Well, maybe not everybody . . . but have you read it? History Will Judge The Complicit by Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic.
. . . Since the Second World War, historians and political scientists have tried to explain why some people in extreme circumstances become collaborators and others do not. . . .
Hoffmann observed that many of those who became ideological collaborators were . . . people who perceived themselves as part of a natural ruling class that had been unfairly deprived of power under the left-wing governments of France in the 1930s. Equally motivated to collaborate were their polar opposites, the “social misfits and political deviants” who would, in the normal course of events, never have made successful careers of any kind. What brought these groups together was a common conclusion that, whatever they had thought about Germany before June 1940, their political and personal futures would now be improved by aligning themselves with the occupiers. . . .
It’s long, fascinating, highly relevant, and important, so let me get out of the way and leave you to it.
Tomorrow: a trick for keeping bananas fresh.
