Justice

“Because I hated you so much, I studied you. I listened to everything you said; never missed a broadcast. Did you know that until this very moment, nothing would have delighted me more than to prove that you were a spy—to see you shot. Now, I couldn’t care less if you were a spy. Do you know why?”

“No”

“Because now I know that even if you were a spy, you could never serve the enemy as well as you served us. All of the ideals that made me proud of being a Nazi, they came not from Hitler…but from you. You alone kept me from concluding that Germany had gone insane.”

0:30:30

Campbell’s father-in-law tells this to him when Campbell goes to visit their home after the news arrives that Helga has died. Campbell realizes for the first time in the movie that his greatest enemies may be those that are very close or closely related to him. This realization proves to be painfully true near the end of the movie. 

The power of words is illustrated in this passage. Campbell's job as a propaganda writer for the Nazis was to write speeches that upheld the Nazi principles and views that would be broadcast on the radio for all to hear. However, his job as an American spy was to insert seemingly random pauses and coughs. The meaning of these he never understood, thus the secret messages he was sending out he himself did not know. For him, all he could know and control were the words. And being the talented writer that he was, his propaganda was extremely effective; later in the movie when he sees his speech replayed at a Nazi meeting, he is shocked by the brutality of his own words. He sees for himself the person that he was to the world minus four people, including himself. The words that he wrote for the Nazis were more powerful than any secret message that he was sending out. He informed a few military powers in America, but inspired every Nazi in Germany. It is at this point in the movie that he stops writing, having realized the terrifying power of his words. 

Campbell had only meant to do what he was told by his superiors. Write propaganda. Pause here. Cough here. However, his simple obedience of orders earned him credit of a portion of the six million humans killed throughout the war. It is this truth that his writings fueled and propelled the Nazi movement and Holocaust that leads him to turn himself in at the end and ultimately commit suicide--a justice he feels he deserved.

Q: What justice do you think Campbell deserved?

Howard W. Campbell Jr. : The Last "Free" American

"What froze me was the fact that I had absolutely no reason to move in any direction." The moment I chose is this moment where he is standing still and alone in the dark for hours along with the following scene where he is sitting in his wrecked apartment playing with the chess piece he made.


Howard Campbell is trapped at the end of the film. He spent his entire adult life pretending to be something that he wasn't. He joined the Nazi regime in order to spy for the American government and through his radio program and adamant support for the Nazi cause, he became one of the most famous Nazi leaders in Berlin. However, only three Americans actually know that he is actually a spy, one of those being the president, Franklin Roosevelt. Howard sacrifices his entire life for the sake of the American government and while he was one of the most crucial American agents, the majority of the world believes him to be a Nazi. This serves to ruin him at the end of the war. There is no public announcement that he was really an American spy, no coming home party, no reward for his sacrifice because it is much too confidential. He is forced into solitude and hiding essentially. He is hated by Americans and is forced out of his home because his life is being threatened. It is ironic hat the only people he can find safety with is with a American Nazi group, the very thing he isn't.
When the war ended, he was frozen. He couldn't find refuge in the American government because they were required to keep his role in the war a secret. However, he also could not find real refuge with the German government or even American Nazi's because that was not where his true loyalty resided. This is where the significance of the chess pieces come into play.  Like a pawn, he was tossed back and forth by higher forces and once the "game" or war was over, he was of no use to them anymore and he remained trapped in this false Nazi identity that he and the government created.

Q: Since, only 3 other people knew about Howard's secret identity a a spy, do you think its possible that Howard could have imagined his "blue fairy god mother" and the entire espionage mission? Do you think he could have imagined that he was an american spy while in reality he had become one of the most prominent Nazi leaders of the war?

Mother Night

“I took several steps down the sidewalk when something happened…it was not guilt that froze me. I had taught myself never to feel guilt. I wasn’t the fear of death—I had taught myself to think of death as a friend. It was not the thought of being unloved that froze me—I had taught myself to do without love. What froze me was the fact that I had absolutely no reason to move in any direction.”

1:39:03

In this scene Campbell stops in the middle of the street after he comes to a realization that he has nowhere to go. He grasps that he has nothing to live for anymore, as everything he has stood for has seemed to him a lie. When the two people he thought he could trust turn out to both be spies, Campbell essentially stops believing in anything. He concludes that the only way to make things better is to cleanse himself of his past, which involves facing trial in Israel. Campbell is intent on setting things right once he realizes the true weight of his actions, no matter the consequences are for him.

Vonnegut seems to have a similar message in Mother Night as in Slaughterhouse Five—we cannot ever truly cleanse ourselves of the effects war may have on us. As no matter what Billy does, he is constantly reminded of and goes back to moments in the war, the same seems true of Campbell--even after starting a new life in New York the war comes back to haunt him. When he and Resi finally start to live together happily, Campbell discovers she is actually a Russian spy, as well as finding out that George Kraft has had intentions of turning him in all along. Campbell comes to a conclusion that although he can never escape his actions, he can go to face them. Along with the newspaper article and the all of the eventual publicity his name receives soon afterwards, it seems that in the end it seems we never truly can rid ourselves of the war. This is a truth even Campbell seems to recognizes, as hanging himself seems to be the only way out.

