History Series / TheManInTheHighCastle

* MandatoryMotherhood: Bearing children is considered the greatest female virtue in the Greater Nazi Reich. When Juliana defects to the GNR in Season 2, she is told by a doctor performing an inspection who's specialized in [[EvilutionaryBiologist "racial science"]] (among other things, measuring her skull and skin tone) that she has an injury which may render her infertile and endanger her chances for a visa. Juliana later becomes close with a StepfordSmiler among the Nazi elite who has had problems becoming pregnant. She fears her social position may be endangered because her husband has started to move on due to her infertility.

* MonumentOfHumiliationAndDefeat: In Season 3, [[spoiler:as part of the Jahr Null (Year Zero) celebrations, the Nazis melt down the Liberty Bell and convert it into a swastika]]. They also blow up the Statue of Liberty, and Season 4 [[spoiler:shows the new statue the Nazis put in its place, of a "heroic" Aryan man and woman]].

** "The Marshal" carries around [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most-wanted_Iraqi_playing_cards a deck of playing cards containing the faces and information of enemies of the state]].

** [[spoiler:Arnold, Juliana's stepfather,]] works for a division of the ''Kempeitei'' that monitors all phone conversations in San Francisco.

** Speaking of the SS, they're shown wearing [[DarkIsEvil all-black uniforms]] even in 1962. This is the "Black Ensemble" uniform, which started to get phased out in front of more BoringButPractical "earth-grey" tunic uniforms.

* CriticalResearchFailure: "Nazi" was a German colloquialism that was [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism#Etymology never officially in use during the period of the Nazi rule in Germany]] and thus wouldn't have been used as the official designation of an American puppet state. (The book was a lot closer to reality by using the term "Greater Germanic Reich" when referring to the Nazi empire, a name that had officially been in use during WW2.)

* AffablyEvil: The patrolman Joe Blake meets is a nice, friendly, helpful man... who doesn't mind the fact handicapped and terminally ill people are being cremated, the ashes falling like snow.

* AlcoholicParent: [[spoiler:Tagomi, in the alternate timeline where the Allies won the war, is an alcoholic father who dies after falling off a bridge in a drunken stupor. The Tagomi that takes his place (the Pacific States Trade Minister) is shocked to hear this]].

** In the season 3 episode "Sabra", a (Japanese) Buddhist monk douses and ignites himself with gasoline in the middle of the street as Japanese troops are violently putting down a street protest, alluding to the 1963 [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-immolation self-immolation]] protest of Vietnamese Buddhist monk [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thích_Quảng_Đức Thích Quảng Đức ]] against the regime in South Vietnam.

** The Nazi policy to eradicate and erase all United States history from before the conquest by the Reich, is named "Jahr Null" which means "Year Zero". The only time in real life that a political force named a policy "Year Zero" was in Cambodia by the ''Khmer Rouge'' of Pol Pot, and its purpose was the total elimination of all culture, traditions, and history that existed in that country before Pol Pot's communist revolution. It also references "Stunde Null" (Hour Zero), which ironically was the term for post-Nazi Germany breaking with that period completely.

** The Greater Nazi Reich [[spoiler:splitting in two at the end of the series, with one Führer ruling the West and one Führer ruling the East, brings to mind the division of UsefulNotes/TheRomanEmpire due to overreach. Also, much like the Romans themselves, the western part is the first to collapse.]]
** The Yakuza remaining in operation in America [[spoiler: with Inspector Kido and his son trapped into becoming members]] after the Empire's occupation withdrawal, alludes to how the Yakuza endured after Japan's surrender, and increased through black-marketeering and swelling their ranks with demobilized (and demoralized and destitute) ex-servicemen including former Kempeitei.

** An InUniverse example includes the plot of propaganda film ''The Grasshopper Lies Heavy'', which details a world where it was instead the Allies, not the Axis powers who won the war.[[spoiler: It isn't the only one in-universe. At least three alternate timelines are spoken of, and as both Adolf Hitler and Hawthorne Abendsen have libraries of ''hundreds'' of newsreels it is uncertain how many alternate worlds are being implied.]]

