text: Overview The term was formed from the words  (realm, empire) and , the latter a deliberately medieval-sounding word with a meaning approximately equivalent to shire. The  were an attempt to resolve the administrative chaos resulting from the mutually overlapping jurisdictions and different boundaries of the NSDAP Party , placed under a Party , and the federal states, under a  responsible to the Ministry of the Interior (in the Prussian provinces, the equivalent post was that of ). Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick had long desired to streamline the German administration, and the  were the result: the borders of party  and those of the federal states were to be identical, and the party  also occupied the post of . Rival interests and the influence the  wielded with Hitler prevented any reform from being undertaken in the "Old Reich" (), which meant Germany in its borders of 1937 before the annexation of other territories like Austria, the , and Bohemia, and the  scheme was therefore implemented only in newly-acquired territories.
  There were several :
  (German: Ostmark) formed from the formerly independent Austria
  , formed from a substantial part of the German-speaking outer rim areas of the former Czechoslovakia occupied in 1938
  (German: Danzig-Westpreußen) and , formed from the Free City of Danzig and areas annexed from Poland
  The East March was subsequently subdivided into seven smaller , generally coterminous with the former Austrian  (federal provinces).
  List of
  in Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia established in 1938
  established during the Second World War
  (partly) formed out of pre-existing
  Planned  that were never established