A Hasidic Jew fixer, a Manchu princess and Himmler’s masseur; each regarded as both heroes and villains due to their wartime acts. Friedrich Weinreb took money from fellow Jews in a deportation-avoiding scam, but is known by supporters as ‘the Dutch Dreyfus’. Kawashima Yoshiko spied for the Japanese secret police in China. Felix Kersten became indispensable to the SS commander but after the war presented himself as a resistance hero. Historian and former New York Review of Books editor Ian Buruma skilfully reconstructs what we can know about these mythologised individuals and what remains out of reach.  In conversation with the actor and author Simon Callow.