Seeing Red: Meditation on Quisling - The Final Days and its Australian refractions

In Mark Twain’s and Charles Dudley Warner’s 1873 novel, The Gilded Age it is noted: “History never repeats itself, but the Kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends.”

The Scandinavian Film Festival has brought us rich fragments for consideration in Quisling: The Final Days. It is one of three festival films on the Nordic reaction to World War 2 Nazi occupation (the other two being Number 24 and Never Alone, all at Palace and Luna cinemas). Evidently, Scandinavians are engaged in historical reflections on their past.

Norway nestles on the other side of the planet and WW2 was generations ago. Can today’s Australians relate to Quisling: The Final Days as anything more than a distant historical tragedy?

Unfortunately, current US politics, the war drive against China and the events in Gaza* raise startling resonances and sickening contradictions. Perhaps Australians can meditate on the various ideological fragments that are being marshalled in the rising tide of war and fascism we face today.

As if in a funhouse mirror, what we see today is in many ways the inversion of the last titanic struggle against fascism. For example, where Australians once fought against Nazism (my father was a Rat of Tobruk and my uncle lies in a War Grave in Greece), the Australian government is not staunchly opposing what is happening in Gaza.

The landscape of Quisling: The Final Days is that of a country that has liberated itself from tyranny. Vidkun Quisling was the Norwegian military officer who the Nazis installed as “Minister President”. He murderously ruled the country as a one-party state between 1940 and the end of the war in 1945, when he was arrested, tried and executed. The film covers the period from his fall from power until his demise.

As the New York Times reported in May, 1945: “In the Gestapo prison, the notorious Moellergarten 19, where he himself sent so many of his countrymen, sits Vidkun Quisling tonight pondering his sins.” This claustrophobic setting is where Quisling and his reluctant chaplain converse.

Having governed for years according to “Førerprinsippet” (the same dictatorial concept as Hitler’s “Führerprinzip”), by which he dominated all around him as the absolute leader, we see the captive Quisling grappling with not just his helplessness but his humanity. Can this brutal man allow even the smallest chink in his self-image?

This intense psychological drama conjures images of Donald Trump.

The script is drawn from the diaries of the hospital chaplain, Peder Olsen, compelled to attend to Quisling’s spiritual needs, despite his inexperience in prison ministry, and Olsen’s wife, Heidi.

Heidi’s legitimate rage against Quisling articulates that of the majority of Norwegian society. She plays a significant role in confronting Olsen with the reality and pain of his own moral failures. She is the first in their relationship to recognise the truth of the Holocaust and leads her husband towards a confrontation with his own culpability in it.

Quisling’s wife, Maria, is another important voice. She is like Lady MacBeth, encouraging his worst characteristics and then realising what his death will mean for her. Theirs is a co-dependent relationship in which each reinforces the other’s contempt for human frailty.

This film is part of a wider project. Alongside the movie is a TV series, made with a different production team, that focuses on Maria Quisling. Unfortunately, there are at present no plans for its release in Australia.

Quisling’s stated defence in his trial was that he had saved Norway from becoming a theatre of battle in WW2. In an example of a kaleidoscopic refraction of that logic, Australians are now being told that we must prepare for the opposite, war on this continent.

Admiral David Johnston, the Chief of the Defence Force, in a rambling 4 June presentation to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) said Australia needs to “reconsider” how it thinks about war, resilience and national preparedness. The target is China. The ABC radio news report of his speech said that he mentioned the need to prepare hospitals for casualties.

ASPI reported him as saying that “finally, we’re having to reconsider Australia as a homeland from which we will conduct combat operations….[That] is a very different way almost since the Second World War about how we think…”

Never in history has China threatened Australia. Yet from at least the 1850s Australians have been induced to hate and fear China. The first Act of the Australian Parliament in 1901 was the Immigration Control Act, the notorious White Australia Policy. Over 500 Australians died in Vietnam and thousands of Vietnamese freedom fighters died at Australian hands because of the racist lie of the Yellow Peril.

Yet, here we are being groomed for World War 3 on the basis of the same falsehood.

Another kaleidoscopic refraction is our national failure to respond to what is happening in Gaza. Unlike Norwegians who could pretend to themselves that they knew nothing of the Holocaust until evidence arrived after the War, Australians cannot feign ignorance. However, in an ideological inversion the accusation of antisemitism is being mobilised, via Jillian Segal’s Special Envoy’s Plan to Combat Antisemitism, to repress opposition to the killing of thousands in Gaza in the name of defending the memory of the Holocaust.

In 1945, the New York Times said that Vidkun Quisling was “pondering his sins”. Australian viewers of Quisling the Final Days should contemplate our responsibilities before they reach the scale of sinfulness.

Directed by Erik Poppe. Starring Gard B. Eidsvold, Anders Danielsen Lie, Lisa Carlehed, Lisa Loven Kongsli. In Norwegian with English subtitles.

* Editor’s Note – While many experts argue that the legal criteria for genocide – intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national or ethnic group – have been met in relation to the events in Gaza, others caution that proving intent remains a high bar in international law. The current International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court proceedings against Israel will be pivotal in shaping formal accountability.

By Barry Healy

Barry Healy is a life-long Marxist who first came to Perth in the 1970s to establish the Resistance young socialist group. He was a founder of the Green Left and currently edits the Culture section of the Red Spark website.

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