Terboven takes power in Norway

On 25 September 1940 the German Reich Commissioner for occupied Norway, Josef Terboven, made a radio speech that ended the first, “soft” period of the occupation. He announced that the negotiations with Norwegian politicians had broken down, and that King Haakon VII and the government of Johan Nygaardsvold, in London since June, had been stripped of power and would not return to the country. He dissolved the Administrative Council, which had been running the occupied territories since April, and banned the activity of all political parties except the fascist Nasjonal Samling. From now on the ministries were to be run by thirteen “acting” ministers (konstituerte statsråder), appointed by Terboven and subordinate to him. Most of them belonged to Vidkun Quisling’s party. Terboven declared that there was only one road to “freedom and independence” for the Norwegians, and that it led through Nasjonal Samling.

Some chronologies state under 28 September that Quisling “became head of state in Norway”. That is not what happened. The constitutional upheaval had been carried out by Terboven three days earlier, and Quisling himself received no office at the time: he was not among the acting ministers, although as leader of the only legal party he became their political patron. He was given the post of “Minister President” (ministerpresident) only on 1 February 1942, and he was never head of state. Supreme authority in occupied Norway was exercised until the end of the war by the German Reich Commissioner.

From the Administrative Council to talks on a council of state

On 9 April 1940, the day of the German invasion, Quisling announced on the radio that he was taking power. Neither the King nor the government recognised him, and on 10 April Haakon VII rejected the demand that he appoint Quisling prime minister. The German minister, Curt Bräuer, then concluded that Quisling was merely a hindrance and found another partner. On 15 April the Supreme Court under its president, Paal Berg, appointed a seven-member Administrative Council (Administrasjonsrådet) chaired by the county governor Ingolf Elster Christensen. Made up of respected officials and experts, it was to run the day-to-day administration in the occupied part of the country. Quisling had to step aside. On 24 April Adolf Hitler created a Reich Commissariat for the occupied Norwegian territories and placed at its head Terboven, the Gauleiter of Essen, who was answerable to Hitler alone. The decree allowed the commissioner to govern through the Administrative Council.

After Norway’s capitulation on 10 June, with the King and the government already in Britain and France collapsing, the Germans decided that the time had come for a permanent settlement. On 13 June Terboven’s aide Hans Dellbrügge presented the members of the Council with an ultimatum: Norway would keep a measure of autonomy only on German terms; otherwise it would be governed as a protectorate. So began the negotiations, which lasted until September, over a “council of state” (riksråd) that was to replace both the Administrative Council and the government in London. The name, harking back to the medieval council of the realm, was suggested by the Bishop of Oslo, Eivind Berggrav. On the Norwegian side the negotiations were conducted from mid-June by the presidium of the Storting, the Norwegian parliament, headed by its vice-president Magnus Nilssen of the Labour Party.

The German conditions were clear. The Storting was to revoke the powers granted to the government at Elverum on 9 April, declare the Nygaardsvold government removed, ask the King to abdicate – and, should he refuse, depose him – and appoint a new council of state. In an atmosphere of defeat, when it seemed that Germany had won the war, the presidium accepted these demands. Its only condition was that Quisling be kept away from power. On 27 June the presidium sent the King a request to abdicate. Haakon VII refused for the second time. In a letter of 3 July and in a speech broadcast by the BBC on 8 July he explained that the request was not an expression of the free will of the Norwegian people but the result of pressure by the occupier, and that he could not take part in a solution contrary to the constitution. This royal “no” became for many Norwegians the first fixed point in a summer that otherwise brought mainly despondency.

Quisling back in the game

Terboven did not think highly of Quisling and believed that his share in government would only turn Norwegians against the occupier. In the summer he persuaded him to go to Germany. Quisling, however, had influential patrons in Berlin, above all Alfred Rosenberg and Grand Admiral Erich Raeder. On 16 August he was received by Hitler, who decided that Nasjonal Samling must be given a share of power and sent Quisling back home against the commissioner’s wishes. From then on Terboven had to demand more and more of the Norwegians.

