 | |
| Founded | 1940 |
|---|---|
| Folded | 1944 |
| Replaced by | definitively dissolved |
| Country |  Nazi Germany |
| Region | General Government |
| Level on pyramid | Level 1 |
| Domestic cup(s) | Bernsteinpokal |
The Gauliga Generalgouvernement was the highest football league in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany in October 1939 in the so-called General Government (German:Generalgouvernement). The league existed from 1940 to 1944, in 1941 it was incorporated into the German football championship system.
In the summer of 1940, the sports department of the German government in occupied Poland organised the first football championship for German clubs in the General Government (GG). These were all clubs that had been newly founded. They included military teams from the Wehrmacht units, squadrons of the Luftwaffe, the Waffen SS and the Ordnungspolizei; occupying authorities such as the Reichspost (mail service) and the Ostbahn (Eastern Railway) also took part, as did large companies under German control, particularly in the armaments sector. In 1940, a total of 80 German football clubs were registered in the General Government. [1]
Only Reichsdeutsche and Volksdeutsche were eligible to play. Poles were not allowed to participate in organised sport, all Polish clubs and societies were dissolved and banned. Several teams signed former Polish national players who came from the Eastern part of Upper Silesia; they had been born as citizens of Prussia, but became Polish citizens when their home region was annexed to Poland in 1922. They were categorised as volksdeutsch (ethnic German) by the occupying authorities. [2]
In the major cities, the German teams played in the stadiums of the officially disbanded Polish top clubs, including the Wisla Stadium in Kraków. Construction work on the much larger Kraków Municipal Stadium, which was almost completed on the eve of the war, was finished in 1940, and under the name "Deutsche Kampfbahn" (German battle ground) it became the venue for most of the final matches for the championship and the Bernsteinpokal (Amber Cup), the cup of the General Government. [3] The officer responsible for the "Wehrmacht Stadium" in Warsaw, where Legia Warsaw had previously played its home matches, was captain Wilm Hosenfeld [4] whom Roman Polański would later commemorate in his film The Pianist (2002).
For the first two seasons, a champion was determined in the four districts of Kraków, Lublin, Radom and Warsaw. The winners of these four districts determined the champion of the Gauliga in the cup system. In 1942, the newly created District of Galicia was added. From 1942 onwards, the final round was played between the five district champions in a league system (each against each). The winner of the finals went on to the German championship.
Following a decision by the National Socialist League of the Reich for Physical Exercise, the Gauliga Generalgouvernement adapted its seasons, which previously ran from January to December each year, to structures within the Reich. This meant that the 1942 season was followed by the 1943/44 season; as a result, the championship title was not awarded in 1943. [5] In view of Germany's unfavourable situation on the Eastern Front, Gauliga matches were discontinued after the 1943/44 season.
The winners and runners-up of the league:
| Season | Winner | Runner-Up |
|---|---|---|
| 1940 | LSV Deblin | LSV Radom |
| 1941 | LSV Boelcke Krakau | LSV Warschau |
| 1942 | LSV Adler Deblin | SS- u. Pol.-SG Warschau |
| 1943–44 | LSV Mölders Krakau | LSV Deblin |
The Bernsteinpokal (Amber Cup) was played between the teams in the Gauliga and was donated by the Governor General Hans Frank. [6] The cup winners and the defeated finalists:
The clubs and military teams in the Gauliga were recruited from guest players who only played for them temporarily, sometimes only for a few weeks. Formally, they continued to belong to their home clubs in Germany. The overwhelming majority were soldiers of the Wehrmacht or the Waffen-SS whose units had been transferred to locations in occupied Poland. Among them were some national players. The Upper Silesians who had played in Polish clubs before the war had also been drafted into the Wehrmacht. Among the best known footballers in the General Government were
The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the German authorities within the new General Government territory of occupied Poland. At its height, as many as 460,000 Jews were imprisoned there, in an area of 3.4 km2 (1.3 sq mi), with an average of 9.2 persons per room, barely subsisting on meager food rations. Jews were deported from the Warsaw Ghetto to Nazi concentration camps and mass-killing centers. In the summer of 1942, at least 254,000 ghetto residents were sent to the Treblinka extermination camp during Großaktion Warschau under the guise of "resettlement in the East" over the course of the summer. The ghetto was demolished by the Germans in May 1943 after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising had temporarily halted the deportations. The total death toll among the prisoners of the ghetto is estimated to be at least 300,000 killed by bullet or gas, combined with 92,000 victims of starvation and related diseases, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and the casualties of the final destruction of the ghetto.
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The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the 1943 act of Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto in German-occupied Poland during World War II to oppose Nazi Germany's final effort to transport the remaining ghetto population to the gas chambers of the Majdanek and Treblinka extermination camps.
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A Gauliga was the highest level of play in German football from 1933 to 1945. The leagues were introduced in 1933, after the Nazi takeover of power by the National Socialist League of the Reich for Physical Exercise.
The Pabst Plan was a Nazi German urban plan to reconstruct the city of Warsaw as a Nazi model city. Named after its creator Friedrich Pabst, the Nazis' "Chief Architect for Warsaw", the plan assumed that Warsaw, the historical capital of Poland and a city of 1.5 million inhabitants, would be completely destroyed and rebuilt as a small German town of not more than 130,000 inhabitants.
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All match reports and results lists can be found in the Krakauer Zeitung published by the administration of the General Government, whose regional edition for the northernmost district is called the Warschauer Zeitung. The sports sections of both newspapers are identical. The Warschauer Zeitung has been digitised by the Mazovian Voivodeship digital library, access is free.