Balder Ex-Libris

Author : Walsh Michael
Title : The Slaying of a Viking The Epic of Vidkun Quisling
Year : 2001

Link download : Walsh_Michael_-_The_Slaying_of_a_Viking_The_Epic_of_Vidkun_Quisling.zip

"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 18th 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. Churchill’s aim, to cut Germany’s essential ore lifeline, was yet another of his acts of war against a non-belligerent neutral country. The conspiracy was later exposed by his ally, Prime Minister Paul Reynard of France: "Churchill came to Paris on April 5th 1940 and at last the British government resolved that the mine fields in Norwegian territorial waters would after all be laid. The operation was, however postponed until April 7th so Hitler could learn of it and prepare his counter move. One of the aims of the enterprise was to, entrap the opponent by provoking him into making a landing in Norway." Vidkun Quisling continued speaking: "I want a man who observes and reflects. I may tell you that in future you are going to be the man who himself has seen and heard what is happening at this decisive moment in the history of Norway and that of the West. You will be my historical witness." Franklin Knudsen recalled those prophetic words nearly five years later when on October 24 1945; Vidkun Quisling sleeping fitfully in his sparse cell was aroused at 2.00am and taken into the bitter cold of the prison yard at Mollergaten Gaol in Oslo. ...