It seems that residents of the American Reich and Japanese Pacific States can travel there freely. So why not just stay there to live, free of Nazi and Japanese repression. Sure there are fewer amenities, and life is "harder" but no secret police, no oppression. Sounds like a better option.
shareThe neutral zone makes little sense to me. For the same reasons you mentioned. Also the area sectioned off as the Neutral zone would still have a lot of natural resources that you would think both the Japanese and Germans would be after.
shareAgree. I could see a de-militarized border, say a few miles wide, to prevent hotheads from starting a war.
shareLooks like there's also a lot of lawlessness. People getting robbed by gangs, etc. Some may prefer law and order.
shareGreat point.
Totalitarian governments of that period had to prevent their populations from freedom of movement or no one would choose to stay.
Supposing a world of only totalitarian rule if the choice were between living in a constant state of paranoia under a fascist regime or in a state of anarchy, I'd opt for the latter too. The key would be finding a refuge in a protective community, sort of like the Jewish commune, where there'd be strength in numbers. I'd imagine well governed democratic city states in the free zone would be immensely popular, so long as they didn't grow too large to attract the attention of German or Japanese. I'm surprised they haven't sprung up all over the free zone.
The neutral zone is resource depleted with a crappy economy, and very little law and order. The Japanese and the Germans never fully trusted each other in real life. Hirohito knew perfectly well that Hitler would turn on him eventually if they won the war. It sounds as though he anticipated a geopolitical situation similar to the US-USSR Cold War would develop between the Third Reich and the Empire of Japan. Which is basically the scenario in this show. Although technically allies, there is deep distrust and a lot of plotting and scheming under the surface. You can see why they might like a buffer zone between their territories.
And if some of the undesirable element wants to remove themselves voluntarily so they're not making trouble for you, why not let it double as a ѕhitty little strip of land they can go live on. The standard of living is low. So no one who can easily live elsewhere wants to be there. Plus, a lot of high officials probably use the NZ as a place to facilitate activities and transactions they could be prosecuted for in their own jurisdictions. There are lots of reasons why something like this would be useful - so long as they made sure the Zone could never acquire enough power of its own to become a threat, and the system of rules seems structured to make sure of that. Here's an article I found with a little historical background:
http://the-man-in-the-high-castle.wikia.com/wiki/Neutral_Zone
Ah. I had no idea the Neutral Zone was such a small strip and the Nazi Reich lay claim to about 2/3rds of the continental US. Thought it was more equal but it makes more sense the Nazis would have a greater amount of territory since they would have been the greater power.
shareIt's not so much that as location. Las Vegas is almost exactly equidistant from both Tokyo and Berlin. In other words that's where their spheres of influence would intersect. Most of the continental US is closer to Germany than it is to Japan. So the Japanese have about the chunk of North America you'd expect them to in a fair deal.
Check this out:
https://image.ibb.co/jOisgL/Man-in-the-High-Castle-World-Map.png
Notice the gray areas in South America and Eurasia. It looks like South America has a neutral zone just like the north - presumably that's where John Smith was sending his son to avoid legally mandated euthanasia. Eastern Russia is part of the Reich but it looks like much of the country is neutral territory. I can't see them establishing a neutral zone by treaty that was that large. Perhaps some sort of negotiated settlement. Keep your frozen tundra independent as long as you don't make trouble. Or did enough people from Europe and other places flee there to make it strong enough to resist being conquered? I've never read the book and they haven't mentioned Russia on the show (at least that I've noticed).
Well it's not all frozen tundra, the Neutral Zone in Asia includes all the Stans reaching down to Afghanistan.
I think that would be the place to seek out refuge because of the impossibility of either empire making any headway in an area so ideally suited for guerrilla warfare. 😓
Interestingly, the Chinese territory controlled by Imperial Japan is completely absent Tibet; which is entirely in the Neutral Zone. That's gotta have an interesting backstory, since it's territory you'd expect Japan would control since Tibet is part of China. But we also know how Himmler took an interest in Tibet and greenlit a Nazi scientific expedition there in the late 30's (immortalized by Brad Pitt in Seven Years in Tibet) just as Japan had successfully invaded China and seized control of Manchuria.
