Can a good person be a Nazi? The Nazis murdered millions of people, broke treaties, plunged the world into a terrible war, all for horrible ideas. So it seems absurd even to consider such a question. Wading into the uncomfortable space where we ask it is Man in the High Castle.
Based on Phillip K. Dick’s novel, Man in the High Castle describes a world where the Germans and Japanese won World War Two. They have both carved up the United States into zones of influence: the Japanese control the West and the Germans the East. After defeating the allies, they are now in a cold war reminiscent of the one that actually happened between the United States and the Soviet Union. The show follows Juliana Crane and her boyfriend Frank (along with others) as they are caught up in the resistance to Germany and Japan. One the men they are resisting is John Smith.
When American Heroes Become Nazis
Our first introduction to Smith is as a high-level Nazi bureaucrat ferreting out American resistance. Smith orders a man to be tortured, and then beaten to death. He’s set up nicely to be a villain for us to hate for the entire series. This is fair for a man who does many villainous things. He double-crosses a band of black smugglers by promising them money in exchange for one of the films [on the show, Hitler tasks him with finding films depicting an alternate universe where the Nazis lost world war two], but then sends a bomb. He demonstrates no remorse about participating in war crimes and genocide as a younger man.
But there’s more. He’s a loving father and husband. You can see it in the way he interacts with his son and daughters when they’re eating breakfast or in the intimate moments he shares with his wife. And it is precisely those attachments that make his journey as a Nazi so compelling. The Nazis on the show–and in real life–engaged in euthanasia for anyone they deemed subhuman. This includes those with debilitating ailments. At first he and his wife seemed to agree with this; his wife observed after seeing Smith’s brother in a wheelchair that such people weren’t permitted to suffer under Nazi rule, i.e., were euthanized. Her tune changed when she learned their son Thomas had a rare, incurable disorder. The doctor gave Smith an ultimatum: kill his son himself, or have the condition reported to the government (in which case Thomas would have been killed anyway). To save his son’s life, Smith murdered the doctor and covered it up. At the same time he was rising up the Reich’s hierarchy, he was a victim of its ideology. And although he was an ambitious man, he was willing to put his ambitions at risk for those he loved. With an excellent portrayal by Rufus Sewell, viewers are eventually left cheering for what remains of Smith’s humanity to prevail over his darkness.
As the series went on, we learned that Smith had fought bravely in the U.S. Army before the Nazis took over. This is a tantalizing hint of what might have been for his character: a patriotic American devoted to serving his country and its ideals. More than anything, I’m left with questions for him. Did he ever think about joining the resistance? What were his views towards the blacks and Jews targeted by the Nazis? What about Nazism appealed to a decorated American soldier?
What can we learn from John Smith?
Smith’s nuanced portrayal differs from the way Nazis usually appear in popular media. On Man in the High Castle, Hitler was a crazed maniac obsessed with crushing the resistance to his rule and tracking down the films. In Wolfenstein: the New Collosus, Hitler is cartoonishly evil, vetting auditions for actors trying to play his nemesis Billy (a man fighting in the resitance to Nazi rule in the game) and shooting those who displease him. And Hitler wasn’t even the craziest on the show; that honor belongs to Reinhard Heydrich and others plotting to embroil the world in a war with Japan. It says something about the bloodlust of the Nazis on the show that Hitler is too meek for some of them.
An exception is the German movie Downfall, set during the last days of world war two. Hitler is shown at the beginning being kind to his secretary and dog and appreciative of the efforts his Hitler Youth soldiers make. Of course, there are limits to how much Downfall can humanize Hitler given the historical record. The movie recognizes this. Out of touch with reality, he orders around nonexistent German units to attack his enemies and fulminates against generals who accurately describe the military situation. His SS hunts down and hangs old men who refuse to fight against overwhelming odds.
The best Downfall can do is give Hitler’s monstrosity a human gloss. But there can be no doubt that a man who plunged the world into a war that continues to affect us today and ordered the genocide of people he deemed inferior is a monster.
The only way Hitler could have succeeded, though, was with the assitance of others. There were the millions of Germans who shared every aspect of his wretched ideology and cheered him on as he trampled on human rights and brought war. But even that was insufficient. To be as effective as he was, he needed the assistance of people like John Smith, people who had consciences and redeeming qualities. That is scary.
One enduring lesson from world war two is to vigilantly guard against leaders like Hitler. And yet to stop there lets us off too easy. To truly avoid repeating the atrocities, we have to be vigilant against men like John Smith.