"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?
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