Prøve GULL - Gratis
The Collaborators
The Atlantic
|July - August 2020
What causes people to abandon their principles in support of a corrupt regime? And how do they find their way back?

On a cold March afternoon in 1949, Wolfgang Leonhard slipped out of the East German Communist Party Secretariat, hurried home, packed what few warm clothes he could fit into a small briefcase, and then walked to a telephone box to call his mother. “My article will be finished this evening,” he told her. That was the code they had agreed on in advance. It meant that he was escaping the country, at great risk to his life.
Though only 28 years old at the time, Leonhard stood at the pinnacle of the new East German elite. The son of German Communists, he had been educated in the Soviet Union, trained in special schools during the war, and brought back to Berlin from Moscow in May 1945, on the same airplane that carried Walter Ulbricht, the leader of what would soon become the East German Communist Party. Leonhard was put on a team charged with re-creating Berlin’s city government.
He had one central task: to ensure that any local leaders who emerged from the postwar chaos were assigned deputies loyal to the party. “It’s got to look democratic,” Ulbricht told him, “but we must have everything in our control.”
Denne historien er fra July - August 2020-utgaven av The Atlantic.
Abonner på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av kuraterte premiumhistorier og over 9000 magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
FLERE HISTORIER FRA The Atlantic

The Atlantic
CANADA IS KILLING ITSELF
THE COUNTRY GAVE ITS CITIZENS THE RIGHT TO DIE...DOCTORS ARE STRUGGLING TO KEEP UP WITH DEMAND.
28 mins
September 2025

The Atlantic
WHY MARRIAGE SURVIVES
The institution has adapted, and is showing new signs of resilience.
9 mins
September 2025

The Atlantic
The Forgotten Still-Life Prodigy
The 17th-century painter Rachel Ruysch was once more famous than Vermeer.
9 mins
September 2025

The Atlantic
THIS IS WHAT THE END OF THE LIBERAL WORLD ORDER LOOKS LIKE
In a post-American world, greed and nihilism are destroying Sudan.
39 mins
September 2025

The Atlantic
The Judgments of Muriel Spark
The novelist Muriel Spark died almost 20 years ago, but she still regularly appears on lists of top comic novelists to read on this subject or that. Crave more White Lotus-level skewering of the ridiculous rich? Try Memento Mori, The New York Times suggests. An acerbic take on boring dinner parties? Symposium. Interested in “the fun and funny aspects of being a teacher”? Read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie— also good for learning how to be a highly inappropriate teacher, if you want to know that too.
12 mins
September 2025

The Atlantic
Playing Mailman
A new memoir considers what public service is, and what it isn't.
8 mins
September 2025

The Atlantic
Chasing le Carré in Corfu
If you're trying to find someone who doesn't want to be found, you don't go to the obvious places.
20 mins
September 2025

The Atlantic
THE MAN WHO ATE NASA
The agency once projected America's loftiest ideals. Then it ceded its ambitions to Elon Musk.
27 mins
September 2025

The Atlantic
CAPTAIN RON'S GUIDE TO FEARLESS FLYING
The pilot who calms the nerves of anxious fliers
7 mins
September 2025

The Atlantic
GOING BACK
What home meant before, and after, Hurricane Katrina
10 mins
September 2025
Translate
Change font size