THE COLLABORATORS

The seemingly unrelated stories of three World War II–era figures who “embellish[ed] their biogra­phies with exotic tales of adventure.”

Buruma’s subjects didn’t know each other, had little influence on history, looked after their own interests in occupied nations, and lied about it afterward. The author, who has written numerous books about this era, notes that “none of the three was utterly depraved. They were all too human, especially in their frailties. Similar frailties can be seen in many figures strutting around the public sphere today.” Having spent perhaps too much effort justifying the significance of his subjects, he proceeds to write an enjoyable book that will appeal to WWII buffs. Felix Kersten (1898-1962) spent World War I in the German army, ending the war in Finland, where he studied physical therapy before moving to Berlin. A charismatic figure, he grew wealthy as a practitioner of healing massage, serving many highly placed figures, including Heinrich Himmler. Safely ensconced in Sweden after the war, he proclaimed (and a gullible biographer agreed) that he had used his influence to save anti-Nazis and Jews. Buruma expresses understandable skepticism. In Holland, which was decimated by the Nazis, Friedrich Weinreb (1910-1988) survived by convincing them that he could find Jews in hiding while also collecting money from Jews with the false promise of keeping them from deportation. He served three years in prison, but, an aggressive self-promoter, he later convinced many that he was a hero of the resistance scapegoated by the establishment. Perhaps the most bizarre of the trio was Kawashima Yoshiko (c. 1906-1948), daughter of a Chinese aristocrat who gave her up for adoption to a Japanese official. Raised and educated in Japan, she was a flamboyant figure who dressed in men’s clothes and whose aggressive support of that nation’s conquests in Manchuria and China made her a popular figure in Japanese media during the 1930s. She sat out the years after Pearl Harbor in Beijing, after which a vengeful Chinese government executed her for treason.

Entertaining WWII minutia.