** In this reality, the Nazi Party is hypercompetent and has managed to not only win World War 2, but also occupy and colonize almost half the world while virtually stamping out local resistance. In less then two decades, they've built a powerful empire, filled Berlin with colossal monuments to themselves and made technological breakthroughs that are ahead of their time. This is in spite of the show acknowledging the Nazis' rocky relationship with science.

** John Smith is an agent of the Nazi Reich, but a lot of his conflict centers on struggling to hold his family together, which puts him at odds with the Reich. We are frequently reminded that he would have been a much different person had the war gone differently. Season 2 reveals that [[spoiler:he was an American soldier in the war]]. In Season 3 he watches a home movie from an alternate dimension showing him as a happy, unassuming, non-bigoted father. We're frequently called upon to sympathize with him in spite of the monstrous things he does to the resistance.
*** [[spoiler:He eventually [[JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope embraces full-on megalomania]] in Season 4 after gaining too much power... but only after calling Himmler out for being an even worse monster than him, followed by [[KarmicDeath gassing him]] and putting a saner Furher in charge.]]
** Chief Inspector Kido is a ruthless agent of the JPS, but he also has a strong sense of honor and occasional PetTheDog moments. Ultimately he's just doing what he can to serve his nation.
* AnyoneCanDie: In a dystopian setting this dangerous, it's no wonder that death is just around the corner. By season 3, even main characters start to bite the dust, with [[spoiler:both Joe Blake and Frank Frink]] dying for real. [[spoiler: Season 4 opens with the death of Minister Tagomi.]]

** The show portrays UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler as being the individual who is primarily responsible for preventing the Nazis and Japanese from going to war with each other. In RealLife it appears that he took the view that after the Allies were defeated, a war between Germany and Japan was virtually inevitable. Somewhat justified in this case, as Hitler in the show is OlderAndWiser and knows from [[spoiler: the ''Grasshopper'' newsreels]] that [[PragmaticVillainy such a conflict would ruin his empire]] [[PyrrhicVictory even if they win]].

* AssholeVictim: Among the characters who are killed without mourning are not just Nazis or collaborators, but resistance members too. The notable examples include [[spoiler:resistance members George Dixon, Susan and offscreen Gary Connell and eventual Nazi spy Joe Blake, all of whom except Gary were killed personally by Juliana in self-defense.]]

** [[spoiler: Hawthorne was counting on Juliana to specifically ignore his insistence that George Dixon's survival was key to preventing nuclear war, and that she would instead kill him to save Thomas's life, thereby ensuring John Smith would make it to Berlin to stop Heusmann. Given the fact that he's The Man in the High Castle and has seen hundreds of different futures, planning that far ahead wouldn't be too difficult for him.]]

* BecomingTheMask: John Smith initially joined the Reich to provide for his family, participating in Nazi atrocities for many years while burying his conscience. Throughout the series he continues to climb the ranks to protect them from new threats, but loses even that excuse by the end. As of the last episode of the series [[spoiler:there is literally nothing stopping him from abandoning the Reich. The new führer has made North America completely autonomous, and will not interfere with Smith in any way, even though he continues to provide logistical support. Smith's second-in-command even begs him to break away from the Reich and make America independent again. However, Smith continues to go through with the plans to kill most of the people in the Pacific states with a series of scorched-Earth attacks, and to renew the American Holocaust against those who remain. In their last moments together, Helen tells him that they need to stop pretending to be Nazis, and John says he doesn't know how.]]

** [[spoiler:The Origami man who Juliana meets in Canon City]]. Although initially hinted that he is also a member of the resistance, it is later revealed he is an undercover member of the Sicherheitsdienst (the SS intelligence agency) and tries to kill her once she hands him the film.
** [[spoiler:Martin Heusmann]], despite being a BlueBlood, pretends to have little ambition beyond his work. [[spoiler:It gets him named Acting Chancellor]].

