The Man in the High Castle is one of those books I have been meaning to read for a long time, but having finally gotten around to it, I ended up being a little disappointed. Don’t get me wrong. Philip K. Dick’s classic story of alternate history in which the Axis power won World War II is a very good book. It has all the ingredients necessary for a thoroughly enjoyable read, interesting characters you can identify with, a suspense-filled plot, and a surprising ending. Although The Man in the High Castle is a relatively early work of Dick, it showcases many of his themes: the nature of reality, personal experience, and identity, as well as the struggle for truth in an authoritarian society. I did enjoy reading the book. I was simply a little disappointed.
My problem with The Man in the High Castle was that the world it presented did not seem very plausible. Mr. Dick had, it appeared to me, some misunderstandings about the nature of the nations which made up the Axis alliance and the most probable outcome of an Axis victory. That may not have been Dick’s fault. He wrote his novel in 1962, and some of the then-prevailing ideas about Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan have since been reconsidered. We know more about the inner workings of the Axis powers than we did in 1962, and many of Dick’s ideas about a world ruled by the victorious Axis seem outdated now.
The Man in the High Castle takes place in an America that has been partitioned into puppet states controlled by Germany and Japan. Japan controls the Pacific States of America on the west coast while Germany dominates a rump United States and the South on the East. Between the two occupying powers is a neutral zone that maintains a precarious independence called the Rocky Mountain States. This setting seems implausible in the extreme. I can imagine scenarios in which the Axis won the war. I cannot imagine any scenario in which they managed to occupy North America.
The Germans found it difficult enough to cross the English Channel to invade Britain. They would have found it absolutely impossible to cross the North Atlantic to invade America. The best the Germans could have hoped for was to avoid war with the United States long enough to compel the British to accept a negotiated peace in which they agreed to stay neutral while the Germans completed their conquest of the Soviet Union. If the Germans had made continental Europe into a fortress, with a neutral Britain forbidden to allow American troops to use Britain as a staging ground for an invasion of France, Germany might have won the war.
As for Japan, the bombing of Pearl Harbor was just about at the limit of Japanese capabilities. One of the reasons the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was such a surprise was that the American military command simply did not believe the Japanese would engage in so risky an operation so far from their bases. If the war had proceeded in Japan’s favor and they were very lucky, the Japanese might have been able to occupy Hawaii. An invasion of the West Coast was simply impossible for Japan.
As far as I can see, the best possible outcome for Germany would be an empire that dominated Eurasia after conquering Russia with a neutral, “Finlandized” Great Britain. Japan’s best hope would have been a negotiated peace with the United States, allowing them control of the western half of the Pacific Ocean along with its conquests in China and Indochina. In both cases, there would probably be a continuing cold war with the United States and an American-supported guerrilla war in Russia and China. The occupation of the United States is simply not within the realm of possibility.
Phillip K. Dick takes a rather benign view of the Japanese occupiers in The Man in the High Castle. The Japanese are portrayed almost as the ‘good guys’ in the Axis. The Japanese control the puppet Pacific States of America but rule with a light hand, almost benevolently. There is some sign that Blacks and Chinese are persecuted, but Whites seem to live much as they did before the war. They are free to move about and make a living as they see fit. One of the characters states that the Japanese did not build ‘ovens’, referring to the Holocaust. At one point in the story, the Japanese authorities refuse to extradite a Jew to the Germans on the grounds of humanity. The Japanese themselves repeatedly deplore Nazi cruelty.
Dick seems entirely unaware that the Japanese were actually quite a bit more brutal than the Nazis. The Asian Holocaust, which the Japanese perpetrated throughout East and Southeast Asia, may have killed twice as many people as the better-known Nazi Holocaust. The Nazis were more meticulous at mass murder, but the Japanese were more cruel. The Nazis had ovens. The Japanese had Unit 731, the Rape of Nanjing, and the Bataan Death March. Judging from the Japanese treatment of the Chinese and others, the Japanese occupation of America would not have been pleasant for the occupied at all.
Nazi Germany is clearly the dominant political and scientific power in the world of The Man in the High Castle. In 1962, The Nazis have rocket planes that fly from Europe to America in an hour. They have sent manned missions to Mars and Venus and have drained the Mediterranean to create additional farmland. The Germans have even worked to rebuild the infrastructure of their American clients, building modern, efficient roads and industries.
It would seem that Phillip K. Dick subscribed to the myth of Fascist efficiency so prevalent in the years before, during, and after the war. This myth is the idea that while Nazis and Fascists may have been brutal and tyrannical, they were, at least, efficient. Totalitarian governments may deprive their citizen of freedom, the argument goes, but at least they get things done. Mussolini made the trains run on time. Hitler helped the Germans recover from defeat and the Depression.
This idea, usually held by citizens of free nations who do not have to live under tyranny, that countries ruled by authoritarian governments are somehow more efficient has also been applied to the Soviet Union under Stalin and, most recently, the People’s Republic of China. The myth simply isn’t true. Nazi Germany was not a paragon of efficiency by any measure. Nazi Germany was a mess. The civil service of the Nazi Government was corrupt and inefficient with ill-defined and overlapping responsibilities between departments. Hitler preferred it this way since as long as his lieutenants were fighting against each other they weren’t conspiring to overthrow Hitler. That did not make for efficient administration.
The German economy was also a mess. Historians can debate to what extent the National Socialists took Socialism seriously. The Nazis did not nationalize the entire economy as the Soviets did, but they were hardly supporters of free market capitalism either. The Nazis were socialists to the extent that they believed the economy should serve the needs of the state. This meant that decisions that might have been made by the market in a free economy were made by politicians and bureaucrats. This is not the way to have an efficient economy.
As for science, Germany had indeed been the leading nation in scientific research before the Nazi takeover. It turns out that chasing out the Jewish scientists from your country and declaring most of modern physics to be Jewish science to be replaced with good Aryan science does not give a country a good chance of maintaining its lead in science and technology.
In a very real way, Germany entered the Second World War crippled by the inefficiencies of the Nazi administration. It is actually a testament to the hard-working nature of the German people that Nazi Germany succeeded to the extent it did. A victorious Germany would not be a scientific wonderland with everything proceeding with machine-like efficiency. After Hitler, Nazi Germany would probably resemble the Soviet Union, a sclerotic empire, corrupt and stagnant with a restive subject population in the process of losing a cold war with the United States and Japan.
All such quibbles aside, The Man in the High Castle is well worth reading. After all, science fiction is less about the imaginary worlds the author creates than what he is saying about the real world we live in, and Phillip K. Dick has plenty to say about our world in his classic work of alternate history. I only wish he had been a little more realistic about an Axis-dominated world.
David's Commonplace Book 