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About this quote

What does it mean?
A character claims Nazis understood God by knowing how to keep him away.
In plain terms
The Nazis knew how to ignore God.
What can you take from it?
Ideologies can succeed by rejecting moral accountability.

Where it applies

  • discussing religion
  • analyzing nazism
  • moral philosophy

Putting it to work

  • studying history
  • writing fiction

Questions to consider

  • What does it mean to ignore God?
  • How do evil regimes survive?

Another view

It oversimplifies religious and historical complexity.

More from Kurt Vonnegut

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  3. Congressman Nixon had asked me why, as the son of immigrants who had been treated so well by Americans, as a man who had been treated like a son and been sent …

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