| Gauliga Wartheland |
|---|
| Founded |
| 1941 |
| Disbanded |
| 1945 |
| Nation |
| Nazi Germany |
| Voivodeships |
| Łódź Voivodeship |
| Poznań Voivodeship |
| Warsaw Voivodeship |
| Gau |
| Wartheland |
| Number of Seasons |
| 4 |
| Replaced by |
| Region became part of Poland |
| Level on Pyramid |
| Level 1 |
| Domestic Cup |
| Tschammerpokal |
| Last Champions 1943-44 |
| BSG DWM Posen |
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 incooperated 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.
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The league was introduced 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 determined 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.[1]
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 gravely affected all Gauligas and football in the region ceased in 1944. The 1944-45 season may not have been started at all anymore.
With the end of the Nazi era, the Gauligas ceased to exist. The Wartheland came under Soviet control. The region then became a part of Poland again. The German population was almost completely expelled from the region. All German football clubs were dissolved.
The ten founding members were:
Group I:
Group II:
Litzmannstadt was the German name for Łódź from 1939 to 1945, named after Karl Litzmann.
| Season | Winner | Runner-Up |
| 1941-42 | SG Ordnungspolizei Litzmannstadt | Deutscher SC Posen |
| 1942-43 | BSG DWM Posen | SG Ordnungspolizei Posen |
| 1943-44 | BSG DWM Posen | SG Ordnungspolizei Posen |
| Club | 1942 | 1943 | 1944 |
|---|---|---|---|
| DSC Posen | 1 | 5 | 4 |
| DMW Posen | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Orpo Posen | 3 | 2 | 2 |
| Reichsbahn SG Posen | 4 | 6 | |
| Post SG Posen | 5 | 7 | 9 |
| Orpo Litzmannstadt | 1 | 4 | 7 |
| Union 97 Litzmannstadt | 2 | 3 | 8 |
| SG Freihaus | 3 | 8 | 10 |
| Reichsbahn SG Litzmannstadt | 4 | 10 | |
| SG Sturm Pabianitz | 5 | ||
| TSG Gnesen | 6 | 5 | |
| TSG Kutno | 9 | ||
| SG Kalisch | 3 | ||
Source:"Gauliga Wartheland". Das deutsche Fussball-Archiv. http://www.f-archiv.de/. Retrieved 2009-04-23.
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