Why Do You Hate Us So? Trivia Quiz

Answer: Vidkun Quisling

Norwegian politician Vidkun Quisling was an admirer of Adolf Hitler; on Hitler's fiftieth birthday in 1939, Quisling sent him greetings thanking him for "saving Europe from Bolshevism and Jewish domination". When Germany invaded Norway in 1940, Quisling participated in a coup d'etat. He served as Minister-President of Norway until the end of the war. He was tried, convicted of high treason and murder and executed in October, 1945. His surname has since been used as a synonym for traitor.

Answer: Mir Jafar

Because of his desire to be Nawab (governor or person of high status) of Bengal, Mir Muhammed Jafar Ali Khan Bahadur (commonly known as Mir Jafar), concocted a secret pact with Robert Clive of the British East India Company to compromise the Army of Bengal in a battle with the British, while withholding his own soldiers from the battle.

After being named Nawab, Jafar tried to gain financially from the Dutch, lost and regained favor with the British and died in 1765. The British ruled India without native assistance for the next two centuries.

Answer: Tokyo Rose

Iva Toguri D'Aquino was one of several women known as Tokyo Rose, Japanese propaganda broadcasters in World War II. Toguri was an American citizen living in Japan during the war. She was questioned by U.S. authorities immediately after the war and released. When she tried to return to America, public outcry caused a renewed investigation. She was tried on eight counts of treason in 1949 and convicted of one. In 1974, journalists were told by witnesses for the prosecution in the trial that they were coerced to lie. President Gerald Ford pardoned Toguri in 1977.

Answer: Christine Keeler

British Secretary of State for War John Profumo met Christine Keeler in 1961 and had an affair with her. In 1962 it became public knowledge and it was learned that she also had a relationship with Yevgeny Ivanov, a senior attaché at the Soviet embassy in London.

In June, 1963, after denials, Profumo resigned. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan resigned in September of that year, citing ill health. It may have been exacerbated by the scandal.

Answer: Marcus Junius Brutus

Marcus Junius Brutus, generally known as Brutus, was of a different political faction from Julius Caesar, dictator of the Roman Republic. However, impressed with Brutus' abilities, Caesar made him Urban Praetor in 45 B.C. As Caesar took more and more power for himself, Roman senators began plotting against him and Brutus was recruited to their conspiracy. On the Ides of March, 44 B.C., as many as 60 senators stabbed Caesar to death, Brutus apparently being the second to do so.

The attack was so violent that some of the conspirators stabbed each other. Brutus committed suicide in 42 B.C., rather than be captured and executed for Caesar's assassination.

Answer: Mordechai Vanunu

Mordechai Vanunu was employed at the Negev Nuclear Research Center, an Israeli nuclear weapons research facility, beginning in 1977. Becoming disenchanted with the work, he left and went to Australia. There, he met a journalist and in time revealed his nuclear secrets to the British "Sunday Times" in 1986. Vanunu was eventually smuggled back to Israel where he was tried for treason and espionage and sentenced to 18 years in prison. Since being released he has been returned to prison a number of times for parole violations.

Answer: Benedict Arnold

Benedict Arnold, of Connecticut in Britain's American colonies, followed his father as a successful businessman. When the Revolution broke out, Arnold became a captain (an elected position) in the Connecticut militia. Showing tactical skills and winning battles, Arnold rose quickly through the chain-of-command to major general.

Others took credit for some of his victories and he was passed over for further promotion. Stung (and having married a British sympathizer), he devised a plan to gain monetarily by collaborating with the British.

The plot was discovered and Arnold escaped to join the British army. He died in England in 1801.

Answer: Guy Fawkes

In seventeenth-century Britain a group of Catholics hatched a plot to blow up the House of Lords, with King James I in it, and put a Catholic monarch on the throne. Guy Fawkes, a former soldier, was one of the plotters and was put in the basement of Westminster Palace to guard the barrels of gunpowder the rebels had smuggled there.

But on November 5, 1605, the authorities, having received an anonymous letter tipping them off, captured Fawkes and after being tortured, he revealed the plot and those involved. Sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, Fawkes jumped from the gallows scaffold, dying from a broken neck. November 5th was named a day of celebration for the saving of the king. Over time it has become more of a way of remembering Fawkes, with bonfires and great carryings-on.

Answer: Wang Jingwei

Chinese politician Wang Jingwei began his political career as a liberal. Frustrated by his inability to advance, he accepted an invitation to help form a Japanese puppet government when Japan invaded China in 1937. In 1940, his government signed the "Sino-Japanese Treaty", essentially China's capitulation to Japan. He died in 1944. Considered China's greatest traitor, his name and reputation in China are equivalent to Vidkun Quisling in Norway and Benedict Arnold in the United States.

Answer: Kim Philby

Harold "Kim" Philby was recruited by the Soviet Union as a spy around 1934, apparently soon after he married an Austrian Communist. He started working for British intelligence around 1937. The life of a double agent is difficult and finally in 1963, paranoid and close to being arrested, Philby defected to Russia. He died there in 1988. In 1990, the Soviet Union honored Philby by releasing a postage stamp with his portrait on it.