Vidkun Quisling
Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonssøn Quisling (born July 18, 1887 in Fyresdal , † October 24, 1945 in Oslo ) was a Norwegian officer and politician . From 1931 to 1933 Quisling was Norwegian Defense Minister, then from 1933 to 1945 party leader of the fascist Nasjonal Samling , which he founded . After the elected social democratic government under Johan Nygaardsvold had to flee into exile due to the occupation of Norway by National Socialist Germany , Quisling led a puppet government set up by the German occupation forces from 1942 to 1945 as Prime Minister of Norway .
To this day, the name Quisling is considered the epitome of collaboration and betrayal and has entered various languages as a term for a collaborator. In addition to Norwegian there is the term u. a. in English, German, Swedish and Italian. The expression was largely coined by the British newspaper The Times in April 1940.
Life
Quisling was the son of the evangelical pastor and well-known genealogist Jon Lauritz Qvisling from Fyresdal. Both father and mother were among the oldest and most respected families in Telemark Province .
After graduating from the Military Academy with the best degree ever awarded, he was promoted to major a few years later .
He began his political career in 1922 as an employee of Fridtjof Nansen in the Soviet Union during the time of the famine. From 1927 to 1929 he was a diplomat in Moscow . In the 1930s he ideologically approached the fascists. He became Minister of War in 1931 and left the government in 1933.
On May 13, 1933, Quisling and the Attorney General Johan Bernhard Hjort founded the fascist party Nasjonal Samling ("National Unity"). Nasjonal Samling was strictly anti-democratic based on the leader principle . Quisling was the Fører (" leader ") of the party, comparable to Adolf Hitler's position in the NSDAP . The party had only modest successes. In the elections of 1933, four months after the party was founded, it received 27,850 votes (around two percent), mainly through support for the "Norwegian Farmers Aid", to which Quisling had connections from his time as Minister of War. When the party line shifted from a religious to a pro-German and anti-Semitic policy from 1935 onwards, support from the churches decreased. In the 1936 elections, the party received fewer votes than in 1933. The party continued to radicalize, which initially reduced its influence. After the German invasion , the number of members dropped to 2,000. Under the German occupation , 45,000 Norwegian collaborators joined the party by 1945 .
During the German invasion of Norway on April 9, 1940, Quisling announced a coup d'état on a news program for the first time in history . In the turmoil of the invasion he proclaimed a provisional government. Quisling had visited Adolf Hitler in Germany the year before, but could not win his sympathy. Hitler simply considered it useless because it did not enjoy any noteworthy support from the Norwegian population. The Quisling "government" lasted only a few days. On April 15, 1940, the Administrasjonsrådet replaced them. Administrasjonsrådet was a kind of emergency government made up of Norwegian experts.
On April 24, 1940, Josef Terboven was appointed Reich Commissioner in Oslo , the highest and most direct executive body of Adolf Hitler. In September all political parties and youth organizations were banned and their property was confiscated. Reichskommissar Josef Terboven announced on March 23, 1941 that anyone who “collects or tries to collect news and communicates it to others with the aim of supporting the enemy” would be sentenced to death. Prison threatened anyone who "spreads orally or in writing untrue or grossly distorting statements that are likely to degrade the German people and in particular the reputation of the German armed forces", as well as those who founded illegal organizations, worked in them or supported them.
In autumn 1941 it was banned to listen to the radio and the radios were confiscated, first from the population on the coast and in northern Norway, and later in other parts of the country. Only members of Quisling's Nasjonal Samling were allowed to keep their radio.
Although the relationship between Quisling and Terboven was considered tense, Terboven offered Quisling the post of Prime Minister in 1942, presumably because it seemed to him advantageous to let a Norwegian hold a higher position of power in order to minimize dissatisfaction among the population. Quisling then took up this post on February 1, 1942.
Vidkun Quisling remained in power until his arrest on May 9, 1945. He was arrested in a villa on Bygdøy in Oslo , to which he had given the name Gimle , in Norse mythology the place where the survivors of Ragnarok meet in heaven, in the house of good people. The house was later renamed Villa Grande and now serves as a center for Holocaust and minority studies .
