Lieutenant Colonel A.J. McCausland
74th (Peel & York) Battalion

The accused No. 1 Fuehrer Adolf Schicklegruber, alias Adolf Hitler, Elite Guard, Berlin, Germany, a soldier of the Third Reich, is charged with: Murder, rape, theft and sadistic crimes against humanity … The accused was tried before the court of public opinion on this 28th day of April, 1945. The court found the accused guilty of all charges and sentenced him to be taken out and hanged until he is dead and may God have mercy on his soul.

-Maj. A.J. McCausland

(Brantford Expositor, 1 May 1945, 5)

A Toronto native, Alan Joseph McCausland was born on 9 June 1887. He enlisted as a private in the Queen’s Own Rifles in 1903, and at the outbreak of the war was a militia captain with the 36th Peel Regiment. At the age of twenty-eight, he was one of the youngest men appointed to battalion command when authorized to raise the 74th from Peel and York counties. He sailed overseas in March 1916, and his unit provided reinforcements for Ontario battalions at the front.

At the end of the Second World War, McCausland had the distinction of announcing the death sentence for an effigy of Adolf Hitler in Brantford, Ontario just days before the real Hitler killed himself. Continue reading →