For a few years now, My Favorite Author has been Harry Turtledove. Harry Turtledove writes Counterfactual (Alternative History) Novels. I know some are immediately thinking, " What a waste of Time! Things either occurred or DID NOT!!!! occur, Why would anyone want to think about, NEVER mind write HUNDREDS of pages about what COULD!!! HAVE!!! HAPPENED!!!
The other options/ the side road that History could have journeyed along, can teach us how truly fragile and not necessarily guaranteed our CURRENT WORLD is. One of the 20th Century's most REVERED American Poets, Robert Frost, opined , in verse, about Roads NOT Taken, " Two Roads diverged in a Yellow Wood, I took the one LESS Traveled and that has made ALL the difference!". I know I've wondered, often, what the life of the "I" of that poem would have been like had THE other road been traveled!
There are myriad "could haves" that had history dodged right instead of left that could easily have become hard fact.In 1944, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a dying man- most historians agree that this was so- defeating Thomas Dewey. President Roosevelt finally died on April 12th, 1945.The US Vice- President in 1944 was Henry Agard Wallace. When Mr. Roosevelt ran for re-election , He did not keep Vice- President Wallace on the ticket. His running mate in the Fall of 1944 was Harry S.Truman. Vice- President Truman became America's 33rd President once President Roosevelt died.
President Roosevelt kept both Henry Wallace and Harry Truman out of the loop. All that need to be known- -critical to the Fighting of World War 2 and the critical essentials of the intimacies of running The US were kept with The President and shared with only those that he deemed should be considered with having a "need to know". Mr. Roosevelt did not include/ CHOSE NOT to include either one of his Vice- Presidents on this important list.
So, A lsubstantial amount of "Vital to the best operation of the Country" information was not accessible to Harry Truman until he became President. What we know of how President Truman operated as The Commander in Chief from 1945 until 1953 depended greatly on his instincts and his personality in addition to his reactions to the information that he gained after April 12th, 1945. Therefore, President Roosevelt's DECISIONS on how much to keep to himself and how much to share was an important one!. Henry A Wallace 's personality and instincts were very much different from Harry Truman's. Mr. Wallace would have, very likely responded to many of the issues concerning the ending of the Second World War, The Cold war against the Soviets and The Korean War rather differently. I''m inclined that we might not recognize many aspects of THAT world in our current year of 2011 due to how President Wallace would have functioned in office!
Twist and turns, possibilities and options, reactions and and consequences. Mr. Turtledove's writing help me to consider again and yet again that no man is an island, You and I do make choices that DO affect others! I am aware that choices, options and decisions, when it is POSSIBLE to do so, should be soberly thought about, mulled over and analyzed properly! We get different results upon the roads that we CHOOSE to travel upon. One of the best way that we can add quality and blessings into our lives by deciding well and caringly and factoring what will work well for the largest group of people when we make our decisions!
- Johnny -
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