The Collaborators
Three Stories of Deception and Survival in World War II
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Narrated by:
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Ian Buruma
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By:
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Ian Buruma
About this listen
Ian Buruma’s spellbinding account of three near-mythic figures—a Dutch fixer, a Manchu princess, and Himmler’s masseur—who may have been con artists and collaborators under Japanese and German rule, or true heroes, or something in between.
On the face of it, the three characters in this book seem to have little in common—aside from the fact that each committed wartime acts that led some to see them as national heroes, and others as villains. All three were mythmakers, larger-than-life storytellers, for whom the truth was beside the point. Felix Kersten was a plump Finnish pleasure-seeker who became Heinrich Himmler’s indispensable personal masseur—Himmler calling him his “magic Buddha.” Kersten presented himself after the war as a resistance hero who convinced Himmler to save countless people from mass murder. Kawashima Yoshiko, a gender-fluid Manchu princess, spied for the Japanese secret police in China, and was mythologized by the Japanese as a heroic combination of Mata Hari and Joan of Arc. Friedrich Weinreb was a Hasidic Jew in Holland who took large amounts of money from fellow Jews in an imaginary scheme to save them from deportation, while in fact betraying some of them to the German secret police. Sentenced after the war as a con artist, he was regarded regarded by supporters as the “Dutch Dreyfus.”
All three figures have been vilified and mythologized, out of a never-ending need, Ian Buruma argues, to see history, and particularly war, and above all World War II, as a neat story of angels and devils. The Collaborators is a fascinating reconstruction of what in fact we can know about these incredible figures and what will always remain out of reach. What emerges is all the more mesmerizing for being painted in chiaroscuro. In times of life-and-death stakes, the truth quickly gets buried under lies and self-deception. Now, when demagogues abroad and at home are assaulting the truth once more, the stories of the collaborators and their lessons are indispensable.
©2023 Ian Buruma (P)2023 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Ian Buruma's new book is a gripping dissection of wartime lies. But it is also something more. Rather than indict his subjects, Buruma, a historian of novelistic temperament and imagination, seeks to navigate the grey zone they inhabited, and to explore what their behavior (and self-rationalizations) might tell us about ordinary men and women living, as we increasingly do, in a world of alternative facts. Imagine Better Call Saul set in a country occupied by the Axis powers, and you will have an idea how this fascinating book reads.” —Adam Shatz, US editor, London Review of Books
“Buruma sifts through his subjects’ complex, multinational backgrounds in fluid prose and brings a welcome measure of sympathy to their lives without minimizing the repercussions of their actions. It’s a captivating portrait of what happens when survival turns into self-deception.” —Publishers Weekly
“In The Collaborators, Ian Buruma brings his rare combination of attributes—intelligence, discipline, a commitment to truth (but wariness of certitude), modesty, wisdom, and wit—to revisit the celebrated and clouded sagas of three notorious World War II scoundrels. Their range taps into yet another of Buruma's gifts: his fluency in the cultures and histories of two continents. Telling their tales, disassembling their dissembling, he catalogues the very different set of traits that helped the three survive and even, thanks both to their own lies and the connivance of chroniclers lacking everything Buruma exemplifies, find a measure of rehabilitation they did not deserve.” —David Margolick
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Story
During World War II, Géraldine Schwarz’s German grandparents were neither heroes nor villains; they were merely Mitlaüfer - those who followed the current. Decades later, while delving through filing cabinets in the basement of their apartment building in Mannheim, Schwarz discovers that in 1938, her grandfather took advantage of Nazi policies to buy a business from a Jewish family for a low price. Weaving together the threads of three generations of her family story with Europe’s process of post-war reckoning, Schwarz explores how millions were seduced by ideology.
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Not what it purports to be
- By DPM on 10-10-20
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Year Zero
- A History of 1945
- By: Ian Buruma
- Narrated by: Gildart Jackson
- Length: 14 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Year Zero is a landmark reckoning with the greatdrama that ensued after war came to an end in 1945. One world had ended and anew, uncertain one was beginning. Regime change had come across Asia and all of continental Europe. It was the greatest global powervacuum in history, and out of the often vicious power struggles thatensued emerged the modern world as we know it.
