Josef Antonius Heinrich Terboven (23 May 1898 – 8 May 1945) was a German Nazi Party official and politician who was the long-serving Gauleiter of Gau Essen and the Reichskommissar for Norway during the German occupation.
Terboven was born in Essen, Germany, and attended Volksschule and Realschule before he volunteered for military service during the First World War. After the war, he studied law and political science at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and the University of Freiburg, where he first got involved in politics. Terboven joined the Nazi Party in 1923, participated in the Beer Hall Putsch and eventually rose through the ranks to become the Gauleiter of Essen and the editor of various Nazi newspapers. After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, Terboven was promoted to SA-Gruppenführer and was made a member of the Prussian State Council.
In 1940, he was appointed Reichskommissar for Norway, a position that granted him significant power and control. Terboven established multiple concentration camps in Norway, ruthlessly persecuted the Jewish population and focused on crushing the Norwegian resistance movement. His actions led to numerous atrocities, such as the Beisfjord massacre in which hundreds of Yugoslavian political prisoners and prisoners-of-war were murdered.
As the tide of the war turned against Germany, Terboven implemented a scorched earth policy in northern Norway that resulted in the forced evacuation of 50,000 Norwegians and widespread destruction. He hoped to turn Norway into a fortress for the Nazi regime's last stand. However, after Adolf Hitler's suicide, his successor, Großadmiral Karl Dönitz, dismissed Terboven from his post as Reichskommissar on 7 May 1945.
On 8 May 1945, the day of Germany's surrender, Terboven died of suicide by detonating 50 kg (110 lbs) of dynamite in a bunker on the Skaugum compound in Norway. His family survived in West Germany, and his wife, Ilse (Stahl) Terboven died in 1972.
Terboven was born in Essen, the son of minor landed gentry of Dutch descent. The family name comes from the Low German daar boven ("up there"), referring to a farmstead on a hill. Josef Terboven attended Volksschule and Realschule in Essen until 1915 and then volunteered for military service in the First World War. He served with Feldartillerie Regiment 9 and then with the nascent air force. He was awarded the Iron Cross, 1st and 2nd class, and attained the rank of Leutnant before being discharged on 22 December 1918. He studied law and political science at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and the University of Freiburg, where he first got involved in politics. He dropped out of the university in 1922 without earning a degree and trained as a bank official in Essen, working as a bank clerk through June 1925.
Terboven joined the Nazi Party in November 1923 with membership number 25,247 and participated in the abortive Beer Hall Putsch in Munich. As an early Party member, he later would be awarded the Golden Party Badge. When the Party subsequently was outlawed, he continued to work at the bank until after the ban was lifted in February 1925. In August 1925 Terboven went to work full-time for the Party, becoming the head of a small Nazi newspaper and book distributorship in Essen. At this time he also founded the Ortsgruppe (Local Group) in Essen, becoming its first Ortsgruppenleiter. He also joined the Sturmabteilung (SA) becoming the SA-Führer in Essen. He formally re-enrolled in the Party on 15 December 1925. By 1927, he had advanced to Bezirksleiter (District Leader) of the Essen district in the Großgau Ruhr. From 1927 to December 1930, Terboven was the editor of the weekly Nazi newspaper The New Front: The Weekly Sheet of the Working People. In 1929, he was sentenced to three months imprisonment for continuing to publish the proscribed paper. In the 20 May 1928 election, Terboven failed in his attempt to be elected to the Prussian Landtag.
On 1 October 1928 upon the dissolution of the Großgau Ruhr, the Essen district became an independent unit subordinated to the central Party headquarters in Munich. However, on 1 August 1930 the Essen district officially was raised to Gau status and Terboven was named Gauleiter. He would retain this post throughout the Nazi regime.
In 1930, Terboven also became a City Councilor in Essen and a member of the Provincial Landtag of the Rhine Province until it was dissolved in 1933. On 14 September 1930, Terboven was elected to the Reichstag from electoral constituency 23, Düsseldorf West and would continue to hold this seat until the end of the Nazi regime. From 15 December 1930, Terboven was also the editor of the National-Zeiting in Essen.
After the Nazi seizure of power, Terboven was promoted to SA-Gruppenführer on 1 March 1933 and made a member of the Prussian State Council on 10 July 1933. On 28 June 1934, Terboven married Ilse Stahl, Joseph Goebbels's former secretary and mistress. Adolf Hitler was a witness at the wedding, and while in Essen put into play preparations for the Night of the Long Knives. On 5 February 1935, Terboven was appointed Oberpräsident (High President) of Prussia's Rhine Province which included Gau Essen and three other Gaue. He thus united under his control the highest party and governmental offices within his jurisdiction. On 27 April 1935 Terboven received the Golden Party Badge. He was promoted to the rank of SA-Obergruppenführer on 9 November 1936. On the outbreak of war on 1 September 1939, he was named Reich Defense Commissioner for Wehrkreis (Military District) VI, which included his Gau together with Gau Dusseldorf, Gau Cologne-Aachen, most of Gau Westphalia-North and Gau Westphalia-South and part of Gau Weser-Ems. On 16 November 1942, the jurisdiction of the Reich Defense Commissioners was changed from the Wehrkreis to the Gau level and Terboven remained Commissioner for only his Gau of Essen.
Terboven was named Reichskommissar for Norway on 24 April 1940 even before the military invasion's completion on 10 June. He moved into Skaugum, the official residence of Crown Prince Olav, in September 1940 and made his headquarters in the Norwegian Parliament building. Nothing in Terboven's background and training particularly qualified him for that post, but he had Hitler's full confidence. He was responsible to no one but Hitler, and within the Nazi governmental hierarchy, his office stood on the same level as the Reich Ministries. Terboven regarded himself as virtually an autonomous viceroy with what he termed "limitless power of command". His conception of his role resulted in his attempting to ignore any directives not issued by Hitler himself.
Reichskommissar Terboven had supervisory authority over only the German civilian administration, which was very small and did not rule Norway directly. Day-to-day governmental affairs were managed by the existing seven-member Norwegian Administrative Council, which had been set up by the Norwegian Supreme Court after the king and cabinet fled into exile. On 25 September 1940, Terboven dismissed the Administrative Council and appointed a thirteen-member Provisional State Council to administer affairs. All the members were Terboven's hand-picked appointees and worked under his control and supervision. A proclamation was issued deposing King Haakon VII, outlawing the government-in-exile, disbanding the Storting and banning all political parties except Vidkun Quisling's Nasjonal Samling. Terboven therefore remained in ultimate charge of Norway until the end of the war in 1945, even after he had permitted the formation of a Norwegian puppet regime on 1 February 1942 under Quisling as minister-president, the so-called Quisling government.
Terboven also did not have authority over the 400,000 regular German Army forces that were stationed in Norway which were under the command of Generaloberst Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, but he commanded a personal force of around 6,000 men of whom 800 were part of the secret police. In contrast to the military forces commanded by Falkenhorst, which aimed to reach an understanding with the Norwegian people and were under orders by Falkenhorst to treat Norwegians with courtesy, Terboven behaved in a petty and ruthless way and was widely disliked not only by the Norwegians but also by many Germans. Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda, expressed annoyance in his diaries about what he called Terboven's "bullying tactics" against the Norwegians, as they alienated the population against the Germans. Terboven's relations with the army commander were strained, but his relations with the Higher SS and Police Leader, Wilhelm Rediess, were very good, and he co-operated in providing Rediess's staff a free hand with their policies of repression.