Saturday, June 28, 2008

TODAY'S TWD: POIROT AND THE LIFE OF FDR

"Amazing, isn't it?
Millions unemployed, a lunatic about to take power in Germany,
And all we read about is how some spoiled brat stole her best friend's fiancé
."
Ferguson
'Poirot' - "Death On The Nile"

During the voyage up the Nile, Ferguson was reading a copy of Life magazine which had President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the cover. A quick internet search shows that this particular issue of Life had a news-stand date of January 4, 1937.
Let's figure that the mail service might have been somewhat slow back then, especially to third-world nations, and that magazine would probably be long out of date by the time Ferguson was looking through it.

Yet Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany on January 30th, 1933, about five years before Ferguson said he was about to.

Ferguson was an intelligent man. Not very conversant with how to deal with others, but he had his book smarts, being actually Lord Dagliesh traveling under an alias. So he must have known that "the lunatic" already had taken power in Germany.

I believe that he was thinking more along the lines that Hitler was expanding his control over the region. Perhaps Ferguson was referring to the revelation by Hitler of his war plans at the Hossbach Conference on November 5th, 1937.

This would give plenty of time for that issue of Life magazine to reach the S.S. Karnak, and could indicate that all of these Englishers visited Egypt during the colder winter months.

BCnU!
Toby OB

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