Vidkun Quisling, Norway's infamous Nazi collaborator, was perhaps the world's most renowned traitor. In early 1942, when he rose to power in occupied Norway under German occupation, a small paramilitary unit was charged with his personal protection. It came to be known as Førergarden or the Leader's Guard.
In Førergarden: A Traitor's Guard Hugh Page Taylor relates the untold story of this unit in an engrossing portrayal of its characters and functions, all with a meticulous attention to detail. Starting with a history of Quisling and his nefarious role in the German invasion of Norway, the book moves on to numerous studied chapters covering every feature of Førergarden, from its complicated and disputed beginnings to its uniform and regalia (one of Taylor's specializations).
Taylor is not averse to the difficult questions inevitably raised by his subject and he gives much thought to the role that Førergarden played in both the German occupation and the Holocaust. As a result, this book is a far-ranging and meticulous study of not only Førergarden but also the complexities of German occupation together with Norway's collaboration and resistance.
The product of over 50 years of research, Taylor's book brings together an extraordinary amount of information, including never before published photographs and documents, and it is destined to become an authoritative text on its topic. Scholars of the Second World War and Axis history in particular will appreciate the new perspective that this book brings to the subject.
Author Biography:
Hugh Page Taylor was born during the Second World War and Førergarden's second year of existance in a hospital in the East End of London in June 1943, 716 miles (1,152 km) southwest of the unit's quarters in the Norwegian capital of Oslo. Son of Cyril Edward Rainbow Taylor, an insurance broker then serving as a Squadron Leader in RAF Bomber Command, and Pamela Rose (née Nicholson), who had abandoned a career in the theatre and was serving as an ambulance driver in the RAF. Mother and baby son transferred to the safety of the south coast of England for the remainder of the war and the reunited family then settled in the home counties. Hugh was educated privately, boarding from the age of ten and from thirteen to eighteen at Stowe School, Buckingham. Convinced by his father, who had in the meantime become a distinguished marine underwriter, Hugh followed him into the insurance industry rather than make the army his career. After initial training in the City of London in 1961, he spent 5 years learning about marine insurance in France, Belgium, Italy, Norway and finally New York, improving his French, learning Italian and trying to master Norwegian. 1965 was spent in Oslo, where his interest in the German occupation of Norway and Norwegian collaboration began and flourishes to this day. The training period over, Hugh's career for the rest of his working life was in all sides of insurance; direct and reinsurance broking at Lloyd's of London, underwriting, risk management as the insurance manager of Italy's then largest private shipowner and multi-modal transport operator, and finally loss adjusting, in Italy from 1970 until 1999 and since then in Melbourne, Australia. His interest in the Second World War dates back to 1959. After originally collecting military memorabilia he soon focused on gathering information by way of original pre-and post-May 1945 books, magazines, periodicals, documents and photographs. Lack of detailed and reliable sources on the Axis and collaborationist forces soon led to specialisation in their military, paramilitary and political histories and the creation of one of the world's leading private archives. His first two books were published in 1969: Volume 2 in Andrew Mollo's Uniforms of the SS devoted to the non-German political organizations of the SS (Germanische-SS) which was also published in German in 1994, and the first in a series of five volumes entitled Uniforms, Organization and History of the Waffen-SS for the late Roger Bender. Over the decades he has acted as technical consultant in a number of war crimes trials, assisted countless other would-be and published authors and has written two volumes (again for Bender) of Uniforms, Organization and History of the German Police (2004 and 2009), as well as numerous articles in English and Italian on the Axis forces and political organizations. His work has also been published in Hungarian and Estonian.
