There is no individual despised more by patriotic citizens of any country than a traitor. There have been many men, over the passage of time, whose names have become synonymous with treachery such as Mir Jafar and Brutus. There is one infamous man whose name became associated with treachery to such an extent that his name has now become a part of the English vocabulary. He was Vidkun Quisling.
In the English dictionary, a quisling is a person who collaborates with an enemy occupying force. The term ‘quisling’ has become a synonym in many European languages for traitor.
The word dates back to the time when Norwegian war-time leader Vidkun Quisling headed a domestic Nazi collaborationist regime during the Second World War.
There were many men and women during the Second World War who collaborated with the hated Nazis and betrayed their countrymen but it is primarily Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonssøn Quisling who is remembered as one of World War II’s most infamous traitors.
Quisling held the office of President of Norway from February 1, 1942, ensconced in his post as a puppet of the Nazis till the end of World War II, while the elected social democratic cabinet of Johan Nygaardsvold was exiled in London.
As the leader of the national socialist Nasjonal Samling Party, Quisling met Hitler in Berlin in the winter of 1939-40 and indicated how beneficial it would be for Germany to occupy Norway. The Germans responded to his overtures without delay and immediately after the invasion, on the morning of April 9, 1940, he proclaimed himself the new head of the government and ordered the Norwegian armed forces to stop battling the Germans.
Why Quisling resorted to these unscrupulous tactics and become the most hated man in Norway is a mystery? This son of the Lutheran minister had a distinguished career and both his parents belonged to some of the oldest and most distinguished families of Norway. He achieved the rank of major in the Norwegian army some years before he became the country’s best ever war academy cadet upon graduation and also worked in the Soviet Union during the famine in the 1920s, as well as served as defence minister in the agrarian government 1931-1933.
It is evident that Hitler seemed to have inspired Quisling in many ways. On May 17, 1933, Quisling and state attorney Johan Bernhard Hjort formed Nasjonal Samling (NS) (National Unity), the Norwegian national-socialist party. The party had an anti-democratic, Führerprinzip-based political structure akin to the Nazis and Quisling was to be the party’s Führer, as Adolf Hitler was for the NSDAP in Germany.
The party went on to have modest successes which it owed to support from the Norwegian Farmer’s Aid Association, with which Quisling had been associated from his time as a member of the Agrarian government.
However, the party line slowly underwent a sinister change from a religiously rooted one to a more pro-German and anti-Semitic hardline policy from 1935. This transformation led to diminishing support from the Church. As the party became increasingly extremist, the party membership dwindled to an estimated 2,000 members after the German invasion.
When German forces invaded Norway on April 9, 1940, Quisling became the first person in history to announce a coup during a news broadcast and declared an ad-hoc government amidst the confusion of the invasion hoping that the Germans would offer their support. During his visit to Germany, Quisling established a great rapport with Hitler, so his belief that Germany would offer unilateral support was not entirely unfounded.
However, Quisling had little popular support and his government lasted only five days, following which Josef Terboven was installed as Reichskommissar (Commissioner), the highest authority in Norway, reporting directly to Hitler.
Quisling and Terboven had a tense relationship although Terboven, realising the advantage of having a Norwegian in a position of power, named Quisling the ‘Minister President’ (as opposed to Prime Minister) in 1942, a position the self-appointed ‘Führer’ assumed in 1943, on February 1.
After the war, Quisling met his comeuppance when he was tried for high treason and executed by a firing squad.