How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
'Did you ever hear any of my broadcasts?' I asked him. The medium of my war crimes was radio broadcasting. I was a Nazi radio propagandist, a shrewd and loathsome anti-Semite. (3.8)
Propaganda messes with a lot of things. Most notably? Reality. It alters what we think we know of the past and what we're experiencing in the present, and that in turn meddles with the future. If individuals have a warped perception of reality, then their actions will adapt to that version of "truth," and a new reality can come about that's even more twisted.
Quote #2
I had a certain amount of skill as a dramatist, and Dr. Goebbels wanted me to use it. Dr. Goebbels wanted me to write a pageant honoring the German soldiers who had given their last full measure of devotion—who had died, that is—in putting down the uprising of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Dr. Goebbels had a dream of producing the pageant annually in Warsaw after the war, of letting the ruins of the ghetto stand forever as a setting for it. (5.8-9)
Here's an example of an instance when art is employed to intentionally alter historical memory and solidify a lie. If Campbell were to write a pageant commemorating the Germans, then future audiences who weren't there might really believe the Nazis weren't the bad guys.
Quote #3
Goebbels asked me where I'd gotten the working title, so I made a translation for him of the entire Gettysburg Address.
He read it, his lips moving all the time. 'You know,' he said to me, 'this is a very fine piece of propaganda. We are never as modern, as far ahead of the past as we like to think we are.' (5.20-21)
Poor Honest Abe. We're pretty sure this is Vonnegut rubbing it in that nothing is sacred, and anything can be used for insidious purposes. On the flipside, it could also be his reminder that maybe our own politicians—no matter how we've valorized them—may have their own skeletons hanging around.