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The Ship That Disguised Itself as an Island and Other Lesser-Known WWII Facts

Khalid Elhassan July 6, 2020 35 min

Guadalcanal - Guadalcanal campaign — Marines arriving in Guadalcanal. Encyclopedia Britannica

24. Struggling to Get Taken Seriously as a Traitor

Quisling, in black suite, bottom left, with Himmler and other Nazi higher ups. Quora

It took two years of wheedling before the Nazis finally recognized Quisling in 1942 as Norway’s “Minister-President” of a puppet regime. In that position, he did all he could to please his masters, including eager cooperation in their deportation of Norway’s Jews to death camps. Captured after the end of WWII, Quisling was tried by the Norwegians. Convicted of treason, murder, and embezzlement, he was executed in October, 1945.

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, e.g.; calling somebody a “Benedict Arnold”, but 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, ever eager to please the foreign occupier with shameless displays of boot licking obsequiousness.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.