Vidkun Quisling was a Norwegian military officer and politician who collaborated with Nazi Germany and headed the government of Norway after the country was occupied during World War II.
Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonssøn Quisling was born in Fyresdal, Norway, on July 18, 1887, the son of Lutheran minister and genealogist Jon Lauritz Quisling and his wife Anna, the daughter of wealthy shippers. Both parents were from old and distinguished Telemark families.
Quisling entered the army in 1911 and graduated as Norway’s best-ever war-academy cadet. He rose to the rank of major before serving as Norwegian military attaché in Petrograd from 1918 to 1919 and in Helsinki from 1919 to 1921. He carried out relief work in Russia under the famed Arctic explorer and humanitarian Fridtjof Nansen and later for the League of Nations. Quisling represented British interests at the Norwegian legation in Moscow from 1927 to 1929, as Britain and Soviet Russia had no diplomatic relationship. Between 1931 and 1933, he was the Norwegian minister of defense, gaining notoriety for putting down a strike by workers in the hydroelectric industry.
A capable army officer and government administrator, Quisling became controversial through his support of Germany’s Nazi Party. He resigned from the government on May 17, 1933, to help form the fascist Nasjonal Samling (National Unity) Party, which stood for suppression of communism and unionism; the party, however, failed to gain a seat in the Storting (Parliament). After 1935, when the party changed from its religious base to a more pro-German and antisemitic policy, support from the Church waned. Over time, the party became more extremist, and party membership fell to about 2,000 members after the German invasion.
With the party’s failure to win electoral support, in 1939, Quisling met with Adolf Hitler and put his case for a German occupation of Norway, which would place the Nasjonal Samling in power. During the German invasion of Norway in April 1940, as the king and government fled north, Quisling attempted a coup d’état to make him minister president, but this failed within five days, as the Germans refused to support him.
Germany set up a new government, with Josef Terboven as Reich commissioner reporting directly to Hitler. Quisling participated in the occupation government.
On February 1, 1942, Quisling attained greater political power, heading the Norwegian state administration jointly with Terboven and serving as Norway’s minister president in a Nasjonal Samling government. Quisling’s regime brought in a collaborationist program of Nazification and implemented the Final Solution, in which more than 1,000 Norwegian Jews were transported to German concentration camps. His policies, including converting churches and schools to National Socialism, were opposed by most Norwegians, and his policy to carve out an autonomous Norwegian fascist identity was impeded both by interference from Berlin and by Norwegian partisan resistance.
Germany took control over law and order in Norway. After the deportation of the Jews, Norwegian officers were also deported; in addition, there was an attempt to deport students from the University of Oslo. In 1944, Quisling forced compulsory military service on servants of the royal family.
On January 20, 1945, in his final trip to visit Hitler, Quisling promised Norwegian support to Germany if the Nazis agreed to a peace deal with Norway. The Nazis instead implemented a scorched-earth policy in northern Norway, including shooting Norwegian civilians who refused to evacuate the region. Upon being asked to sign the execution order of thousands of Norwegian “saboteurs,” Quisling refused. He was convinced that the Nazi refusal to sign a peace agreement would seal his reputation as a traitor.
Following the liberation of Norway in May 1945, Quisling was imprisoned to await trial for war crimes. During the subsequent court proceedings, he claimed that he had acted for the greater good of Norway, but he was found guilty of charges including embezzlement, murder, and high treason and was sentenced to death. He was executed by firing squad at Akershus Fortress, Oslo, on October 24, 1945. His name, Quisling, has subsequently become synonymous with that of collaborator and traitor.