In the alternative history imagined in The Man in the High Castle, Giuseppe Zangara assassinates President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, resulting in the continuation of the Great Depression and the policy of United States non-interventionism at the start of World War II in 1939. American inaction allows Nazi Germany to conquer and annex continental Europe and the Soviet Union into the Reich. The exterminations of the Jews, the Romani, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Slavs, and all other peoples whom the Nazis considered subhuman ensued. The Axis powers then jointly conquered Africa, and still compete for the control of South America in 1962. Imperial Japan won the war in the Pacific and invaded the West Coast of the United States, while Nazi Germany invaded the East Coast; the surrender of the Allies ended World War II in 1947. By 1962, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany are the world's superpowers, fighting a geopolitical cold war over the world, and in particular over the former United States and South America. Japan extended the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere with the establishment of the collaborationist Pacific States of America (PSA), with the politically neutral Rocky Mountain States acting as a buffer against the Nazi territory to the east. Nazi North America is composed of two countries: The South, and the northeastern part of the former contiguous United States of America, which is referred to as "the U.S." in the book, both of which are ruled by pro-Nazi puppet regimes. Canada remains an independent country. The aged Adolf Hitler is incapacitated by tertiary syphilis, Martin Bormann is the acting Chancellor of Germany, and many high-ranking Nazi leaders - Joseph Goebbels, Reinhard Heydrich, Hermann Göring, and Arthur Seyss-Inquart — still survive and vie to succeed Hitler as the Führer of the Greater Germanic Reich. Technologically, the Nazis have drained the Mediterranean Sea for Lebensraum and farmland, developed and used the hydrogen bomb, developed rockets for traveling throughout the world and into outer space, and have undertaken colonization missions to the Moon and to the planets Venus and Mars. In 1962, it has been fifteen years since Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany won World War II. In San Francisco, in the Pacific States of America, Japanese judicial racism has enslaved black people and reduced the Chinese residents to second-class citizens. Factions: Greater Germanic Reich - The Nazi faction rules the eastern half of the former United States from its regional capital in New York City, answering directly to Berlin. Totalitarianism, extreme racial purification, and rapid technological advancement (e.g., supersonic travel). The SS, led in America by ambitious figures like Obergruppenführer John Smith. Total global dominance, global racial cleansing, and the eventual destruction of their Japanese rivals. Empire of Japan - The Japanese Empire rules the western coast of North America from San Francisco, utilizing a strict military government. Imperial colonialism, rigid bureaucratic hierarchy, and heavy cultural assimilation of the American populace. The Kempeitai (military secret police) and the Ministry of Trade, which manage resource extraction. Maintaining control over their territory while desperately trying to avoid a devastating war with the technologically superior Nazis. The Neutral Zone - A lawless, desolated buffer state running along the Rocky Mountains that separates the Nazi and Japanese empires. Lawlessness, survivalism, and rugged individualism. Outlaws, smugglers, political refugees, Jews, and Black Americans fleeing persecution. Survival outside the grasp of the two occupying superpowers, though it is heavily infiltrated by spies from both sides. The American Resistance - A decentralized network of guerrilla fighters sabotaging Axis infrastructure, smuggling contraband, and hunting down the forbidden films/books. The Black Communist Rebellion (BCR) - This autonomous faction fights a guerrilla war against Japanese occupation in the West while striving to build an equitable, self-governing society free of white supremacy.