In September the negotiations entered their decisive phase. The Germans forced the members of parliament who were in the occupied country to hold trial votes in their party groups. According to the Store norske leksikon, a motion for the Storting to recognise the abdication of the King and the royal house was supported by 50 members, with 80 against. A majority of 75 to 55, however, agreed to suspend the King from his functions until peace was concluded with Germany. Other tallies give slightly different figures. The readiness to make such far-reaching concessions was judged harshly after the war by the parliamentary commission of inquiry of 1945. No agreement was reached, however. The Germans kept making new demands concerning the composition of the council of state, and finally insisted that at least five portfolios go to Quisling’s men, which would in practice have given them a majority. To this the Norwegians could not agree. On 18 September the negotiations broke down, which many of the Norwegian participants greeted with relief.

The speech of 25 September

A week later Terboven announced his decision on the radio, which the Germans called the “New Order” (Nyordningen). The speech was published in print in Oslo immediately afterwards. The commissioner accused Norwegian politicians of failing to seize the chance they had been given and announced that:

• the royal house and the Nygaardsvold government had lost all authority and would not return to Norway, and any activity on their behalf was forbidden;
• the Administrative Council was dissolved;
• all political parties except Nasjonal Samling were dissolved, and the founding of new ones was forbidden;
• the individual ministries would be headed by acting ministers, appointed by the Reich Commissioner and working under his supervision.

The Storting was not formally dissolved, but it ceased to exist as an institution. Its building was already the seat of the Reich Commissariat, and the members did not meet again until after the liberation, in June 1945.

Of the thirteen acting ministers, three were regarded as non-party experts: the banker Erling Sandberg at finance, the civil servant Sigurd Johannessen at trade and industry, and Øystein Ravner at supply. The rest were members of Nasjonal Samling or people associated with it – usually ten according to Norwegian tallies, although some sources count slightly fewer, since not all of them were formally party members at the time. The key ministries of coercion went to men who became pillars of collaboration: Jonas Lie took the police, Sverre Riisnæs justice, Albert Viljam Hagelin the interior, and Gulbrand Lunde culture and propaganda. The ministers met for the first time on 26 September. In legal terms they were not a government but heads of departments acting on the commissioner’s behalf. Quisling chaired their weekly meetings, but the last word belonged to Terboven.

The arrangement was a compromise. Terboven would have preferred to govern directly through the German apparatus, as Arthur Seyss-Inquart did in the Netherlands, and did not want to give Quisling a leading role. Hitler, however, required that Nasjonal Samling have its place. The result was a dual system in which real power lay with the Reich Commissariat, while the Norwegian National Socialists provided the façade.

Reactions

Terboven’s speech dispelled any illusion that under occupation it would be possible to preserve even a semblance of Norwegian self-government on terms resembling those in Denmark. Nasjonal Samling, which before the war had not won a single seat in the Storting, gained thousands of new members within a few months, often out of opportunism. Most Norwegians, however, saw the “New Order” as the open imposition of rule by traitors. From London the King and the government declared Terboven’s decrees null and void and contrary to the constitution. At home civil resistance began to take shape, based on the very institutions that were now to be subordinated to Nasjonal Samling: the courts, the Church, the schools, the sports associations and the professional organisations.

Place in the war

For Norway, 25 September 1940 marked the beginning of the occupation proper in the political sense. Norway, whose King and government had continued to fight on the Allied side from London after losing the Norwegian campaign, was no longer merely a country held by an army, but one in which the occupier was trying to impose a National Socialist “New Order”. The response came quickly. In the autumn of 1940 sportsmen began to boycott competitions organised under the aegis of Nasjonal Samling, and in December the judges of the Supreme Court resigned in protest against interference in the administration of justice. In 1942, after Quisling was appointed “Minister President”, there were open conflicts with the Church of Norway, whose bishops and most of whose pastors resigned their offices, and with the teachers, who refused en masse to join an imposed professional organisation. From September 1941 the acting ministers styled themselves ministers, and from February 1942 they formed Quisling’s government, but Terboven remained the real master of Norway until May 1945. After the war Quisling and some of the ministers appointed on 25 September, among them Hagelin, were tried by Norwegian courts and sentenced to death for treason.