In one of the most desperate campaigns in World War II, the Nazi high command, facing continued and intensifying opposition in Greece, decided to exterminate an entire town – the people and everything else – as an example and a warning of what they would keep doing were that opposition to persist.

Until World War II, it had been generally true that war meant soldiers fighting other soldiers; with some accidental exceptions, civilian populations endured relatively unharmed. The Nazi monsters changed all that, electing to make war on civilians the crown jewel of their military strategy.

In the Greek town we are talking about, they not only destroyed any way to produce food; they also went systematically from house to house – after all, they were German – and confiscated the food they found therein. When they left a house they pulled it down or burned it down and kicked the people out with nothing more than the clothes they were wearing. They destroyed all personal property. They even pulled the wedding bands from the fingers of the women they threw into the street.

Who were the victims of this atrocity upon whom the Nazis had pronounced the death penalty? For the most part, they were women, children, old men, and the sick and wounded who were unfit for military service. The able-bodied men were gone, fighting in guerrilla bands or dead, wounded or just hiding. Had the Nazis stopped there, the incident would still amount to a war crime for which they should have been convicted at the Nuremberg trials and hung. But the horror they committed in that little town in Greece was just beginning. Now they gathered the people who had worked in the factories and shipped them out of their country.

The Nazi high command apparently feared that the victims might somehow survive starvation and rebuild the factories Field Marshal von Steiner had burned to the ground. To forestall that, here is what they did, according to a massive study of this still unknown, unpunished war crime:

". . . With little or no concern for homes, women and children were torn from their families and shipped north. The vast majority of these people were never to see their loved ones again. In all, more than two thousand women, children, and a few old men were collected. Families were divided. Children were separated from their mothers. Tearful mothers were forced to watch as children, who had worked in the factories, were dragged away from home – almost none of them would ever be heard from again. . . ."

The victims were taken north to Germany – and vanished. No attempt was ever made to reunite them, even after the war. Were they killed in Allied bombings? Were some of them too young – or too old – to remember where they had come from? We shall never know. The mystery was never solved.

By now you probably figure you have heard it all. No, pilgrim, you figure wrong. The Nazi monsters did not ship all the women north. They kept four hundred – yes, four hundred young women and children – in the open town square for almost a week. It was the summer of 1943. The guards were drunk. The horror that happened there does not need to be described. The town completely vanished from the map.

Not all the women died or disappeared. Some became virtual slaves in Germany, no surprise in a country that could tolerate the concentration camps. Because the Nazis by now had completely destroyed morality in Germany, von Steiner was not disgraced; he was honored and promoted. Hitler gave him new assignments. Such is the fate of a nation whose people worship the government, not God.

The subtitle of this commentary is "Coming Again." There is a lesson here for us. What can we learn from this monstrous war crime committed by the Nazis in Greece? What does the subtitle mean? Am I trying to sell you the stale Communist canard that our country is Fascist and will commit such crimes here?

First let me apologize. I have played a trick on you. What you have read so far is not quite the truth. All the monstrous crimes I have described did happen, exactly as I said they did, but the Nazis did not commit them. They did not happen in Greece. There was no Field Marshal von Steiner. The women and children were not sent to Germany. Adolf Hitler did not rejoice.

But because you have read so much about the Nazis and seen so many movies about the Nazis, you did fall for my little trick; you did believe this was another Nazi war crime you were hearing about for the first time. The atrocity resembles everything else you have heard about the Nazi monsters.

If the Nazis didn’t do it, who did? The town that vanished was New Manchester, Georgia. The victims were Southern women and children. The men who did it were Union soldiers. The date was the summer of 1864. The monster who ordered it was Union General William Tecumseh Sherman. The monster who not only condoned it, but also applauded it and rewarded it, was our first Communist President, Abraham Lincoln.

Can you imagine such men for all time as Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson committing such atrocities? Lee could have – he invaded the North – but he did not. Could you imagine Stonewall Jackson pulling a lady’s wedding ring off? Read a poem entitled "Barbara Frietchie" by John Greenleaf Whittier. "Who touches a hair on yon gray head, dies like a dog, ‘March on!’ he said." See the movie, "Gods and Generals."

Indeed, when the Nazi monsters from the North committed these crimes, Confederate officers went to President Jefferson Davis and asked for permission to retaliate in kind. President Davis refused, because such conduct was uncivilized. Had Lee not been the sublime gentleman he was, perhaps he could have won.

You will find the history in an electrifying book by James Ronald Kennedy and Walter Donald Kennedy, entitled The South Was Right! (Gretna, Louisiana, Pelican, 2000). The facts in my rendition are exactly as the brothers Kennedy set them down. Start at the bottom of page 121. All I did was put the facts in another setting. For instance, the women and children were shipped north, not to Germany but north of the Ohio River.

Why did I tell the story that way? Why did I trick you? I did it that way because, had I told it straight, the Communist Yankee propaganda all of us have been subjected to for years in the government schools would have kicked in, and you would have come to the automatic, brainwashed conclusion that propaganda is artfully designed to elicit.

Unless you have managed to overcome or, even better, avoid, the brainwashing, you would have excused the atrocity – like a "good Nazi" – as soon as I told you who did it. So, the reason I told it the way I did was that I needed you to commit to the fact that it was a Nazi atrocity.

The War for Southern Independence was the first "modern" war, in that it was the first war deliberately fought against civilians. It introduced "total" war, no surprise when you remember that Communist monster Lincoln was running a totalitarian dictatorship. It is eminently reasonable to speculate that, just as Hitler learned about concentration camps from the English (our traditional, perennial enemy) in the Boer War, so he learned about total war from Communist dastard Abraham Lincoln.

So, what is the lesson? What is "coming again?" The same people who committed the atrocity in New Manchester – and all across the South for many years – are in power in D.C. (the District of Criminals) now. They have different bodies but the same minds. Why did they hate the South with such insane passion? They hated the South because it fought for independence.

Today they hate anyone who fights for independence. They are presently in the process of destroying our national independence. Their goal is a world government in which the United States would be dissolved. They hate personal independence. If you try to live without a Social Security Number, if you try to obey the tax laws by paying only the taxes the laws require you to pay, if you act independently, they will do everything they can to destroy you.

You say my point is preposterous; that nothing like New Manchester could ever happen here again? Ever hear of Waco? Ever hear of Mt. Carmel? Remember David Koresh? How many women and children did the Yankee dastards exterminate there? Yes, I know it was a "cult," but one man’s cult is the next man’s church. They said they were after Koresh, but remember that they could have arrested Koresh any time, when he was jogging alone or went into town.

Someone very smart has written that whoever controls the past controls the present. The Yankee totalitarians have rewritten our history for that purpose. People who have no knowledge of their history and the glory that is there are easy to conquer and enslave. Notice that the war continues. Under cover of the phony race issue, mindless totalitarians go berserk when they see a Confederate flag or other such symbol and go to court to remove it. If court fails, they will deface it.

It wasn’t a "Civil War" at all. In a civil war, two sides contend for control of a government. It was the War for Southern Independence, because that was all the South wanted. The more I learn about it, the more I realize I have been a Southerner all along.

Copyright Family Guardian Fellowship