Party's uniform regulations had included a series of braided shoulder boards to be worn in conjunction with Nazi collar insignia. The next major change to Nazi uniforms would occur in 1934, a year after the Nazis had come to power in Germany. Nazi Germany political positions In 1933, the Nazi Party took national power in Germany and began a process known as Gleichschaltung to completely merge the civilian government of Germany with the political leadership of the Party. After the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, the Nazi Party underwent a major reorganization as a prelude to Nazi leadership members merging their own positions with local, state, and federal government establishments. The first step in this process was to divide the Nazi Party into several "levels", which were designed to act independently from each other. These levels in turn were: Ortsgruppen (Local level – German towns and cities) Kreisleitung (District level – German counties) Gauleitung (Regional level – German states and their provinces) Reichsleitung (National level – German nation) Nazi Party political leaders were to choose a level in which they would make a career. Each level of the Nazi Party was self-contained and separate from other levels. While, in theory, this was intended to avoid jurisdictional conflict, the result was that the level leaderships ignored the wishes of the others and, in some cases, came into direct conflict. Hitler and the senior Nazi leaders were also "outside the chain", giving orders to all levels simultaneously and sometimes different party levels were given orders to carry out the same task. This caused high levels of in-fighting and backstabbing in Nazi leadership circles, to such a degree that regulations had to be introduced preventing deputies from succeeding their own superiors therefore to discourage subordinates from intentionally sabotaging their leaders. The new Nazi Party levels called for several new ranks and the Nazi Party titles were overhauled with several new positions. Some positions were duplicated on each level of the Party while others were unique to the local, county, state, or national level. The Nazis also created a supreme political rank, known as Reichsleiter, considered the top rank of the Reichsleitung (national) level, as well as the senior-most political rank in the party next to Hitler himself. In all, the following were the primary Nazi political staff ranks used between 1933 and 1939: Mitarbeiter Hilfs-Stellenleiter Stellenleiter Hauptstellenleiter Amtsleiter Hauptamtsleiter Dienstleiter Hauptdienstleiter