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.
Bio
Vidkun Quisling had a mixed and relatively successful background. 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. At the time Quisling was the country's best ever war academy cadet upon graduation, and he achieved the rank of major in the Norwegian army. He was also a brilliant mathematician.
In 1908, Quisling became attached to the general staff immediately after his graduation from "Krigsskolen", literally "The War School", in Oslo. In 1918 he was appointed the Norwegian military attaché in Russia and Finland: St. Petersburg and Helsinki. During the period 1922-1925 and the famine of the Soviet Union, Major Quisling was therefore handpicked to be the closest co-worker of the Norwegian national hero Fridtjof Nansen in his relief work in western Russia, and in the Ukraine where Quisling was in charge of the relief work. Nansen received the Nobel Peace Price for their work in Russia and the Ukrainie. Like Nansen, Quisling was an Anglophile, and his work for British interests in Russia earned him the CBE order; Commander of the British Empire . Moreover, what he learned about the Russian revolution and the Soviet regime established him as by far the most knowledgeable Norwegian on Russian affairs. The experience in Bolshevik Russia shaped his views on international affairs of the 1930s to a considerable degree.
The Bolshevik experience even affected the national hero Nansen to a degree that made him found and front the movement Fedrelandslaget ("The Fatherland Association") in 1925, which Quisling later joined on his return from the Soviet Union in 1930. This was an anti-Communist and anti-Parliamentary organisation of some 100 000 members at its height, which tried to have the Labour Party and the Communist Party deemed illegal, but when this proved difficult they opted for a mobilisation of non-Socialist voters, resulting in a land-slide election against the Socialists in 1930. After the death of Nansen it ran for Parliament and in 1940 worked for a collaborationist government with the Labour Party and the Germans. There is speculation that Nansen planned for a coup, but died prematurely in 1930. This association with Fascism of Nansen, the Polar hero, is today conveniantly forgotten in Norway. Nansen's and Quisling's political work may therefore to a large extent be seen as a reaction on the pressure and threat from Soviet Russia and their collaborators domestically, as was typical for the Fascist movements in Europe. Quisling's own party from 1933 differed from Nansen's movement in that Quisling adopted a programme of more radical social reform, thereby establishing it as Nationalist and Socialist, in other words a version of National Socialism, or Fascism, which opposed the rule of Moscow and the Comintern over the world's nations.
Quisling served as defense minister in the Agrarian government of 1931–1933. In 1932 he led a Parliamental Committee of investigation, whose report exposed the wide ranging plans of the Labour Party to install a Bolshevik regime in Norway with Russian support. Part of the plans were to establish Northern Norway as a separate Bolshevik regime, independent from Oslo. Gold was early smuggled in from Moscow over the northern border in advance to support the new regime e.g. by Alfred Matsen who was arrested in 1920, and thereafter nicknamed "Goldsmuggler Matsen". Typically Matsen later became member of the board of the Norwegian Central Bank Norway's Bank from 1929 and then a Minister of Trade. Likewise Sverre Støstad recieved 8 000 crowns per year (a workingman's average pay per hour was in 1930: 1,20 crowns) from Comintern for his work in the Scandinavian Communist Federation, designed to arm workers and erect Communist cells in the armed forces. Støstad was later to become President of the Norwegian Parliament. Documents in the report proved that e.g. Trygve Lie, later the first United Nations Secretary-General, had received Bolshevik money in 1921. The report exposed extensive smuggling of weapons, establishment of weapon storages and of armed forces counting more than 8 000 men. As late as March 1932 half a million Norwegian crowns were transferred from Comintern to support the Communists cells in the Norwegian defence forces. Quisling's exposure was supported in the Parliament by the non-socialist parties with 108 against 42 votes and the plans were put down, but no measures were taken against the Labour Party politicians. In 1935 a Labour government was formed under Johan Nygaardsvold.
On May 17, 1933, the Norwegian Constitution Day, Quisling and state attorney Johan Bernhard Hjort formed Nasjonal Samling ("National Unity"), the Norwegian fascist party. The party had an anti-democratic, Führerprinzip-based political structure, and Quisling was to be the party's Fører (Norwegian equivalent of German Führer, i.e. leader), much as Adolf Hitler was for the German Nazi Party. Nasjonal Samling had only modest success; in the election of 1933, four months after the party was formed, it garnered 27,850 votes (approximately 2%), 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 fewer votes. Nevertheless, in 1936, a speech by Qusling gathered 30 000 people in Oslo. Nasjonal Samling became increasingly extremist, and party membership dwindled to an estimated 2,000 members after the German invasion. By 1945 it had grown to almost 45,000 members.
During the 1930s, there were several obscure events in Norwegian politics. For instance, according to the Norwegian Constitution, elections were to be held every 3 years. The last election being in 1936, the next election due in 1939 was nevertheless postponed, although once again: The Norwegian Constitution had very strict rules for such changes, demanding this to be ratified by subsequent Parliaments over several years, rules that were disregarded. The Labour Government's introduction of a new election law, 22 April 1938, was therefore unconstitutional. From a legal and constitutional point of view, likewise, the Norwegian Parliament and Labour Government were illegal after 1939, ironally in contrast to Hitler's legal takeover in 1933 in Germany.
When German forces 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 people. Quisling had visited Adolf Hitler in Germany in 1939, but was not well liked by Hitler who thought Quisling was of "no use" to him. The main goal of Quisling's visit to Berlin had not been to get German support for action in Norway but rather to warn Hitler against Stalin's plans against Europe. The "Military Commission's Report of 1945" acquitted all Norwegians of collaboration with the invading forces ahead of the invasion.
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 on February 1, 1943. Under Quisling's regime many social reforms were introduced, such as a Mother's compensation for children, later taken over by the post-war Social-Democratic regime.
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 victims of the Holocaust.
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. Subsequently these sentences have been controversial, since capital punishment was reintroduced to the Norwegian legal system by the government-in-exile 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, Norwegian, Swedish and Serbian, for traitor, particularly one who collaborates with invaders. The term had been coined by the British newspaper The Times by April 1940 and was spread around the world by the BBC.
Literature
In Norwegian:
- Knudsen, Harald Franklin. (1951). Jeg var Quislings Sekretær, København: Eget forlag
- 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:
- Knudsen, Harald Franklin. (1951). I Was Quisling’s Secretary, Britons Publishing Company, 1967, Norwegian original: Jeg var Quislings Sekretær, København: Eget forlag
- Høidal, Oddvar K. 1989. QUISLING - A Study in Treason, Oslo: Norwegian University Press (Universitetsforlaget), ISBN 8200184005