Q: What would Campbell’s fate have been had he not commited suicide? Would he be able to live with himself, provided he has finally come to terms with the weight of his actions?

You are what you pretend to be

24:08

I suppose the moral here is this: You must be careful what you pretend to be, because in the end you are what you pretend to be.

I'm pretty sure I've heard this quote before, which might be why it stuck out to me. This self-proclaimed moral of the story relates to an obvious theme of identity in the movie. Primarily, Howard W. Campbell identifies neither with any Americans or Germans, besides Helga. At some point in the movie it even says that "he may, in fact, be a citizen of nowhere at all." Even his status as a spy is disputed because of his talent for shmoozing Nazi power players and his convincing radio broadcast. Helga - or is it Resi? - is German, but works for the Russians. George Kraft, or Potipov, is also a Russian spy. Campbell becomes so immersed in his German life that it becomes his real life, and he can receive neither recognition nor award from either side for his efforts. The more he succeeded at being Herr Campbell, the less he could be an American. This quote is not only relevant in the novel, but has remained applicable since Mother Night was published in 1961.

Q: At what point in the movie was Campbell no longer pretending?

Identity Crisis

1:08:44

"I am not Helga."

What?! For a second, I thought I was watching Jerry Springer. This completely caught me off guard which is why it stands out to me as an important moment in the film.

Convinced the woman brought to him was his wife Helga, Howard Campbell is shocked to hear from her that she is not who he believes she is. She claims she is Helga's sister, Resi,but the audience later finds out this is not true. This particular moment stood out to me because it ties an awkward moment for the audience into a recurring theme for the film. This theme is identity.

Many of the characters play the same character in multiple roles. Campbell was an American, an American-German, and a German double-agent. Resi was a German-American and a Russian spy. George Kraft was a Russian spy acting as an American. All these hats that everyone put on shows the audience that other people will fall victim to believing that someone is who they pretend to be. This directly relates to a line Campbell narrated 24 minutes into the film: "I suppose the moral here is: 'You must be careful what you pretend to be, because in the end, you are what you pretend to be.'" Campbell's pretending to be a Nazi propagandist led the American public to believe that he helped put millions of Jews into camps, which he did.

Q: Could someone who acted in the way Howard Campbell did during the war, providing intelligence to the Allies and spread Nazi propaganda, be considered a war hero and a war criminal?

So it....goes?

1:07:00

"People should be changed by world wars. Otherwise, what are world wars for?"

Though Campbell is only saying this to assure "Helga" he has not changed in an unexpected or negative way, he is stating a point emphasized in Slaughterhouse-Five as well. During the war, Campbell was an anti-Semitic Nazi. However, only after fleeing Germany and letting go of his identity, he realizes his actions during the war were wrong and unwarranted. Of course, he only comes to this revelation after the damage has been done and he is suffering--after the war is over. So, for him the war is never truly over or in the past. He is constantly plagued by what he did, and he will never be able to escape it. Vonnegut might have been trying to say that wars are meant to change people forever; they're meant to essentially never just be history for those involved. In Slaughterhouse-five, the Tralfamadorians have wars all the time, but they choose to focus on the good in their lives, as if the bad never happened. However, humans cannot do that because wars are crucial moments in determining who they really are. The choices Campbell made and the consequences he had to live with changed him and there was no turning back. How could someone just say "so it goes" and move on, especially when they are literally not the same person anymore?

Q: Does Vonnegut's "so it goes" attitude apply to Mother Night? Didn't Campbell surrender & then commit suicide because he could not move on?

-Madhu Singh

7,000,000,000 seven billion 7^9

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2011-10-30/world-population-hits-seven-billion/51007670/1

"On an average, 324,000 new babies are born into the world every day. During that same day, 10,000 persons, on an average, will have starved to death or died from malnutrition. So it goes. In addition 123,000 persons will die for other reasons. So it goes. This leaves a net gain of about 192,000 each day in the world. The Population Reference Bureau predicts that the world's population will double to 7,000,000,000 before the year 2000.

'I suppose they will all want dignity, ' I said.

'I suppose,' said O'Hare."

So we have, and yes they do. Our population is unfathomably large and growing exponentially. Hundreds of thousands of lives come and go each day, and it is really hard to realize or even conceive of this fact. Thus when a massacre occurs like Dresden and World War II it is an even more difficult subject to discuss. Death is always a sensitive topic but there can never be growth or any justification of those lives sacrificed if we cannot openly discuss and comfort one another about such issues. All seven billion of us on Earth do most definitely want dignity, and revolutions such as the one in Egypt earlier this year will turn up at every place that dignity is denied. Rather than perpetuate a cynical kill or be killed Darwinist mindset, there need to be more cooperative discussions and compromises quite soon. On average now that the world's population has doubled, one can estimate for every bomb dropped twice as many lives will be lost. Thus every war from now on will murder twice as many innocent people, and if we cannot realize these facts and talk about them we may be doomed to repeat history.

Q: What does the phrase "If you're ever in Cody, Whyoming, just ask for Wild Bob." mean to Billy Pilgrim now that the war is over and Wild Bob is dead?