Photo by NARA/UPI
On March 15, 1939, German troops, occupying the Czech provinces in the name of Adolf Hitler, entered Prague in triumph to the hisses and catcalls of the people, who sang the Czech national anthem.
(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, March 15, 2025)
Apologies, but today’s offering is on Adolf Hitler.
Eighty-six years ago, on March 15, 1939, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia. The Second World War started soon after when he couldn’t resist bombing Poland. Nobody knew what to do with the forest fire that was the German Führer.
His March 15 invasion broke the Munich Pact. He’d promised Great Britain, France and Italy that, with their appeasement gift of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland, he’d disregard the rest of that nation. Turns out Hitler was a liar.
Then again, Hitler operated on what he called the “Big Lie.” That’s the notion that the bigger the lie, the more believable it is, especially if people think that they’ll somehow benefit.
Billy Joel, still rocking at 75 (although he had to cancel, for medical reasons, a Toronto show tonight) knows about this. That is, Joel’s Jewish family knew all about Hitler’s lies. I’ve been reading about it. Billy’s grandfather, Karl Joel, had his German textile industry fortune stolen by the Nazis
In Billy’s words, written by his biographer Fred Schruer, “My relatives were hounded out of Germany at an absurd price — a paradigm of the economic casualties during the Nazi takeover.” Billy adds, “There’s a long history of anti-Semitism that was simmering for generations. Hitler tapped into it. He knew how to exploit popular culture.”
Seeing war coming, in 1938 Karl Joel managed to get his family, including his wife, Meta, and son, Helmut (Billy’s father), out of Germany. In 1942 they reached New York City, where Billy was later born. Karl’s brother Leon wasn’t so lucky.
In 1939, with 934 others, Leon Joel, his wife Joanna and son Guenter, escaped Germany on the ocean liner St. Louis. After reaching Cuba, nobody, including the U.S., accepted the Jewish passengers. So the ship turned back to Europe and disembarked. Eventually more than 200 of those passengers were murdered by the Nazis, including Leon and Joanna, killed in the Auschwitz death camp.
Leon’s son, Guenter, escaped and eventually immigrated to the U.S. where he lived a full, but scarred, life. While alive, my own father, also Guenter, could have told you about war scars. As a boy in war-torn Germany he made the coffin for a cousin who starved herself to death.
The story of the Joel family is just one story. Multiply it by 10. Multiply that by 100. Multiply that by 1,000. Multiply that a few times to get close to the several million Jews and other so-called disposables killed by the Nazis. I’ve personally seen the ovens in Dachau.
Things never start out that way. These ecosystems take time to form. First you simply can’t sit on a park bench. Then you can’t use a public pool. Then you can’t vote. Then you’re sent packing from home and business. You’d never imagine one day you’d be squeezed into a boxcar, like cattle, now going where?
Before Hitler put a bullet in his own head, he proved that lies – “alternate facts” to use today’s political jargon – have consequences. Alternate facts become alternate realities. As the expression goes, “You can build castles in the sky. The problem comes when you try to live in them.” Which is to say, the best way to deal with a liar is to remind them that lies are weak.
This also relates to today’s White House presidential Lord of the Lies, Donald Trump. Not that Trump, the pathological liar, is Hitler, the pathological liar. He’s not. They’re different men from different times. But neither would have risen to power without certain political and cultural ecosystems supporting them.
Hitler’s “Make Germany Great Again” rhetoric developed when, after First World War reparations, Germans had a crisis of identity. Hyperinflation was wild. Hitler made Germans feel especially victimized by others, before restoring Germany’s economy through rearmament. Jews were the scapegoats because scapegoats are needed. Also needed are people willing to fight, fight, fight.
Peace, on the other hand, thrives on truth. In disorienting times, it’s our best compass.