L&T Publisher Earl Watt
This past weekend June 6 came and went without much fanfare, but it is a day that is almost as important as July 4.
June 6, 1944, was the day that the Allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy and started the process of liberating a continent under the control Adolf Hitler’s Nazi German Reich.
In my lifetime I have seen the less we know about Hitler and fascism the more we make references to it.
The young men inside those landing transports knew what price would need to be paid to end true fascism. It was likely they would have to die so that others could live free.
By the end of the invasion, 4,414 Allied soldiers lie dead on the beaches of France.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Kansan from Abilene, led the risky attempt to establish a foothold on the European continent, and despite the losses, the mission was accomplished.
It would take 11 months and many more dead to bring Germany to its knees, but victory in Europe took place May 7, 1945 with the unconditional surrender of the Nazis.
What was discovered during the liberation of Europe during those 11 months would horrify the world with a lesson that has been forgotten today.
From Buchenwald to Auschwitz to Dachau and many others, concentration camps were discovered where the Nazi’s Final Solution was taking place.
Fascist and Nazi are terms thrown around today as a way to insult a political rival, but the truth of fascism and what the Nazis did is comparable to nothing so evil as to be compared to someone with different ideas on how to operate a freely-elected government.
Inside these death camps were found the skeletal shadows of what were human beings. Forced to provide labor for the German military, these prisoners were malnourished, provided no medical care and worked to death.
And their crime? They were Jewish.
There are plenty of detractors to the foundation of Israel today and why it is where it is.
But few are willing to revisit the treatment of the Jews in Germany and surrounding nations as the Nazi war machine made its way across Europe.
Being a Jew was a death sentence, not because of taking up arms or opposing the government. Jews didn’t do that. But for a religious belief a group of people were stripped of their rights.
It didn’t happen instantly. For quite some time Jews lived in harmony throughout Europe.
But when Germany lost World War I in 1919, someone had to be blamed.
And by saying Germany lost World War I isn’t to say they were outgunned in battle. Germany still had the means to continue fighting, but the war had reached a virtual stalemate, and so Germany simply sought to end the war.
What was worse is that Germany lost the peace agreements and was saddled with the cost of rebuilding the entire continent, a lesson that was learned and not repeated after World War II.
Faced with economic ruin and defeat, the German people, with the encouragement of what started as small factions made mostly of young up-and-coming leaders, blamed Jews for not doing enough to help Germany win.
That started a road of racism and persecution that began with boycotts of Jewish owned businesses in 1933.
And it steadily deepened.
Sure, there were gatherings on German campuses to degrade and attack Jews, but it continued to include the dismissal of Jews from working for the government, and the Nuremberg laws of 1935 banned mixed marriages with Jews.
The road expanded to preventing Jews from owning businesses and this was done in the name of reclaiming property for Germans known as the “Aryanization” of the country.
This wasn’t just done as a point of national German policy. Local units of government started to restrict the education of Jewish children, and their literature was burned.
Kristallnacht (The Night of Glass) took place Nov. 9-10, 1938, when synagogues and Jewish properties had their windows bashed in and homes vandalized.
By this time, Jews were already forced to be identified publicly by wearing the Star of David on their clothing.
Arrests followed, and Jews were then sent to the camps.
At least 6 million Jews were exterminated after being worked to death or simply forced into gas chambers or along trenches where they faced firing squads.
That’s what being a Nazi is all about. That’s what fascism looks like.
We don’t have a clue, and we aren’t teaching it, because America campuses are now advocating Jewish hate and bigotry as if history never took place.
That’s the reason American soldiers died on the beaches of Normandy June 6, 1944. And many more would die freeing a people in the clutches of true evil.
No one should refer to anyone today as a fascist or Nazi. That should be seen as derogatory as any racial slur.
There has to be a special place in hell for what those people did to their fellow man, and yet we are seeing an acceptance to chant that these very same people who have created a home in Israel be wiped off the face of the Earth.
It’s sickening. It’s ignorance to a level that defies reason.
No matter the circumstances of the creation of Israel, it followed perhaps one of the worst human tragedies of one people in history.
And what we see happening today not only denies an understanding of the Holocaust, but it also rejects the sacrifices made to liberate people suffering under a brutal regime.
Much like the rise of Hitler, it only takes a scapegoat and hate with the backing of the so-called academics to spark such a dark moment in history.
We can never forget what led to D-Day. Gen. Eisenhower required every German to tour the concentration camps so they could never deny what happened there. Hopefully a new generation will never have to tour them here.
