If we preserve historic buildings, as we should, it’s important to learn their histories, to know what happened inside them. Knowing that pro-Hitler speeches and swastikas were part of public events in places like the old Masonic Temple (now the Egyptian Theater) and German House on First Hill has changed the way I see those buildings. In the 1930s, swastikas were also displayed at public rallies and ceremonies in Seattle. Navy destroyer Craven, Harold Sturtevant, climbed to the ninth story of the consulate and, with help from some fellow sailors, cut the Nazi flag down in front of a cheering crowd of 2,000 people. In January 1941, a young American sailor from the U.S. That image is perhaps an echo of the fact that a real giant Nazi banner once hung from the German consulate in San Francisco. In The Man in the High Castle, Nazi banners hang from public buildings. They were businessmen and trading partners, spies, propagandists, they were local German Americans who believed Hitler was the savior of their homeland and could teach American a thing or two about how to run a country. Some were diplomats, some visiting members of the Gestapo and SS. The Amazon series got me thinking: What about real Nazis? Not neo-Nazis, not fictional Nazis, but actual representatives of the Third Reich and their fellow travelers? Were they here in Seattle? Turns out, they were, all up and down the Pacific Coast. Our monorail - like Disneyland’s - was crafted after the war in Cologne, Germany, by hands and minds that once helped the Luftwaffe fly. The Alweg was designed by a Swedish industrialist, Axel Wenner-Gren, who was considered by our FBI to be way too friendly to the Germans before and during WWII. Our Alweg monorail is seen gliding through some scenes - it feels a bit like world’s fair futurism is married to Hitler’s plans for domination. We also learn, this being a science fiction series, that there are alternate timelines with different outcomes. Set in the early 1960s, most of the action takes place in San Francisco, where large Swastika banners hang from buildings and the SS is ever present. Most of America has been absorbed into Hitler’s Third Reich, the West Coast is ruled by Imperial Japan, and a thin stretch of the Rocky Mountain states is a kind of no man’s land.
It’s a dystopian alternative history that imagines that the Axis powers won World War II. Dick’s novel, The Man in the High Castle. What inspired me was an Amazon original TV series based on Philip K.
Most seemed to assume it had to do with Donald Trump and the whiff of fascist politics from a guy who pitches himself as a nationalistic strongman. Many readers have asked me what my inspiration was for digging into Seattle’s Nazi past.
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