September 1, 1939

I hope you’re all having a great long weekend. I’ve just wrapped up a wonderful 10-day, action-packed trip with my son, where we explored Slovenia, Austria, Germany and Sweden. As I headed to the airport this morning, we drove by a truck that said, “Capture memories, not things.” So very true.

The sun sets over Lake Bled, Slovenia

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Remembering what happened 85 years ago today

On a more somber note, eighty-five years ago this morning the world was lit on fire.

Asia was already at war in 1939. The Japanese had ravaged China, and committed atrocities that remain incomprehensible 80 years later. Europe was in crisis, and a generation of British and French politicians who were shaped by the death and disaster of the Great War did not want to see tens of millions more dead.

The peace that they dreamed of had failed. The borders of new countries that had been drawn by the victorious powers in 1918 seemed on the edge of being redrawn by the German Fürher. He preached a gospel of racial purity, economic grievance, scapegoating, national exceptionalism and strength. He demanded a reunification of the German people across artificially-drawn borders. The British and French leaders believed that appeasing him would prevent death and war. They were wrong. He wanted everything.

Shortly before 5 am on September 1, 1939, the first shot was fired in the deadliest war in human history.

The shell was picked up, handled, loaded and fired by young German men, following orders aboard the Battleship Sweswig-Holstein. The shell arced through the air and exploded on Polish territory. German commandos would attack from the ship as well. Prisoners from Dachau were taken to a German radio station on the border, and dressed in Polish Army uniforms by their Nazi captors and shot. The dead bodies and a fake broadcast were the flimsy lie upon which Hitler justified his aggression to the world.

Before the grubby Fürher put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger six years later, the war that he started had killed tens of millions of people. It brought civilization itself to the edge of annihilation.

The man who started the war was a fascist. Adolf Hitler was a Nazi. His philosophy is not dead.

Let us remember and pray for the dead today. Forgetting the lessons of how it happened means that there will be a future generation that prays for the dead of our era — if they are allowed to at all.

Winning the fight against the evil unleashed on September 1, 1939, took six years and all of the nations of the world coming together as Allies to stand for freedom.

The fight continues.

Sixty-five days remain until the presidential election.

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