(Curious -- on my iPhone it seems virtually impossible to type "Hailey" without it coming out "Hailet" on the first pass.)

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The PEANUTS daily that adorns one of my Studio walls is from a sequence in which Snoopy was reading WAR AND PEACE -- one word per day!

Speaking of "one word per day!"

     Having decided to sift through the pile of books at home to get around to one that I brought for my dad, who had an interest in this particular volume but lacks the will to stay awake while reading it (something else I may have to look forward to when I hit age 74):

The Federalist Papers by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay.

     While not a political junkie, I've long felt the need to review the documents authored by the framers of the United States Constitution as an American citizen, and am fascinated by what drove these men to create the laws that my country was founded under.   Given the nature of the debate over policies and political philosophies that rages in this day, I often wonder just how we can apply what these men were doing in their day to the circumstances we deal with today.  Perhaps knowing what they wrote might give me some insight in coping with the furious (and sometimes ominous) debates in our present day?

Started THE AUDACITY OF HOPE: THOUGHTS ON RECLAIMING THE AMERICAN DREAM by President Obama. Very inspiring in many respects, but I have to admit - I am quite cynical of all politicians at the moment. Still, I hope President Obama is different, some of his values are values I can identify with.

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One of the most bizarre conversations I've had was a few years back, with a young Assistant Editor at Marvel, who not only insisted that the Federalist Papers were actually official government documents, but that there had been a "debate" in congress over our entry into World War II -- not over whether we should get into it, but on which side!!

  ^ That sounds like one of those Harry Turtledove alternate history novels. What would todays world be like if the US took Germany's side in WWII?

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After almost seventy years, I'd guess that, on average, the World would be messed up to about the same degree it is today, but that it would be a whole different set of elements that would be messing it up!

 Do you think Europe would be a German Union of States, would it have collapsed by now like the Soviet Union?

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It's difficult to paint this picture. To borrow from STAR TREK, when we look at the "Mirror, Mirror" story, with the alternate universe with Kirk and Spock being "evil", it makes for a fun episode, but it's wise not to look too closely. Basically, there's really no way to GET THERE. No way to structure everything that happened BEFORE the episode.

As I was thinking earlier today about the question posed by this notion, America siding with the Nazis, I realized that there, too, there is no way to GET THERE --- not without a massive rewriting of American history, anyway. The young AE who suggested this was even considered used as his starting point the "fact" that England is America's "traditional enemy". Apparently he was not aware that King George VI and Queen Elizabeth had visited the 1939 New York World's Fair. Or that there were a lot of nations OTHER than England involved in WW2. Nations whose people had populated the United States, and who probably would not have been too thrilled to see this nation taking sides with the country that was currently tromping thru their ancestral homes with hobnail boots! (Also, important to remember that Franklin Roosevelt was very sympathetic -- in the context of time and place -- to the plight of the Jews, both in Europe and within our borders. So much so that his detractors sometimes called him "the Jew in the White House".)

If we somehow COULD imagine America entering the War on Germany's side, it would therefore have to be an America so totally different from the country that existed in 1939 that we might as well be speculating on what would have happened if the Martians had sided with the Nazis. (Hm, War of the Worlds II?) And, getting past that point, it's plain that Nazi Germany would have to alter its course pretty rapidly, if it won the War, precisely to avoid the kind of collapse that eventually brought down the Soviet Union. A regime based on fear and hate cannot operate on a global scale.*

So, in the end, we'd be looking at a very different America, and a very different post-War environment. But I STILL think we'd find all kinds of new and different ways to mess up the world!

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* Currently rereading, as mentioned further up this thread, THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH, and struck once again that one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th Century was that Hitler was a raving lunatic. He really was quite brilliant -- in just 12 years he rose from literally sleeping in the gutters to being absolute ruler of the most powerful nation on Earth -- and one has to wonder how the World would have turned out differently if, to use a comicbook phrase, "that power could have been harnessed for Good."

Of course, the harsh reality is that, had Hitler NOT been driven by insanity, he probably would NOT have risen as high and as fast as he did.