Norway’s WWII PM Vidkun Quisling has become a synonym for for “Traitor” *** Approximately 772

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]Okay, there's a lot of history in World War II that surrounds the Norwegian fjord. So, what makes the Norwegian fjord so famous is that, of course, these are not lakes. These are inlets from the sea. So, the ocean comes all the way in. And that means that the water is brackish. Brackish means that it's half salt, half uh half fresh because there's so much snow melt, right, from all the So, it's brackish water. It's cold. Now Norway was critical to both the German war effort and the nor and and the allied war effort and why because uh the control of the entire of all of Scandinavia but then Swedish ore Sweden was neutral in the second world war um Norwegian minerals Norwegian oil there's a lot of oil in Norway that's why Norway one of the reasons Norway is a wealthy country so the Germans invaded Norway way. But actually the British were also planning, Churchill was planning to invade Norway and the Norwegians deserve a lot of credit because they actually resisted the Germans. Denmark surrendered to the Germans in 6 hours. Let me repeat that.

[00:01:12]Denmark surrendered to the German army, the Vermach in 6 hours. The Norwegians fought for a few for a few months and they even retook a city. There's a great movie about it. The Germans came in, conquered one of the biggest cities and then the Norwegians fought back and for a while they retook their city.

[00:01:29]After that it gets very ugly. Norway then I mean with all the viewers and all of you that you had this ugly history.

[00:01:35]So uh Vidkun um Quizling becomes the prime minister and he is an absolute Nazi collaborator. In fact, there's only two people in kind of world history whose names have become synonymous with uh being traitors to their people. One is Benedict Arnold like you're Benedict Arnold because Benedict Arnold was a great trader the American Revolution. He had he had astonishing victories like at Yorktown um uh sorry not Yorktown I'm sorry at Saratoga in New York uh with Horatio Gates but then he became a traitor and tried to give away West Point uh which was the westernmost point of the Hudson River which is why it's called West Point. for our militarymies today. And then you have Vidkun Quizzling. So to be a quizzling is to be a traitor.

[00:02:17]Quizzling was hung hanged I should say by the Norwegians. There's a great movie about quizzling that you should see as well. Netflix, Amazon Prime, one of them. It's made in uh Norway and it's in Norwegian, but it has great English subtitles. So, a lot of history.

[00:02:32]Obviously, the Fjords are spectacular.

[00:02:35]There's almost nothing like them, especially if you're here in the in the in the spring. So, you get to see it's it's cold, not as cold as the winter, obviously. You get to see the melting snow caps. You get to see the gorgeous blue. Uh, it's late here, so the sun is now coming down, but of course, you know, it gets dark very late cuz we're so far north. I miss.