The Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. WEDNESDAY, OCT. 2, 1946. VERDICT OF NUREMBERG

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 32, 2 October 1946, Page 4

The Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. WEDNESDAY, OCT. 2, 1946. VERDICT OF NUREMBERG

HISTORIC Nuremberg is the focal point of world attention today. The name of this town is destined to live both as the shrine of Nazi vainglory during the twenty-two startling years of Hitler’s regime, and also as the scene of shame and degradation when its exponents and champions were brought to the dock as common criminals to be tried by an inter-Allied court of justice. Wbrld history has been made in this court, for it is without precedent as far as the human story is concerned. The conclusion of wars in the past has meant suffering only for the common people who were called upon to make all the sacrifices and to bear all the suffering in order to wage them. The arch-villians of the piece, have all too often been the lucky subjects of the so-called international sporting instinct of chivalry. It was until 1945 almost impossible to think of the leaders of a war provoking country as criminals. They were retired, perhaps or exiled on an honourable allowance from their defeated country’s purse, in order that they might still be permitted to keep up appearances. We recall the slogans of the 1914-18 war of ‘hang the Kaiser.’ But as soon as the frenzied fires of war died down Wilhelm removed himself to Holland, married again and died as a quiet country dweller who utilised his declining strength in felling trees on his estate. The story was'different in 1945. World temper had been whipped to a pitch which this time would know no denial. This time —this time, when to the already brutal picture of total war, was added the horrors of concentration camps, liquidating depots,/experimental clinics where human guinea-pigs were subjected to every kind of indescribable torture, slave labour for tens of millions of innocent sufferers, massacres by cold-blooded design, and State-spon-sored sexual depravity which defied conception; this time with a death roll approximating One Hundred Millions, the voice of mankind has been heard with unmistakeable intensity. The leaders and promoters of all this unparalleled torture and death must be brought to justice. Germany’s erstwhile rulers, stripped of all their power and arrogance are now humbled after their ten months trial, and today they hear the verdict of the court which has been set up by the free peoples of the world to judge them. The trials must have a powerful significance. They will ihfluence the war-mongering factions of the future, for the Nuremberg prisoners as they stand in the dock facing the charges brought against them do not make -a pretty picture. The new procedure must become a powerful argument for peace and an antidote for war. We await the outcome.