PREVIEW: Backer Bonus Episode on 'Slaughterhouse Five' by Kurt Vonnegut
Become a backer of Daniel or Jack to get exclusive access to a new bonus episode. Becoming a patron also brings access to all other bonus episodes. At least one new Patreon exclusive bonus episode every month. This time we talk about Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut's classic satire of war and American civilisation (but I repeat myself), and the disappointing movie version. Slaughterhouse-Five - Wikipedia Daniel's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/danielharper/posts Jack's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4196618&fan_landing=true Please consider donating to help us make the show and stay independent. Patrons get exclusive access to one full extra episode a month. IDSG Twitter: https://twitter.com/idsgpod Daniel's Twitter: @danieleharper Jack's Twitter: @_Jack_Graham_ IDSG on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i-dont-speak-german/id1449848509?ls=1
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Here's a preview of the new one.
The book goes out of its way to remind you of the Holocaust on several occasions.
It mentions that the POW camp where he's initially unloaded was originally built to be an extermination camp.
The British prisoners of war that they're originally billeted with are using candles and things like that that are made out of human fat.
I don't know if that's historically accurate or not.
That's not historically accurate, no.
No.
But I think it was believed to be.
It was believed to be at the time he wrote the novel.
It was believed to be.
And on that subject, the book actually mentions by name David Irving as a historian of the bombing of Dresden.
And it repeats his numbers for the dead of Dresden, which leads the narrator to actually categorically state at one point, I think it's actually in the first chapter, so it's Vonnegut talking as himself.
That he witnessed the biggest massacre on European soil, which he's getting from David Irving's figures about Dresden, which we now know to be... At the time, David Irving was considered a respectable historian, and that book was considered a serious piece of historiography.
It was criticized and it was debated, but it wasn't... It's not like now where we... I mean, this is a genuine sort of of its time thing.
For once, it's a genuine thing.
At the time, there were criticisms, but people did not know at the time that David Irving was actually a Nazi and a falsifier of history and a Holocaust.
The historiography is now revised on that subject, and David Irving is no longer taken seriously.
So, I don't think Vonnegut has anything to apologize, anything much to apologize for there, except, you know, relying on data which has subsequently been called into question.
But that does, yeah, I mean your point was about the possible perception of moral equivalence.
And I think it's a question of levels, isn't it?
Because I think what the book is trying to get at is the idea that on an interpersonal level, on a normal human level, people are pretty much helpless in the situations that they find themselves in.
And I think that's true, most of the time anyway.
The ordinary Germans that they meet in Germany are portrayed fairly sympathetically.
Even most of the soldiers, the German soldiers, are portrayed generally quite sympathetically.
And, funnily enough, a lot of the American soldiers are actually portrayed as much worse.
But the book makes the point that they are all incredibly young.
It makes that my counterpoint a couple of times.
It's really your country when they get taken to task a little bit.
We can talk about that if you like.
Oh yeah, the Brits in the book are guzzling extra Red Cross supplies, aren't they?
Completely unselfconsciously!
I'm literally sitting there and going, like, you know, you just need to make sure to shave every day and examine your posture and make sure you're not showing signs of depression, young, young sailor, you know.
And they bring the Americans in, you know, from this, like, emaciated state of eight days on a train car.
And they serve them this, like, sumptuous meal with 10 cigarettes.
And, you know, like, and then they're just shocked, shocked.
When all of these Americans who are not used to eating food like this at all, immediately go to shit their brains out and like, we got to get rid of these Americans.
They're just too uncouth.
Oh man, that was, again, an element that just sort of like, it didn't pass me by, but I found it particularly telling in terms of what Vonnegut's attitude towards this.
But also, that's very sort of like the World War II movies of that period, sort of had that vibe of the stiff upper lip and British soldiers and that sort of thing.
It is very informed by war movies of the 40s and 50s.
I can quite believe that something like that really happened as well, I'm afraid.
I love the bit where the British POWs are actually described as the richest people in Europe at that moment, because they're just swimming in supplies that they're getting from the Red Cross as a result of a clerical error.
And they're very pally with the Germans, and they like the Americans a lot less than they like the Germans.
And I'm afraid I find that very believable.
Well, you know, the German officers are, you know, they're trading for favors.
They're trading for privileges, you know, with the German officers.
They're using some of those Red Cross rations to curry favor, which, you know, is a human thing to do.
But when you've got 10 times the amount of liquor, you know, and you're literally just like swimming in like steak in the middle of, you know, this desolation of war, the greatest war in human history.
You know, with, like, death camps everywhere, and you're, like, literally sitting and, like, doing, like, plays every night and singing from the Pirates of Penzance.
Like, it's, yeah, no, Vonnegut has a gift for absurdity, and it's just, it's pitched just that level of, like, to where it's just, it is, no, I found it, it was a delightful sequence rereading it this time through.
