Uniforms

It's a little-known fact, but soldiers wear uniforms.

Okay, yes, you knew that.

What's the point of a uniform? A uniform tells you who is friend and who is foe. That's important on a battlefield.

But beyond their utility in warfare, uniforms can symbolize a lot of other things, too. Campbell, for one, is hyperaware of who is wearing which kind of uniform: O'Hare's got an American Legion uniform; the Iron Guard members in Jones's basement wear white and sew special buttonholes into theirs. The list goes on.

It's all about status and identity, and Campbell, for one, is pretty jazzed by how these duds make meaning.

No, seriously. Uniforms are as much a part of the propaganda machine as Campbell's radio broadcasts. He's so attuned to the power of dress to shape thoughts and opinions that he develops his own kind of uniform while he's playing Nazi.

Campbell wears his custom-made, original uniform "in order to dazzle any Germans who might try to keep [him] from getting out of Berlin" (18.32) when he wants to feel cool. He even wears it while visiting his crazy Nazi father-in-law. It's a wild hodge-podge of symbols, and he knows it'll shock, if not awe.

So what does it all mean? Well, luckily for us, Campbell himself provides an answer when Werner Noth asks that very question:

I explained it to him, showed him the device on the hilt of my dagger. The device, silver on walnut, was an American eagle that clasped a swastika in its right claw and devoured a snake in its left claw. The snake was meant to represent international Jewish communism. There were thirteen stars around the head of the eagle, representing the thirteen original American colonies. I had made the original sketch of the device, and, since I don't draw very well, I had drawn six-pointed stars of David rather than five-pointed stars of the U.S.A. The silversmith, while lavishly improving on my eagle, had reproduced my six-pointed stars exactly. (18.70)

Basically, this outfit is an offensive mashup of different symbols with allegiances and agendas that conflict. It's absurd. In fact, it's almost like Campbell is performing his own shifty status: as a secret agent playing a dangerous role, he's everything and nothing. He cancels himself out. On top of that, it's almost like he's critiquing the way symbols are used every day to casually get people to believe something, the way branding does in an advertisement. It's all just make-believe—but it's dangerous make-believe.