The Anti-Christian Nazis of "The Man in the High Castle"

The Man in the High Castle series by Amazon shows the Nazis, in their control of eastern North America and in their influence in the mountains neutral zone, to be decidedly hostile to the Christian religion. The Bible is banned. So far as I recall, there was no evidence of (above ground) churches, and in a late episode, we see a snatch of ritual of the Reich sponsored religion, apparently a marriage of fascism with ancient German mythology. Think swastikas, dirndls and lots of blond pigtails.

The implicit claim of the series, that Nazism was “godless” is historically inaccurate and politically dangerous. This sort of revisionism is particularly attractive to the right wing, especially the far right wing. The not so hidden message is: “There is no reason to be afraid of political movements just because they are nationalist, racist, and bind the state to capital, subjugating the employed classes. That isn’t what made Nazism bad; all the really bad stuff came from the fact that they were atheists.” For example, Dinesh DeSousa includes Hitler among the “atheist tyrants,” Hitler becomes a card carrying atheist, as if he were Madalyn Murray O'Hair or Ayn Rand.

The Many World Metaphysics of "The Man in the High Castle"

The Amazon series in which the Axis powers won the Second World War is based on the premise that things might have turned out with North America split between a Greater Nazi Reich in the east and the Japanese Pacific States, a largely lawless Rocky Mountain area separating the two. It is not too hard for us to imagine at least one war outcome different from this. 

The metaphysics of the series has it that both these possible worlds are actual, as are others, and that information transfer and human travel among them are possible. The political and human consequences of interacting worlds fuel much of the drama of the series. I am going to put aside world politics, fascism, terrorism, life, death and the longings of the human soul to focus, instead, on what I am sure got the audience clicking into episode after episode: the metaphysics of plural worlds.