60 YEARS AGO

The Nuremberg Lynching

There was a time in the history of the West, when warring nations treated a defeated enemy with respect and consideration. That tradition was upheld by the German armies when, in a spirit of chivalry, they graciously accepted the surrender of French and Polish officers in the early campaigns of World War II.

Their opponents had a much different attitude and outlook, however, one which is perhaps best epitomized by Sir Winston Churchill, when upon reaching the Reich at the end of that conflict, he ordered the officers and aides accompanying him to unzip their trousers and join him in the solemn act of urinating in the Rhine!

Less benign than this puerile act of vulgarity, however, was the mass extermination by the Western allies which ensued, in which hundreds of thousands of German prisoners of war died of deliberate, enforced starvation and maltreatment in death camps set up in occupied Germany at the behest of one Dwight David Eisenhower.

In all of this wanton barbarism, they were only exceeded by their "gallant Soviet ally," responsible for such humanitarian delights as Katyn, the gulags and the death of countless tens of millions in the "workers' paradise."

These, then, were the people who were to stage the most spectacular show trial in modern time, one which concluded on October 16, 1946, with the mass execution of top German military and political leaders.

In a gross parody of justice, the gloating victors contrived to set themselves up as accusers, prosecutors, judges and executioners of the vanquished in a kangaroo process in which the outcome had already been determined. By the same token, they conveniently exempted themselves from indictment on the very same charges, of which they themselves were most certainly guilty.

The fairness of this legal farce can be judged by the fact that, among other things:

The 10 men who were duly lynched in the most foul manner this day (Herman Goering escaped lynching through freewill death), 60 years ago, as well as the hundreds of others who suffered a similar fate, died for one simple reason: They were on the losing side in a war between polar ideals and outlooks. By exterminating the leadership of those representing Aryan values, their opponents thought they could kill the Idea.

The fact, however, is that great ideas cannot be killed by force and persecution alone, in the absence of a countervailing idea lacking in a moribund Old Order. Although National Socialism lost the war militarily, morally it remained undefeated and continues to this day.

And so, on this occasion, we pay homage to those 11 Martyrs of Nuremberg, who stand as a common symbol against the hate and depravity of the mortal enemy:

PRESENT!