For People Who Say: "That Can't Happen in Real Life."

Dexter is an American television drama series that centers on Dexter Morgan, a bloodstain pattern analyst for the Miami Metro Police Department, who moonlights as a serial killer.

In season 4 Dexter befriends another serial killer who ends up murdering Dexter's wife, Rita. A serial killer who befriends another serial killer? A best-buddy serial killer who turns on his friend and murders his friend's wife?  An improbable plot, to be sure!

When I read about that story line I thought, "surely, that could never happen in real life." But then I thought of an historical analogy: The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact under which Hitler and Stalin became best buddies, and which ended disastrously with Germany invading Russia about two years later.

The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, colloquially named after the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was an agreement officially titled the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union and signed in Moscow in the late hours of 23 August 1939. It was a non-aggression pact under which theSoviet Union and Nazi Germany each pledged to remain neutral in the event that either nation were attacked by a third party. It remained in effect until 22 June 1941, when Germany implemented Operation Barbarossa, invading the Soviet Union.

In addition to stipulations of non-aggression, the treaty included a secret protocol dividing Northern and Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence, anticipating potential "territorial and political rearrangements" of these countries. Thereafter, Germany and the Soviet Union invaded their respective sides of Poland, dividing the country between them. Part of eastern Finland was annexed by the Soviet Union after the Winter War. This was followed by Soviet annexations of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Bessarabia.

Let that be a lesson to the kiddies out there.  Don't become best friends with a homicidal maniac; you or your nearest and dearest might become your friend's next target.

And for all those who question the truth or logic of fictional tales or seeming fiction, remember Strauss:

Es sind die mehreren Dinge auf der Welt
so, daß sie eins nicht glauben tät,
wenn man sie möcht erzählen hören.
Alleinig wers erlebt, der glaubt daran und weiß nicht wie . . .

There are many things in this world
that you don't believe when you hear about them --
but if you lived them you believe, and don't know why.
--Strauss, Der Rosenkavalier