Execution of Vidkun Quisling - History's Most Infamous TRAITOR who Sold his Country to the NAZIS

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The 9th of April 1940. Under the  codename “Operation Weserübung”,   Nazi Germany invades Denmark  and Norway. Strategically,   Denmark's importance to Germany is as a  staging area for operations in Norway.  In Norway, Germany seeks to secure naval bases  for use against the British fleet in the North   Sea and to guarantee vital iron-ore shipments from  neutral Sweden on which Nazi Germany is dependent.  While invasion of Denmark lasts less than six  hours and is the shortest military campaign   conducted by the Germans during the war, Norway  surrenders to Germany only after 2 months on the   10th of June 1940. On 1 February 1942, the  Germans appoint a minister president whose   pro-Nazi collaborationist puppet government  will participate in Germany's war efforts,   and sent Jews out of the country to  concentration camps in German-occupied   Poland. His name, which will become a byword for  "collaborator" or "traitor", is Vidkun Quisling. Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonssøn Quisling was  born on July 18, 1887, in Fyresdal in southern   Norway. His father Jon Lauritz Quisling  was a Lutheran minister and genealogist   and Vidkun’s mother Anna Caroline Bang came  from a wealthy family in Grimstad in Norway. In 1905, then the 18-year-old Vidkun Quisling  entered the War College. Of the 250 cadets, he   had achieved the highest score on the notoriously  difficult entrance exams. From the War College,   Quisling entered the Military Academy to pursue  a career in the army. Vidkun Quisling graduated   with the best grades in the history of the  Academy since its founding in 1817 and the   King of Norway rewarded him by inviting  the young Vidkun to an audience with him. In 1911, Quisling joined the General Staff  of the Norwegian Army. 3 years later on the   28th of July 1914, the First World War began.  During the war, Norway was neutral. Quisling   detested the peace movement, though the high  human cost of the war did temper his views.  In March 1918, he was sent to Russia as  an attaché at the Norwegian legation in   Petrograd. Though dismayed at the living  conditions he experienced, Quisling   nonetheless concluded that "the Bolsheviks have  got an extraordinarily strong hold on Russian   society" and marvelled at how Leon Trotsky had  managed to mobilise the Red Army forces so well.  He asserted that by contrast, in granting  too many rights to the people of Russia,   the Russian Provisional Government under  Alexander Kerensky had brought about its   own downfall. When the legation  was recalled in December 1918,   Quisling became the Norwegian  military's expert on Russian affairs. In September 1919, Quisling departed Norway  to become an intelligence officer with the   Norwegian delegation in Helsinki in Finland,   a post that combined diplomacy and politics  and in January 1922 he arrived in the Ukrainian   capital Kharkiv to help with the League of  Nations humanitarian relief effort there.  In august of the same year, he married the  Russian Alexandra Andreevna Voronina. It   appeared that there was no romantic involvement  between the two and it is believed that Quisling   merely seemed to have wanted to lift the  girl out of poverty by providing her with   a Norwegian passport and financial security Soon, he met Maria Vasiljevna Pasetchnikova,   a Ukrainian more than ten years his junior.  The couple behaved as though they were married,   claimed Alexandra was their daughter,  and celebrated their wedding anniversary. His time in Russia, however, had the  greatest impact on Quisling’s political   thought. Quisling called his political  philosophy “Universism.” The goal was   to develop a collective consciousness for  global unity by passing a consciousness   from the individual level to the national level.  Eventually, Universism took on a racial element   as Quisling incorporated a belief in Nordic  racial superiority. He asserted that the path   to world unity would only be achieved under  Nordic leadership, working against the Jews. Quisling permanently returned to Norway in  1929. He served as the Norwegian Minister of   Defense between 1931 and 1933 as a member of  the Agrarian Party. When the Agrarian Party   refused to appoint Quisling as party leader,  he left to form his own party. In May 1933,   he co-founded the Nasjonal Samling - meaning  the National Unity - political party. Quisling   also became the party’s fører, or leader. The  party’s platform was based on four principles: - a corporatist vision of society - an emphasis on nationalism and Christianity  - paternalism of the state - and economic self-sufficiency. However, the Nasjonal Samling was not successful  in elections. In the 1933 Norwegian parliamentary   elections, the party took 2.2% of the vote.  