What if the Axis powers won World War II and occupied the United States?

Ideas & Philosophy · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Philip K. Dick’s 1962 novel imagines a partitioned America under Nazi and Japanese rule. This Hugo Award-winning work uses the I Ching to craft a reality where the Allies lost, exploring how history, chance, and fate shape our world. It remains a foundational, unsettling pillar of modern science fiction literature.

In the world of The Man in the High Castle, the trajectory of the 20th century shifts in 1933 when Giuseppe Zangara assassinates president-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. This event prevents the United States from abandoning its non-interventionist stance, leading to a total Axis victory by 1947. By 1962, the world is divided between the two superpowers: Imperial Japan, which controls the Pacific States of America, and Nazi Germany, which dominates the East Coast and the South. The Nazis have achieved terrifying technological feats, including draining the Mediterranean Sea, developing hydrogen bombs, and colonizing the Moon, Venus, and Mars.

The narrative centers on a novel-within-the-novel, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, written by the mysterious Hawthorne Abendsen. In this counterfactual story, the Allies win the war, a version of history that is banned in Nazi-controlled territories but permitted in the Japanese-occupied Pacific States. Characters like the antique dealer Robert Childan, the jewelry maker Frank Frink, and the trade official Nobusuke Tagomi navigate this oppressive landscape, often using the Chinese I Ching to guide their decisions. The novel’s internal logic suggests that the reality depicted in Abendsen’s book—where the Allies win—is actually the higher truth, revealing the fragility of the world the characters inhabit.

Philip K. Dick drew inspiration from diverse sources, including Ward Moore’s Bring the Jubilee and historical texts like The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Despite the book's critical success and its 1963 Hugo Award, Dick struggled to write a sequel. He found the research into Nazi figures like Reinhard Heydrich psychologically taxing, noting that he could not bear to inhabit the mindset of such individuals. While he experimented with concepts for a follow-up, including early drafts that eventually evolved into his later works like VALIS and Radio Free Albemuth, he never completed a direct sequel, leaving the story with an intentionally open ending.

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