16. A Slimy Norwegian Collaborator
Quisling’s party never won more than 2% of the vote, which made him increasingly bitter and frustrated with his countrymen. In late 1939, he flew to Berlin, met with Hitler, and offered to assist the Germans if they tried to seize Norway. The Nazis, aware of his lack of support in Norway, were noncommittal. When Germany invaded Norway in 1940 and its government fled into exile, Quisling opportunistically tried to set up a collaborationist government. He was ignored by all, including the German occupiers. It took two years of wheedling before the Nazis finally recognized the slimy pol in 1942 as Norway’s “Minister-President” of a puppet regime.
In that position, Quisling did all he could to please his masters, including eager cooperation in their deportation of Norway’s Jews to death camps. Captured after the war, he was tried and convicted of treason, murder, and embezzlement, and executed in October of 1945. His name became synonymous with collaboration and treason. To this day, a “Quisling” is used as an epithet to denote a traitor. Not a run-of-the-mill traitor, such as calling somebody a “Benedict Arnold”, however. Instead, a “Quisling” denotes a traitor of the lowest, grubbiest, and most despicable kind. One who lords it over and represses his own people on behalf of an enemy, eager to please with shameless displays of bootlicking obsequiousness.