In 1936, the last elections held before the   outbreak of World War II, it took only  1.8% of the vote. Neither result was   enough for the party to ever hold a seat in the  Storting, the unicameral Norwegian Parliament. In addition, dwindling party membership  created many problems for Quisling,   especially financial ones. For years  he had been in financial difficulties   and reliant on his inheritance,  while increasing numbers of his   paintings which he had acquired cheaply  in post-revolutionary Russia, were found   to be copies when he tried to sell them. His  collection stretched to some 200 paintings,   including works claimed to be by Rembrandt,  Goya, Cézanne and numerous other masters. However, sometimes even originals did not raise  as much as Quisling had hoped. Vidkun and his   brother Arne sold one Frans Hals painting for  just four thousand dollars, believing it to be   a copy and not the fifty-thousand-dollar  artwork they had once thought it to be,   only to see it reclassified as an original  and revalued at one hundred thousand dollars. In 1939, Quisling turned his attention towards  Norway's preparations for the anticipated   European war, which he believed involved a  drastic increase in the country's defence   spending to guarantee its neutrality. Meanwhile,  Quisling presented lectures entitled "The Jewish   problem in Norway" and supported Adolf Hitler in  what appeared to be a growing future conflict.   Despite condemning Kristallnacht which was a  series of coordinated violent riots against   the Jews throughout Nazi Germany and recently  incorporated territories which occurred on the   9th – 10th of November 1938, he sent the  German leader a fiftieth-birthday greeting   thanking him for "saving Europe from Bolshevism  and Jewish domination". Quisling also contended   that should an Anglo-Russian alliance make  neutrality impossible, Norway would have   "to go with Germany." Invited to the country in  the summer of 1939, he began a tour of a number   of German and Danish cities. He was received  particularly well in Germany, which promised   funds to boost Nasjonal Samling's standing in  Norway, and hence spread pro-Nazi sentiment. At the start of the World War II in 1939,  Norway—like all of Scandinavia—gained new   strategic importance for Germany. Erich Raeder,  head of the German navy from 1939 to 1943,   was concerned about maintaining German  naval access to the North Sea and the   Atlantic Ocean via naval bases on the  Norwegian shoreline. In December 1939,   first Raeder, then Hitler met with Quisling.  The Fuhrer was generally impressed. Quisling   suggested the British were planning to move into  Norway for their own strategic needs. Alarmed,   Germany began planning Operation Weserübung,  the invasion of Denmark and Norway. The German   invasion of Norway under General Nikolaus  von Falkenhorst began on April 9, 1940. The same day, while the German offensive got  underway, Quisling attempted to seize power in   the world's first radio-broadcast coup d'état. He  announced to the Norwegian public that they should   welcome, rather than resist, the advancing  Germans. He also announced a new government   and declared himself the new head of state.  Two hours later, Quisling repeated his radio   announcement. This time, he issued a warning that  “any refusal” to cooperate with the new government   would “henceforth involve the most serious  consequences for the individuals concerned.” Quisling now reached the high-water mark of his  political power. On Hitler's orders, Curt Bräuer,   Germany's representative in Norway at the time of  the invasion, demanded that King Haakon appoint   Quisling head of a new government, thereby  securing a peaceful transition of power and   giving legal sanction to the occupation. However,  Haakon rejected this demand. He went further in   a meeting with his cabinet, telling the ministers  that he could not appoint Quisling prime minister   because neither the people nor the Parliament of  Norway had confidence in him. He let it be known   that he would sooner abdicate than appoint any  government headed by Quisling. Hearing this, the   government unanimously voted to support the king's  stance. It formally advised him not to appoint any   government headed by Quisling and urged the  people to continue their resistance. With his   popular support gone, Quisling ceased to be of use  to Hitler. Germany retracted its support for his   rival government, preferring instead to build up  its own independent governing commission. On April   15, 1940, Nazi leadership forced him to step down.  Thus, Quisling’s coup only lasted six days and his   domestic and international reputation both hit new  lows, casting him as both a traitor and a failure. Norway fell to Germany on June  19, 1940 and the king and Prime   Minister Johan Nygaardsvold  went into exile in London. On April 24, 1940, Hitler appointed Josef  Terboven, Reichskommissar of the Occupied   Norwegian Territories. General Von Falkenhorst,  who had planned and commanded the German invasion   of Denmark and Norway in 1940, retained military  control. In addition, all political parties other   than Quisling’s Nasjonal Samling were outlawed. As  the leader of Nasjonal Samling, Quisling was given   a position as head of the cabinet under Terboven.  