Juxtaposition of Two Unlike Things

Every story has two sides. With the topic in hand being the Holocaust, we see today the horrific effects the Holocaust had on the Jewish population. However, the Nazi perspective portrays Adolf Hitler to be a hero. In much of the the Nazi propaganda, Hitler is pictured as the protagonist of a utopia story. In the image pictured to the right, Hitler is holding up a small child and is smiling. All is happy, and the Swastika is prevalent. On the other hand, the Jewish people lived a much different life. Shown in Art Spiegelman's Maus, the images contrast each other in a huge way. While Hitler is gleefully expressing his happiness to a child, the Jewish people represented by mice are dying slowly and painfully from an inferno that leads to their inevitable death. Speigelman's use of horrific images not only qualifies the synthesis claim we had in class this week, but the heavy contrast between the light mood of the Nazi propaganda and the violent images in Maus emphasize how different the life of the Nazis and Jews were. Along with the other motifs such as the cat and mouse metaphor used in Maus, Spiegelman is effective in portraying this difference. Mice die and suffer miserably and hopelessly while the cats live in happiness with their families.
What makes propaganda so effective?