Quisling: A Study in Treachery
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 8/21/2008
EAN 9780521041157, ISBN10: 0521041155
Paperback, 472 pages, 23.4 x 15.6 x 2.7 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
The word 'Quisling' is used all over the world as a synonym for 'traitor' or 'treachery'. The original Vidkun Quisling (1887–1945) was a gifted Norwegian army officer who earned notoriety when he sided with the Nazis on the first day of Norway's entry into the Second World War. Quisling's coup d'état in Oslo on 9 April 1940 was immediately denounced as an act of arch-treason, and even Churchill spoke of 'the vile race of Quislings'. Hans Fredrik Dahl's 1999 biography makes use of a complete range of source material from Nordic, German, Italian and Russian archives, and of family archives now in the USA. He traces Quisling's ultimately futile career from his earlier internationalist career as a diplomat and businessman to the drama of his trial and execution for high treason in 1945.
List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Prologue
innocent?
1. Back in Norway
2. The Russian dream
3. A reluctant leader
4. Mussolini or Hitler?
5. A time of crisis
6. Leader on probation
7. Revolution from above
8. Betrayed by Hitler
9. On the edge of the volcano
10. An enemy of the people
Epilogue
dangerous?
Archive sources
Bibliography
Index.
'... Dahl's work constitutes a welcome climax to Quisling studies, and has given us by far the fullest understanding of its subject, becoming, in fact, one of the outstanding biographies of the Second World War era'. The Times Literary Supplement