We also know Japan had taken an interest in Tibet too when they sent an undercover operative on an 18 month intelligence and reconnaissance mission in 1939. Both Germany and Japan had taken in interest in wanting to research the stories and legends of Tibetan mysticism and both wanted to explore the possibility of using it as a base to stage attacks on British India.
So the decision to let Tibet be in the neutral zone and not be under Japanese control had to be part of some serious wrangling in a negotiated truce with the Nazis. Hirohito may have just decided to say fuck it, Lhasa is just too out of the way up in the mountains to battle Nazis for it, and both empires decided to just let the Tibetan monks live their self imposed exile in the neutral zone isolated from the rest of the world.
I still think that neutral zone is much too big to have been agreed upon voluntarily. A land area greater than all of North America. The other neutral zones are narrow strips clearly set up as buffers. That's why I speculated that perhaps one non-axis power has survived. Inspector Kido did mention "the conflict zone in Mongolia" when he was talking to that recruit who ended up betraying him. So who would they be fighting on an ongoing basis?
Suppose enough refugees fleeing the growing Reich had gone to the USSR and (along with the Soviet military industrial complex) that gave them the strength to remain independent. Maybe there's still some fighting along the border over disputed territory - which implies no peace treaty.
The GNR with their nukes could certainly mount an invasion. The fact that they haven't indicates some combination of not feeling an urgent need to seize that land, and not considering them enough of a threat to make massive casualties and expenditure of funds worthwhile. Not yet anyway. Ultimately of course, the Reich wants every square inch of the planet under their control. No independent nations. No Japanese Empire. It's just a question of how and when. If Nazi technology is advancing faster than all potential adversaries' why not wait until the advantage is decisive? Time is on their side.
Geopolitically those borders make sense to me. I can see why it would have been an easy decision for Germany not to bother with greater Siberia east of the Urals and would have gladly designated that as part of the buffer zone in any negotiations. Defending those territories would make them vulnerable, much like Russia has historically been vulnerable, to having to defend that vast southern border. The Urals provide no protection against incursion from the south and southeast, the direction of greatest threat to Russia in a country with a surprising lack of natural geographic borders.
It would have been easy for Japan and Germany to agree to demarcate Afghanistan/Pakistan as Neutral Zone buffer up through the Stans of central Asia. That gives Germany all the natural resource hoard of the Middle East up through Iran, Japan gets the wealth of India, while both avoid the hostile topography and religious fundamentalism of the Afghanistan and Pakistan indigenous. Historically Russia has used the Stans of Central Asia as a buffer against invasion from the south, so I don't see why the Axis powers wouldn't use that as buffer zone as well.
It's common sense to assume any Neutral Zone a natural haven for resistance, so I'd expect eurasian neutral zone to have considerable numbers fleeing either Reich or Japan. Given what we know of the extreme prejudice Japanese forces treated Chinese, not unlike how Germans treated Jews, replete with Mengele-esque concentration camps and experimentation on Chinese subjects, I'd assume a significant Chinese resistance movement rebelling against their inhumane subjugation. Mongolia seems like natural staging area for Chinese rebels to launch resistance attacks on their foreign occupiers in Manchuria.
I just think if the eurasian Neutral Zone hadn't been negotiated there's no good reason I can think of why the entirety of Tibet would be so conspicuously omitted from Japanese control. Tibet has mattered geopolitically to China because of its vital role as the source of its water supply. The Yellow and Yangtze rivers are responsible for the agricultural productivity of its entire eastern zone and foreign control of that water supply would threaten China's food security. Japan would have to know that.
I've never read the book so I don't know why that large area is gray. Maybe as the new resistance starts getting organized the parts of the world that are still "free" will become more significant and play a larger role in the story. There's a lot about this world the series simply hasn't gotten into yet.
shareAs the Preppers say, it is WROL ... without rule of law. Anything can happen at any time and you cannot do anything about it.
share