9780593671146
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The Collaborators audiobook

  • By: Ian Buruma
  • Narrator: Ian Buruma
  • Category: History, Military, World War II
  • Length: 9 hours 37 minutes
  • Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
  • Publish date: January 01, 2023
  • Language: English
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The Collaborators Audiobook Summary

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.

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The Collaborators Audiobook Narrator

Ian Buruma is the narrator of The Collaborators audiobook that was written by Ian Buruma

About the Author(s) of The Collaborators

Ian Buruma is the author of The Collaborators

The Collaborators Full Details

Narrator Ian Buruma
Length 9 hours 37 minutes
Author Ian Buruma
Category
Publisher Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
Release date May 07, 2024
ISBN 9780593671146

Subjects

The publisher of the The Collaborators is Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group. includes the following subjects: world war 2 books, history books, wwii, ww2, military, war, best selling books for men, wwii books, history gifts for men, history buff gifts, japan history, world war ii, world war 2, military history, ww ii, european history, world history, war books, ww 2, military history books, gifts for history buffs, japanese, pearl harbor, historical books, gifts for dad, japanese history, dad gifts, battles, army, history, hitler, holocaust, japan, holocaust books, nazi, fathers day gifts, asian, hiroshima, asia, japanese mythology, History, Military, World War II, History, Holocaust, History, Asia, Japan The BISAC Subject Code is History, Military, World War II

Additional info

The publisher of the The Collaborators is Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group. The imprint is Penguin Audio. It is supplied by Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group. The ISBN-13 is 9780593671146.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

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