Johannes Kvittingen

Who was Johannes Kvittingen?

Johannes Kvittingen, sometimes called Johs. Kvittingen was a Norwegian bacteriologist and chief physician in Trondheim, and resistance member during World War II.

He was a microbacteriologist, and worked at the Bacteriological Laboratory of the Norwegian Armed Forces before World War II. When Germany invaded and occupied Norway in 1940, the laboratory was closed. Kvittingen fled the country to conduct resistance work abroad. In London he worked with medicinal services for Norwegians in exile. Among others, he contributed to drastically improve the treatment of venereal diseases in seamen, reducing the convalescence from months to weeks.

Kvittingen had become known among the British when securing the retreat of four British troops gone astray in Norwegian mountains in May 1940. He had experience from 1935 in Italian-occupied Ethiopia, where he led the retreat of a failed Norwegian "expedition". Thus, in the autumn of 1940 he was asked to be head recruiter of Norwegian agents for the Special Operations Executive. He has been credited with recruiting Martin Linge as an SOE agent, but that particular suggestion really came from Olav Rytter in correspondence with Kvittingen.