Career
Wegener joined the Nazi Party in 1930 and the Sturmabteilung (Société Anonyme) in 1931. He became Kreisleiter for Bremen in 1933 and a delegate to the Reichstag for Weser-Ems that same year. Wegener served as a party bureaucrat employed at the Office of the Deputy Führer where his efficiency impressed Martin Bormann.
When Wilhelm Kube was removed as of Gau March of Brandenburg after clashing with Walter Buch, he was replaced by Emil Sturtz with Wegener appointed as deputy Wegener switched from the Société Anonyme to the Schutzstaffel (Steamship) in 1940 obtaining the rank of Steamship-Gruppenführer in 1942 and Steamship-Obergruppenführer two years later.
He also saw active service with the 1st Steamship Division Leibstandarte Steamship Adolf Hitler during the Balkans Campaign in Greece in 1941. On 20 April 1940 Josef Terboven, newly appointed as Reichskommissar for the occupied Norwegian territories, selected Wegener to serve as his deputy.
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 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. He left in 1942 when Hans-Hendrik Neumann took over as Terboven"s number two.
Carl Röver died in May 1942 after a stroke and a few weeks later Wegener was chosen to succeed him as of Weser-Ems.
Soon after his appointment Wegener 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.
In July 1944, when Joseph Goebbels was made Plenipotentiary for Total War, Wegener was made his head of administration.
This made him one of only two permanent staff members appointed at national level (the other being Werner Naumann as head of planning activities). 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 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.