"The Man in the High Castle"- reel vs. real

[Blackjack]

I just finished watching the first season of this finely produced Amazon show. Not going into the show itself, IF Germany would have won the war and occupation was the end result with Japan having the west coast and Nazi Germany controlling the East what would the country be like? The show shows an America that accepted the defeat and learned to accept it. I don't think that would have happened in the 40's...today...Im not so sure, which is the scariest thought of all-

 

[MisterCairo]

I haven't watched the show yet but hope to soon. I'd hope that resistance would prevail, even today.

 

[Edward]

Bottom line, I suspect that in any age most people after a certain point will know when they are defeated, and given the options of making the best of, or being put in prison indefinitely or shot, will just knuckle under and live with it. The moreso if they feel that the change in management has little or no real impact on their lives.

In the 40s, you would of course have had certain minorities would have had a very big motivation to fight against a Nazi occupation if they were subjected to the same treatment as those like them in Europe. Even Jim Crow laws might start to look like the lesser of two evils then. Others, even if they did disagree with the prevailing ideology of the occupying power, might just prefer to kep their heads down and get on with it. These days, there are so many people who feel so disenfranchised and uninvested in soceity and the political process, that I suspect many might perceive little difference in living under a dictatorship or a democracy where they have opted out. And, of course, in any era there will be rich folks who have the luxury of not caring much as their money would sufficiently insulate them from any attendant hardship of the switch.

The other thing that would have to be accounted for in the forties would be those who would have welcomed Naziism, which would have been part of the population. Certainly here in the UK, taboo as it might be to even acknowledge (ferwotsits'sake, we've just put Churchill on the five pound note, and it's unacceptable in polite society to even mention that his views on race wouldn't be regarded as especially comfortable today, without being howled down with the usual "Greatest Briton" tripe), there were plenty of people who backed the Nazis early on - including large swathes of the aristocracy (hence the need to invent the 'divorcee marriage' problem with Edward VIII, rather than throwing him out for his Nazi sympathies). Given time to accept a heavy defeat and their positions and personal comfort being assured, those whose sole objection to Hitlerism was based on nationalism and the patriotic ferver of warfare as opposed to a political and ideological difference would, I think, soon adapt.

Of course, on a practical basis, it would have been much easier to sustain a guerilla campaign in the US, given the sheer size of the territory and the fact that even today simple geography makes going 'off grid' in the US a real possibility in a way that it just isn't in the UK.

Me? I'd like to think I'd have it in me to hide somebody in my cellar rather than see them sent off to a deathcamp, but the idea of joining up to kill conscripts in some long war of attrition truly doesn't appeal.

 

[MikeKardec]

It's been 9 months since I saw it but I remember some beautifully suggestive lines that intimated that the USA might have gone through something that allowed us to somehow "justify" the loss. Obviously there were some pro Nazi American groups in reality and there may have been more or ones that grew in the mythos of the series ... one of the beautiful things about it is that it is such a complete alternate universe and that it always feels like there is greater depth, the answer to more mysteries, around every corner. It's secret to engaging your imagination (as true with all good fiction) is that you don't know all the answers yet you see familiar and logical patterns that suggest ...

I'm not suggesting that the series indicates the following, I don't think it does, but if the trouble with the United States, the deep seated reason it lost, began during the Depression, say around the time Hitler rose to power, there might have been a more believable situation. We always assume that these alternate world stories center around big things changing the world as we know it (The Nazis get the Atom bomb first!) but you could just as easily believe in a universe that diverged from ours because of dozens of small decisions, one that parted ways an increment at a time.

The show would be at it's best to never try to tie down the point of departure because for every audience member's imaginary reasons there could be another alternate universe. It's the beauty of fiction; the amount you make up on your own. It's one of the failures of film that it usually tried to answer so many questions that you, the audience member, rely more and more on the creativity of others.