Quisling's Russian wife Maria Wassiljevna lived in Oslo until her death in 1980. The couple remained childless.
process
Quisling was with two other party leaders, Albert Viljam Hagelin and Ragnar Skancke, because of high treason to death by firing squad condemned and in the on 24 October 1945 Akershus Fortress executed . His judge was Sven Arntzen, the grandfather of Wenche Elizabeth Arntzen . The death sentence is legally controversial in Norway, as the death penalty was only reintroduced by the government in exile , presumably in anticipation of the post-war trials. Quisling was buried in Gjerpen .
Swedish author Astrid Lindgren , who was able to observe his politics from a neutral neighboring country , collected information about the trial against Quisling, which was published in 2015, long after her death, as part of her diaries 1939–1945 with various facsimiles of newspaper reports published at the time.
Honors
Publications
- Russia and us. Blix Forlag, Oslo 1942 (Norwegian: Russia og vi )
literature
- Else M. Barth: A Nazi Interior. Quisling's Hidden Philosophy . Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2003, ISBN 3-631-50816-6 (original edition: Gud, det er meg. Vidkun Quisling som politisk filosof . Pax, Oslo 1996, ISBN 82-530-1803-7 ).
- Hans Fredrik Dahl: Quisling. A Study in Treachery . Cambridge University, Cambridge 1999, ISBN 0-521-49697-7 (Original edition: Vidkun Quisling. 2 volumes. Aschehoug, Oslo 1990–1992, ISBN 82-03-15632-0 volume 1; ISBN 82-574-0978-2 Vol. 2).
- Hans-Dietrich Loock: Quisling, Rosenberg and Terboven. On the prehistory and history of the National Socialist Revolution in Norway . In: Sources and representations on contemporary history . No. 18 . Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1970, ISSN 0481-3545 (At the same time: Berlin, Freie Univ., Habil.-Schr., 1968).
- Stanley G. Payne : Il fascismo: Origini, storia e declino delle dittature che si sono imposte tra le due guerre . Newton Compton, Rome 2006, ISBN 88-541-0630-5 .
- Alexandra Andreevna Voronine Yourieff, W. George Yourieff, Kirsten A. Seaver : In Quisling's Shadow. The Memoirs of Vidkun Quisling's First Wife, Alexandra (= Hoover Institution Press publication . No. 553 ). Hoover Institution Press, 2007, ISBN 0-8179-4832-5 , ISSN 0073-3296 .
- Acting State Councilor Ragnar Skancke, Albin Eine (Lukas), Captain Odd Melsom, HN Ostbye: A book about Vidkun Quisling . Blix Forlag, Oslo 1941 (A book presumably supported by Nazi propaganda that was brought to Germany by a soldier stationed there. Printed by J.Chr. Gundersen, Buchdruckerei).
Web links
- Literature by and about Vidkun Quisling in the catalog of the German National Library
- Newspaper article about Vidkun Quisling in the press kit of the 20th century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
Individual evidence
- ^ Richard J. Evans : The Third Reich. Volume 3: War. DVA 2009, p. 157.
- ↑ duden.de
- ↑ www.synonymer.se
- ^ Rut Brandt : Freundesland. Memories . 6th edition. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1992, ISBN 3-455-08443-5 , p. 44, 49 .
- ↑ Astrid Lindgren: Humanity has lost its mind. Diaries 1939–1945 . Ullstein, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-550-08121-7 , pp. 454, 480 ff., 504 ff.
- ↑ Hans Fredrik Dahl: Quisling: A Study in Treachery. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1999, ISBN 0-521-49697-7 , pp. 67-69.
| predecessor | Office | successor |
|---|---|---|
|
Johan Nygaardsvold |
Prime Minister of Norway 1942–1945 |
Einar Gerhardsen |
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Quisling, Vidkun |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Quisling, Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonssøn (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Norwegian officer and politician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 18, 1887 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Fyresdal , Telemark , Norway |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 24, 1945 |
| Place of death | Oslo , Norway |