Paul Wegener (born 1 October 1908 in Varel - died 5 May 1993 in Wächtersbach) was a German Nazi Party official.
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Wegener joined the Nazi Party in 1930 and the Sturmabteilung the following year. He became Kreisleiter for Bremen in 1933 and a delegate to the Reichstag for Weser-Ems that same year.[1] Wegener served as a party bureaucrat employed at the Office of the Deputy Führer where his efficiency had impressed Martin Bormann.[2] When Wilhelm Kube was removed as Gauleiter of Gau March of Brandenburg after clashing with Walter Buch he was replaced by Emil Sturtz with Wegener appointed as deputy Gauleiter.[2]
He switched from the SA to the Schutzstaffel in 1940 obtaining the rank of Gruppenführer in 1942 and Obergruppenführer two years later. He also saw active service with the 1st SS Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler as part of the Balkans Campaign in Greece in 1941.[1]
On 20 April 1940 Josef Terboven, newly appointed as Reichskommissar for the occupied Norwegian territories, selected Wegener to serve as his deputy.[3] From the start Wegener was hostile to the notion that Vidkun Quisling should take a leading role in the new government, instead favouring the idea that the Nazis should establish their own administrative system in Norway.[4] Eventually when it was decided to include Quisling he established the Einsatzstab Wegener, which placed pro-Wegener men in each branch of the Nasjonal Samling, both to improve the organisation of what had been a minor party and to ensure complicity with the demands of the governing Nazis.[5] He left Norway in 1942 when Hans-Hendrik Neumann took over as Terboven's number two.[6]
Carl Röver died in May 1942 after a stroke and a few weeks later Wegener was chosen to succeed him as Gauleiter of Weser-Ems.[7]
Soon after his appointment he produced an internal document, the Wegener Memorandum, in which it was said that the Nazi Party should be purged of much of its vast membership and instead be reorganised as an elite group to provide leadership for future generations of Germany. To this Wegener proposed a reorganisation of the Hitler Youth to bring it under the control of the party bureaucracy rather than the state. This new Hitler Youth would provide all the future membership of the Nazi Party with most existing party members absorbed into the Sturmabteilung, which was to be reconstituted as a veterans organisation.[8] His plan also included a strengthening of the role of the Nazi Party Chancellery and this occurred in the following months as Wegener's old mentor Bormann was given greater power at the expense of first the Reichsleiters and then members of the cabinet.[9]
When Joseph Goebbels was made Plenipotentiary for Total War in July 1944 Wegener was made his head of administration, making him one of only two permanent staff members appointed at national level (the other being Werner Naumann as head of planning activties).[10]
Wegener spent time in prison for his involvement in civilian deaths during his time in Bremen before finding work as a salesman in Sinzheim and then Wächtersbach. According to British secret service files however Wegener was also involved with an underground group of ex-Nazi Party members, organised by Werner Naumann, which was involved in attempts to infiltrate the Free Democratic Party.[1]