Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Quisling was awakened at 2 a.m. and hurried from his cell to a square in Oslo's somber Akershus Fortress. Awaiting him were a clergyman, a state prosecutor and a firing squad, an officer and ten men. No photographers, no reporters recorded his last abasement or his last heroics.
At 2:40, the officer commanded: "Fyr!" The ten soldiers obeyed.
Thus died the man whose name had become a worldwide synonym for traitor. The police had to keep the ashes of his cremated body; his native village refused to accept them for burial.
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