14. Payback for a Collaborator
Quisling had bet on the wrong horse, and the Nazis whose boots he had spent years licking, lost. Captured after the war, he was tried by the Norwegians and was convicted of treason, murder, and embezzlement. Payback for his misdeeds was exacted in October of 1945, when he met his end before a firing squad.
Quisling’s name became synonymous with collaboration and treason. To this day, a “Quisling” is routinely used as an epithet to denote not a run-of-the-mill traitor, such as calling somebody a “Benedict Arnold”. Instead, a Quisling is a traitor of the lowest, grubbiest, and most despicable kind. The type of traitor who lords it over and represses his own people on behalf of a conquering enemy, and is ever eager to please the foreign occupier with shameless displays of obsequiousness.
