Sympathy for the Devil

In a recent article by Ian Buruma for The New York Review of Books, Christopher Hitchens is reported to say of his father, who was a commander in the Royal Navy during World War II: "Sending a Nazi convoy raider to the bottom is a better day's work than any I have ever done." I think we can all pretty much agree with that, not just for Hitchens' sake but for just about anyone else's as well.

Similarly, the execution of six Nazi collaborators on September 2, 1944, near Grenoble, barely a week after the liberation of Paris, must certainly rank as a good day's work as well. With the abstraction that distance provides, this is certainly true. But removing that distance provokes more mixed emotions - at least, it did for me. Here's a series of photos from Life of that grisly, though necessary event. Seeing these images of six young, doomed, and incalculably evil Frenchmen in their last moments on Earth left me hollow. I didn't give a silent cheer, and in fact I would shudder to think that I would. I guess the best way to describe a day's work like this is that it is laudable - but unsavory.