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Gustav Alfred Julius Meyer (5 October 1891 – 11 April 1945) was a Nazi Party official and politician. He joined the Nazi Party in 1928 and was the Gauleiter of North Westphalia from 1931 to 1945, the Oberpräsident of the Province of Westphalia from 1938 to 1945 and the Reichsstatthalter of Lippe and Schaumburg-Lippe from 1933 to 1945. In 1941 he became the Permanent Deputy to the Reichsminister of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories. He represented the ministry with Georg Leibbrandt in the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, at which the genocidal Final Solution to the Jewish Question was planned. Near the end of World War II in Europe, Meyer committed suicide in April 1945.
A conservative and a monarchist, Meyer aspired to become a Prussian military officer. However, upon graduation, he entered the University of Lausanne to study law. After one term in Lausanne, he unexpectedly received an appointment as a Fahnenjunker (cadet officer) with the 68th (6th Rhenish) Infantry Regiment in Koblenz in 1912. He passed his officer exam and was commissioned as a Leutnant on 16 June 1913. During World War I he fought with Infantry Regiment 363 on the Western Front, earning the Iron Cross first and second class and the Wound Badge. Promoted to Oberleutnant in June 1916, he was wounded and captured by the French in April 1917. This experience, according to Meyer, was especially traumatic and left him with a hatred against France. Released from captivity in March 1920, the downsized Reichswehr had no use for him and he left the army in October with the rank of Hauptmann.
After the war, Meyer studied jurisprudence and political science at the Universities of Bonn and Würzburg. He graduated with a PhD in 1922 and joined the legal department of a Gelsenkirchen mining firm. In 1924, he joined the local Freemasonry lodge. Meyer was also the chairman of the local Kyffhäuserbund unit. He married Dorothee Capell in 1925 and had five daughters with her.
In September 1930, Meyer was elected to the Reichstag from electoral constituency 17, Westphalia North, and on 31 January 1931, he was appointed the Nazi Party Gauleiter of the newly-formed Gau Westphalia-North. He also became the editor of the local Party newspaper, the Westfälische Landeszeitung Rot-Erde. On 24 April 1932, he was elected to the Prussian Landtag and was returned to the Reichstag on 6 November 1932. Following the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, Meyer was appointed to the Westphalia Provincial Landtag on 12 March, becoming its president in April. On 10 April, he was made the province's plenipotentiary to the Reichsrat, serving until its abolition on 14 February 1934. Adolf Hitler appointed him as the federal Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governor) of the German States of Lippe and Schaumburg-Lippe on 16 May 1933. He was again returned to the Reichstag at the election of 12 November 1933, retaining his seat until the fall of the Nazi regime. On 1 August 1934, he was named to Hans Frank's Academy for German Law. Additionally, he also became the Staatsminister (Minister of State) in charge of the state government of Lippe, succeeding Hans-Joachim Riecke, effective 1 February 1936. He also was named a Minister of State in the Schaumburg-Lippe government of Landespräsident (State President) . Finally, on 4 November 1938 he was made Oberpräsident of the Prussian Province of Westphalia, thus uniting under his control the highest party and governmental offices in his jurisdictions. In the Nazi paramilitary organization, the Sturmabteilung, he was promoted to SA- Gruppenführer on 20 April 1936 and to SA- Obergruppenführer on 9 November 1938.
On 6 September 1939, Meyer was made Chef der Zivilverwaltung (Chief of Civil Administration) in the West. On 29 May 1940 he was appointed Acting Reich Defense Commissioner for Military District VI during the absence in Norway of Josef Terboven. On 17 July 1941 he was named Ständiger Stellvertreter (permanent deputy) to Reichsminister Alfred Rosenberg in the newly-established Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (RMO). Meyer was responsible for the departments of politics, administration and economics. In his role in the East, he used workers that were mainly Jewish for slave labor assigned to a variety of works.
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