** [[spoiler:Smith commits suicide as a broken man, and his wife sacrificed herself to assassinate him, though their daughters get to live (for better or worse, as one hates their guts and the other has fully embraced fascism). Kido pays his son's life debt by serving the Yakuza in San Francisco, rather than return to Japan. Childan gets married, but must spend the rest of his life in Japan as an impoverished second-class citizen. Abensen's wife dies, but it's implied he'll find another version of her in another universe]].
* BlatantLies: The official story taught in schools regarding people of African decent in the American Reich is that they were sent back to Africa to work for the Reich. They are actually killed in accordance with Nazi ideologies, but since the PropagandaMachine uses African slavery to vilify pre-war America they can't openly disclose the truth. When Smith's daughter asks him about the situation, he has to ask her what she's taught in school because he's not confident that he knows the reich's most recent propaganda on the matter.

** John Smith, a high-ranking SS officer in America, is horrified to learn that [[spoiler: his son has muscular dystrophy, because it means he will have to be euthanized]].
** Smith's older brother, whom he worshiped as a child, [[spoiler: died of the same disease. His wife mentions how such people are not allowed to suffer, not knowing she was talking about her own son]].
** [[spoiler: Thomas Smith]] eventually turns himself in to be "euthanized", which he's lionized for.

* ButForMeItWasTuesday: [[spoiler: When Smith captures Abendsen, he says: "John, I wondered if we'd ever meet again."]] Smith has to order a bunch of clerks to dig through old files to figure out who the hell he is.

** Season two ends with [[spoiler: Juliana reunited with either a very-much-alive Trudy or her alternate-history counterpart, and Lem approaches Tagomi with additional films from the Man]].
** Season three ends with [[spoiler:High Castle now the Nazis' prisoner, Himmler shot in an assassination attempt and the threat of a potential power struggle looming over the Reich, and Juliana escaping to another reality but not just before getting shot by Smith]].

* CoolCar: For all its faults, if you're a fan of classic German cars this world is impressive: government officials are taken around in Mercedes S600 limos, while even ''taxicabs'' in the former US are as often as not made by Mercedes-Benz. Granted, as the series is set in 1962 these are all new cars at the time... but the degree to which the cars are everywhere is still impressive, especially since it seems clear that US automakers are still in business. And for fans of the small, budget-model European cars from the 1950s and 60s (Citroens, Fiats, Volkswagens, etc.), these are spotted all over San Francisco. These were apparently meant as substitutes for equivalent Japanese models, which are likely too rare for the series' production to obtain for filming.
* CoolGuns: Multiple varieties show up. The resistance mainly uses Thompsons and Colt 1911's, with some old-school .38 wheelguns for good measure. The Marshal has a sawed-off Winchester 1887 lever action shotgun. GNR Nazis use Mauser [=Kar98K=] bolt-action rifles and MP-40 [=SMGs=], likely hand-me-downs from the Wehrmacht, who are seen to be replacing their WWII-era inventory with HK G-3 automatic rifles and MP-5 [=SMGs=]. The Japanese use Nambu pistols, with Arisaka Type-38 and -99 bolt-action rifles equipping their rank-and-file soldiers. They have just adopted the Howa Type-64 automatic rifle, but it's so new that only elite units like the Imperial Guard have them yet. The new guns are all at least slightly anachronistic, but it's excusable in the alternate timeline, in which they could have been developed earlier. [[spoiler: The assassin who shot the Japanese Crown Prince]] uses an even more unlikely Dragunov SVD rifle. In Season 2, Gary Connell favors a Browning [=HiPower=], which fits perfectly because it was manufactured before WWII in both Belgium and Canada, and after they captured Herstal, the Nazis had FN continue production of the "Pistole 1935" for issue to the ''Wehrmacht'' and ''Luftwaffe''. Walther PPK pistols also pop up here and there. Guns (and their value and cachet) are a DiscussedTrope since multiple characters are interested in acquiring and selling them: Childan deals in authentic antique weapons while Frank works at a foundry that churns out reproductions. A wide variety of Kalashnikovs, PPS-43 sub-machine guns and various Soviet pistols finally make their debut in Season 4, with the implication that China are now the main suppliers of Russian firearms in that timeline.