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Great historical overview
- By marykk on 10-14-13
By: Ian Buruma
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Che Guevara
- A Revolutionary Life
- By: Jon Lee Anderson
- Narrated by: Armando Durán
- Length: 36 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Che Guevara was a dashing rebel whose epic dream was to end poverty and injustice in Latin America and the developing world through armed revolution. Jon Lee Anderson traces Che's extraordinary life from his comfortable Argentine upbringing to the battlefields of the Cuban revolution, from the halls of power in Castro's government to his failed campaign in the Congo and his assassination in the Bolivian jungle.
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Encompassing and Fair Look at an Historical Man
- By Matt on 08-10-11
By: Jon Lee Anderson
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The Patient Assassin
- A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge, and India's Quest for Independence
- By: Anita Anand
- Narrated by: Anita Anand
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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The “compelling [and] vivid” (The New York Times Book Review) true story of a man who claimed to be a survivor of a 1919 British massacre in India, his elaborate 20-year plan for revenge, and the mix of truth and legend that made him a hero to hundreds of millions.
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more interesting history
- By Autodidact on 09-07-19
By: Anita Anand
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Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister
- Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China
- By: Jung Chang
- Narrated by: Catherine Ho
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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They were the most famous sisters in China. As the country battled through 100 years of wars, revolutions, and seismic transformations, the three Soong sisters from Shanghai were at the center of power, and each of them left an indelible mark on history. All three sisters enjoyed tremendous privilege and glory, but also endured constant mortal danger. They showed great courage and experienced passionate love, as well as despair and heartbreak.
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Fascinating reading
- By David L. Jones on 03-26-20
By: Jung Chang
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Genius & Anxiety
- How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947
- By: Norman Lebrecht
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 18 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Norman Lebrecht has devoted half of his life to pondering and researching the mindset of the Jewish intellectuals, writers, scientists, and thinkers who turned the tides of history and shaped the world today as we know it. In Genius & Anxiety, Lebrecht begins with the Communist Manifesto in 1847 and ends in 1947, when Israel was founded. This robust, magnificent volume, beautifully designed, is an urgent and necessary celebration of Jewish genius and contribution.
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Post-anxiety
- By Amaze on 03-27-20
By: Norman Lebrecht
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The Whisperers
- Private Life in Stalin's Russia
- By: Orlando Figes
- Narrated by: John Telfer
- Length: 29 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on a huge range of sources - letters, memoirs, conversations - Orlando Figes tells the story of how Russians tried to endure life under Stalin. Those who shaped the political system became, very frequently, its victims. Those who were its victims were frequently quite blameless. The Whisperers recreates the sort of maze in which Russians found themselves, where an unwitting wrong turn could either destroy a family or, perversely, later save it: a society in which everyone spoke in whispers - whether to protect themselves, their families, neighbours or friends - or to inform on them.
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A Real Life Dystopian Nightmare
- By Timothy on 08-31-18
By: Orlando Figes
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Say Nothing
- A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
- By: Patrick Radden Keefe
- Narrated by: Matthew Blaney
- Length: 14 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Jean McConville's abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress--with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes.
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On a par with I'll Be Gone in the Dark, plus...
- By Grace O'Malley on 03-01-19
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True Believer
- Stalin's Last American Spy
- By: Kati Marton
- Narrated by: Amanda Carlin
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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True Believer reveals the life of Noel Field, an American who betrayed his country and crushed his family. Field, once a well-meaning and privileged American, spied for Stalin during the 1930s and '40s. Then, a pawn in Stalin's sinister master strategy, Field was kidnapped and tortured by the KGB and forced to testify against his own Communist comrades.
