| Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonssøn Quisling (July 18, 1887 – October 24, 1945) was a Norwegian politician and officer, commonly known as one of World
War II's most infamous traitors. He held the office of Minister
President of Norway from February 1 1942 to the end of World War II, while the elected social democratic cabinet of Johan Nygaardsvold was exiled in London. Quisling was tried for high treason and executed by
firing squad after the war.
The term "quisling" has become a synonym in many European
languages, including English, for traitor (see Judas, and the understanding of Benedict
Arnold in the United States).
Quisling had a mixed and relatively successful background, having achieved the rank of major in the Norwegian army (some years
before he had become the country's best ever war academy cadet upon graduation), and worked with Fridtjof Nansen in the Soviet Union during the
famine in the 1920s, as well as having served
as defense minister in the agrarian government 1931-1933. He was son of the Lutheran minister and well-known genealogist Jon
Lauritz Qvisling and both of his parents belonged to some of the oldest and most distinguished families of Telemark.
On May 17, 1933, the Norwegian Constitution
Day, Quisling and state attorney Johan Bernhard Hjort
formed Nasjonal Samling (NS) ("National Unity"), the Norwegian
national-socialist party. Nasjonal Samling had an anti-democratic,
Führerprinzip-based political structure, and Quisling was to be
the party's Führer, much like Adolf Hitler was for the NSDAP in Germany. The party went on to have modest
successes, in the election of 1933, four months after the party was formed, it garnered 27850 votes, following support from the Norwegian Farmer's 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 onwards, the support from the Church waned, and in the 1936 elections, the party got ca.50 000 votes. The party became increasingly extremist, and party
membership dwindled to an estimated 2000 members after the German invasion.
When Germany invaded Norway on April 9, 1940, Quisling became the first person in history to announce
a coup 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. Quisling had visited Adolf Hitler in Germany the year before, and was liked by Hitler, so Quisling's
belief that the Germans would back his government were not entirely unfounded. However, Quisling had low popular support, and the
Quisling government lasted only five days, after which Josef Terboven
was installed as Reichskommissar (Commissioner), the highest
authority 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 a position of power to reduce resentment in the population, named
Quisling to the post of "Minister President" (as opposed to
Prime Minister) in 1942, a
position the self-appointed "Führer" 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 which he called Gimle after the place in Norse mythology where the survivors of Ragnarok were to
live.
Quisling, along with two other Nasjonal Samling leaders, Albert Viljam Hagelin and Ragnar Skancke,
were convicted and executed by firing squad. In
later days these sentences have been controversial, since the capital punishment was reintroduced to the Norwegian legal system
during the end of the war, by the exile government, to handle the post war trials.
Maria Vasilijevna, Quisling's Russian wife, lived in Oslo until her death in 1980.
They had no children.
Literature
In Norwegian:
- Dahl, Hans Fredrik (1991): Quisling - En fører blir til. Oslo: Aschehoug (BIBSYS (http://wgate.bibsys.no/gate1/SHOW?objd=911283048&lang=N))
- Dahl, Hans Fredrik (1992): Quisling - En fører for fall. Oslo: Aschehoug (BIBSYS (http://wgate.bibsys.no/gate1/SHOW?objd=921785690&lang=N))
- Borgen, Per Otto (1999): Norges statsministre. Oslo: Aschehoug (BIBSYS (http://wgate.bibsys.no/gate1/SHOW?objd=991385179&lang=N))
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