war, which he believed involved a drastic increase in the country's defence spending to guarantee its neutrality. Meanwhile, Quisling presented lectures entitled "The Jewish problem in Norway" and supported Adolf Hitler in what appeared to be growing future conflict. Despite condemning Kristallnacht, he sent the German leader a fiftieth-birthday greeting thanking him for "saving Europe from Bolshevism and Jewish domination". Quisling also contended that should an Anglo-Russian alliance make neutrality impossible, Norway would have "to go with Germany." Invited to the country in the summer of 1939, he began a tour of a number of German and Danish cities. He was received particularly well in Germany, which promised funds to boost Nasjonal Samling's standing in Norway, and hence spread pro-Nazi sentiment. When war broke out on 1 September 1939, Quisling felt vindicated by both the event and the immediate superiority displayed by the German army. He remained outwardly confident that, despite its size, his party would soon become the centre of political attention. For the next nine months, Quisling continued to lead a party that was at best peripheral to Norwegian politics. He was nonetheless active, and in October 1939 he worked with Prytz on an ultimately unsuccessful plan for peace between Britain, France and Germany and their eventual participation in a new economic union. Quisling also mused on how Germany ought to go on the offensive against its ally the Soviet Union, and on 9 December travelled to Germany to present his multi-faceted plans. After impressing German officials, he won an audience with Hitler himself, scheduled for 14 December, whereupon he received firm advice from his contacts that the most useful thing he could do would be to ask for Hitler's help with a pro-German coup in Norway, that would let the Germans use Norway as a naval base. Thereafter, Norway would maintain official neutrality as long as possible, and finally the country would fall under German rather than British control. It is not clear how much Quisling himself understood about the strategic implications of such a move, and he instead relied on his future Minister of Domestic Affairs, Albert Hagelin, who was fluent in German, to put the relevant arguments to German officials in Berlin during pre-meeting talks, even though Hagelin was prone to damaging exaggeration at times. Quisling and his German contacts almost certainly went away with different views as to whether they had agreed upon the