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Misplaced Loyalty
- By Joanne on 04-08-18
By: Kati Marton
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Lenin
- The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror
- By: Victor Sebestyen
- Narrated by: Jonathan Aris
- Length: 20 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on new research, including the diaries, memoirs, and personal letters of both Lenin and his friends, Victor Sebestyen's unique biography - the first in English in nearly two decades - is not only a political examination of one of the most important historical figures of the 20th century but a portrait of Lenin the man. Unexpectedly, Lenin was someone who loved nature, hunting, and fishing and could identify hundreds of species of plants, a despotic ruler whose closest ties and friendships were with women.
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Lenin totally took an extra piece of that cake.
- By John Gathly on 05-14-19
By: Victor Sebestyen
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Hitler and the Habsburgs
- The Fuhrer's Vendetta Against the Austrian Royals
- By: James Longo
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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As he rose to power, Hitler's hatred toward the Habsburgs and their diverse empire fixated on Franz Ferdinand's sons, who became outspoken critics and opponents of the Nazi party and its racist ideology. When Germany seized Austria in 1938, they were the first two Austrians arrested by the Gestapo, deported to Germany, and sent to Dachau. Within hours they went from palace to prison. The women in the family, including the Archduke's only daughter Princess Sophie Hohenberg, declared their own war on Hitler.
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More of the Story
- By EJJ on 08-28-19
By: James Longo
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An Impeccable Spy
- Richard Sorge, Stalin’s Master Agent
- By: Owen Matthews
- Narrated by: Mike Grady
- Length: 16 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Richard Sorge was a man with two homelands. Born of a German father and a Russian mother in Baku in 1895, he moved in a world of shifting alliances and infinite possibility. A member of the angry and deluded generation who found new, radical faiths after their experiences on the battlefields of the First World War, Sorge became a fanatical communist - and the Soviet Union’s most formidable spy.
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Lots of Politics
- By Cynthia on 04-24-20
By: Owen Matthews
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The Red Prince
- The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke
- By: Timothy Snyder
- Narrated by: Michael Damon
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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From the palaces of the Habsburg Empire to the torture chambers of Stalin's Soviet Union, the extraordinary story of a life suspended between the collapse of the imperial order and the violent emergence of modern Europe. Wilhelm Von Habsburg wore the uniform of the Austrian officer, the court regalia of a Habsburg archduke, the simple suit of a Parisian exile, the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece, and, every so often, a dress.
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little known story about Hapsburgs
- By Janice on 03-30-10
By: Timothy Snyder
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Agent Sonya
- Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy
- By: Ben Macintyre
- Narrated by: Ben Macintyre
- Length: 14 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1942, in a quiet village in the leafy English Cotswolds, a thin, elegant woman lived in a small cottage with her three children and her husband, who worked as a machinist nearby. Ursula Burton was friendly but reserved, and spoke English with a slight foreign accent. By all accounts, she seemed to be living a simple, unassuming life. Her neighbors in the village knew little about her. They didn’t know that she was a high-ranking Soviet intelligence officer. They didn’t know that her husband was also a spy, or that she was running powerful agents across Europe.
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Wanted to love it
- By Robert Bell on 09-30-20
By: Ben Macintyre
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The Shining Path
- Love, Madness, and Revolution in the Andes
- By: Orin Starn, Miguel La Serna
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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On May 17, 1980, on the eve of Peru's presidential election, five masked men stormed a small town. They set election ballots ablaze and vanished, but not before planting a red hammer-and-sickle banner in the town square. The lone man arrested the next morning later swore allegiance to a group called Shining Path. Described by a US State Department cable as "cold-blooded and bestial", Shining Path orchestrated bombings, assassinations, and massacres across the cities, countryside, and jungles of Peru in a murderous campaign to seize power and impose a Communist government.
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Understanding my wife
- By Eugene on 06-10-22
By: Orin Starn, and others
What listeners say about The Collaborators
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Victor Owen
- 07-06-24
Excellent history and excellent entertainment. Beautifully written.
As a student of this war and of collaboration within it, I found Ian Baruma’s book to be both entertaining and informative.
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- Andrew M Ward
- 08-28-23
Fantastic
Superb scholarship, lively narrative style, and great reading. I just want more now about collaborators through the ages.
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1 person found this helpful