In early 1942, Terboven appointed him minister   president of a National Government that was  essentially a puppet state under German control. In the course of the summer of 1942, Quisling  lost any ability he might have had to sway   public opinion by attempting to force children  into the Nasjonal Samlings Ungdomsfylking youth   organisation, which was modelled on the Hitler  Youth. This move prompted a mass resignation   of teachers from their professional  body and churchmen from their posts,   along with large-scale civil unrest. His  attempted indictment of Bishop Eivind Berggrav   proved similarly controversial, even amongst his  German allies. Quisling now toughened his stance,   telling Norwegians that they would have the new  regime forced upon them "whether they like it or   not." On 1 May 1942, the German High Command  noted that "organised resistance to Quisling   has started" and Norway's peace talks with  Germany stalled as a result. On 11 August 1942,   Hitler postponed any further peace negotiations  until the war ended. As an added insult,   for the first time he was forbidden  to write letters directly to Hitler. Quisling believed that the only way he could win  back Hitler's respect would be to raise volunteers   for the now-faltering German war effort. After  the German defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943,   he committed Norway wholeheartedly  to German plans to wage total war.  About 15,000 Norwegians volunteered for combat  duty on the Nazi side and of the 6,000 sent into   action as part of the Germanic SS, most were  sent to the Eastern front. Germanic SS was   the collective name given to paramilitary  and political organizations established in   parts of German-occupied Europe between 1939  and 1945 under the auspices of the German SS. One of Quisling’s first acts in his role as  minister president was to reinstate the so-called   Jewish paragraph of the Norwegian constitution.  This paragraph, which had been removed in 1851,   prevented Jews from immigrating to Norway. From  October through November 1942, Quisling signed   a series of laws that enabled the arrest of  all Norwegian Jewish men, the confiscation of   all Jewish-owned property and assets, and  the registration of all Norwegian Jews. There were approximately 2,100 Jews in Norway at  the time of the German invasion. Among them were   about 350 German and Austrian refugees who had  sought haven from Nazi Germany. A month after   the mass arrest of Jewish men, Nazi officials  working with the Quisling’s Nasjonal Samling   began to arrest women and children. Acting  on plans that had been previously developed,   the Norwegian police arrested Jews throughout  Norway and brought them to Oslo for deportation   to Germany. The first deportation of 532 Jews  left Oslo on November 26, 1942. Another 158 were   deported on February 25, 1943, followed  by transfers of smaller groups. In all,   772 Norwegian Jews were deported from the  Norwegian capital to Germany. From Oslo,   Norwegian Jews were sent by ship to the German  port city of Stettin, today’s Szczecin in   Poland. They were then transferred by train to  Auschwitz where most were gassed immediately   upon arrival. However, 34 Norwegian Jews—all  men—ultimately did survive to see the end of   the war. Fortunately however, many Jews received  advance warnings of the roundups from Norwegian   policemen and members of the underground. As  a result, many of Norway's Jews, about 1,000,   escaped to neutral Sweden with the aid of the  underground and many others went into hiding. Following the deportation of the Jews, Germany  deported Norwegian officers and finally attempted   to deport students from the University of  Oslo. Even Hitler was incensed by the scale   of the arrests. Quisling became entangled  in a similar debacle in early 1944 when he   forced compulsory military service on elements  of the Hirden, causing a number of members to   resign to avoid being drafted. The Hirden was  a uniformed paramilitary organisation during   the occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany,  modelled the same way as the German SS. On 20 January 1945, Quisling made what would  be his final trip to visit Hitler. He promised   Norwegian support in the final phase of the  war if Germany agreed to a peace deal that   would remove Norway's affairs from German  intervention. This proposal grew out of a   fear that as German forces retreated southwards  through Norway, the occupation government would   have to struggle to keep control in northern  Norway. To the horror of the Quisling regime,   the Nazis instead decided on a scorched earth  policy in northern Norway, going so far as   to shoot Norwegian civilians who refused to  evacuate the region. The period was also marked   by increasing civilian casualties from Allied air  raids, and mounting resistance to the government   within occupied Norway. The meeting with the  German leader proved unsuccessful and upon being   asked to sign the execution order of thousands  of Norwegian "saboteurs," Quisling refused,   an act of defiance that so enraged Terboven,  acting on Hitler's orders, that he stormed out of   the negotiations. On recounting the events of the  trip to a friend, Quisling broke down in tears,   convinced the Nazi refusal to sign a peace  agreement would seal his reputation as a traitor. Adolf Hitler committed