page_title: Josef Terboven
section_title: Rule of Norway
hierarchical_section_title: Josef Terboven / Rule of Norway
caption_attribution_description: Information added by Wikimedia users.English: The first Norwegian volunteers taking the oath as new soldiers of Regiment Nordland of the Waffen-SS during a ceremony in Oslo, 31 January 1941.
context_page_description: Josef Antonius Heinrich Terboven was a Nazi leader, best known as the Reichskommissar for Norway during the German occupation of Norway and the Quisling regime.
context_section_description: Terboven was made Reichskommissar for Norway on 24 April 1940, even before the military invasion was completed on 10 June 1940. He moved into Skaugum, the official residence of the Crown Prince of Norway, in September 1940 and made his headquarters in Stortinget (the Norwegian parliament buildings). Ilse and their daughter Inge did not accompany him to Norway, remaining in Germany.
  Reichskommissar Terboven only had supervisory authority over the civilian administration in Norway. The German civilian administration did not rule Norway directly, however, and remained relatively small. Daily affairs were managed by the existing Norwegian state administration, headed by an acting cabinet and then by the Quisling cabinet. Terboven did not have authority over the 400,000 regular German Army forces stationed in Norway which was under the command of Generaloberst Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, but he did command 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 the same petty and ruthless way he did as governor of the Rheinprovinz, and was widely disliked, not only by the Norwegians, but also by many Germans. From 1941, he increasingly focused on crushing the irregular military resistance against the Germans, declaring martial law in Trondheim in 1942, and ordering the destruction of Telavåg. Goebbels expressed annoyance in his diary about what he called Terboven's "bullying tactics" against the Norwegians, as they alienated the population against the Germans. Terboven nevertheless remained in ultimate charge of Norway until the end of the war in 1945, even after the proclamation of a Norwegian puppet regime under Vidkun Quisling, the Quisling government. On 18 December 1944, Falkenhorst was dismissed from his command for opposing certain radical policies of Terboven.
  As the tide of the war turned against Germany, Terboven's personal aspiration was to organise a "Fortress Norway" (Festung Norwegen) for the Nazi regime's last stand. Hitler's successor, Admiral Dönitz, dismissed Terboven from his post as Reichskommissar on 7 May, transferring his powers to General Franz Böhme.
caption: Terboven (seated 2nd from right) with Quisling, Himmler and von Falkenhorst.
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