The Penultimate Truth by Philip K. Dick Page A

were starving. Because of the British.
     
         How clear it was, as this theme emerged throughout twenty-five expertly put-together episodes. This was the "definitive" history of World War Two--for the people of Wes-Dem, anyhow.
     
         _Why run the thing?_ Adams asked himself as he sat smoking his cigarette, trembling with muscular and mental weariness. I know what it shows. That Hitler was emotional, flamboyant, moody, and unstable, but of course; it was natural, the film lied. Because he was pure and simply a genius. Like Beethoven. And we all admire Beethoven; you have to forgive a great world figure genius type its eccentricities. And, admittedly, Hitler was at last pushed over the edge, driven into psychotic paranoia . . . due to the unwillingness of England to understand, to grasp, the looming, _real_ menace--that of Stalinist Russia. The peculiarities of Hitler's personal character (after all, he had been subjected to great and prolonged stress during World War One and the Weimar Depression period, as had all Germans) had misled the rather phlegmatic Anglo-Saxon peoples into imagining that Hitler was "dangerous." Actually--and in episode after episode, Alex Sourberry would purr out this message--the Wes-Dem TV viewer would discover that England, France, Germany and the United States should all have been allies. Against the authentic evil-doer, Josef Stalin, with his megalomaniacal plans for world conquest . . . proved by the actions of the USSR in the postwar period--a period in which even Churchill had to admit that Soviet Russia was _the_ enemy.
     
         --And had been all along. Communist propagandists, fifth columnists in the Western Democracies, however, had deceived the people, even the governments . . . even Roosevelt and Churchill, and right up into the postwar world. Take, for instance, Alger Hiss . . . take the Rosenbergs, who had stolen the secret of The Bomb and given it to Soviet Russia.
     
         Take, for instance, the scene which opened episode four of version A. Advancing the spool, Joseph Adams halted it at this episode and put his eyes to the scanner, this modern technological crystal ball into which one gazed to know--not the future--but the past. And . . .
     
         Not even the past. Instead, this fake which he now witnessed.
     
         Before his eyes a film sequence, narrated by the maddeningly ubiquitous Alex Sourberry and his oily, skillful murmur. A scene vital to the overall moral of version A which Gottlieb Fischer, backed angelwise by the Wes-Dem military establishment, had wished to drive home--in other words this was the _raison d'être_ of the whole twenty-five hour-long episodes of version A.
     
         The scene enacted in miniature before him showed the meeting of the heads-of-state, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin. The location: Yalta. Ominous, fateful Yalta.
     
         There they sat, the three world leaders,s in adjoining chairs, to be photographed; this was an historic occasion the magnitude of which was intolerable. And no one alive could afford to forget it, because here--Sourberry's voice purred--the momentous decision was made. You are now seeing it with your own eyes.
     
         _What_ decision?
     
         In Joseph Adams' ears the professional smooth voice whispered, "At this spot, at this moment, the deal was hatched which was to decide the future fate of mankind down unto generations yet unborn."
     
         "Okay," Adams said aloud, startling the harmless Yance-man using the scanner across from him. "Sorry," Adams apologized, and then merely thought, did not speak it aloud, _Come on, Fischer. Let's see the deal. Like they say; don't just tell us; show us. Put up or shut up. Prove the basic contention of this great prolonged "documentary" or get out_.
     
         And he knew, because he had seen it so many times before, that the film producer was going to show it.
     
         "Joe," a woman's voice said, close to