* ConspicuouslyPublicAssassination: Attempted against the Crown Prince of Japan. [[spoiler: The assassin intends to be caught and serve as a PretextForWar.]]

* TheCoup: Near the end of season 4, [[spoiler:John Smith, realizing that he is about to be removed from his position as Reichsmarshall and likely eliminated for his faltering loyalty, stages a coup against Himmler and his Berlin inner circle in alliance with an ambitious German general, creating two Nazi empires in America and Europe.]]
* CrapsaccharineWorld: In contrast to the Neutral Zone the Greater Nazi Reich (and, to a lesser extent, the Japanese Pacific States) are far more developed and livable, and in some cases even ''enjoyable'', assuming you aren't one of the persecuted minorities. However, the show goes to great lengths to reveal what happens when someone stops being protected and starts to come into the eyes of the state. Juliana was perfectly happy with her life until her sister was murdered by the Kempeitai, Frank was doing just fine until Juliana disappeared and he lost almost his entire family, but the worst has to be what has started to happen to Obergruppenfuhrer Smith, not for the severity, but because he is the one man who has the most to gain from the society he's helped build. [[spoiler: In episode 8, he learns that his son is suffering from a degenerative disability and will go into full paralysis within a year. Since the Nazis don't want to create cures for such disabilities, as they would lead to an ''impure'' human race, he is given only one option-eventual euthanasia]]. It's clear that no matter how much faith he has in the Reich, [[BreakTheHaughty this turn of events is shaking that faith]], because [[EvenEvilHasLovedOnes he loves his wife and children more than anything]], and had previously deluded himself into believing that by joining the Nazis he was making a better world for them.

** The Japanese Empire covers all of the Pacific, the US and Canada west of Nevada and the Rocky Mountains, and pretty much everything between Siberia to the Indian Ocean. Australia is mentioned in Season 4.

** Sweden is implied to be an independent sovereign nation, but can be assumed to go out of their way to stay on Berlin's good side. Mexico remains independent as well, but probably has to walk a tightrope to stay out of either superpowers' sights. Some South American countries are still independent as well. Argentina is specifically mentioned, as Smith tries to send his son there to protect him, but is allied with and heavily influenced by Germany. It is implied that Germany and Japan probably have plans for them.

* CriticalResearchFailure: "Nazi" was a German colloquialism that was [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism#Etymology never officially in use during the period of the Nazi rule in Germany]] and thus wouldn't have been used as the official designation of an American puppet state. (The book was a lot closer to reality by using the term "Greater Germanic Reich" when refering to the Nazi empire, a name that had officially been in use during WW2).

* DecoyProtagonist: [[spoiler:When the show started, Frank Frink, Joe Blake, Tagomi and Smith were stated to be protagonists, but by the GrandFinale, Frank and Joe were killed (with Joe undergoing a FaceHeelTurn into one of the show's antagonists that would lead to his death) in the third season, while Tagomi is KilledOffscreen at the beginning of the last season and Smith is revealed to be the true BigBad before being DrivenToSuicide in the GrandFinale, leaving their voided roles to filled in by other characters who were there since the first season as minor supporting characters or even later added new characters such as Wyatt. By the end of the show, the titular Man in the High Castle acts as the deuteragonist, while Wyatt is the tritagonist.]]

** In the season 3 finale, Juliana says this verbatim about [[spoiler: Himmler's plan to attack other worlds through the dimensional portal. "He's just gonna roll tanks through the portal alongside the troops? With no idea what they'll find on the other side? If they even get to the other side? Or have none of you thought that through?" As Juliana points out, surprise or no, a small Nazi incursion force has little chance against advanced worlds where Germany was already defeated. They later send spies through to get them intelligence and sabotage strategic technological efforts instead.]]

