The Collaborators

On the face of it, Felix Kersten, Kawashima Yoshiko, Friedrich Weinreb, 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. All three figures have been vilified and mythologised, out of a never-ending need, Ian Buruma argues, to see history, and particularly war, and above all World War II, as a neat tale of angels and devils. In telling their often-self-invented stories, ‘The Collaborators’ offers a fascinating reconstruction of what in fact we can know about these fantasists and what will always remain out of reach. It is also an examination of the power and credibility of history, truth is always a relative concept but perhaps especially so in times of political turmoil, not unlike our own.