, 2021, pp. 231; 248; 283; 438; 608. {{ISBN|978-1-781-55826-3}}.</ref>
==References== {{reflist}}
{{Nazi Germany paramilitary ranks}}
[[Category:Nazi political ranks]]