MovieChat Forums > The Man in the High Castle (2015) Discussion > Question about Smith ordered to [spoiler...

Question about Smith ordered to [spoiler]....

posted 8 years ago by ehaas-3
4 replies | jump to latest

...kill his son.

For the most part I'm really enjoying the show including the speculations about how the internal cultures of victorious fascist societies might have developed(chilling but fascinating).

But the Nazis doctor`s way of dealing with the terminally ill child of a high-ranking official comes across excessively heavy handed and crude even for them. Thomas isn't exactly consuming a huge amount of state resources and his parents can afford to support him.

If he became noticeably disabled, Smith wouldn't even object, though he'd be sad, and Thomas might at the time be in a Nazi hospital where involuntarily euthanasia routinely takes place.

But to force the issue and say your seemingly healthy child must die right now and you must do it personally seems like it would be asking for trouble, even from a loyal citizen.

Since they ultimately kill everyone who isn't healthy enough, what's the rush? Without public aid to the disabled even being a thing, there's no chance of him ever mooching(as they would see it) off the government, anyway.

[–] patty1 8 years ago

Before I respond to your questions, I'd like to suggest that you edit the subject line of your posting to remove the large spoiler. You could use wording like I did or something similar. Thanks!

Dr. Adler was actually trying to protect Smith and his family. By making it appear that Thomas died of natural causes (or maybe he was going to "drown" at the lake and his body would never be found), none of the Nazi officials would ever find out that Smith was hiding the information about Thomas's condition. And of course, Adler was also trying to protect himself, because he'd known about the situation for a while and hadn't told his higher-ups about it.

It doesn't matter that Smith had plenty enough money to care for Thomas himself. In the view of the Nazis, Thomas was "defective" and had to be killed. They wouldn't have waited for him to show more obvious symptoms; they would have done it immediately.

[–] ehaas-3 8 years ago

Sorry, I hadn't thought of the spoiler issue since Thomas's illness has been part of the show for a while. But hopefully there are plenty of new viewers who wouldn't know about it. This deserves to be as famous as possible.

I guess the logic of issues like this comes down to the question of what directions these regimes would have taken if they'd won and obviously had more leeway to do as they pleased due to increased power and another generation of children raised with them as the norm.

The book never really had in-depth Nazi characters or settings, but it was obvious that they had only become more extreme and ideological in victory while the Japanese had become more moderate. So it makes sense that their standards of who should be eliminated would broaden and be enforced in a more absolutist manner.

In real life, while they did kill a lot of people for having certain health problems, they also had to be careful about how far to take it because of the population`s potential outrage. But after this long in power, not so much.

I'd expect the definition of a pure Aryan would get much more strict as well, as time went on.

[–] smithjgs 8 years ago

But the Nazis doctor`s way of dealing with the terminally ill child of a high-ranking official comes across excessively heavy handed and crude even for them. Thomas isn't exactly consuming a huge amount of state resources and his parents can afford to support him.

The doctor was actually stalling due to the influence the Smith family had.

His records were checked too so there would be know way for him to even help Smith.

Since they ultimately kill everyone who isn't healthy enough, what's the rush? Without public aid to the disabled even being a thing, there's no chance of him ever mooching(as they would see it) off the government, anyway.

There is a risk of the son having children.

If this is Locke, then who's in there? 

[–] steve4192 8 years ago

"There is a risk of the son having children. "

^ This

The Nazis were big believers in eugenics. They didn't kill 'defectives' because they were worried about them being useless mouths. They killed them because they didn't want them corrupting the gene pool by breeding. They started off with compulsory sterilization programs in the early 1930s and eventually escalated to murdering severely mentally and handicapped children in the name of 'racial hygiene' by the late 1940s, then expanded the program to adults in the 1940s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_euthanasia_in_Nazi_Germany