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Concept
Josef Terboven
Summary
Josef Antonius Heinrich Terboven (23 May 1898 – 8 May 1945) was a 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 University of Munich 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 committed suicide by detonating 50 kg of dynamite in a bunker on the Skaugum compound in Norway. His family survived him in West Germany, and his wife, Ilse (Stahl) Terboven died in 1972.
Terboven was born in Essen, the son of minor landed gentry.
Official source
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