But For a Turn of Fate
A Story about What Could Have Been
On New Year’s Eve, 1948, Harold Caldwell joined his favorite intellectual sparring partner and fellow columnist, Richard Hayes, at the New York Observer-Sentinel’s annual party.
The news had just arrived that the chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler, had died of some sort of stomach cancer. Rumors were spreading that this might mean the camps – which everyone knew existed, though nobody would admit as much – could close. Several of the Observer-Sentinel’s top editors were Orthodox Jews, so the word was that the editorial board would be calling on President Taft to put pressure on the Germans to finally close them.
Sure enough, within twenty minutes of arriving, Caldwell and Hayes had used this latest news as the jumping-off point to launch into their favorite long-running debate.
“I was right,” said Hayes. “That Hitler was doing something evil to the Jewish population in Germany.”
“And what do you propose we should have done about it? Marched in there and told him to stop? Against the most powerful military might in the history of mankind? Besides, you’ve heard the rumors about the famine in the Ukraine region. Stalin’s got plenty of blood on his hands, too. We can’t prevent every humanitarian crisis. It’s terrible, but what’re we going to do?”
“We could have done something. The British and the French would have joined us.”
“And Mussolini and Stalin would have joined Hitler. And Japan – we’re lucky they stopped short of Hawaii.”
“You still think we should sell them Hawaii.”
“Well, maybe we should! Hey look, I’m the one who should be saying that I was right!”
“You have been saying as much since 1933.”
A crowd had gathered by this point. Bob Rogers pushed a pair of drinks into Caldwell’s and Hayes’s hands.