24. Struggling to Get Taken Seriously as a Traitor
It took two years of wheedling before the Nazis finally recognized Quisling in 1942 as Norway’s “Minister-President” of a puppet regime. In that position, he did all he could to please his masters, including eager cooperation in their deportation of Norway’s Jews to death camps. Captured after the end of WWII, Quisling was tried by the Norwegians. Convicted of treason, murder, and embezzlement, he was executed in October, 1945.
Quisling’s name became synonymous with collaboration and treason. To this day, a “Quisling” is routinely used as an epithet to denote not a run-of-the-mill traitor, such as, e.g.; calling somebody a “Benedict Arnold”, but a traitor of the lowest, grubbiest, and most despicable kind. The type of traitor who lords it over and represses his own people on behalf of a conquering enemy, ever eager to please the foreign occupier with shameless displays of boot licking obsequiousness.