Qunhua's week8

How does Dick’s essay (1999; 1964) illuminate his use of Nazism as a motif in High Castle?
In this essay, Dick mentioned a Nazi friend of his whom live in the United States after the war. This fellow was literally afraid to go into the apartment and he felt somatic, horrible aversion. Why he like this? Dick thought that is difficult to find answer. Even the “greatest modern critic of Germany”, a Jew herself or a Jew who raised among them, does not know the reasons.  He thought that is sub-rational; it is psychological, not logical.  “Phobia is phobia; it springs, as Freud and Jung and H.S. Sullivan showed, from depths of the self unknown to the self.”

 Philip K. Dick's in his novel "Man in the High Castle", he vividly depicted his Nazi-filled version of what had happened in past - Nazism. There were many examples cited in the passage which reminded him dearly of the Nazi's treatment of the Jews; what they did, their ideologies but did not understand the true rational of why the Nazis did it.

 There were many established facts where the author cited on the Nazi's killings of the Jews during the war world.

 1).. when Himmler asked for and got the chance to witness an execution of innocent harmless Jewish people by firing squad, he had a convulsion of horror, fainted, fell to the floor, rolled in a spasm of anguish and had to drag to his feet by his aides, thereafter, Himmler made a decree that no more killings of Jews by shooting but more merciful and yet painless methods.

2). Germans citizens poked bread into the sealed cattle cars carrying Jews to their death through Reich;

3) Remarque recorded a German playing the theme from Beethoven's Fidelio that depicted the prison unjustly held by a tyranny and subsequently killed and led down on the streets past his house.

4) German prostitutes also came to the walls of the death camps had mercies on the innocent Jews and wanting "to do something for them before they were killed

5) Average Germans who became aware of the Nazis held protests and subsequently Nazis called these Germans who did not approve of the policies would be killed as well.

 Nazism and the killing of Jewish people in the concentration camps left traumatic experience or phobia for the post war Nazis as well as for the Jewish people to-date. Jew and German cannot co-exist because of the Nazi ware and the treatment of millions of Jewish people. The Jews hated the Germans so much that they viewed them as victims of tyranny and blood-stained. Many Jews today would not ride in a Volkswagen and some would not even listen to music of Beethoven. It also cited an incident whereby a Jewish violinist's hand was broken by a Zionist fanatic because the violinist played a Richard Strauss piece in concert in Israel. All these illustrated the "deep-seeded" animosity and hatred between Jews and Germans.

 References

Dick,P.K.(1995). Nazism and the High Castle. In Sutin, L.(Ed.), The Shifting Realities of New York:   

                 Vintage.