Gauliga Wartheland
 |
|
| Founded | 1941 |
|---|---|
| Folded | 1945 |
| Replaced by | Region became part of Poland |
| Country |
 Nazi Germany
|
| Voivodeships | |
| Gau | Wartheland |
| Level on pyramid | Level 1 |
| Domestic cup(s) | Tschammerpokal |
The Gauliga Wartheland was the highest football league in Gau Wartheland from 1941 to 1945. The Gau was made up from the former Polish Voivodeship of Poznań and parts of Warsaw Voivodeship and Łódź Voivodeship which had been occupied by Nazi Germany in 1939 and incorporated into the Third Reich. The league and the region are named after the local river Warthe (Polish:Warta), and not after the Prussian province Posen, which it had been from 1848 to 1918.
The league was introduced by the Nazi Sports Office in 1941, a considerable time after the defeat of Poland. The league started out in two groups of five teams, with the two divisional champions playing each other in a home-and-away series to determine the Gauliga champion. The league champion then qualified for the German championship. Polish clubs were not permitted to take part in the competition, only clubs from the German ethnic minority, which made up between five and ten percent of the population in the region and about two percent of the overall population of Poland.
In its second season, the league played with ten teams in a single division. The bottom three teams were relegated at the end of the season. The 1943-44 edition initially saw no change, but the SG Freihaus dropped out of the league during the season and not all games were played throughout the season.
The imminent collapse of Nazi Germany in 1945 affected play throughout the country with Gauliga competition in this region coming to a halt in 1944. There is no record that the 1944-45 season here ever commenced.
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Wikipedia