--->'''Himmler''': Did you really believe your perversions had no price?
* DimensionalTraveler: Kotomichi, Tagomi, [[spoiler: and alternate-Trudy]] stumbled onto how to pull this off and go into alternate timelines, but exactly how it works is a mystery. The Man in the High Castle is suspected to also be a "traveler", but is not. The finale of Season 3 shows [[spoiler:Juliana become one, vanishing right before Smith's eyes.]] WordOfGod suggests that individuals can only travel to alternate timelines where their own counterpart is already dead, which Tagomi finds about his counterpart (although that man's family are all completely unaware that he is gone). These people are also implied to be the ''real'' source of the alternate timeline films popping up throughout the setting, having carried them over from these other realities.
* DirtyCommunists: It's mentioned that Stalin was executed in 1949. Based on maps, the Soviet Union was divided between Germany and Japan, with a large neutral zone taking up Siberia and Central Asia. Communistic influence however is still strong as ever, with the Japanese still facing massive communist guerrilla resistance in Manchuria and the remnants of China while a large portion of African-Americans in the JPS have organised themselves into a movement called the "Black Communist Rebellion".

* DistractedByTheSexy: In Season 3's "The New Colosseus", Rockwell spends his time in Cuban exile courting a [[BellyDancer dancer]] and her male partner after a show. Rockwell gets immersed in the performers and is real close to having a fun night [[spoiler: right before he gets stabbed through the back by an assassin hired by Smith.]]

** When [[spoiler: the Crown Prince]] is shot, his wife remains by his side in a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Chanel_suit_of_Jacqueline_Bouvier_Kennedy pink kimono splattered with her husband's blood, and refuses to take it off]].

** One main setting of the series is the "Greater Nazi Reich", the German occupation zone in the East US. The Nazis never used the word "Nazi" themselves, which was a slur by their enemies, and always used the long term "Nationalsozialisten". "Greater German Reich" would have been way more appropriate, or even "Greater ''Germanic'' Reich", which was the planned name for the Nazi empire once they fully incorporated the occupied territories. Hell, even "Greater Aryan Reich" (which was never considered during the war) would have made more sense.

** Even if it's got a swastika on the tail, it's hard not to have your heart skip a beat at the sight of a Concorde sitting on the tarmac in San Francisco... in the early 1960s, over a decade before they went into service IRL. The fact that it is made clear that Lufthansa is running multiple flights each day across the US and across the Atlantic (barely an episode goes by without hearing the sonic boom of one) is, when compared with the total global fleet of them ''ever'', quite impressive. Taken UpToEleven in the second season when we see the Berlin airport. There are Concordes lined up at the gates as if they were 737s today. The implied fleet size alone is staggering.

* StockEpisodeTitles: "Revelations," "End of the World."

''The Man in the High Castle'' is an AlternateHistory series based on [[Literature/TheManInTheHighCastle the book of the same name]] by Creator/PhilipKDick. It debuted in 2015 and aired four seasons via Amazon Prime.

** In Season 2, Hitler is replaced as Chancellor by Martin Heusmann, who immediately orders a full-scale attack on Japan on the pretext that they [[spoiler:poisoned the Fuhrer]]. When planning the attack, Heusmann orders Tokyo to be targeted in the first wave of nuclear strikes; Heinrich Himmler - both historically and in this universe a ruthless proponent of genocide - objects and only backs down when Heusmann insists on it. Later, John Smith shows the Nazi leadership a supposed recording of a Japanese H-bomb test; Himmler is visibly shaken by the implication that the Japanese have nuclear weapons and that the war will be much more destructive than he anticipated. Heusmann, however, insists that the invasion will go ahead as the Reich still has the advantage. John Smith then [[spoiler:shows Himmler evidence that Heusmann was part of the aforementioned conspiracy to murder Hitler and attack Japan, so Himmler has Heusmann arrested, takes power, and cancels the attack]].

