The Original Quisling

Contemporary Review, Dec, 1999 by George Wedd

Quisling: A Study in Treachery. Hans Fredrik Dahl. Anne-Marie Stanton-Ife, translator. Cambridge University Press. [pounds]30.00. 452 pages. ISBN 0-521-49697-7.

In this century we have grown used to a political form unknown to Aristotle: the puppet government. A major power animated by an ideology conquers a smaller neighbour. It discovers there some people who share its ideology, and forms an obedient, subservient government from among them. In the Second World War, the first of such puppets was Vidkun Quisling in Norway. Unfortunate in his name, which was memorable and easy to spell and say, he has given the world a word for a particular kind of infamy. But what sort of a man was he, and what did he actually do? This book will tell you.

It is a full and academically respectable work by a Norwegian Professor. To get the faults out of the way first, it is too academic, with a burdensome apparatus. It is concentrated entirely on its subject, and does not distinguish sufficiently between important and unimportant points. The minutiae of Quisling's daily life are given as full a treatment as the broad outlines of the vast drama in which he was playing Second Murderer: one has to know a good deal about the War to set much of the book in context.

Even Norwegian events are seen purely through a Quisling lens: one has to read attentively to discover that while he and his 'Ministers' were trying to reach a postwar agreement with Hitler, and conduct some modest social reforms, the German Reichskommissar and real power in Norway, an unlikeable character called Josef Terboven, was merrily having hostages shot and deported. One wonders repeatedly: what were the other characters in the drama doing? What was daily life like under the Occupation?

There is much drama in the story, which Professor Dahl high-mindedly underplays, for example the events of April 1940. Why does he not say that the brave men in the Oscarsborg Fortress, who, without waiting for orders, torpedoed the leading ship in the invasion fleet and sank the Blucher, deprived the German Navy of a key heavy ship and set the commander of the invasion and his staff swimming to shore a long way from Oslo, thus giving the King and the lawful Government time to get out?

The Ministers dithered over the possibility of resistance, but were swayed by the courage of the King, reminiscent of Albert of Belgium in 1914 and the cheerful bellicosity of Crown Prince Olav. (There is a photograph of Olav taken a few days later, in the snow at Hamar, up-country: he, at least, is enjoying himself).

At the other end of the tale, there is the decision of Quisling and his government to turn themselves in. As they left Quisling's home at Gimle ('Home of the Gods'), they solemnly emptied their pockets, tipping keys, papers, money and weapons on to the hall table and collected sandwiches before driving in convoy to the police station. Knowing what lay ahead for them -- Norway was to prove more vengeful, in proportion to its population, than most other liberated countries -- this was, to say the least, a dramatic moment. Professor Dahl resolutely underplays it.

Who was Quisling? A modest megalomaniac, simple in his life, religious in his thoughts, a philosopher of sorts. A successful Army staff officer, a junior diplomat, a collaborator of Nansen in his relief work after the First World War. He had seen the Bolshevik Revolution close up, and turned against it. He adopted anti-Semitism along with the whole Nazi package. His racial ideas were of Nordic supremacy, and he wanted Hitler's New Order to be based on a friendly partnership of Nordic nations in which Norway should have an honoured and free place.

Hitler, of course, had no such ideas. One is reminded of a cartoon of the times, in which the Nazi leadership is shown feasting among scenes of rapine and desolation. A pitiful figure approaches the table with a question. Hitler replies: 'What do you mean, when does the New Order start? This is the New Order!' So it was. Quisling's God failed him. Turning to the Bible, especially Revelations, in his last days, he faced the firing squad with courage, knowing that he was going down into a void of failure, execration and oblivion.