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 of Norway from February 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. His name has become an eponym for traitor..
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 priest and well-known genealogist Jon Lauritz Qvisling from Fyresdal and both of his parents belonged to some of the oldest and most distinguished families of Telemark.
On May 17, 1933, Norwegian Constitution Day, Quisling and state attorney Johan Bernhard Hjort formed Nasjonal Samling ("National Unity"), the Norwegian fascist 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'), much as Adolf Hitler was for the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi Party) in Germany. 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, 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 approximately 50,000 votes. The party became increasingly extremist, and party membership dwindled to an estimated 2,000 members after the German invasion, but by 1945 it had 45,000 members.
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 was not well liked by Hitler who 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 a 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.
Quisling, along with two other Nasjonal Samling leaders, Albert Viljam Hagelin and Ragnar Skancke, was convicted for high treason and executed by firing squad at Akershus Fortress. Subsequently these sentences have been controversial, since capital punishment was reintroduced to the Norwegian legal system by the exile government at the end of the war, in anticipation of the post war trials.
Maria Vasilijevna, Quisling's Russian wife, 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 and Norwegian, for traitor, particularly one who collaborates with invaders. The term was coined by the British newspaper the Daily Mail.
Literature
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