In honour of the 130-th birthday of Vidkun Quisling
By Michael Walsh
[From the book Heroes of the Reich by Michael Walsh]
“You will be my historical witness. The day will come when I will need it,” said the Norwegian Prime Minister Vidkun Quisling to his secretary, Franklin Knudsen. The national leader’s words were spoken with great solemnity as the two men sat in a room of Oslo’s Grand Hotel on the 18* April 1940. Nine days earlier their country had fallen to the forces of the Third Reich, victims of a conspiracy masterminded by England’s unelected leader Winston Churchill.