** When standing his ground against his [[spoiler:would-be assassin Rudolph Wegener]], Hitler states that [[spoiler:his death is the only thing preventing Nazi Germany from starting a destructive war against Imperial Japan.]]

** One main setting of the series is the "Greater Nazi Reich", the German occupation zone in the East US. The Nazis never used the word "Nazi" themselves, which was a slur by their enemies, and always used the long term "Nationalsozialisten". "Greater German Reich" would have been way more appropriate, or even "Greater ''Germanic'' Reich", which was the planned name for the Nazi empire once they fully incorporated the occupied territories.

* GratuitousGerman: Comes with the territory, but of varying quality. Kenneth Tigar (Himmler) for example puts on a very convincing accent despite not being native, Carsten Norgaard (Wegener) speaks fluently, but with a distinct foreign accent, Timothy Murphy (Eichmann) makes a laughable attempt, and Wolf Muser (Hitler) is, well, a native speaker (just to name several).

** One main setting of the series is the "Greater Nazi Reich", the German occupation zone in the East US. The Nazis never used the word "Nazi" themselves, which was a slur by their enemies, and always used the long term "Nationalsozialisten". "Greater German Reich" would have been way more appropriate, or even "Greater ''Germanic'' Reich", which was the planned name for the Nazi empire once they fully incorproated the occupied territories.

** One main setting of the series is the "Greater Nazi Reich", the German occupation zone in the East US. The Nazis never used the word "Nazi" themselves, which was a slur by their enemies, and always used the long term "Nationalsozialisten". "Greater German Reich" would have been way more appropriate.

* GratuitousJapanese: Slightly less than German, but still there. Joel de la Fuente's (Kido) American accent gets lampshaded in season 3.

* AdultFear: Finding out your child has an incurable degenerative disease that will eventually kill them? Check. Living in a nation that doesn't tolerate the disabled or terminally ill? Double check. Raising him to be a good and loyal member of the State? Triple Check.

The series begins many years after the victory of the Axis powers in the UsefulNotes/SecondWorldWar, and what was once the United States has been divided between the Japanese Empire and the Third Reich. A thin strip of neutral, lawless territory in the Rocky Mountains serves as a buffer between the two superpowers, who have been in an uneasy truce since the war's end. Juliana Crain, a woman living in the Japanese Pacific States with her fiancé Frank Frink, is given a film reel depicting an AlternateHistory where the Allied powers won the war. In the Greater Nazi Reich, a man named Joe Blake carries one of these mysterious film reels toward the Neutral Zone, under orders from Obergruppenführer John Smith. Meanwhile, high-ranking politicians from both empires fear for the aging UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler's life, knowing that the death of the Fuhrer would trigger a war far more terrible than any seen before.

* BlatantLies: The official story taught in schools regarding people of African decent in the American Reich is that they were sent back to Africa to work for the Reich. They are actually killed in accordance with Nazi ideologies, but since the PropagandaMachine uses African slavery to vilify pre-war America they can't openly disclose the truth. When Smith's daughter asks him about the situation, he has to ask her what she's taught in school because he's not confident that he's up to date on the latest story.

* {{Hypocrite}}: Residents of the Greater Nazi Reich are contemptuous of the Japanese notions of superiority that are standard in the Japanese Pacific States while flouting their own.

* KarmicDeath: [[spoiler:Himmler is murdered with Zyklon B gas, the same used in Nazi death camps]].

* MandatoryMotherhood: Bearing children is considered the greatest female virtue in the Greater Nazi Reich. When Juliana defects to the GNR in Season 2, she is told by a doctor performing an inspection who's specialized in [[EvilutionaryBiologist "racial science"]] (among other things, measuring her skull and skin tone) that she has an injury which may render her infertile and endanger her chances for a visa. Juliana later becomes close with a StepfordSmiler among the Nazi elite who has had problems becoming pregnant. She fears her social position may be endangered because her husband has started to move on.