Vidkun Quisling

Vidkun Quisling , 1887-1945, Norwegian fascist leader. An army officer, he served as military attaché in Petrograd (1918-19) and Helsinki (1919-21) and later assisted Fridtjof Nansen in relief work in Russia. He was Norwegian minister of defense from 1931 to 1933. He then left the Agrarian party to found the fascist Nasjonal Samling [national unity] party. In 1940 he helped Germany prepare the conquest of Norway. Remaining at the head of the sole party permitted by the Germans, he was made premier in 1942. Despite his unpopularity and difficulties with his German masters and within his own party, he remained in power until May, 1945, when, after the Germans in Norway surrendered, he was arrested. He was convicted of high treason and shot. From his name came the word quisling, meaning traitor.

Bibliography: See biography by P. M. Hayes (1972).

Quisling, Vidkun (1887–1945) Norwegian fascist leader. A former minister of defence (1931–33), Quisling founded the National Union Party (1933), based on the German Nazi Party. In 1940 he collaborated with the invading Germans, and they set him up as a puppet ruler during their occupation of Norway. At the end of World War II, he was shot as a traitor.

Quisling, Vidkun (1887–1945),founder of the Norwegian Fascist National Union Party who forged useful links with Hitler and other Nazi leaders during the 1930s. In April 1940, when they invaded Norway (see Norwegian campaign) the Germans demanded that he be made prime minister. Initially, this only helped stiffen the Norwegian Government's resistance but in June both it and King Haakon were forced to flee to the UK. At first Quisling was treated sceptically by the Reich Commissioner for Norway, Josef Terboven, but on 1 February 1942 he became the country's minister-president and began the Nazification of his country, which was rigorously opposed by most Norwegians. When the war ended he was tried for treason and executed. His name has lived on as a synonym for a fifth columnist, collaborator, or traitor.