The Complete Guide to The Man in the High Castle Season 3 – Premiering 10/5

Lemuel Washington: A Paragon of Realistic Idealism

Amazon Studios

Lemuel Washington, front and center, holding up Juliana and Joe for an infamous film

Lem Washington (Rick Worthy) is likely the most noble character this side of Tagomi. We know very little about him other than he is a major member of the resistance, he is the closest character to the Man in the High Castle Hawthorne Abendsen, and he is Muslim.

Lem Washington is in many ways a saintly figure in this epic. While having no issue getting into the muck, Lem always seems to rise above it. For all that his resistance work entails, he holds a certain belief that one cannot defeat this enemy by abandoning the values and ideals he is risking his life to protect. Seemingly incorruptible, Lem serves as the figure which is the best the American resistance has to offer.

The choice of Lem Washington to be such a noble character fighting for a better life and higher American ideals seems to be an intentional paradox on the part of the writers. As a middle aged black man, Lem very likely knew well the United States before the war. As it was a country where in certain areas segregation was legally enforced, he’s not only fighting for traditional American values, but a better America should it ever come in his lifetime.

For all that it is worth, Lem’s fight is a continuation of the Double-V campaign that occurred during the historic Second World War. A fight for both victory against America’s external enemies, and victory over racism and prejudice at home. Needless to say that Lem may be the greatest idealist of all. Yet in this show, the matter of race is a lot more disturbing than most have likely considered.

Take note that really the only time the audience sees any person of color is when the scene occurs in the Pacific States. For the portions of the story shown in the Reich, it is completely whitewashed, and this subtle fact alludes to a much more devastating truth: slavery is legal in the Third Reich.

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In the brief 12 years that was the Nazi experiment historically, forced labor was commonplace. This was made even more prevalent during the war, when the German government would import large numbers of needed workers for war production from their occupied territories. Depending on where a worker fell on the Nazi racial scale, that would almost entirety dictate the treatment they would receive.

If a worker was imported to Germany from France or Norway, their experience working in Germany was often not disagreeable, according to British historian Roger Moorhouse (See: Berlin at War, 2010). On the other hand, if you were a Slav being sent to work in Germany from Ukraine or Belorussia, an “Ostarbeiter,” or Eastern worker, it was truly slave labor as Nazi racial policy deemed Slavic peoples “untermensch,” or subhuman.

It is very likely the sinister reason we never see any people of color in the American Reich is due to slavery being reestablished. Those with dark skin whose ancestry traces back to the African continent were also considered untermenschen by Nazi Germany. In season one, we hear Heydrich literally boasting to Oberst-Gruppenführ Smith’s family about his taming and breaking the resistance of various subject tribes in Africa itself. Hence Lemuel’s fight and perspective might be even more overwhelming than we can truly understand.

As a rule however, wherever Lem goes, so goes the story. He is the truest compass to both the characters below, and even Abendsen above. Lemuel Washington merits the closest of attention at all points moving forward.