The Man in the High Castle (TV series)

The Man in the High Castle is an American dystopian alternate history television series created for the streaming service Amazon Prime Video, depicting a parallel universe where the Axis powers of Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan rule the world after their victory in World War II. It was created by Frank Spotnitz and produced by Amazon Studios, Ridley Scott's Scott Free Productions (with Scott serving as executive producer), Headline Pictures, Electric Shepherd Productions, and Big Light Productions. It is based on Philip K. Dick's 1962 novel.

The pilot premiered in January 2015, and Amazon ordered a ten-episode season the following month which was released in November. A second season of ten episodes premiered in December 2016, and a third season was released on October 5, 2018. The fourth and final season premiered on November 15, 2019.

Setting

Set in 1962, the series' main setting is a parallel universe where the Axis powers have won World War II in 1946 after Giuseppe Zangara assassinates the president-elect of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1933, creating a series of developments that include the Germans dropping a nuclear weapon on Washington, D.C. (now renamed "District of Contamination") in late 1945. After this, the Japanese launch a ground invasion of the U.S. West Coast. The American federal government subsequently surrenders, though it takes another year for the Axis and their American collaborators to pacify the country. The Germans build concentration camps for the enslavement and eventual extermination of Jewish Americans and African Americans and commit massacres in cities such as Cincinnati.

By 1962, the German Reich extends to Europe and Africa and the Empire of Japan comprises Asia and Oceania, but most of the series is set in the former U.S. and in Germany proper. Adolf Hitler is dictator of this German Reich, and the emperor of Japan rules most of the rest of the world. Although the real-world Axis included Fascist Italy under the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini, only the Japanese and German factions of the Axis are depicted. There are no Italians in the scenario, nor is Mussolini accounted for, except as an image in one of the mysterious newsreels with the Führer.

Western North America, the "Japanese Pacific States", is occupied by the technologically less advanced Shōwa era Empire of Japan, which has imposed its hierarchical society on their part of the former United States. The Empire treats non-Japanese as subjects with fewer rights and little prospect of advancement in Imperial society, although some upper-class Japanese are fascinated by pre-war American culture. Japan's trade and science ministers work in the Pacific States' capital, San Francisco, California. The Yakuza wield extensive influence in Japanese America and are largely tolerated by the Kempeitai. In Season 4, an organization calling itself the Black Communist Rebellion takes up arms against the Japanese, gaining ground as the Empire's strength wanes.

Eastern and Midwestern North America is a colony controlled by the Greater Nazi Reich (GNR) under an aging Hitler. Headed by a "Reichsmarschall of North America", it is commonly referred to as "Nazi America" or "the American Reich" and its capital is New York City, which survived the war and invasion largely intact. The Nazis continue to hunt minorities and kill the physically and mentally ill. Fictional developments of 1960s technology such as video phones, live surveillance video (CCTV), and supersonic airliners that were technologically available in the 1960s but never commercially produced are seen in the series.

Japan and Germany have left the Rocky Mountains to serve as a buffer zone between the Japanese Pacific States and Nazi America due to Cold War–like tensions between the two powers. The Neutral Zone has no substantial government, economy, or armed forces, and is left to fend for itself while the two rival empires pursue their ambitions. Resistance groups use the Neutral Zone as a haven and the Germans and Japanese intermittently send spies into the region, both to monitor the Neutral Zone and each other.

Films collected by the eponymous "Man in the High Castle" are newsreels depicting numerous other Earths, including some where the Allies were victorious, some featuring executed Allied leaders (such as Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin), and some where an American resistance is doing well. The events depicted include real history and possible alternative timelines.