suicide on 30 April  1945. Privately, Quisling had long accepted that   National Socialism would be defeated and on 7 May,  he ordered police not to offer armed resistance to   the Allied advance except in self-defence  or against overt members of the Norwegian   resistance movement. The same day, Germany  announced it would surrender unconditionally,   making Quisling's position untenable. A realist,  Quisling met military leaders of the resistance   on the following day to discuss how he would  be arrested. Quisling declared that whilst he   did not want to be treated as a common criminal,  he did not want preferential treatment compared   to his Nasjonal Samling colleagues. He argued he  could have kept his forces fighting until the end,   but had chosen ensure a peaceful transition  to avoid turning "Norway into a battlefield." On 9 May 1945, Quisling and his ministers  turned themselves in to police. Quisling   was transferred to Cell 12 in Møllergata  19, the main police station in Oslo. The   cell was equipped with a tiny table, a basin,  and a hole in the wall for a toilet bucket. After ten weeks being constantly watched to  prevent suicide attempts in police custody,   he was transferred to Akershus Fortress and  awaited trial as part of the legal purge. The trial opened on 20 August 1945. Quisling  was charged with murder, embezzlement, theft,   and other crimes. The most worrying of all  for Quisling was the charge of conspiring   with Hitler over the invasion and occupation  of Norway. In court, Quisling argued that he   acted in Norway’s best interest and always with  the goal of restoring Norwegian independence. He   misrepresented the truth on several occasions  and the truthful majority of his statements   won him few advocates in the country at large,  where he remained almost universally despised. In the later days of the trial, Quisling's  health suffered, largely as a result of the   number of medical tests to which he was  subjected, and his defence faltered. The   prosecution's final speech placed responsibility  for the Final Solution being carried out in   Norway at the feet of Quisling, using  the testimony of German officials. On 10 September 1945, when  the verdict was announced,   Quisling was convicted on all but a handful  of minor charges and sentenced to death. After giving testimony in a number of  other trials of Nasjonal Samling members,   Quisling was executed by firing squad at Akershus  Fortress on 24 October 1945 at 02:40. His last   words before being shot were, "I'm convicted  unfairly and I die innocent." After his death   his body was cremated, leaving the ashes to  be interred in Fyresdal, where he was born. Quisling's residence, Villa Grande, which he  called "Gimlé", a name taken from Norse mythology,   today hosues the Norwegian Center for Holocaust  and Minority Studies which is a research,   education and documentation center in Oslo  focusing on the Holocaust, other genocides,   extremism, antisemitism, hate speech, and the  situation of minorities in contemporary societies. On 8 May 1945, 1 day before he turned  himself in to police, Quisling said:   I know that the Norwegian people have sentenced  me to death, and that the easiest course for   me would be to take my own life. But I want to  let history reach its own verdict. Believe me,   in ten years' time I will have  become another Saint Olav.”  However, he was wrong. While the saga of Saint  Olav became central to a national identity and   is a symbol of Norwegian independence and  pride, Vidkun Quisling has become one of   history's most infamous traitors owing  to his collaboration with Nazi Germany. Outside of Norway, the word “quisling” has  outlasted the memory of Vidkun Quisling himself   and became synonymous with “traitor,” a use  that began during the war. The word “ quisling”   continues to be applied to political  figures who collaborate with outside powers,   especially invading forces. However, it is also  used as a general term for a traitor. Thus, his   betrayal of Norway to Germany has made his name  into a label for all collaborators and traitors. There were no teras shed for Vidkun Quisling. thanks for watching the World History  Channel be sure to like And subscribe   and click the Bell notific ification icon so you   don't miss our next episodes we thank  you and we'll see you next time on the channel
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Channel: World History
Views: 312,980
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Keywords: World History, Operation Weserübung, Vidkun Quisling, First World War, WW1, World War 1War 1, German invasion of Norway, German occupation of Norway, Nazi collaborant, Leon Trotsky, Nasjonal Samling, Storting, Rembrandt, Goya, Cézanne, Franz Hals, Kristallnacht, Erich Raeder, Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, King Haakon, Josef Terboven, Villa Grande, Quisling, Quislings, Execution of Vidkun Quisling, Holocaust in Norway, Norwegian Holocaust, Hitler, Adolf Hitler, Norwegian Jews, Holocaust
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Length: 20min 13sec (1213 seconds)
Published: Fri Dec 22 2023
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