the DFB at the time, wished for the introduction of the Reichsliga but failed to get the motion passed by the regional associations in 1932. The clubs from the West of Germany, especially the industrialised Ruhr region, were the most vocal in advocating professionalism and the Reichsliga. To general surprise, the annual convention of the DFB on 16 October 1932 in Wiesbaden passed a resolution to permit professionalism, without the subject even having been on the list of items to debate and after years of opposition. It was decided to develop a frame work in which professional football could be organised and a clear separation between professional and amateur football in the country could be achieved. During Nazi rule All this came to nought on 30 January 1933, when the Nazis took power in Germany. The DFB was converted to the new Reichsamt Fußball and the German football landscape reorganised into 16 Gaue with a regional league, the Gauliga, on top of each. Professionalism and the Reichsliga were out of question and the debate silenced. While professionalism experienced another blow in 1938 with the Anschluss of Austria and the outlawing of the professional league there, the Reichsliga soon returned on the agenda. The freshly unified German-Austrian team, playing with high expectations at the 1938 FIFA World Cup was a complete disappointment, being knocked out in the first round. The embarrassment to Germany and its Nazi government caused the latter to approve plans for the concentration of forces in German football. The Reichsliga or, as an alternative, the reduction of the number of Gauligas from 16 to five was envisioned. The events of the Second World War however put a stop to all these plans, and by the time the regime fell in 1945 the number of Gauligas had greatly expanded because of travel difficulties caused by the effects of the war and Nazi expansionism. Post-war attempts The year 1945 brought a restart for German football. New leagues were gradually formed in Allied-occupied Germany, first in the South and Berlin, later in the West and North, too, which had suffered greater damage to its infrastructure through strategic bombing during the war. Travel between occupation zones was difficult and the new leagues followed in their boundaries the limits of the Allied zones. In the US zone, the Oberliga Süd was established, in the French zone the Oberliga Südwest and in the British