"Time passed. I never told my Helga I was a spy. To tell her would only put her in danger and live in constant fear. So I hid my true self from her, knowing that politics had no place in our nation of two. I suppose the moral here is you must be careful who you pretend to be because in the end, you are what you pretend to be."
(24 min)
This is the first scene where Howard Campbell begins to lose himself. By committing himself to a cause he does not believe in and through his job as a propagandist he brainwashes others through his speeches and begins to brainwash himself. He breaks his commitment with Helga to stay true to their "nation of two" by not telling her who he really is. If he cannot be true to his wife (in his opinion their "nation of two" is greater than both America and Germany) how is he able to be true to himself and know who he really is? This followed by the death of his wife and the horrors of war allows Campbell's original self to be destroyed and replaced by the new Campbell who he had originally pretended to be. Without Helga to keep him in touch with reality Campbell has no way to know who he really is. Eventually he becomes engulfed by his work as a propagandist and embodies the beliefs of the Nazis.
Do the people around you effect who you are? How do the traumas of war effect our personalities?
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