Vidkun Quisling began as an army officer and a humanitarian — he worked at Fridtjof Nansen's side feeding the starving in Russia after the Great War. He ended as the most hated man in Norwegian history.
When the German ships came up the Oslofjord on 9 April 1940, Quisling seized a radio microphone and declared himself head of a new government — a coup timed to the invasion. King Haakon VII refused to sanction it, and the Norwegian people never accepted it, but the occupier installed Quisling as its puppet Minister President. His name passed into every language on earth as the very word for a traitor.
When the war ended he was arrested, tried, and condemned. In the small hours of 24 October 1945, Vidkun Quisling was shot at Akershus — the fortress he had himself helped hand to the enemy. The rock he had given away took his life in the end.