Vidkun Quisling led the puppet government of Norway from 1 February 1942 to 9 May 1945. Under his administration, the small Norwegian Jewish community of around 2,100 people was registered, dispossessed, and partially deported. Around 770 Norwegian Jews were arrested in late 1942. Of these, 532 were deported to Auschwitz aboard the troopship MS Donau on 26 November 1942. Around 30 of the deportees survived. The Norwegian operation is small in absolute scale, but the Quisling regime’s active participation in it is documented in detail. Quisling was tried, convicted of treason and crimes against humanity, and shot at the Akershus Fortress on 24 October 1945. His name has entered the English language as a synonym for collaborator.
The 9 April 1940 broadcast
On the morning of the German invasion of Norway, 9 April 1940, Quisling went to the Oslo radio studios and broadcast a declaration that he was taking power and that further resistance to the German invasion was futile. The broadcast was unauthorised by any Norwegian institution. The Norwegian government and king fled to London. The Germans had not asked Quisling to make the broadcast and were initially uncertain whether to back him; they replaced him with the German civilian commissioner Josef Terboven within six days. The broadcast established Quisling, in Norwegian memory and in international understanding, as the Norwegian who had volunteered to serve the invader before he had been asked. The English noun quisling, meaning a traitor of this specific kind, was coined in The Times of 19 April 1940.
The 1 February 1942 Statsakt
Quisling was installed as Minister-President of an internal Norwegian administration, under continuing German overall authority, on 1 February 1942 in a ceremony at the Akershus Fortress. The ceremony was billed as the Statsakt, the act of state. He delivered an inaugural speech in the throne room of the royal palace, which the king had vacated. He took the position with full understanding that he was serving as the German occupier’s political instrument.
The Jewish registration
The Norwegian police, under the Quisling Justice Ministry, registered all Norwegian Jews in early 1942 using a stamped J on their identity papers. The stamp was applied at the Justice Ministry’s direction. The list of names produced by the registration was the operational basis for the arrests of October and November 1942.
The 26 October 1942 arrests
On 26 October 1942 the Norwegian state police arrested all male Jews aged sixteen and over across Norway, around 260 men. The arrests were conducted entirely by Norwegian police, without German troop participation. On 25 November 1942 the same forces arrested the remaining Jewish women, children, and elderly. The detainees were held at the Berg internment camp near Oslo and at the Bredtveit prison.
On 26 November 1942 the troopship Donau sailed from Oslo with 532 Norwegian Jews aboard. They were transferred at Stettin to a deportation train and taken to Auschwitz. The men were selected on arrival; most were sent immediately to the gas chambers. The women and children were almost all gassed on arrival. The deportations from Norway continued through 1943 with two further transports, raising the total deported to around 770. The Norwegian state, on Quisling’s authority, had delivered around a third of its Jewish population to the German killing operation.
The Swedish escape
The remainder of the Norwegian Jewish community, around 1,200 people, escaped to neutral Sweden. The escapes were organised by the Norwegian resistance with substantial Swedish cooperation. Sweden took every Norwegian Jew who reached its border. The contrast between Quisling’s Norway, which delivered Jews for deportation, and Sweden, which received them, was clearly understood at the time and has been clearly understood since.
The 11 February 1942 meeting with Hitler
Quisling met Hitler at the Reich Chancellery on 11 February 1942, ten days after his installation as Minister-President. The meeting was, on his own subsequent account, the high point of his political career. The transcripts of the meeting, prepared by the German interpreter, show Quisling enthusiastically advocating a closer integration of Norway into the new German Europe and proposing that Norwegian forces should serve alongside the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front. He recruited around 5,000 Norwegians for service in the SS Volunteer Legion Norge and the SS Volunteer Panzer Division Wiking, of whom around 700 were killed in Soviet operations.
The trial and the execution
Quisling was arrested on 9 May 1945, the day after the German surrender in Norway, and tried before the Norwegian Court of Appeal in August and September 1945. The case against him included the 9 April 1940 broadcast, the registration and deportation of Norwegian Jews, the recruitment of Norwegians for SS service, the suppression of Norwegian resistance, and treason against the Norwegian state and crown. He was found guilty on all principal counts on 10 September 1945 and sentenced to death. The Norwegian Supreme Court rejected his appeal on 13 October 1945. He was shot by firing squad at the Akershus Fortress in the early hours of 24 October 1945. His last words, recorded by witnesses, were a denial of his guilt.
What he was
Quisling was the case of the small-country fascist whose ideological commitment to Hitler’s new Europe was complete and unforced. He had not been pressured into collaboration. He had volunteered for it before being asked. He had built a Norwegian state apparatus that registered, arrested, and delivered Norwegian Jewish citizens to a foreign killing operation. The Norwegian operation was small because Norway was small. The Quisling personal contribution to it was complete. The English language, in adopting his name as a common noun, has captured the case correctly.
See also
Sources
- Hans Fredrik Dahl, Quisling: A Study in Treachery, Cambridge University Press, 1999
- Bjarte Bruland, Holocaust i Norge, Dreyer, 2017
- Norwegian Holocaust Center, Oslo: documentation of the Norwegian deportations
- Quisling trial transcripts, Norwegian National Archives
- USHMM: Norway