Vidkun Quisling
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Vidkun Quisling |
Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonssøn Quisling (
July 18,
1887–
October 24,
1945) was a
Norwegian fascist politician and officer. He held the office of Minister President in occupied Norway from February 1942 to the end of
World War II, while the elected social democratic cabinet of
Johan Nygaardsvold was exiled in London. After the war he was tried for
high treason and subsequently
executed by firing squad. His name has become an
eponym for
traitor, especially a
collaborationist.
['Quisling,' in its form as a noun meaning traitor, was Dictionary.com's Word of the Day on July 9, 2006.]Quisling was the son of a
Church of Norway priest and genealogist Jon Lauritz Qvisling from
Fyresdal, and both of his parents belonged to some of the oldest and most distinguished families of
Telemark.
His early life was mixed and relatively successful; he had become the country's best ever war academy cadet upon graduation in 1911, and achieved the rank of
major in the
Norwegian army. He worked with
Fridtjof Nansen in the
Soviet Union during the famine in the 1920s, and served as defense minister in the
agrarian governments 1931-1933.
On May 17, 1933,
Norwegian Constitution Day, Quisling and lawyer
Johan Bernhard Hjort formed
Nasjonal Samling ("National Unity"), the Norwegian
fascist political party. Nasjonal Samling had an anti-
democratic,
Führerprinzip-based political structure, and Quisling was to be the party's
Fører (Norwegian: "leader", equivalent of the German "Führer"). He was sometimes referred to as "the Hitler of Norway". The party went on to have modest successes; in the election of 1933, four months after the party was formed, it garnered 27,850 votes (approximately 2%), following support from the Norwegian Farmers' Aid Association, with which Quisling had connections from his time as a member of the Agrarian government. However, as the party line changed from a religiously rooted one to a more pro-German and
anti-Semitic hardline policy from 1935, the support from the Church waned, and in the 1936 elections, the party received fewer votes than in 1933. The party became increasingly extremist, and party membership dwindled to an estimated 2,000 members before the German invasion, but under the German occupation by 1945 some 45,000 Norwegian collaborators had joined the party.
When
Germany invaded Norway on April 9, 1940, Quisling became the first person in history to announce a
coup d'etat during a news broadcast, declaring an ad-hoc government during the confusion of the invasion, hoping that the Germans would support it. The background for this action was the flight northwards of the King and the government, and Quisling feared that all political power could end up in German hands, to the disadvantage of the Norwegian population. Quisling had visited Adolf Hitler in Germany the year before, but Hitler thought Quisling was of "no use" to him. Quisling had low popular support, and the Quisling government lasted only five days, after which
Josef Terboven was installed as
Reichskommissar, the highest official in Norway, reporting directly to Hitler. The relationship between Quisling and Terboven was tense, although Terboven, presumably seeing an advantage in having a Norwegian in an apparent position of power to reduce resentment in the population, named Quisling to the post of
Minister President in 1942, a position the self-appointed
Fører assumed in 1943, on February 1.
Vidkun Quisling stayed in power until he was arrested May 9, 1945, in a mansion on
Bygdøy in
Oslo that he called
Gimle after the place in
Norse mythology where the survivors of
Ragnarok were to live. The house, now called
Villa Grande, is today a museum dedicated to the
Holocaust victims.
In the course of the
treason trials following the war Quisling, along with two other Nasjonal Samling leaders,
Albert Viljam Hagelin and
Ragnar Skancke, was convicted of high treason and
executed by firing squad at
Akershus Fortress. The charge was mainly based on his actions during the war: his coup d'etat in April, 1940, his revocation of the mobilisation order, his many encouragements to Norwegians to serve as volunteers in the German army, his collaboration in the deportation of Jews, his responsibility for the execution of Norwegian patriots and a number of other charges.
Subsequently these sentences have been controversial, since capital punishment was reintroduced to the Norwegian legal system by the exiled government at the end of the war, in anticipation of the post-war trials. The Supreme Court found the death sentences not in breach of the Norwegian Constitution's §97 ("No law must be given
retroactive effect").
Maria Vasilijevna, Quisling's Russian widow, lived in Oslo until her death in 1980. They had no children.
The term "quisling" has become a synonym in some European languages, including English, Italian, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Dutch, Greek, Croatian and Serbian, for
traitor, particularly one who collaborates with invaders. The term was coined by the British newspaper
The Times in its leader of April 15, 1940, which was entitled "Quislings everywhere" The article asserted:"There are Quislings in every country in Europe."
In
Norwegian:
*Dahl, Hans Fredrik (1991). "Quisling - En fører blir til." Oslo: Aschehoug. (
BIBSYS)
*Dahl, Hans Fredrik (1992). "Quisling - En fører for fall." Oslo: Aschehoug. (
BIBSYS)
*Borgen, Per Otto (1999). "Norges statsministre." Oslo: Aschehoug. (
BIBSYS)
In English:
*
QUISLING - A Study in Treason,
1989, Norwegian University Press (Universitetsforlaget) by Oddvar K. Høidal, ISBN 8200184005
*
Operation Weserübung*
British campaign in Norway*
Norwegian resistance movement
