World War II Day by Day

Oslo, Occupied Norway · February 7, 1942

On this date in 1942 in German-occupied Norway, Minister Presi­dent Vid­kun Quis­ling abol­ished the Nor­we­gian consti­tu­tion and estab­lished a dic­ta­tor­ship one year after as­cending to the pre­si­dency. Quis­ling had been a reserve officer in the Nor­we­gian Army and served as the Nor­we­gian Minis­ter of Defense from 1931 to 1933. It was after his stint as a cabi­net minis­ter that he founded Nasjonal Samling (National Unity), a poli­tical party with an ideo­logy simi­lar to Nazism. Its plat­form was pan-German, anti-Soviet, anti-Brit­ish, and anti-Se­mi­tic. Three months after Hitler in­vaded Poland in 1939 Quis­ling, strictly in the role of party chief (fører), visited Berlin to offer the Ger­man Wehr­macht “the nec­es­sary bases” that would fore­stall the Brit­ish and French, now at war with Ger­many, from gaining a foot­hold in neu­tral Nor­way. Grand Admiral Erich Rae­der, who was privy to Quis­ling’s ex­traor­di­nary offer, recog­nized that a Brit­ish presence in Nor­way could possi­bly jeop­ardize Ger­many’s naval posi­tion in the Baltic, inter­rupt the free flow of Swed­ish iron ore through the ice-free Nor­we­gian port of Narvik, and pre­vent the Kriegs­marine from gaining access to the North Atlantic. Twice in mid-Decem­ber 1939 Hitler received Quis­ling, the first time in the com­pany of the highest officers of the Wehr­macht. Four months later, when Hitler’s armed forces in­vaded Nor­way and seized its capital, Oslo, on April 9, 1940, as part of Opera­tion Weser­uebung, an em­bold­ened Quisling took to the air­waves to pro­nounce himself head of a new na­tional govern­ment, ordered all resis­tance to end (it didn’t), and threatened to take action against those who did not obey. Quis­ling remained “head of govern­ment” for six days until Hitler dumped him in an effort to quell Nor­we­gian resis­tance to the Ger­man in­va­sion. Even­tu­ally Ger­man autho­ri­ties found they had a need for Quis­ling, and for his treach­ery he remained at the helm of a pup­pet govern­ment until Nor­we­gian Prince Olaf and Brit­ish repre­sen­ta­tives accepted the sur­render of German forces in Nor­way on May 8, 1945. “Quis­ling” appears in dic­tion­aries as a syno­nym for “traitor.” After the war a Norwegian court convicted Quisling of treason, murder, and theft and ordered his execution by firing squad on October 24, 1945.

Norway Under German Occupation, 1940–1945

Above: Norway’s Parliament Building flying the Swastika, 1941. The banner deco­rating the front of the build­ing reads, “Deutsch­land siegt an allen Fronten” (“Germany is victo­rious on all fronts”).

Left: King Haakon VII (1872–1957) and his family chose exile in England in lieu of accepting Ger­man sur­render terms. An elected monarch (November 1905), Haakon won the respect and affec­tion of his people and played a pivo­tal role in uniting the Nor­we­gian nation in its resis­tance to the Nazi invasion and sub­se­quent five-year-long occu­pa­tion of his country. The Nor­we­gian em­bassy in London became the seat of the Nor­we­gian govern­ment-in-exile. Here Haakon attended weekly cabi­net meetings and worked on the speeches that were regularly broad­cast by the BBC World Service to lis­teners in Nor­way. After the end of the war, Haakon and the Norwe­gian royal family returned to Nor­way on June 7, 1945, exactly five years after they had been fled their country.

Right: Norwegian Minister President Vidkun Quisling was pleased to pro­vide his auto­graph for this admirer in 1943. Among most Norwe­gians the Quis­ling regime had next to no support, partly because of Quis­ling’s coup attempt on April 9, 1940, and partly because his collab­o­rationist govern­ment was in con­flict with Norway’s constitution and political traditions.

Norwegian Traitor Quisling Faces the Judgment of History