Eighty years ago, a Norwegian Nazi puppet adds a new word to the English language and a Soviet puppet gives British politics a brief moment of surreal absurdity
The announcement
that a new government with a complete cabinet had been formed in Norway under
the leadership of the head of the country’s Nazi party, Vidkun Quisling, proved
to be over hasty. King Haakon refused to approve Quisling’s seizure of power,
which largely deprived him of his potential value as puppet ruler. The Germans
dispensed with any pretence that they were anything but conquerors and
appointed Josef Terboven as Reichskommissar. The only immediate outcome of
Quisling’s attempted coup was to add a new word to the English language with
quisling becoming a generic term for any collaborator or traitor. Sir Horace
Wilson, Chamberlain’s arch-appeaser right-hand man, was swiftly rechristened
Sir Horace Quisling.
The Royal Navy
went into action against the units of the Kriegsmarine that had brought
German invasion forces to the north of Norway through the port of Narvik. British
destroyers twice entered the fjord in what came to be known as the first and
second battles of Narvik. The British suffered some losses but the German fleet
lost about half its destroyers. The Royal Navy could afford the losses, the
Germans could not. They had already lost one heavy cruiser Blücher in the attack on Oslo and in other actions the
British sunk a light cruiser and damaged the heavy cruiser Lützow
severely. Well before a seaborne invasion of Britain even became a remote
possibility, the German naval forces that it would have required had
practically ceased to exist.
Ill health forced
the Labour MP for Battersea North to resign, sparking a by-election. In keeping
with a wartime agreement between the main parties not to contest by-elections,
the Conservatives did not put up a candidate so as to leave the Labour candidate
with a clear field. At the last moment an official of the local Labour Party called
Joyce presented himself as an “anti war” candidate with the backing of the
Communist Party, which was under the control of the Soviet Union then still neutral
and uneasily aligned with Nazi Germany. The situation was all the more surreal as
Joyce had actually signed the nomination papers of the official Labour
candidate. Joyce polled only 7% and lost his deposit.
Comments
Post a Comment