Vidkun Quisling

Nasjonal Samling Fascists and Nazis 1887–1945 ✕ Executed by firing squad

Founder of Nasjonal Samling who headed Norway’s puppet government under German occupation

Born in Fyresdal in Telemark, he became an army officer, organised famine relief in the Volga region with Fridtjof Nansen in 1921 and served as a diplomat in the Soviet Union. Defence minister in the Agrarian governments of 1931–1933, he founded the fascist Nasjonal Samling in 1933, which never won a seat. On 9 April 1940, during the German invasion, he attempted a coup by radio broadcast and failed; in February 1942 he became minister president of a German-approved government, ruling jointly with Reichskommissar Josef Terboven. His government deported Jews to camps in occupied Poland. Convicted of treason, he was shot in October 1945, and his name became a byword for collaborator.

Also known as: Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonssøn Quisling