Other Forces

Enigmatic Fuhrer - Vidkun Quisling.

Author unknown.

Vidkun Quisling, leader of Norway's unconstitutional, pro-Nazi "government" from the time of Germany's invasion of Norway, reviews soldiers of Norway's volunteer Waffen SS brigade, late-1941 or early 1942. His fellow-reviewer is SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Wilhelm Rediess, Hgher SS and Police Leader in Norway and de facto controller of all SS and Police affairs in Norway. Quisling is, indeed, somewhat of an enigma - although some may find comparisons with Britain's Oswald Mosley informative. Following brilliant success in his military education, his early career was with the Royal Norwegian Army Staff, and as a diplomat representing Norwegian and British interests in various capacities, mainly in the newly-minted Soviet Union. Early on, he seems to have conceived a distaste for "disorderly" democratic government, but this took a long time to harden into a particular political programme. In fact, it might be argued that it never did. Perhaps under the influence of his Soviet experience, he initially flirted with the Soviet authoritarian model, but seems to have rejected this as Leninism moved to Stalinism - the start of a move towards the radical Right that, in progression, led him to favour Italian Fascism, a sort of Norse Naziism, all the way to pretty full-blown National Socialism (although he would probably have denied the label) complete with full-blown anti-Semitism and his own form of "Nordic" racial supremicism. One strand was constant - the need to establish a "strong", independent Norwegian state under "rational" direction. In this, his political career was a total failure. Whatever he may have thought himself, he appears to have been used by the Germans to facilitate their invasion of Norway and the subversion of the legitimate government. By the time this came about, his political party (the "National Unity" Party) had endured the typical electoral decline of western European Nazi-type parties - but more so. Quisling entered power on the back foot and, by late-1942, was rendered increasingly powerless in the face of intrusions by Reichcommissar Josef Terboven (head of the German civil administration in Norway) and by Obergruppenfuhrer Rediess. All his efforts to secure even nominal Norwegian independence within the German empire were deferred to the conclusion of the war in the East. It is worth noting, in this context that - typically of west European Nazi-type thinkers, he was early to propose a form of European Union, involving Great Britain, Germany, Norway and other western European nations - an idea of little real interest to the Germans, even if they were willing the use it as a propaganda ploy. In any event, his failure to secure "independence", combined with the increasingly harsh government exercised (often through his administration) by Terboven and Redeiss, and by the German military authorities, destroyed any chance Quisling had of bringing the Norwegian people over to his side. He would ever afterwards be marked as a puppet collaborationist and a traitor. Eventually brought to trial under emergency laws promulgated by the Royal government-in-exile based in London in 1942, Quisling was convicted of what amounted to High Treason, and executed by firing squad on 24 October, 1945. His name lives on .... Best regards, JR.