quisling: [20] Vidkun Quisling was a Norwegian politician who from 1933 led the National Union Party, the Norwegian fascist party (Quisling was not his real name – he was born Abraham Lauritz Jonsson). When the Germans invaded Norway in 1940 he gave them active support, urging his fellow Norwegians not to resist them, and in 1942 he was installed by Hitler as a puppet premier. In 1945 he was shot for treason. The earliest recorded use of his name in English as a generic term for a ‘traitor’ comes from April 1940.
quisling (n.)
1940, from Vidkun Quisling (1887-1945), Norwegian fascist politician who headed the puppet government during the German occupation of Norway in World War II; shot for treason after German defeat. First used in London Times of April 15, 1940, in a Swedish context.
